Tag: national review
For Right-Wing Pundits, Garland Is Damned If He Indicts Trump -- And Damned If He Doesn't

For Right-Wing Pundits, Garland Is Damned If He Indicts Trump -- And Damned If He Doesn't

The Justice Department keeps revealing damning details about the ongoing investigation into Donald Trump’s illicit possession of highly classified documents and his alleged effort to conceal and retain those materials. That has some commentators arguing against an indictment of the former president on the grounds that it might spur a backlash from conservatives who will argue that Democrats have weaponized the DOJ.

Trump’s “defenders would claim that every person ostensibly committed to the dispassionate upholding of the rule of law is in fact motivated by rank partisanship and a drive to self-aggrandizement,” Damon Linker wrote last week in The New York Times. “This would be directed at the attorney general, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other branches of the so-called deep state. The spectacle would be corrosive, in effect convincing most Republican voters that appeals to the rule of law are invariably a sham.”

But this smear of federal law enforcement cannot be staved off by declining to indict the former president, as Linker suggests. It is true that a bloc of Republicans and right-wing media personalities have spent the weeks since the FBI’s August 6 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort loudly arguing that the action was a partisan sham, and they would certainly continue to do so if he were indicted. Another faction, however, is now preparing to go after the Justice Department on the exact same grounds of Democratic partisanship if it decides not to indict the former president.

This damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don’t tendency runs through the columns of Andrew McCarthy, a Trump-skeptical legal commentator respected in higher-brow conservative circles. McCarthy is a former federal prosecutor whose columns run in National Review and The New York Post and who regularly provides legal commentary in his role as a Fox News contributor.

McCarthy’s August 9 column, written in the immediate aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search, provided a somewhat more sober version of the incendiary conspiracy theories of a justice system weaponized for Democratic benefit that were replete at the time on Fox. The National Review columnist argued that the Justice Department had “obviously” used concerns about classified information “as a pretext” to find evidence tying Trump to the January 6 insurrection. He warned against filing charges on such grounds, saying that such an indictment “would fuel the perception that Democrats are using the Justice Department as a political weapon.”

“The Biden Justice Department is under enormous pressure from the Democratic base to indict Trump, and it is straining to deliver,” McCarthy concluded.

A couple weeks later, McCarthy was still telling readers that any Trump indictment would be politically motivated. After reviewing the redacted affidavit supporting the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, he concluded that the Justice Department would be unlikely to indict the former president unless it had strong evidence to prosecute an obstruction of justice charge or Trump talked himself into an indictment.

“I don’t think the Justice Department and FBI want to prosecute Donald Trump on classified-information or document-retention offenses in light of all the considerable downsides of doing so,” McCarthy explained. But he added: “Of course, the Biden Justice Department has shown itself to be very responsive to the demands of Democrats’ progressive base. As the midterms approach, if the left’s rabid insistence on a Trump indictment gets intense enough, all bets are off.”

After Tuesday’s damning DOJ filing, however, McCarthy concluded in his August 31 column that the DOJ possesses “formidable” evidence of obstruction on Trump’s part and that Attorney General Merrick Garland will likely approve charges. That evidence is so damning, in fact, that McCarthy wrote that the only explanation for not indicting Trump would be that the DOJ is in the service of the partisan interests of the Democratic Party.

This is a serious obstruction case that appears as if it would not be difficult to prove. The Justice Department is under immense pressure from the Democratic base to indict Trump, and the jury pool in Washington, DC, where the government would file any indictment, is intensely anti-Trump. It is thus hard to imagine that Attorney General Merrick Garland will decide against filing charges.

The best hope Trump has of avoiding an indictment is that Democrats would rather run against a wounded Trump in 2024 than indict him in 2022.

Note that McCarthy left himself room to accuse Garland of partisanship regardless of what the attorney general does: If he files charges, it will be because his department is “under immense pressure from the Democratic base to indict Trump,” while if he refrains, the only explanation is that he thinks it will help Democrats by keeping Trump on the 2024 presidential ballot.

To his credit, when the facts change, McCarthy’s stated view changes. To his detriment, the throughline is that if the Justice Department doesn’t do what he wants, it must be because it’s run by Democratic partisans.

It’s easy to imagine that this line of reasoning might spread amid the faction of the GOP that would prefer to see another candidate — perhaps Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — on the ballot in 2024 in Trump’s stead. It gives such individuals a talking point that suggests moving on from Trump without actually criticizing his behavior: It’s the Democrats who want Trump to be the 2024 Republican nominee! You can tell that’s true because the Justice Department isn’t indicting him!

The staunchly pro-Trump faction, of course, has a different view.


The Justice Department would be wise to follow the facts wherever they may lead and make a decision about whether to indict Trump based on what it finds. Trying to avoid right-wing allegations of partisanship is futile — in that information ecosystem, such conspiracy theories are the coin of the realm.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

'Dumbest Thing' Is Far Right's Latest Attack On AOC For Miami Vacation

'Dumbest Thing' Is Far Right's Latest Attack On AOC For Miami Vacation

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Almost three years after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City was first sworn into Congress, far-right Republicans continue to be obsessed with the progressive Democratic congresswoman — and many of their attacks on her fall painfully flat. A case in point: Republicans playing “gotcha!” in response to a new photo of a maskless AOC drinking outside during a visit to Miami.

People who aren’t regular consumers of right-wing media, upon seeing the photo that’s supposed to inspire outrage, are likely to respond, “So what?” A New York Post tweet reads, “AOC pictured dining maskless in Miami Beach as Omicron cases soar.”

The implication, evidently, is that Ocasio-Cortez isn’t practicing COVID-19 safety even though she has been an outspoken proponent of vaccines, masks and social distancing precautions. But AOC, in that photo, is outside in the open air and several feet apart from the person she was dining or drinking with. AOC never called for 24/7 isolation and ceasing all human contact in response to the pandemic.

The Washington Post’s David Weigel found the right-wing non-issue puzzling, and The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson found it to be just plain “dumb.”


Far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' office posted:

AOC responded:

Here are some more responses to the far-right’s latest anti-AOC attack:




Abraham Lincoln

Should We Trust The Lincoln Project? Ask Me After Nov. 3

The New Yorker magazine asked a typical New Yorker magazine question: "Should progressives trust" The Lincoln Project?

Founded by Republican operatives who detest Donald Trump, the Project is running a swashbuckling campaign to see the president defeated — and humiliated. Brilliant, funny, and viciously effective, they see their mission as moving people who voted for Trump in 2016, or didn't vote, to Joe Biden's column.

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Conservatives Admit ‘Quid Pro Quo’ — But Insist That’s Not ‘Impeachable’

Conservatives Admit ‘Quid Pro Quo’ — But Insist That’s Not ‘Impeachable’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

As Democrats are preparing to begin public hearings in the House of Representatives laying out the evidence of President Donald Trump’s misconduct, his more intellectually inclined defenders head toward consensus on a key fact: The White House did, indeed, propose a quid pro quo with Ukraine, leveraging military aid in exchange for investigations of the president’s political opponents.

Andrew McCarthy, one of Trump’s breathless propagandists when it comes to the Russia investigation, recently wrote a piece for the National Review telling fellow defenders of the president: “Stop Claiming ‘No Quid Pro Quo.’” Rich Lowry, also writing in the National Review, similarly wrote:

The line that there was “no quid pro quo” has become steadily less plausible as more testimony has emerged suggesting that Trump withheld security aid to Ukraine in the hopes that Ukraine would announce an investigation into the 2016 election and the gas company Burisma and/or Joe and Hunter Biden.

Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire also argued Friday: “The White House should stop saying there was no quid pro quo. There was a quid pro quo.”

The idea we’re now supposed to accept, these right-wingers argue, is that despite the fact that there was, undeniably, a quid pro quo, it wasn’t impeachable. Never mind that this may amount to one of the biggest goal-post moves in history. Trump himself has been proclaiming “no quid pro quo.” Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, after having clearly admitted that there was a quid pro quo a couple weeks ago, immediately denied that he had said what he said and blamed the media for reporting on his comments. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has argued on Oct. 3 that the improper request for an investigation into former Vice president Joe Biden was wrong, had then claimed that it wasn’t impeachable in part because “The president did not, as was first reported, offer a quid pro quo to the Ukrainians.”

But now that a quid pro quo is expected to be demonstrated before the American people beyond a shadow of a doubt, don’t expect Trump and company to admit defeat.

They’ll likely adopt the tactics of Shapiro, McCarthy, and Lowry, who all say, for various reasons, that Trump nevertheless shouldn’t be impeached.

One move proponents of this argument like to make is to argue that Democrats were always looking to impeach Trump, and Ukraine is just an excuse, as McCarthy argued:

They have never accepted the voters’ election of Trump. They are not seeking to deduce unfitness from impeachable offenses. They predetermined the unfitness finding and have spent three years looking for some misstep — any misstep — that might pass the laugh test as an impeachable offense.

This is a common refrain, but in many ways, it is obviously false. Democrats were not committed to impeaching Trump no matter what. Were that true, they could have begun impeachment proceedings much earlier on any number of counts, or right after Special Counsel Robert Mueller released his report. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to much criticism — held back her party from embracing impeachment. She didn’t change her mind until September when the scale of Trump’s misconduct in the Ukraine affair became clear, and a wave of moderate House Democrats began vocally supporting an impeachment inquiry.