December 22, 2022: Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, Institutional Failure, Justice Delayed; Justice Denied.

 

“Now all the authorities

They just stand around and boast

How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms

Into leaving his post”

               ----Bob Dylan “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”

 

On November 29, 2016 I wrote that we, the Generation of Swine, had failed our institutions.  I observed that by elevating the individual over the community we had defaced governance, savaged our educational system, brought low our public discourse and, as a final insult, promoted the most vile and corrupt man to ever disgrace the political stage to the presidency. (1)

 The succeeding years have seen the opposite: our institutions failing us.  We saw it first when the Electoral College failed to prevent Caesar Disgustus from assuming the office.  Then Robert Mueller, accepting the proscription that tRUMP’s finances were off-limits to his inquiry, compounded the scandal by shitting the bed; issuing a drab report full of legalese which, after a herculean effort to bend and twist the law, declared that he could make no definitive findings on Russian collusion with the 2016 tRUMP campaign. Witnesses were uncooperative, used coded messaging, and destroyed evidence, he complained.  Hell, he didn’t even call Disgustus or his larvae before the Grand Jury.  With tRUMP's toady William Barr poised to do what he did for George H.W. Bush the way was clear to, in the words of Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, ‘land the plane’.  That they did and Mueller, along with his ten citations of obstruction of justice, are now well in the rear view mirror. 

Clearly Mueller was more invested in defending his institution than in defending the republic; in protecting his much beloved Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice than prosecuting the scandal.  This becomes clear when one reads the report, its tone and its content.  Mueller was clearly trying to ‘depoliticize’ the institutional response so as to mute the damage done by James Comey’s ham-handed handling of the Clinton e-mail imbroglio.

It has taken nearly 4 years for the House Ways and Means Committee to get its hands on the fraudulent tax returns of Caesar Disgustus.  What is required by law, and what should have been achieved within days, was strung out nearly 4 years by continual judicial delay.  Then Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, under whose jurisdiction lies the Internal Revenue Service, refused to hand over the documents to congress despite being legally required to do so.  Instead, the tRUMP toady appealed to the court, a friendly court.  It landed in the courtroom of one Trevor McFadden, a Disgustus appointee who sat on it for over a year before deciding, what was clearly obvious, that Donald had to comply.  This, of course was appealed to the federal circuit court which, after more delay, concurred with the lower court findings.  Of course, Disgustus appealed to the Supreme Court which, after further delay, likewise made similar findings but, iexplicably, remanded the issue back to the original court of jurisdiction, Toady McFadden again sat on it.  Finally, after working its way up the sewage pipe one more time to Robert’s court the issue finally came to resolution—mere days before the Democrats must relinquish the House to the Scum and when Disgustus had long since been booted from office. 

This is outrageous and calls to mind the effort by congressional committees to get White House Legal Counsel Don McGhan to testify in the Russian Scandal about tRUMP fabricating false statements as to the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting between his campaign managers, his larvae and Russian operatives.  It took TWO YEARS, to get him before the committees, not by the courts compelling his compliance but by agreement between McGhan and the committees about what content he would deign to testify to and, again, well after the scandal was in the rear-view mirror. 

Ditto attempts by congressional committees to compel witnesses to respond to Congressional subpoenas.  To date only Steve Bannon has been tried and convicted of criminal contempt for failure to appear and testify and for failure to supply documents subpoenaed by congressional committees.  Sentenced to a mere 4 months imprisonment he was inexplicably released allowing him to return to his 'war room' podcasts and gnaw at the foundations of the republic.  In the meantime, trials for others are still pending and the Department of Justice has yet to act, after over a year, on congressional citations for criminal contempt of congress issued to Mark Meadows despite his being at the center of the attempted coup.  

Then, of course there is this business surrounding the despicable behavior of Judge Aileen Cannon, another tRUMP toady emerging from The Federalist Society one of those conservative stink tanks hell bent on carving up the government and selling it for parts.  Roundly and embarrassingly condemned for stepping in and declaring unfounded jurisdiction in the Purloined Documents at Mar-a-Lago, she succeeded at gumming up the works by appointing a ‘special master’ to review said documents.  It took three months for the appellate court to step in and put an end to the madness.  Another instance of judicial overreach, judicial delay, judicial obfuscation, judicial vandalism. 

 Finally, as noted in the previous post, the Department of Justice had no intention of prosecuting tRUMP or his minions.  It is clear from the J6 Committee (2) findings that the failed coup d’état nearly two years ago involved all three branches of the federal government as well as elected officials at the state and local levels along with partisan political operatives.  It involved several members of the House and Senate, it involved the wife of a Supreme Court justice, a line of communication established to sound out which way the court would rule, it involved the Secret Service, the Departments of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and White House staff—especially Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  It involved Roger Stone and Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones. It involved the ‘war room’ at the Willard Hotel.  It involved the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and other brown-shirt fascists It involved hundreds of other operatives organizing the bussing of rioters to the capital. It involved the transportation and the assembling of arms and munitions.  It involved the creation of fake electors to the electoral college. It was a conspiracy to overthrow the government. 

It has been nearly 700 days since tRUMP attempted to seize power.  To date we have the conviction of Elmer Rhodes and a few Proud boys, and some of the foot soldiers of sedition.  We have yet to have a single indictment of any of those who organized and incited this assault upon the republic.  Justice delayed is justice denied.

This has always been the modus operandi of Caesar Disgustus.  Throughout his entire adult life tRUMP has responded to legal challenge by using the system to delay, obstruct, obfuscate hoping for time to run out or to exhaust the resources and patience of those who seek justice.  By assuming the role of a lowly subcontractor seeking payment for work done on one of his properties, the government has failed to respond in a timely manner to the existential threat to the republic.  By failing to understand that the federal government has vastly more resources than even Caesar Disgustus, it has literally frittered away precious time while the cancer that is tRUMP and all he represents metastasizes in the body politic.  The authorities have fiddled while the Republic burns. The Sergeant-at-Arms has been blackmailed into leaving his post. 

 

An Br’er Putin, he jus’ laugh and laugh

 

Indict Prosecute. Convict. Imprison.

_________

 

1.     See Protagonist: November 29, 2016: Failed our Institutions, Circling the Bowl, Trumped the American Dream (wandererandshadow.blogspot.com)