Guest post: That path must be blocked
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on All he’s got now is breaking stuff.
But there is some poetic justice here because he has been cheating for months. Now his tactics are coming back to bite him. He told Republicans not to vote by mail and they didn’t, but the result is he has been experiencing this slow drip-drip of disaster over the past few days.
I know it wouldn’t be a good look for the Biden Administration to go after Trump, (though it looks like there are plenty of other entities lined up to have a go at him for quite some time), however much he desrves it, but I do hope they investigate his interference with the Post Office. It sure looks like it was a plot to take advantage of people’s reluctance to vote in person during the pandemic and to delay, block and dismiss the millions of mail in votes, which were guaranteed to be heavily Democrat. The combination of Trump months-long delegitimizing voting by mail (essentially a command or warning to his supporters not to use this avenue to vote), and putting one of his own stooges in charge of gumming up the works at the post office sure looks like a put-up job. If there was any “stealing” of the election going on, that was where it was happening.
I also hope that those involved were stupid enough to commit their thoughts to writing, and these records will be discoverable and acted upon. This is much bigger than the financial corruption, self-dealing and venality that Trump flaunted, which was itself bad enough. The election interference goes to the heart of American democracy itself. This has to be pursued, as Trump has laid down a path that others may try to follow, learning from his mistakes. That path must be blocked, securely and permanently. America’s next would-be dictator may not be as flagrantly interested in gross, obvious financial gain, and may not be such a complete fucking moron.
[x] Strongly Disagree
Yes, I get that. I kinda struggled with that myself. The reason I left it in like that was because it could be seen as revenge, or just the Dem’s version of “LOCK HER UP.” I realize that the only people who are going to see it that way are hardcore Trumpistas, but still, I thought the precedent of one administration taking legal actions against its predecessor might not be a good one to set. I know thare are perfectly good, legal reasons to do so, but the unscrupulous Republicans in Congress (i.e. pretty much all of them) might relish a bit of partisan payback in the future if they get a chance to settle the score. They wouldn’t be so worried about avoiding the appearance of a partisan witch-hunt, whereas the Democrats I think would. That’s why I limited my wish list to the postal disruption conspiracy investigation. It represents a bare minimum.
For myself, I’d love to see Trump’s ass in the prisoner’s box for each and every violation of his oath of office and for all of the crimes he committed while in the Oval Office. I’m just not sure how well that would square with Biden’s hopes for unity, reconciliation and healing. I could do with a good deal less of those three commodities if a thorough prosecution of Trump & Co. ended up being an effective deterrent against future corruption.
‘Go after?’ They have to. Undoing the corruption and lawlessness can’t be done without pursuing Trump. We let Jefferson Davis and Co. off the hook in the name of ‘reconciliation’ and look where it got us 155 years later.
Biden doesn’t have to go after them. the DOJ should be able to that very nicely. The question remains as it did when Trump was president, is there a meaningful DOJ?
I guess I’m being to sensitive about the feelings of the Trumpists.
Illegality is illegality. Pursue to the utmost and let the chips fall where they may.
I think it would actually be a good precedent. As the precedents stand, the president of the US is above the law, so there really isn’t anything much to prevent another Donald Trump from taking office and acting accordingly.
In fact, this was one of the biggest failures of the Democratic Party post GW Bush.
Bush was a war criminal, the fact was that he repeatedly attempted to maintain a class of prisoner that was neither POW nor civilian, in order to justify torturing them. These attempts were defeated in the Supreme Court, meaning that Bush had in fact violated laws relating to the treatment of prisoners.
The Democratic Party failed in its duty as a government when it chose not to charge Bush, and thus opened the door to future presidents, such as Trump, flouting the law.
A precedent going the other way would at the very least act as a deterrent on future would-be state looters.