Merrick Garland Is Doing His Job, Now We Must Do Ours – By Winning

This is a historically unprecedented investigation, but without the public Garland doesn't have enough time to prosecute Donald Trump.

Image: Farnoush Amiri, Associated Press

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Last week, I wrote a piece titled “Here’s What We Know About Merrick Garland And Trump,” with the subheadline, “It’s not difficult to see how two-plus-two equals Trump’s in big trouble.” And now, a week later, it turns out I was exactly right with that forecast.

On Tuesday, The Washington Post dropped a colossal bombshell onto the soft, mostly empty skulls of Donald Trump and his Red Hat minions:

The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.

It gets worse for Trump (and better for us):

The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers, including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.

As I mentioned last week, the grand jury – or grand juries, plural – have been criminally investigating Trump and his henchmen since at least February, when insider Peter Navarro was subpoenaed for records and testimony related to his former boss, Trump. The Washington Post added further confirmation that the grand jury preceded the 1/6 hearings::

That effort is another indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject.

Certainly the committee’s work is crucial to the public understanding of the insurrection and the seditious conspiracy managed and implemented by Trump. But now, the grand jury will likely gain access to all of the committee’s interviews, cross referencing the testimony with its own interviews – all under oath. The walls of the trash compactor, crushing Trump’s conspiracy, are moving faster and faster. 

I can't emphasize this point strongly enough: Merrick Garland and presumably Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney in DC, are engaged in an historically unprecedented investigation. A federal criminal investigation of a former president is brand new in the history of the republic, and the lives of the investigators will never be the same. The entirety of the Red Hat entertainment complex and the Trump machine are about to deploy their radioactive orcs against Garland and Graves. And it's going to be next level violence against decency and facts.

The Republicans will do everything they can to derail all of it, while Trump launches his usual run-out-the-clock strategy until a Republican president comes along to pardon him. In this regard, the effort to prosecute Trump for these crimes is not only up to the Justice Department, it’s up to the rest of us to make sure federal prosecutors have the time they need to finish the job. This means making sure we retain our congressional majorities and, even more importantly, the White House. 

If Joe Biden loses in 2024, Trump will never see the inside of a federal prison cell. (A state penitentiary in Georgia is another story.) Not only that, but the Republican president who takes over in 2025 will very likely launch an investigation into Biden, and Biden’s family. Republicans are nothing if not vindictive. They’re all about payback. And I don’t think I need to mention this but I will: barring any electoral college reforms, if a Republican wins the White House in ‘24, it’s very likely he/she will never leave.

The reason I’m spelling this out is mainly because the Garland news landed with a wet thud on Liberal Twitter. The response was either indifference or deep skepticism, often illustrated by obvious and disingenuous goalpost moving. Some bluechecks on Twitter, whose personal narrative evidently precludes the facts, brazenly suggested the investigation started this week. So if you weren’t aware of the news until reading this article, it’s probably because it didn’t get the social media circulation it should have, given its profound historic impact.

We’re entering a new paradigm for the presidency – one in which, no, the president is not above the law. In a democracy, we’re all participants in the process of justice being served against a cruel, reckless, political monster. Merrick Garland appears to be doing his job, and we have an obligation to do ours, otherwise Trump will never be punished for his myriad crimes.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

The March Of Christian Nationalism 2: The Cult Of Christian Dominionism

Dominionists must have an enemy to focus on to motivate the troops.

Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash

This is part 2 of a 4 article series I wrote in 2011 for a website that no longer exists. You should probably start with Part 1. Considering the media has finally noticed that Christian Nationalism is a problem, we here at The Banter thought it might be interesting to republish these old articles and then take a look at how relevant they are a decade later to what is happening in America now. They have been lightly edited for formatting and typos. The content remains mostly unchanged. - Justin 

Now that we have a basic understanding of what Christian Dominionism is, let’s take a look at where it came from and how it works.

Dominionism is an offshoot of Christian Reconstruction, a radical philosophy made famous by R.J. Rushdoony early last century. Reconstruction calls for the replacement of man’s law with Biblical law with all that it entails. Rushdoony was a great believer in the death penalty for blasphemy (such as my poor hypothetical rape victim from the first article), homosexuality, infidelity, and other transgressions that would make an al Qaeda fanatic feel right at home. He popularized the concept that America was originally a Christian nation founded explicitly on Judeo-Christian principles and that we have strayed from that original, righteous path, hence the needed “reconstruction” of America.

Reconstructionism (and, by extension, Dominionism) is a postmillennial theology.

This is an excerpt. Continue reading here.