House GOP amps up its revenge against Attorney General Merrick Garland

Posted on June 10, 2024 by Joan McCarter

The House is going to spend half of this week on their revenge agenda for convicted felon Donald Trump, this time voting to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. This is part of the mounting campaign among Republicans to enact retribution on President Joe Biden, his administration officials, congressional Democrats and anyone else Trump puts on his enemies list. It’s a precursor to what they’ll do if they maintain the House, win the Senate, and Trump wins.

The House will send the resolution against Garland to the Justice Department for criminal referral if it passes later this week. Which essentially means it’s going nowhere. The referral would go to the U.S. attorney who would be tasked with determining whether a crime was committed by Garland in refusing to turn over audio recordings of the interviews special counsel Robert Hur conducted with Biden in a classified documents inquiry, and if charges should be brought.

The U.S. attorney for D.C. is highly unlikely to find criminal action on Garland’s part, which would likely send the case to federal courts, and there wouldn’t be an outcome before the election. But if the election favors Republicans, Garland is going to be high on their list for locking up.

House Democrats have done a bang-up job of humiliating Republicans on this goose chase and are continuing to do so, but a little humiliation isn’t enough to deter them from doing Trump’s bidding.

“Desperate to blame someone—anyone—for the utter failure of this impeachment inquiry, Republicans have contrived an allegation that Attorney General Merrick Garland has impeded their impeachment inquiry by preventing them from hearing President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Hur by withholding the audio recording,” Democrats on the Oversight Committee said in a statement.

“In fact, Republicans, and the American public, can already read the full content of that interview.”

That’s absolutely true—Garland released the transcripts when Hur testified before Congress, a hearing that turned out to be a flop for Republicans. They want that audio, though, to use to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. This is why the Justice Department is refusing to cede to the demand. It’s also why Biden claimed executive privilege to block release of the tapes.

White House Counsel Ed Siskel blasted GOP lawmakers' attempts to get the tapes, insisting that they have no legitimate purpose for acquiring them, only a political one "to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”

Watch: Attorney general pushes back on GOP's absurd Trump defense

‘Political huckster’: GOP congressman exposed in contentious hearing

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‘Little maggot-infested man’ Tom Cotton rises to top of Trump VP list

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Joan McCarter

A new name has popped up in the chatter about Donald Trump’s potential pick for vice president: Sen. Tom Cotton. He’s reportedly high on the list because of his “experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign.” As a running mate, the Arkansas senator “would carry relatively little risk of creating unwanted distractions for a presidential campaign already facing multiple legal threats,” according to The New York Times.

But it sure seems risky to put a no-holds barred racist, sexist creep on a debate stage with Vice President Kamala Harris. Cotton traded in his dog whistle for a racist bullhorn years ago, and has made headlines with his outrageous statements and behavior.

Here is a mere sampling of Cotton’s lowlights:

Attacking Ketanji Brown Jackson

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Cotton teamed up with the other deplorables on the Senate Judiciary Committee to harangue the nominee about everything from QAnon theories to her history as a public defender, attempting to paint her as an adherent of “critical race theory,” as if that’s a bad thing.

Cotton really sunk to the bottom, however, when he all but called Jackson a Nazi sympathizer during a floor speech. “You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis,” he said. “This Judge Jackson might’ve gone there to defend them.”

“Judge Jackson voluntarily represented three terrorists in three cases,” Cotton complained to CNN. “And she called American soldiers war criminals. I have no patience for it.” Jackson, of course, did not call U.S. troops war criminals.

Those were the accusations that prompted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison to call Cotton the “lowest of the low” and a “little maggot-infested man.”

Attacking the first Muslim American appeals court nominee

Cotton’s recent bigoted attacks on Adeel A. Mangi, the first-ever Muslim American federal appeals court nominee, also made headlines when he subjected the Pakistani-born attorney to a barrage of Islamophobic questions about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, al-Qaida’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, policy issues regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and antisemitism in general.

Cotton bragged about his harassment of Mangi on X (formerly Twitter), crowing about his “gotcha” question trying to paint Mangi as antisemitic. Which is ironic, given Cotton’s previous antisemitic tweet history.

Blocking nominees of color

Cotton has a history of opposing Democratic presidents’ Black and brown nominees. From 2014 through 2016, Cotton blocked President Barack Obama’s friend and nominee Cassandra Butts—a Black woman—from an ambassador job. Why? When Butts met with him about his block, she told The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, Cotton admitted it was because “he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s … and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.” Butts died of cancer more than 800 days after her nomination.

Smearing a Singapore national

The senator proved himself an equal opportunity bigot in a recent Senate hearing on child safety and social media, repeatedly attacking TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew—a Singapore national—about his supposed personal connections to “the Chinese Communist Party.” Chew repeatedly denied Cotton’s obnoxious assertions, reiterating again and again, “I served my nation of Singapore.”

That didn’t stop Cotton from running to Fox News to smear Chew. “Singapore, unfortunately, is one of the places in the world that has the highest degree of infiltration and influence by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “So, Mr. Chew has a lot to answer for, for what his app is doing in America and why it’s doing it.”

Defending slavery

Of course, Cotton’s racist theatrics haven’t been confined to Senate hearings. He authored legislation in 2020 to ban public schools from using a curriculum based on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which dissected slavery’s impact on our country’s founding. He justified his bill by calling The 1619 Project “left-wing propaganda” and revisionist history at its worst.”

Cotton added that children should instead be taught that slavery “was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.”

National security sabotoge

When he wasn’t harassing people of color during hearings, Cotton also dabbled in national security sabotage, interfering in Obama’s negotiations with Iran on their nuclear capabilities. Cotton spearheaded a letter from GOP senators to Iranian leaders telling them that even if they came to an agreement with the U.S., future administrations and/or Congress could renege on it.

That infamous New York Times op-ed

And don’t forget Cotton’s gross New York Times op-ed titled “Send In The Troops,” which called for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use “an overwhelming show of force” against protesters who took to the streets nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police. The column incited fierce backlash, which led to backpedaling from The New York Times and the opinion page editor’s resignation.

None of this will diminish Cotton’s prospects with Trump, who likes him because he’s a smart guy with an elite education. Also, he’s a reliable sycophant.

Cotton has refused to condemn Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin, and has bragged about how he ignored the evidence and arguments in Trump’s first impeachment.

“My aides delivered a steady flow of papers and photocopied books, hidden underneath a fancy cover sheet labeled ‘Supplementary Impeachment Materials’, so nosy reporters sitting above us in the Senate gallery couldn’t see what I was reading,” Cotton wrote in his 2022 memoir.

Everything about Cotton appeals to Trump—and everything about him will revolt voters.

Tom Cotton leads the Republican fight to sabotage Iran negotiations

Republican senator turns hearing on child safety into display of racial profiling

GOP senators barrage Biden's Muslim court nominee with hostile, inappropriate questions at hearing

Republican senators who attacked Ketanji Brown Jackson with racist frames got Fox News rewards

Republicans have their racist knives out for Ketanji Brown Jackson

New York Times gets justifiably smashed for publishing Sen. Tom Cotton's fascist screed

We're heading across the pond for this week's episode of "The Downballot" after the UK just announced it would hold snap elections—on July 4, no less. Co-host David Beard gives us Yanks a full run-down, including how the elections will work, what the polls are predicting, and what Labour plans to do if it finally ends 14 years of Conservative rule. We also take detours into Scotland and Rwanda (believe it or not) and bear down on a small far-right party that could cost the Tories dearly.

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The pressure is building for the Senate to do something about Alito

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s insurrectionist flag flying was bad enough the first time around. The second instance demands action. Congress, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the third branch body that oversees the judiciary—the Judicial Conference—have to act, but it’s not going to happen unless the Senate Judiciary Committee raises some hell.

The problem is the chair of that committee, who is also the No. 2 leader of the Senate Democrats, is dithering. Dick Durbin of Illinois, told reporters “I don't think there's much to be gained with a hearing at this point” when news broke that Alito flew an upside-down American flag at his home days after the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, as well as while the court was still considering whether to take up cases over the 2020 election.

“I think he should recuse himself from cases involving Trump and his administration,” Durbin continued.

After the second flag scandal, Durbin is still just calling for Alito’s recusal on cases the court is deciding right now: Donald Trump’s immunity in criminal cases in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and on the prosecution of Jan. 6 riot participants. He’s still not sure whether his committee should investigate; He wants more time to think about it.

“Justice Alito is not taking care to avoid political identity,” he told The Washington Post. “He is identifying the right-wing elements in our political system. And that’s unfortunate. It’s further evidence of the need for him to recuse himself from cases that involve the Trump administration.”

“[Chief] Justice Roberts has to step back and realize the damage that’s being done to the reputation of the court,” Durbin added.

Roberts might realize that, but the chances that he’s going to do something about it are about as unlikely as Alito’s recusal.

Outside groups, including Indivisible and Demand Justice, as well as legal experts are pressuring Durbin to act by launching an investigation into Alito’s insurrectionist leanings. “Chief Justice Roberts must demand that Justices Thomas and Alito not be allowed to participate in deciding the immunity case or any other decision related to Jan. 6,” Norman Eisen, former impeachment counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, and Michael Podhorzer, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote this week for MSNBC.

“And the Senate should hold hearings immediately investigating their conduct. Any other course risks the court’s legitimacy, Americans’ rights and the rule of law,” they concluded.

Durbin is facing pressure inside the Senate as well. Two Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, both nipping at Durbin’s heels to succeed him as chair, want more. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell that what Alito is doing by refusing to recuse on these cases is breaking a "law passed by Congress, specifically applicable to Supreme Court Justices. When they pay no attention to it, they are actually violating statutory law."

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Whitehouse went on to say that “it has gotten to the point where the Chief Justice has to engage, and I think you will see more action on that shortly out of the Judiciary Committee.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Tuesday that “Chief Justice Roberts ought to be summoned to a hearing before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. He ought to show some leadership and be held accountable.”

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“Of course, Justice Alito ought to be subpoenaed as well in my view, but likely he is not going to appear and I think it is a time of reckoning for the Congress,” Blumenthal continued.

“Justice Alito says the Congress can't regulate, to use his term, the Supreme Court. But the Congress set salaries. It sets rules of procedure. It sets the numbers of justices. The founders didn't want the United States Supreme Court to be above the law.”

Alito famously declared himself and the rest of the justices just that in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, in which he made a startling assertion of constitutional power: “No provision in the Constitution gives [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

That interview was with David Rivkin Jr., a regular contributor to the WSJ who also happens to be a lawyer who was about to argue a major tax case before the court. Durbin once again called on Alito to recuse from that case, as well as on Roberts to do something about Alito, for all the good it did.

This is not so subtle pressure on Durbin to do more than tweet sternly worded statements from two of his senior committee members. They see what all of us see: Asking nicely for Alito to recuse—which Durbin and House Democrats have done—is weak sauce.

It’s time to act. House Democratic leadership should be talking impeachment instead of issuing empty demands to Alito. No, Speaker Mike Johnson won’t go along with it, but Democrats are a hair's breadth from having control of the House and they should act like it. They are also likely to take the House back in November, which gives an impeachment threat now more weight.

The Senate Judiciary, led by Durbin, has to investigate. They have to put maximum pressure on Roberts starting right now, before the court issues its rulings on Trump immunity.

It’s time for the Senate to do something about Supreme Court corruption

Alito has another 'Stop the Steal' flag—and he's not blaming his wife this time

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House GOP targets attorney general after failing to dig up dirt on Biden

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Joan McCarter

The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Accountability Committee are holding hearings Thursday to consider holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. The Department of Justice has refused to provide recordings of special counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with President Joe Biden and his ghostwriter in the classified documents probe, having already provided the transcripts of those interviews.

The outcome of these meetings isn’t in question; committee chairs Jim Jordan and James Comer will push the contempt vote to the House floor. They remain intent on finding anything that they can use to impeach Biden and/or members of his administration, and they won’t let the fact that their efforts so far have been ridiculous stop them.

It took them two tries to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, only for the Senate to swat it away. The star witness in their Biden impeachment case turned out to be a Russian mole. And they’ve already been down the road of trying to use Hur’s report to prove Biden unfit for office—a game that Hur refused to play in Jordan’s disastrous hearing. But no embarrassing defeat is going to stop them.

“These audio recordings are important to our investigation of President Biden’s willful retention of classified documents and his fitness to be President of the United States,” Comer said in a press release.

The DOJ has in fact been providing information to Comer and Jordan. In February, it even gave them access to two of the classified documents Biden had from his time as vice president, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.

But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote in refusing the team’s subpoena for more information.

Uriarte detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas in his initial letter to Jordan and Comer in April and concluded “we are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”

In his second letter to the chairs, Uriarte reiterated that point.

“It seems that the more information you receive, the less satisfied you are, and the less justification you have for contempt, the more you rush towards it,” he wrote. “[T]he Committees’ inability to identify a need for these audio files grounded in legislative or impeachment purposes raises concerns about what other purposes they might serve.”

The purpose, of course, is having audio and video that they can chop up to show Biden unfavorably in their televised hearings. They got the transcripts for their hearing with Hur, but they didn’t find anything, so of course they’re doubling down. It’s Jordan and Comer—what else are they going to do?

But this latest sham does at least give Democrats on the committees yet another opportunity to own Republicans in the hearings.

The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

House GOP manufactures new fight after Biden impeachment fails

Ian Bassin is the former associate White House counsel and co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy. Protect Democracy is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group focused on anti-authoritarianism, how to protect our democracy, and safeguarding our free and fair elections.

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GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson is kidding himself about his leadership

Posted on May 7, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted Tuesday morning that he has the House under control and a rosy future ahead of him. “I plan to lead this conference in the future,” Johnson told reporters, adding that he has “plans for the next Congress.”

Good luck with that, Mr. Speaker.

Johnson hopes hinge on the continued support of Donald Trump, and we all know how that goes.

The harsh reality for Johnson is that he has failed at everything the speaker is supposed to do—raise money, hold the majority, pass legislation, and keep the caucus focused on the party’s agenda. Instead, he delivered a failed impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The months-long effort to impeach President Joe Biden is in shambles. The only way Johnson has been able to pass critical legislation is by relying on Democrats, and he’s overseen an ever-shrinking Republican majority. He’s also far behind his immediate predecessor Kevin McCarthy in fundraising. The odds of Republicans holding the majority after November’s election are vanishingly small.

To top it all off, Johnson is continuing to negotiate with terrorists, holding a second meeting in two days with GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, the agitators behind a motion to oust him. Johnson insists that “it’s not a negotiation … I hear suggestions and ideas and thoughts from members. My door has been open from Day One.”

But that’s not what Greene believes.

“I have high expectations, and they have to be met in full,” she said Tuesday. “There is no middle ground. There is no compromise.”

Greene is demanding an end to aid for Ukraine; a promise that Johnson will abide by the “Hastert Rule,” requiring he get the support from a majority of the House GOP on any legislation before bringing it to the floor; a promise that he’ll defund the special counsel probes into Trump in the appropriations for next year; and that he abides by the so-called “Massie Rule,” to make automatic across-the-board cuts if Congress doesn’t come to a funding agreement before a set deadline.

That’s setting the stage for yet another government shutdown fight in September, just weeks ahead of the election. The Senate and the White House certainly won’t agree to defunding Special Counsel Jack Smith, much less the funding cuts she’s insisting upon.

Nevertheless, Johnson told reporters Tuesday he’s considering defunding the Justice Department’s probe into Trump.

“We're looking very intently at it because I think the problem has reached a crescendo,” he said.

Of course he is. He has to if he’s going to keep Trump on his side.

All of this is giving other Republicans bad flashbacks to the fiasco McCarthy created by giving in to the demands of the maniacs.

“We got in trouble [in] January 2023, right? And we may have paid way too much, and I think for right now I would be very careful,” Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told reporters after Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting.

“I don’t have a problem with him listening. What I will have a problem with … is when you start making special deals, side deals, hidden deals, behind-the closed-door deals. And then not just conservatives but moderates, say: ‘Well, what about my deal,’” Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern of Oklahoma added.

Johnson should be taking the McCarthy warning to heart. He might also benefit from looking back to former Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner, who were essentially chased out after trying and failing to meet Freedom Caucus demands.

He might think he’s the anointed one who can navigate this path to victory, but Johnson is setting himself up for a humiliating fall.

Let’s help him lose. Donate $3 apiece to help flip these 16 vulnerable Republican seats so we can take back the House in 2024!

Democrats might stop the House speaker’s ouster—and they won’t let him forget it

Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a mess of House GOP's big impeachment day

House Speaker Mike Johnson just can’t win

Posted on May 6, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Big Republican donors might note Monday that after Speaker Mike Johnson talked tough to them this weekend about cracking down on the rebels who have derailed the House, he chose to kowtow to the current chaos agent; Johnson will have a one-on-one meeting with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to air her grievances.

Johnson and Greene will meet Monday afternoon, following days of Greene abusing him on social media and with her promise of forcing a vote to oust Johnson some time this week. She and her ally, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, are ready to go. “If you’re happy with what he’s done this year and if you’re looking forward to what he will do the remainder of the year, you should join the Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries in supporting Mike Johnson. #uniparty” Massie tweeted Sunday.

That’s in response to the Democratic leadership team’s announcement last week that they’ll ride to Johnson’s rescue and allow members to block his ouster. That move ensures Johnson owes his future as speaker to Democrats and guarantees that his GOP detractors are only going to be more enraged at him because of it. There's just no winning for him no matter what.

Meanwhile, Johnson tried to placate big GOP donors by telling them he wants to crack down on the rebels if the Republicans retain the House next year. In a two-day donor retreat that started Sunday evening, Johnson said that he’d support new rules that would kick members off of their committees if they don’t toe the line on party-line procedural votes. Members of the Freedom Caucus have been regularly grinding the House’s business to a halt this session by blocking bills from moving to the floor either in the Rules Committee or on the floor.

Johnson needs those big donors for the Republicans to have a prayer of keeping their House majority and those big donors need to know that their investment wouldn’t just go down the toilet. The chaos in the House has been a black eye for Republicans, and the money men are seemingly not happy about that.

Johnson’s reassurances that he’d crack down on the malcontents if he stays in the job just made Greene more riled up. “Speaker Mike Johnson is talking about kicking Republican members off of committees if we vote against his rules/bills,” she tweeted Monday morning. “It’s not us who is out of line, it’s our Republican elected Speaker!!” It’s unclear if that came before or after Johnson granted her a private audience.

So far, most of the Freedom Caucus gang seems to be as fed up with Greene as they are with Johnson, so she hasn’t gained much support. But that could change with Johnson’s promise to the money people that he’d crack down on the rebels. That would make Johnson even more reliant on Democrats to save him, which would make the maniacs even angrier. He can’t win.

This was supposed to be a week devoted to messaging bills bashing President Joe Biden and the Democrats, including everyone’s favorite HOOHA bill—Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act—which promises to liberate our refrigerators from the heavy hand of big government. Instead it’s all going to be overshadowed by the soap opera.

Donate now to end this circus, and to take the House back from Republicans!

Mitch McConnell will stop at nothing to regain Senate majority

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Joan McCarter

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Sunday airwaves to pat himself on the back for getting Ukraine aid passed, and promptly reverted back to his old ways. Bipartisanship is in the rear view mirror now and McConnell is still intent on the GOP winning at all costs, no matter what damage is done to the country.

In lengthy interviews on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation,” McConnell dodged the most critical issues of the day in furtherance of his primary goal.

“I think the single most important thing I can do is make sure my successor is the majority leader, no matter how the presidential election comes out,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan. "What I want to do and what I'm focused on is not the presidential race, but getting the Senate back. I've been the majority leader, I've been the minority leader. Majority is better."

McConnell said he intends to "get ready for the challenges that we have ahead of us, rather than just looking backward." The nation’s biggest challenge ahead is Donald Trump and his threat to democracy, and that’s what McConnell is refusing to look back on.

When asked about Trump’s claims of immunity from prosecution, McConnell insisted he “stands by what he said” after Jan. 6, namely that “[t]here is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of [Jan. 6]” and the attack on the Capitol “was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”

That faux-righteous diatribe came after McConnell voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment, the one fail-safe opportunity he and his fellow senators had to ensure Trump could never run for office again. He failed then, just like he failed when he gave Trump his endorsement earlier this year. Now he insists that he has to support Trump, telling Brennan “[a]s the Republican leader of the Senate, obviously, I’m gonna support the nominee of our party.”

And that support doesn’t even really mean anything, he claimed.

“The issue is, what kind of influence, even if I had chosen to get involved in the presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?” McConnell mused.

He had enough influence to make sure Trump would not be barred from running again. On top of that, the Supreme Court McConnell stole for Trump seems intent on clearing Trump’s path back to the White House.

Saving democracy wasn’t the only big issue McConnell tried to dodge on Sunday. NBC’s Kristen Welker asked him whether he supports a national abortion ban, and he refused to answer.

“I don’t think we’ll get 60 votes in the Senate for any kind of national legislation,” McConnell said, not-so-deftly avoiding the question.

He deflected instead, using the standard GOP rationalization.

“It seems to me views about this issue at the state level vary depending where you are. And we get elected by states,” McConnell said. “And my members are smart enough to figure out how they want to deal with this very divisive issue based upon the people who actually send them here.”

Welker pushed McConnell, asking him to explain his celebratory remarks in 2022, after the Supreme Court he built overturned Roe v. Wade and he said a “national ban is possible.” Now that the political blowback of that decision has hit Republicans hard when it comes to election results, McConnell once again obfuscated.

“I said it was possible. I didn’t say that was my view,” he claimed. “I just said it was possible.”

Once again, McConnell’s eye is on that ultimate prize of a Republican Senate majority, no matter what he has to do or lie about. If reclaiming that majority means a second term for Trump, so be it.

Stop McConnell in his tracks. Donate now to stop Republicans from snatching the Senate!

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House GOP manufactures new fight after Biden impeachment fails

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Joan McCarter

House Republicans’ attempt to impeach President Joe Biden has fizzled out. But the two members tasked with the job, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Oversight Chair James Comer, needing to atone for their failure, have picked another fight: threatening to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt over the Department of Justice’s refusal to provide the audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe.

Garland is refusing to play their game.

On Thursday, the DOJ refused for a second time to provide that audio, arguing that it has complied in full with the committees’ subpoenas for information. It provided both the transcription of the Biden interview as well as Hur’s interview with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer for Jordan’s big disaster of a hearing. Two months ago, it even gave Jordan and Comer access to two of the classified documents, which Comer insisted were critical to his investigations.

But Comer “has not yet taken us up on our offer,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote.

In Uriarte’s first letter to Jordan and Comer earlier this month, he detailed all of the information they had provided in response to their demands and subpoenas.

“The Committees’ reaction is difficult to explain in terms of any lack of information or frustration of any informational or investigative imperative, given the Department’s actual conduct,” Uriarte wrote. “We are therefore concerned that the Committees are disappointed not because you didn’t receive information, but because you did.”

Uriarte reiterated that point Thursday.

Those purposes are clearly political. They need to keep up the fight against Biden and are scrambling for whatever they can get. They also probably believe that the audio of the interview could be damaging to Biden. Hur’s report included gratuitous hits about Biden’s age and mental acuity, so Jordan and Comer want to play it during their hearings, knowing that the media would eat that up.

Uriarte outlined the DOJ’s concern about that, writing that it would impinge on Biden’s privacy and that “courts have recognized the privacy interest in one’s voice—including tone, pauses, emotional reactions, and cues—is distinct from the privacy interest in a written transcript of one’s conversation.”

He also implied that Comer and Jordan can’t be trusted with the audio, writing that it could be manipulated by “cutting, erasing, and splicing.”

That’s a safe assumption on Uriarte’s part.

After basically crying “uncle” on impeaching Biden on influence peddling, being humiliated over their Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment stunt, and losing on Ukraine and government funding, Jordan and Comer are itching for revenge.

But the DOJ has called them on it.

“The Committees have demanded information you know we have principled reasons to protect, and then accused us of obstruction for upholding those principles,” Uriarte wrote. “This deepens our concern that the Committees may be seeking conflict for conflict’s sake.”

House GOP to launch critical investigation into just how old Biden is

The New York Times is determined to make 'but his age' the new 'but her emails'

Here's one way to avoid dealing with election results you don't like: just wipe them from the record books. It's not Orwell—it's Arizona, and we're talking all about it on this week's episode of "The Downballot." This fall, voters have the chance to deny new terms to two conservative Supreme Court justices, but a Republican amendment would retroactively declare those elections null and void—and all but eliminate the system Arizona has used to evaluate judges for 50 years. We're going to guess voters won't like this one bit … if it even makes it to the ballot in the first place.

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The Biden impeachment is a huge failure. The GOP is looking for a way out

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Joan McCarter

After 15 months of trying to pull a Biden family crime spree out of thin air, lead impeachment zealot James Comer has watched his dreams of MAGA glory crumble into dust. Comer, the House Oversight Committee chair, told a Republican colleague that he’s ready to be “done with” the whole fiasco, according to CNN.

“Comer is hoping Jesus comes so he can get out. He is fed up,” another GOP lawmaker said.

There’s just so much humiliation one man can take, I guess. The effort by Comer and co-zealot Jim Jordan, chair of the Judiciary Committee, to find dirt on President Joe Biden and his son Hunter has ended up with the two coated in mud. It’s become so pathetic that even Sean Hannity has stopped propping it up.

But how did it come to this?

Start with the fact that a full year ago, even Comer had to admit that there wasn’t any evidence of Biden crimes. But that didn’t stop him and Jordan from plowing on and making it all more ridiculous. They brought in IRS whistleblowers who produced nothing but hot air. The biggest news story to come out of that hearing was extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s porn stunt, displaying nude photos of Hunter Biden—not the usual C-SPAN fare.

Despite those early fiascos, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy decided he’d try to save his own bacon by making the impeachment effort official. (The extent to which that didn’t work is a whole other story.) The first official hearing proved to be another complete farce.

“Through the course of the day, not only did Republicans showcase their lack of interest in facts, they also demonstrated that they are absolutely terrified of anything that looks like a fact witness,” Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote.

It didn’t get any better for Comer and Jordan. They were played by Hunter Biden when he showed up to testify on camera despite their efforts to do it in secret. Comer still plowed on with the hearings only to be embarrassed again in the infamous Russian mole and sawdust debacle. He then tried moving the goalposts, suggesting that impeachment wasn’t their goal after all. Rather, they were gathering evidence for future prosecutions in a would-be Trump administration, Comer claimed.

That was after they tried to pivot the story to a classified documents scandal, featuring a report on Biden’s old age, which was another total flop. They even tried to impeach a Cabinet secretary in another debasing disaster for Republicans.

All of which has served primarily to turn extremist Republicans against Comer for not working hard enough at impeaching Biden.

“I feel like this was slow-rolled, and it’s been very frustrating for me as a new member because I feel like there’s way more that we could have done, and it just hasn’t been done in a timely fashion,” a frustrated GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told CNN.

“I don’t even want to talk to you. … If you don’t think they were influence-peddling, there’s nothing to say. My God,” Comer responded to CNN.

Officially, a House Oversight Committee spokesperson says that “the impeachment inquiry is ongoing, and impeachment is 100% still on the table.” Uh-huh.

All Comer has gotten out of this is the animosity of colleagues and showing himself to be a fool in front of a national audience. Oh, and the unearthing of a few of his own little scandals.

The perfectly hilarious cherry on top of all of this? The Kentucky Republican’s dream of redemption.

“Comer, a five-term congressman, has another matter on his mind: ambitions to run for higher office one day,” CNN reports, “including potentially running for governor, according to lawmakers who have spoken to him.”

Sure, dude. Sure.

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Biden wins on Ukraine as House GOP faces big decision about its future

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Joan McCarter

President Joe Biden and Democrats won big in the House Saturday, when it voted resoundingly in support of Ukraine aid. This could mark a turning point for Republicans, leaving them with a choice: to admit defeat and start governing, or to keep fighting with each other.

For months, both former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and current Speaker Mike Johnson have catered to Donald Trump and the MAGA wing of the House GOP on Ukraine aid, insisting that it could not pass without a harsh immigration and border security bill. Once they got that, they turned it down at Trump’s request. Now there’s Ukraine aid and no border deal—a big loss for far-right Republicans and Trump.

This could signal that the fever has finally broken among the governing bloc of the GOP … or not. What it has done is unleash a torrent of anger against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the extremist Freedom Caucus by some non-MAGA members.

Before the vote, Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas slammed his colleagues, saying, “I guess their reasoning is they want Russia to win so badly that they want to oust the speaker over it, I mean that’s a strange position to take … I think they want to be in the minority too, I think that’s an obvious reality.”

Even Biden impeachment zealot Rep. James Comer denounced Greene’s efforts to oust Johnson in an interview on Fox News.

“Now Mike Johnson walked into a bad situation,” Comer said. “It’s gotten a lot worse since he’s been here. But changing speakers is not the right business model.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas completely unleashed his anger toward his MAGA colleagues on Sunday, calling them “scumbags” who “used to walk around in white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods in the daytime,” during an interview on CNN.

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But Greene and her accomplices are showing no signs of backing down.

“There is more support,” for her efforts, Greene said Monday. “It's growing. I've said from the beginning, I'm going to be responsible with this ... I do not support Mike Johnson. He's already a lame duck. If we have the vote today in our conference he would not be speaker today.”

Greene’s cosponsor Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said Friday, "We want Mike Johnson to resign. We don't want to go speaker-less. So the goal is to show him, through co-sponsorship, how much support he's lost and hopefully he'll get the message and give us a notice so that we have time ... to replace him.”

That’s a tacit acknowledgement that they’d lose on the House floor if they tried to force Johnson out, since enough Democrats would vote to keep him now that he’s finally done the right thing. So it’s really up to the rest of the Republicans to decide. Will they squash Greene and her team once and for all? Will they accept that anything they accomplish in the remainder of this election year will have to involve Democrats and finally stop with the ridiculous messaging nonsense? (Fat chance.)

Meanwhile, most of Biden’s major priorities have been successful, including the securing of a debt limit deal with McCarthy. Despite the maniacs’ best effort, the government did not shut down and was funded at adequate levels. Now Ukraine will finally get the critical aid it needs to stave off Russia once the Senate passes the bill on Tuesday.

On top of all that, the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas collapsed, and the Biden impeachment is dead in the water.

House Democrats hold Johnson’s fate in their hands, and everyone knows it—including the majority of Republicans. Has the fever broken in the GOP? Not as long as Trump is alive and kicking, though his political days might be numbered.

There are likely still big fights to come over next year’s budget, and it’s going to be up to the House GOP to figure out how to salvage something out of its tiny majority before the election.

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