From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

 

Struggling out of the quagmire

ROGER FITCH ESQ • THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2021

The Roberts Supreme Court Court and its obstructions ... Gerrymanders could see the Republicans take back the House ... Members of the "sedition caucus" to testify before January 6 committee ... Big money behind the claims of election fraud ... Trouble ahead for Trump lawyers ... Roger Fitch, Our Man in Washington, reports 

An "impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex" -  psychological assessment of Donald Trump provided to Vladimir Putin in January 2015.

"Rating Outlook is Negative ... The failure of the former president to concede the election and the events surrounding the certification of the results of the presidential election in Congress in January, have no recent parallels in other very highly rated sovereigns. The redrafting of election laws in some states could weaken the political system, increasing divergence between votes cast and party representation. These developments underline an ongoing risk of … difficulty in formulating policy and passing laws in Congress…" - Fitch Ratings, July 2021.

Perhaps the potential loss of America's treasured Triple-A sovereign Issuer Default Rating could make the country's seditious insurgents reconsider their goal of permanent, one-party government. 

Or maybe not. The Democrats seem too compromised and supine to either stop the new Jim Crow voting rights restrictions sweeping Trumpland, or - before there's another Putsch - invoke the 14th Amendment and exclude Trump from public office based on, e.g, his traitorous interference in the Justice Department.  

Perhaps the pending January 6 hearings will uncover sufficient treachery to justify such disqualification of Trump by states and congress. 

*   *   *

As expected, senate Republicans filibustered the Democrats' signature voting rights act for the usual (racist) reasons, and because of their well-founded expectation that stonewalling reforms will produce enduring one-party government at the next election.

If only the Democrats could carve out an exception for the filibuster, limited to constitutional issues, but that's difficult, due to rats in Democrat ranks. 

Filibusters aside, Biden and his party - with the vice-president's vote - have a working majority in the upper house, but they suffer from two backsliders, West Virginia's plutocrat senator Joe Manchin, and the slippery Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Sinema is so conservative that an Arizona Republic writer queried why she hasn't joined the Republican Party.

Senate Democrats have additional ideas for getting voting laws through the upper house, but a determined and mischievous conservative majority on the supreme court might still strike down new voting rights laws. 

Since the ascension of Chief Justice John Roberts, the decisions of the court's right-wing majority have increasingly aligned with the agenda of the Republicans who appointed them, in "total war" on congress, evident in Brnovich v DNC, the latest judicial attack on voting rights in the supreme court. 

There's a new book out on the groundwork that the Roberts Court laid for the current Republican assault on voting rights - obstructed throughout American history by the  court - and a vast suite of civil rights laws. A Progressive writer has a damning list of the worst decisions of the Roberts Court since the chief justice's appointment in 2005. 

The supreme court has been blessing gerrymanders since at least the notorious "second" decennial Texas redistricting of 2003 (heard and decided by the court in 2006). 

That was preceded by a Texas Democrat walkout, a tactic deployed again this year. It's a shame Obama didn't act in January 2009 - the last time  Democrats had a filibuster-proof congress - to pass laws preventing such shocking gerrymanders as that of Texas in 2003. 

Now Republicans are on the brink of retaking the house of representatives through gerrymanders that the supreme court effectively approved. Only four Republican-controlled southern states are needed to do it. One hopes that Biden's AG will meanwhile vigorously enforce existing laws abandoned by Trump's AG.

The only place safe for voting rights legislation now is in the state houses, where a newly-blue Virginia has gone from nearly worst, to one of the best.

*   *   *

In the lead up to the House of Representatives inquiry into the January 6th Capitol riot and insurrection, Just Security has created a "January 6 clearinghouse" site coordinating information relating to the event.

We already know that forewarnings of the insurrection were missed or ignored, and Jane Mayer, one of America's best investigative journalists, has a long read in the New Yorker on the big money behind Trump's ludicrous post-election fraud claims that culminated in the Capitol attack.

Justice Department leaks had already revealed the efforts of Trump to have DoJ assist in the overthrow of the election results. Now, career Justice Department officials are testifying to the machinations of Trump and his acolyte Jeffrey Clark (see below). 

The committee's subpoenas can't be resisted: the Attorney General has decided there will be no DoJ interference with subpoenas to former officials of the Trump administration. 

Trump's man Brooks: sued for incitement to violence

Nor will DoJ intervene to defend individual Republican congressmen who abetted the insurrection, e.g. Rep "Mo" Brooks who is being sued by Democrat Rep Eric Stalwell for his incitements to violence at the rally preceding the mob attack. 

As DoJ opined, "Inciting or conspiring to foment a violent attack on the United States Congress is not within the scope of employment of a Representative - or any federal employee".

Eventually, members of the Republican "sedition caucus" will be called to testify before the January 6 committee, and there's a precedent for that: the demands of Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy, when he was in the Senate. 

Attorney General Garland had already released the astounding draft brief that the Trump White House wanted the Justice Department to file in the supreme court, seeking to reverse the election. 

Garland has since issued restraints on communications between DoJ and the White House.  That's important in the light of the improper actions of Jeffrey Clark, the Justice underling who openly assisted Trump's efforts; notes exist attesting to their conspiratorial conversations.  

*   *   *

Trump administration lawyers are struggling to find jobs in Big Law, which is now accused of being left-wing by conservative groups like the Koch-funded right-wing New Civil Liberties Alliance.

Some of the tainted attorneys have been parachuted into conservative sinecures and "think tanks" (there's a new Trump-Tank in California). Clark himself landed on his feet in a Republican safe house: a rightwing law shop fighting mandatory Covid injections at Indiana University despite 7th circuit and supreme court decisions upholding compulsory vaccinations.

On the civil side, Trump's lying lawyers are in well-deserved disrepute and professional strife, in New York, Michigan (more here) and Colorado.

Commercially, times are tough for Trump himself, and it's not just litigation. Party baksheesh and backhanders are in steep decline at the various enterprises he  owns or promotes. Perhaps that's why America's crassest president is now reduced to using the presidential seal at his golf courses. There must be some intellectual property transgression there.

Meanwhile, presidential historians have been asked to rank America's presidents, again. Incredibly, there have been three worse than Donald Trump. 

The mind boggles. 

FROM ROGER FITCH AND OUR FRIENDS DOWN UNDER AT JUSTINIAN

 

Mixed bag from SCOTUS

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, JULY 5, 2021

Supreme Court wraps up its latest term with some notable shockers ... Another stick of gelignite to blow up the Voting Rights Act ... Secrecy for rich donors to political causes ... But freedom for profane speech ... Department of Justice going slow on prosecuting Capitol insurrectionists ... War criminal and former defence secretary dead at 88 ... Roger Fitch files from Washington 

The supreme court has concluded its October 2020 term. Decisions were mixed, but in the most important case, Obamacare was upheld for the third time against the baffling efforts of Republicans to destroy it. 

In other matters, the court's conservative Catholic faction, joined by liberals, was able to retrieve the fortunes of the Philadelphia diocese, who claimed a continued right to participate in foster care referrals despite their policy of non-referral to same-sex foster parents. More here on the 9-0 decision and it's likely aftermath. 

The decision of the court in the Nestlé and Cargill cases, respecting applicability of the Alien Tort Statute to corporate human rights abuses overseas, was expected - but provided a disappointing and alarmingly broad immunity for corporations. Only Justice Alito dissented.

The unanimous NCAA case, though fair to college athletes, represented a set-back for antitrust law. 

In the disturbing case of TransUnion v Ramirez, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that if plaintiffs cannot prove that their (incorrect) terrorist designation has actually been reported to third parties, they cannot sue because they lack a "concrete" injury under the court's (extremely-flexible) standing doctrine. 

As Michael Dorf explains, "That Congress had passed a law permitting individuals to sue credit agencies that fail to use reasonable procedures to ensure the accuracy of their credit reports did not matter".

There were "liberal" lst and 4th Amendment cases. The free speech case Mahanoy v B.L. affirmed a decision involving a school cheerleader's Snapchat profanity, while in Lange v California the supreme court narrowed police powers to enter a home without a warrant.

Property rights versus civil rights have been at the heart of constitutional conflict since the document was adopted, and a so-called employers' rights decision in the final days of the term was further proof. A powerful union-busting decision, Cedar Point Nursery v Hassid could be the biggest ideological stinker of the court's term, an important step in the conservatives' ambitious dismantling of Roosevelt's New Deal.

HollyFrontier Cheyenne Refining was another corporate victory. Without the help of the newest justice Amy Coney Barrett who joined the liberals, the conservatives made a free gift to polluting companies; ironically, the decision issued on the same day congress used its powers to disallow Trump's methane-boosting regulation. 

In two other cases, Collins v Yellen and Arthrex, the supreme court conservatives actually enhanced Biden's powers, increasing executive authority. 

The court's two deadliest decisions, however, were dead last.

Americans for Prosperity v Bonta will guarantee secrecy for rich donors to highly-political non-profits. The court accepted the non-profits' disingenuous claim that California's contribution disclosure rule violated their donors' First Amendment rights by deterring them from making contributions. 

Supreme Court prefers Republican voters

In the Brnovich case, the Democratic National Committee brought suit against new voting restrictions in Arizona under s.2 of the Voting Rights Act 1965, one of the few remnants left after the court gutted the VRA in the infamous Shelby County v Holder decision of 2013. 

Some Democrats feared that the DNC's stand against relatively minor voting restrictions would open the door to a broad-based supreme court decision, and so it transpired as a Republican supermajority greenlit Arizona's voting restrictions, essentially rewriting s.2 in the process.

Although s.2 of the VRA was not, as feared, annulled, the conservative majority seized upon the case to rule that disparate impacts on minority groups (what used to be called poll taxes) would "typically" not be enough to render voting rules illegal under the VRA. 

The majority then diabolically set out, among salient factors, "the degree to which a voting rule departs from what was standard practice when §2 was amended in 1982": carte blanche for banning postal voting, drop boxes, same day registration, extended hours and other voting innovations.

DoJ's first use of s.2 will be against Georgia's new state voting law; the charge is intentional discrimination.

*   *   *

Biden's AG Merrick Garland has adopted some Trump legal postures, such as defending "faith" as an acceptable ground for LGBTQ discrimination. The president, however, has ended an embarrassing Trump regulation that licensed gender discrimination in health care, based on one's claimed moral or religious views. 

In a pending appeal brought by Trump's DoJ, the Biden administration has argued for the reinstatement of the death penalty in the Boston Marathon Bombing case, even though the president personally opposes capital punishment. 

The attorney general has, however, paused Trump's deadly campaign of federal executions, and Biden is being urged to commute all outstanding sentences and, presumably, abandon the Boston bomber appeal. 

 

E. Jean Carroll is suing Trump over the former president's denial that he raped her ... Trump claims immunity

The Justice Department is also defending pending lawsuits against Trump, e.g. Jean Carroll's defamation action. Is there some tactical justification? As a Nation writer noted, "slandering alleged rape victims is not one of the official duties of the president". 

Some doubt moderate AG Merrick Garland's commitment to prosecuting "Trump's mob", i.e. the Capitol insurrectionists, but he has made a start on other Trump malefactions by e.g. disclosing compromising documents of the old regime that were found within the Justice Department. Thus, Garland released the outrageous draft brief that Trump wanted the DoJ to file in the supreme court, seeking to overthrow the election results. 

More here and here on Biden's attorney general.

*   *   *

The long-expected criminal indictments of the Trump Organisation for tax fraud have finally been filed. So far, Trump hasn't been indicted, but one US newspaper (the Boston Globe), is calling for the criminal prosecution of the former president himself. At least his reputation as an egregious tax cheat has bolstered bipartisan support for more vigorous enforcement of federal tax laws. 

There's an updated litigation tracker for Trump. As for other members of the gang, new evidence of old crimes by his cabinet cronies is still emerging.

*   *   *

Rumsfeld: The Butcher of Baghdad

As Le Monde politely reported, "Donald Rumsfeld, ancien secrétaire à la défense américain et architecte des guerres d'Irak et d'Afghanistan, est mort". 

Or, as less respectful American opinion put it, "War Criminal Found Dead at 88"; "He Played a Leading Role in Mass Murder"; "Rumsfeld represented the very worst of American arrogance and violence toward the rest of the world"; "a tragedy that Rumsfeld died before he could be put on trial for crimes against humanity"; and "worst secretary of defence in American history". 

The Machiavellian Rumsfeld escaped the hangman's noose; under Nuremberg principles, he'd have gone to prison if not the gallows. Instead, the disgraced former secretary of defence outlasted the Abu Ghraib scandal, the ACLU's Ali v Rumsfeld, multiple European criminal proceedings, and dozens of cases involving Pentagon actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo.

He escaped thanks to the protection and stonewalling of successive US governments, including the repeated bad-faith invocation of the "state secrets" privilege. 

It's a sad chapter in American legal history.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

 

Fitch's Washington

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2021

Trump's defeat sees the Republican gerrymander in full swing ... Moving the electoral goalposts ... Filibuster won't be busted ... Lies of the past paved the way for the Big Lie of today ... Military trials and the flouting of law ... The taint of torture ... The failure of Guantánamo ... Roger Fitch files from Washington 

"[The Republican Party is] basically the Titanic….in the middle of this slow sink. We have a band playing on the deck, telling everybody it's fine, and meanwhile …Donald Trump is running around trying to find women's clothing to get on the first lifeboat." - Adam Kinzinger (R) 

"... Trumpism does not merely extol incompetence; it also elevates racist, misogynistic, and all-purpose brutality for its own sake. It's fascism but the trains still don't run on time." - Michael Dorf

"The country is finished. It's all over. But you know, with a new republic like this, if you missed being here at the beginning, the next best thing is to be here at the end." - Gore Vidal

Like the April aftermath of the Civil War, there are fires burning here and there throughout the country; regional pillaging and marauding (e.g, Arizona) continue, as the central government attempts to contain and put out the fires of rebellion. As in that war, jayhawks and banditti rove the countryside, looking for trouble, or find it back home.  

Republicans have lost both presidency and senate. They lost the house, too, receiving less than half the popular vote, but that's usual even when they gain a majority of the seats.

This year, however, 147 house Republicans supported or tolerated an anti-government riot bent on overthrowing the results of the election: two-thirds of the caucus.

Though less seditious, Republican senators have joined to defeat an investigation into the insurrection: the cult leader opposed it. Sometimes, the Trump rump even seems prepared to destroy America's (imperfect) democracy in order to save it, and some fear America could go full-blown authoritarian. More here. 

The lies of the past, never effectively countered by Democrats, have paved the way for 2020's Big Lie. Will Democrats finally confront Republicans when they present an existential threat to two-party democracy? It doesn't look good, based on past experience.

Indeed, the 30-odd states with Republican legislatures, new census figures in hand, will soon concoct barbarously-gerrymandered electoral districts in which they get to select their very own voters. The US supreme court has refused to intervene, and the only hope lies in state constitutions, which sometimes offer protections the federal constitution lacks, e.g, the right to vote.

Arizona, a state the Republicans lost, is the new battleground in the GOP's last-stand electoral terrorism, as state parties strive to move the electoral goal-posts. The Party won't risk open voting, even in states they won with existing cheating, e.g, Florida, Texas (developments here), and other states. Soon, states under Republican control may even refuse to certify Democrat victories. 

Developments in state legislation for good and ill are here.

The only federal agency charged with national election oversight, the FEC, will remain Trump-complicit until Mr Biden gets his new commissioners confirmed; meanwhile, house Democrats have comprehensive legislation to deal with voter suppression, the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. 

In the evenly-divided senate, both Bills face the filibuster rule that requires 60 assents in the 100-member senate before legislation can be brought to vote. Although the Democrats now have a senate majority (with the vice-president's vote) sufficient to abolish the filibuster, two Democrat senators support the filibuster rule, Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema (a former member of the house coalition of backsliding Democrats known as Blue Dogs) and West Virginia's Joe Manchin, now being called America's de facto prime minister. 

Senator Sinema: defender of the filibuster

*   *   *

Donald Trump elevated and glorified the contempt of law throughout American life. Perhaps, as the influence of his political holdovers recedes and new hires arrive, the Justice Department will turn its attention to some of the country's now-entrenched contempts of law: e.g, the offences of white collar criminals, and those of state authorities, the Arizona senate with its clumsy and transparently lawless "audit" of last November's election ballots.      

Impunity for illegality is partly a consequence of the failure by Obama and his attorney general to investigate and prosecute crimes that occurred during the George Bush administration. Democrats have a poor record of standing up to Republicans, and when gaining office, they rarely prosecute their past offences.

*   *   *

Aside from Iraq, George Bush's most transgressive, flagrant flouting of law was establishing a scheme of indefinite detention and military trials at Guantánamo (history here); there the well-documented contempt for international and US domestic law has persisted for years, with a scaffold of purported legality cobbled from extrajudicial acts, political inaction and appellate court acquiescence. 

It's been mostly unlawful from the outset: the secret confinement and torture of invented "illegal enemy combatants" (many of them lawful belligerents); the treatment of men as "war prisoners" who were apprehended (rarely by Americans) for suspected civilian terrorism.

Compounding all that, the arbitrary denial of prisoner of war status hearings, in an "international" conflict that should have attracted full Geneva Convention protections. 

Even the protections of Common Article Three, applicable to "non-international" conflicts, were denied, and Pentagon officials who attempted to provide Geneva protections were sacked (Rick Baccus), bullied (Stuart Couch) and even jailed (Matthew Diaz). 

Lt Comdr Diaz: jailed for sending Guantánamo names to the Centre for Constitutional Rights

Internationally non-compliant military trials were set up, trials that, as law profs David Glazier and David Frakt argued, could themselves be classified as war crimes, and it was all done to avoid legal civilian trials, now rendered impossible because they are tainted by torture and cruelty in violation of the Convention Against Torture. 

Most "convictions" for non-crimes have been overturned on appeal, and perhaps only one charge has been validly pursued, the current one against Abd al-Hadi al-Iraq for killing civilians in a war zone, during a war.

Throughout, the US has denied the men the most basic protection of the US constitution and Anglo-American common law: the unfettered habeas corpus that would have resulted in the release of many of them years ago.

The prisoners' entitlement to full habeas and due process is still being contested by the government, in the Al-Hela case pending before an en banc DC Court of Appeals, a case destined for the supreme court. 

Also pending is the Abu Zubaydah appeal for a civil subpoena, where the state secrets doctrine is being shamefully employed to protect CIA torturers whose identity is a matter of public record. More here. 

Court observers Karen Greenberg and Linda Greenhouse comment on the current state of litigation. 

The Biden administration is meanwhile resolving another Bush-Obama miscarriage of justice, that of Majid Khan, by cutting a deal that will avoid discussion, at his sentencing, of CIA torture. 

Three other prisoners are to be released, including the oldest, Saifullah Paracha, another injustice righted. Still held are people like Mohammed Al-Qahtani: the Pentagon's own Convening Authority declined to refer him for trial, conceding he'd been tortured.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

 

Our man in Washington

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2021

Biden moves well to the left of Obama and the Clintons ... Attorney General Merrick Garland starts repair job at the Department of Justice ... Weeding out the Trump "burrowers" ... Implications for Guantánamo "war prisoners" in light of Afghanistan withdrawal ... Republicans push ahead with electoral rorts ... More Trump corruption emerging ... Roger Fitch's letter from America  

Occasionally, participants in history see the error of their ways: the supreme court justice who provided a decisive vote in Bush v Gore; the speaker of the house who facilitated the baseless Clinton impeachment.

For some, recognition of past error has not come too late. Joseph Biden has seen the light, and unlike Sandra Day O'Connor and John Boehner, he's in a position to do something about it; different from his predecessor Barack Obama, he seems to have the desire and courage to act.

Always considered right-of-centre, the new president is positioning himself well to the left of Obama and the Clintons. The new backbone and activism have delighted the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, and foreign observers, too. 

Most members of Biden's cabinet have now been confirmed, many with bipartisan support. None of them qualify as foxes; instead, they are mending and guarding the henhouses.

There's a decent, highly-qualified attorney general, appeals judge Merrick Garland, confirmed five years to the day that he was appointed by Obama to the supreme court, yet refused a hearing by the then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Can Garland repair the Justice Department? A good start was his reinstatement of consent decrees with errant police departments, scrapped by Trump to gratify the only significant union that supported him: the police.  Much more could be done, e.g, rescinding Office of Legal Counsel memos that purport to immunise a president from criminal liability: it's not in the constitution or US laws.

Civil rights, undermined or sabotaged by Donald Trump, are to be enforced and protected, and corporate crime prosecuted. Antitrust enforcement could be resumed. 

The senate judiciary committee has asked Garland to trace and report on destructive holdovers at Justice, Trump "burrowers" who converted political appointments to civil service positions as Trump departed. His "leftovers" are also a problem in other departments. 

Garland: rooting out the Trumpist holdovers

An experienced diplomat, Antony Blinken, is secretary of state, a clear improvement over Trump's wrecking-ball foreign secretary, Mike Pompeo, the subject of a damning new departmental IG ethics review. Already, the shameful sanctions imposed against witnesses and investigators for the International Criminal Court have been revoked. 

Climate and other science, banished by Trump, have been reintroduced, and scientific facts restored to government websites; Trump's [bad] advice panels have been replaced.

There will be an Environmental Protection Administrator who believes in protecting the environment.

Trump's Big Oil-orchestrated ban on improved emission standards will be undone by the Transportation Department, while the FDA plans to take lead, arsenic and other horrifying contaminants out of the environment, instead of maintaining or increasing them, as Trump's perverse regulations often did.

At the Labour Department there will be, instead of an implacable foe from an anti-labour law firm, a secretary who believes in enforcing labour laws and supporting organised workers. 

A revitalised Federal Trade Commission is seeking legislative authority for expanding rather than limiting consumer remedies. 

*   *   *

Biden's litigation posture in pending legal proceedings commenced during Trump's term has been much more progressive than Obama's when he took office (see Fitch, Feb. 24, 2009). Obama accepted and pursued Bush arguments that suited him (e.g, for the accumulation of executive powers), but Biden has altered the government's position in many pending cases. Some major lawsuits remain to be sorted.

Biden's administration has nevertheless availed itself of some harmful rules and regs from the Trump era, and needlessly appealed the Julian Assange extradition that was denied in Britain. 

The Pentagon has announced new military commission charges, against Hambali, a terrorist with no connection to any war, or the US, other than American Bali-bombing victims - far fewer than the Australians affected. 

Biden's Guantánamo litigation strategy complicates senior senators' efforts to close the prison; their arguments, however, assume the continuance of military prosecutions, only one of which truly involves a war-time war crime: that of Abd Al Hadi.

In theory, the promised official end to the war in Afghanistan should bar US claims that the men are detained as "war prisoners". Much depends on Guantánamo appeals headed for (likely unsympathetic) supreme court review.

*   *   *

Republicans aim to fix the results after an election

As electoral redistricting looms, the demographically-doomed Republicans no longer conceal their aversion to democratic elections, i.e, majority rule, relying instead on egregious gerrymanders.

The decennial US Census counts the whole population, enabling the drawing of congressional and other voting districts. State legislatures control and determine the districting. If they fail to do so, courts may step in to draw the revised districts, but in Rucho v Common Cause (2019), the supreme court ruled that a legislature's partisan (as opposed to race-based) gerrymander is a non-justiciable political question.

Trump failed in his effort to produce a 2020 census based solely on citizenship (rather than the 14th Amendment's "whole number of persons"), but the delay in census data, only released this week, caused new problems. 

Selectively suppressing votes - choosing voters - remains the key Republican policy, and it's entering a dangerous new phase where the objective is subverting undesired results after the election. A recent independent report catalogues the state manoeuvres.

The Democrat congress has introduced proposed new voting standards for federal elections (more here), but  presently voting parameters are set in individual states, most of which lack independent redistricting bodies. 

The most radical Republicans remain those in the Republican statehouses, e.g, Georgia, where it's now a crime to provide food or water to the weary forced to queue for hours to vote; it's all part of a suite of cruel and mean-spirited new laws in party-controlled states.

In eight of these states, Republicans are asserting new political powers over the voting, seeking to undo the legal safeguards that restrained Donald Trump from stealing the election. 

Some of the Bills strip independent elections officials of their power to enforce the acts they administer, and give politicians the ultimate control. Georgia Republicans, smarting from the loss of two US senators, have passed one of the most outrageous of these laws, one that removes the popularly-elected state elections administrator from the elections board, and allows the party's legislators to overrule disfavoured decisions of that body, e.g, the certified, objective results of the election.

There's more comment here and here.  

Beyond the dominance of Republicans in state legislatures lies the obstacle of a partisan supermajority of Republicans on the supreme court. 

*   *   *

More details of the crimes and defalcations of Trump's appointees are soon to come out with the release of previously-quashed reports by departmental inspectors general. 

More Trump corruption is coming to light, and he faces lawsuits on numerous fronts (here's the latest litigation tracker). Surprisingly, his position on the Forbes rich list fell 300 places during his term, despite his extraordinary efforts to enrich himself. 

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

 

 A smoking ruin

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Republicans cling to Trump ... A short history of white supremacists and electoral disruption ... Neo-Confederates on the march ... Trafficking in pardons and associated sleaze ... Roger Fitch in Washington on Trump's grotesque legacy 

"The sacking of the Capitol is proof positive that what we thought was dangerous is indeed very much so. Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years ..." -  James Murdoch

It appears the twice-impeached Donald Trump will escape conviction for insurrection. The senate, even in Democrat hands, will acquit him again.

He clung to power as much to avoid jail as to maintain hustles, and now he faces civil and criminal prosecutions. He's earned it, and Ivanka, too. More here and here.

Republicans have meanwhile learned nothing from the election and its aftermath. Party officials continue to embrace their disgraced leader, especially in states they control and he lost.

Georgia, the state with the best case for prosecuting Trump, plans new voter restrictions; in Michigan, Republicans replaced the party official who joined the state Democrats in certifying the election.

In Arizona, a proposed Bill would allow legislators to replace popularly-chosen electors with those of their own choosing; in Pennsylvania, the legislature plans to punish elected supreme court justices who certified the result (Republicans, too) by forcing them into individual, heavily-gerrymandered districts.

The neo-Confederates triumphed, and Trump survives as a kind of antipope. The plan for minority rule continues: the playbook is the 2018 Wisconsin state elections, where the party lost the popular vote, but kept control of the state through stacked courts and partisan gerrymanders. 

*   *   *

Blackshirts march on Rome - 1922

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes" - Mark Twain

Lincoln's 1861 inauguration was threatened by violent white supremacists not unlike this year's mob, and an impeached president refused to attend Grant's 1869 inauguration. This year's break-in mimicked the 1898 Wilmington Coup as well as the 1954 attack on congress.

As for the ousted president, his behaviour on January 6th paralleled Mussolini's in his 1922 March on Rome, when Il Duce accompanied foot-weary fascists on a first class train. 

This year, Trump sent a mob towards the Capitol, promising to accompany them, then returned by limousine to the White House to watch the ensuing chaos on TV, too absorbed in the drama to answer calls for assistance. 

Mr Trump was reportedly "bemused" by the "spectacle", but found the rioters "low-class". 

Imagine being called lower-class by Donald Trump. 

There's evidence the Capitol break-in was planned (more here and here) and the FBI had warned there would be "war". 

In the event, the attack was poorly-executed. The rioters posted foolish trophy videos on websites like Parler, and the photos and metadata enabled identification of many of the 400 under investigation. 800+ stormed the Capitol, guided by Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

There's more at ProPublica and a timeline here; TPM and the Times have long reads on the months of scheming that led to the attack. One pro-Trump forum is already scrubbing the evidence. 

"Low class" Capitol invader

It seemed to some a redneck revival, a white trash liberation movement with a Confederate battle flag as standard and MAGA hats as the uniting and distinguishing symbol: people that the US class system used to sort-out. 

No longer. Racist thugs, fake patriots and the religiously-deluded now get a pass. 

The insurrectionary rabble comprised more than ignorant buffoons and the usual hate-group suspects. It provided cover for real villains: rogue police, Army reservists, and serving and retired soldiers (including with sniper training). About 20% of those charged had military training.

The attacking mob also contained a lawless lawyer, a disturbed doctor and intruders who knew the capitol layout, e.g, the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop with a view to selling it to the Russians. 

Indeed, there's evidence that "foreign actors" may have helped fund the rally-riot, in addition to shell companies and dark money connected to, well, Donald Trump. Was it all an autogolpe?

Incredibly, the rally that set-off the Capitol assault was promoted by the Republican Attorneys General Association, proof of the bad lawyering in Republican circles. 

The insurgents may have had inside help (more here), e.g, from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado; there was suspicious reconnaissance inside the Capitol on the day before the attack. Boebert is one of congress's two QAnon supporters (the other: barking-mad Georgian Marjorie Taylor Greene).

Even saner members of congress are in legal peril, if they conspired with the Capitol attackers: some congressional ties to extremists are under scrutiny.

*   *   *

"People who say Trump has no empathy are wrong. He has the utmost empathy for degenerate, corrupt, disgraced politicians who perhaps remind him of himself" - Preet Bharara, former Manhattan US Attorney.

Trump's last days offered his venal band a final feeding opportunity, and enterprising mates like Rudolph Giuliani offered themselves as brokers in the business of pardon-trafficking.

On the morning of January 20th, the outgoing president issued 143 pardons and commutations, many as sleazy as expected (more here), including crooked Republican politicians and the odd bent Democrat, e.g, the former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick; Trump had previously commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, the Democrat governor of Illinois serving time for trying to sell Barack Obama's senate seat.

Prosecutors were outraged: pardons included commutation of sentences and foregone restitution in Medicare rort convictions that took years to obtain.

Can pardons be undone? Sometimes. President Biden might have tried to recall pardons not yet accepted, from January 20th. In any case, given Trump's incompetence, some of his pardons may turn out to be ineffective.  

*   *   *

Broke everything he touched

Donald Trump's legacy? Unfettered corruption; contempt for law; and power abused with impunity. 

Through his actions and those of his endless parade of bottom-drawer hirelings, a unique chapter was written in American history. He made war on truth and civility while irreparably coarsening political discourse. He glorified selfishness, greed and gratuitous cruelty. 

If nothing else, he proved that one man, even badly-damaged, can make a difference. For four years, he broke everything he touched. Though defeated in a fair fight, he continued to incite violence and plot sedition; even in his last hours in office, he encouraged mean-spirited harm to others. 

But as a New Republic writer observed: 

"... cruelty and contempt are not just the essential ingredients of Trumpism but exactly what Republican voters hunger for. They don't want deregulation, or a lower marginal tax rate, or even The Wall. What they want is the liberation to talk freely about the people they hate." 

The smashed traditions and American decline are likely to endure. There are dire predictions of an American abyss, a pre-fascist opposition in a Weimar era.

Still, Trump was good for Democrats, turning Virginia "red to purple to blue", adding Democratic Senators from both Georgia and Arizona, and "turning various state-level Democrats into national stars". 

And flipping both houses of congress.