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June 18, 2024
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Last week, we discussed the options Congress has for dealing with Attorney General Merrick Garland after his refusal to turn over the audio recording of the special counsel’s interview with President Biden in his “classified documents” case.  The House had just voted to hold Garland in contempt of Congress, a move that, ever since Obama’s AG Eric Holder received the same distinction with no punishment, generally has been seen as nothing more than ceremonial.

But Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has other ideas.  “The American people deserve more than strongly worded letters,” she told FOX NEWS’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.  (Truer words were never spoken.)  Following the same plan we outlined last week, Luna said she’s already “introduced a resolution for something called inherent contempt of Congress.”  In fact, she did it a few months ago, in anticipation that the “Justice” Department would not do its job.  Gosh, how did she know?

What the inherent charge allows Congress to do, she said, is to “really be the punitive arm and really hold Garland accountable by using the sergeant-at-arms to essentially go and get him as well as the tapes, bring him to the House, and really be a check and balance on the Department of Justice.  ...This hasn’t been done since the 1930s, but that vote will be coming to the floor.  And hopefully we will be able to bring some accountability.”

NOTE:  we’re not sure they can just “go in and get...the tapes.”  They can put Garland on trial on the floor of the House and vote to detain him until the recordings are turned over.  But it would still be his decision to cooperate.  He could possibly delay this until the end of this congressional session, at which point they would have to release him from detention.  If he does all that, we’ll KNOW there’s something on those recordings that would blow the roof off Congress if it were played in there.

“As of now, we fully intend to bring [the inherent contempt charge],” she said.  I don’t really have much faith in the Department of Justice.  And I don’t think the American people do, either.  But we are trying to bring back a level playing field and show that, you know, there should be accountability all the way up to the top.”

“If the DOJ won’t do their jobs, we’re going to do it for them.”  She’s right:  that’s what they have to do, at least until another election and a (hopeful) changing of the guard.  In the meantime, the congressional committees are doing the work the “Justice” Department just won’t do.

Rep. Luna would rather do this than have the case languish in court.  “I know that if this goes to courts,” as [Speaker] Johnson has stated, that’s really going to get stuck there,” she said.  “It’s not going to do anything.  And the American people deserve more than strongly worded letters.  I think we’re all frustrated.  And so, again, we’re hoping to bring that accountability.”

Now that Congress has had its full vote on holding Garland in contempt, and the DOJ has said it won’t enforce that, Luna plans to “force a vote” on her inherent contempt resolution against Garland.  We’re not sure exactly how you force a vote on the floor of Congress, but let’s all wish her well.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/06/16/republican-lawmaker-plans-to-take-action-against-merrick-garland-over-hur-tapes-n2175556

Of course, you know what’s at issue with this audio recording.  Hur’s report recommended against prosecuting President Biden --- even though the special counsel had plenty of evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the handling of classified documents over many years --- because he’d likely come across to the jury as a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.  Since that’s not a ringing endorsement of someone who wants to remain in the White House, we all wanted to hear the audio and find out just how poor Biden’s memory is!  We also wondered how much “editing” the DOJ has done with the transcript of Biden’s audio.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/06/16/republican-lawmaker-plans-to-take-action-against-merrick-garland-over-hur-tapes-n2175556

There’s so much information the DOJ keeps close to the vest.  Yesterday, in our update on the Bryan Malinowski killing by ATF agents in an armed, early-morning raid at his residence --- on my home turf of Little Rock --- we mentioned that the Arkansas State Police had closed their case and that the DOJ refuses to comment on whatever “investigation” they’re still doing.  Investigative reporter Julie Kelly is also trying to find out more about the FBI’s authorization to use deadly force in the Mar-A-Lago raid.

FBI Director Christopher Wray insisted the Mar-A-Lago raid was “standard procedure” --- never mind that no President has ever been treated like this in U.S. history.  Trump had posted that “Joe Biden is locked and loaded and ready to take me out & put my family in danger.” Garland dismissed Trump’s claim as “false” and “dangerous,” but perhaps those who see it as hyperbolic would change their minds if they saw what the Malinowski family is going through now.  Once again, the FBI has introduced an element of grave risk by staging another completely unnecessarily armed raid.

What Democrats are trying to pass off as “boilerplate” instructions for the agents actually includes this specific instruction: “Should FPOTUS [Former President of the United States] arrive at MAL [Mar-A-Lago], FBI [agents] will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS and USSS [U.S. Secret Service] team.”  What???

Who would’ve imagined that if a Secret Service agent had to take a bullet for the President, it might be one fired by our own FBI?  In light of this, the President’s comment doesn’t sound hyperbolic at all.

Kelly quotes former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino as saying, “There was zero reason to create an unnecessary, even one-in-a-thousand chance, of a blue-on-blue situation with firearms.  The DOJ, FBI and management of the Secret Service ‘effed’ this up royally.”

She also quotes 18-year Secret Service special agent Charles Butt (now retired), who told her, “This type of event has never happened to a full-time Protectee of the USSS.  All of this never should have happened in a reasonable environment.”

Kelly also reminds readers of something we reported last week, that due to an executive order signed by Obama that changed policy on the storage of records, the federal government should have already had copies of the very documents they were seeking in the warrant.  One more reason why the raid was unnecessary.

She notes that recent court disclosures “underscore the very different treatments the department has accorded the Trump and Biden families.”

This is a solid, detailed summary by Kelly of what’s been going on with Trump’s “classified documents” case, highly recommended reading.  She’ll fill you in on what lead prosecutor Jay Bratt was doing to rush ahead with the raid despite internal conflict over it.  As you know, due to the many issues involved, presiding Judge Aileen Cannon has delayed the trial at least until late fall, but the motions from both sides still fly back and forth.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/13/searching_for_the_truth_about_the_raid_at_mar-a-lago

And, in case you didn’t see it, Kelly did a report last month about (yes) the White House’s involvement in this case, after Judge Cannon had released about 300 pages of very interesting files…

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/05/02/unredactions_reveal_early_white_house_involvement_in_trump_documents_case

RELATED:  Trump’s “classified documents” case is looking to be totally without merit, just one more hoax.  But Democrats still cling to the old, discredited hoaxes, even as they add new ones.  And they’ve become yet more blatant about accusing Republicans of doing exactly what THEY’RE doing.  As we approach election time, there will likely be some new hoax to top them all, perhaps a fiction we’ll be calling The Mother Of All Hoaxes.

FOX NEWS’ Jesse Watters quoted historian Victor Davis Hanson on Monday: “Do not be surprised when told of a secret Trump plan uncovered to round up critics in 2025 and send them to camps.  Or lurid revelations about evidence that Trump is in worse physical and mental shape than a debilitated Biden.”  Watters followed this with a disturbing video montage of MSNBC “reporters” talking about this very scenario and worse.  MUCH worse --- for example, suggestions that Trump will order a leaker to taken out behind the White House and shot.

And they say Trump is hyperbolic?  These people are telling you nothing about Trump but something very important about themselves.  They’re telling you that they’re mentally sick and engaging in projection.  We thought about linking to this segment of the show but decided to spare you.

Some wacko pundits are even still clinging to Hunter’s laptop as fake, or at least say “prove-there’s-not-some-element-of-fakeness.”  Check out Jonathan Turley’s column about MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade, who warns about “disinformation” and still maintains that very real laptop should be dismissed as a Russian ruse.

With her way of looking at this, Turley said, “any negative stories found in documents or electronic sources can have ‘the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation’ in any given election.”  (This is just how those 51 former intel officials are defending themselves now.)  McQuade and her friends on the left are like Houdini’s audience who believed he had made an elephant disappear.  They believed it had disappeared because they SO WANTED it to disappear.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/14/msnbc-legal-analyst-and-law-professor-barbara-mcquade-double-downs-on-laptop-conspiracy-theory/

Finally, in a new column called “The Corruption of Merrick Garland,” Turley admits he was mistaken about the AG.  Early on, he made the mistake of taking Garland at his word when he said he was apolitical, admitting now, “I was wrong.”  Turley finds the arguments he’s using to hide President Biden’s audio recording especially ridiculous.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/17/the-corruption-of-merrick-garland/

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