Opinion: New emails reveal a Trump White House gone mad
The newly-revealed series of emails sent by former President Donald Trump's senior advisers after Trump's 2020 election loss to top Justice Department officials are stark evidence of a White House gone mad.
The emails themselves look like the stuff that normally gets routed to your spam folder: wild conspiracy theories about election fraud, absurd suggestions on strategy to overturn the already-completed and certified election, desperate entreaties from unhinged fantasists dreaming of flipping the election's outcome. But these were not junk emails from some trolls -- they were sent from the top echelons of power in the White House to the Justice Department, in a genuine effort to overturn an American election.
In a sense, none of this is surprising. The emails, sent in December 2020 and January 2021 -- well after it was clear to any reasonable person that the election was over and Joe Biden had defeated Trump -- are the inevitable end result of four years of Trump using the Justice Department as a political tool, with US Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr largely playing right along.
At times, Trump and his largely compliant attorneys general used the Justice Department to shield politically-connected people from consequences for their conduct. Barr protected Trump when he infamously misled Congress and the American public about the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Later, after public entreaties by Trump, Barr intervened in an unprecedented manner to undermine his own department's prosecutions of Michael Flynn and Roger Stone (both of whom later received full pardons from Trump).
Even more disturbing, new evidence has emerged suggesting that Trump's Justice Department served not only as a shield for the powerful but also as a weapon to pursue his perceived political opponents. The Justice Department secretly obtained private phone records from media outlets (including CNN), which had been the subject of public attacks by Trump, Democratic members of Congress, their families and staff, and even Trump's own White House counsel, Don McGahn. Congress and the Justice Department now must investigate disturbing questions about how and why these investigations were initiated and carried out in secret.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/opinion-new-emails-reveal-a-trump-white-house-gone-mad/ar-AAL52SR
= new reply since forum marked as read
When he writes ...
... I'd like an example of a "disturbing question about how and why" that would be investigated.
Secrecy is usually only known later, after official cover (statement & leader) is gone. Denial of all "how and why" is hard to disprove. Congress could spend all its time on these investigations -- and it would likely need to -- all of which would fall neatly into the 'stall, delay and block' strategy of the non-governing Republican Party.
This is a good analysis, it also tells me
1. That these emails are interpreted as disturbing shouldn't mean this administration must immediately investigate (as in "now investigate"
any more than it already is.
2. We can have governance that gets things done, or we can have Congress and the Justice Department investigating, but we can't have both done well at the same time. Yes, at the same time. But not well. And media would harp on all that.
Pass two more big reconciliation bills,
get on with the current DOJ prosecutions,
and then campaign on all this going into 2022.
Win in 2022 and we'll be ready to win in 2024.
