A free nation must have a fair and balanced judicial system. It cannot exist without it. Justices and prosecutors cannot have political agendas or favor one political party over another. They must be independent and impartial. And courts cannot exceed their boundaries as put forth in the founding documents and Constitutional amendments. The Department of Justice of the United States is part of the Executive Branch, not the Congress. It is the chief law enforcement agency. It is the role of Congress to oversee this Department. The Senate has the combined responsibility to provide advice and consent regarding the leadership of that Department. However, the equal branches of government have checks and balances by design. Today, the Democrat party has veered into the use of political prosecution, very much akin to the Soviet system. The checks and balances have been disregarded. This disregard began innocently enough.
Recent History
Early in his first term in office, Barack Obama set out to slow down the flow of illegal drugs coming into the U. S. across its southern border. The drug flow was controlled by Mexican cartels. Apparently, unknown by Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, the willing Justice Department staff cooked up a program called “Operation Fast and Furious.” It was supposed to help the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) dismantle drug cartels operating inside the U.S. and disrupt drug-trafficking routes.
A field office launched an operation in which guns bought by drug cartel straw purchasers in the U. S. were allowed to “walk” across the border into Mexico. ATF agents were supposed to track the guns as they made their way through the ranks of the cartels. In reality, once the guns walked across the border, they disappeared. For some reason, the ATF officials made no effort to trace the guns. They were, however, busy corresponding about the possibility of using Fast and Furious to push through a regulation requiring gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” In other words, the ATF permitted certain gun shops to conduct certain, inadvisable sales to dangerous people and then planned to point to those sales to justify the need for new reporting requirements. Instead, it wound up putting some 2,000 weapons into the hands of criminals south of the border which were unfortunately used to kill hundreds of Mexicans and at least one member of the U. S. Border Patrol. Obama and his Attorney General would claim to have no knowledge of the operation. This would begin to have a familiar ring to the way things were done. The Press had no desire to investigate any of the Administration’s alleged foul-ups, so, they didn’t. The Republicans couldn’t get anything out of the Attorney General, even with the threat of impeachment followed by an actual impeachment.
The Committee on Oversight and Reform is the main investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. Darryl Issa (R-California) was the chairman at the time of Operation Fast and Furious. The Committee issued a subpoena for documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Congress, like the courts, has subpoena power. A subpoena is simply an order to appear at a certain date at a certain time to give testimony. A subpoena can also command someone to bring items or documents with them for their testimony. When someone receives a subpoena, they can either comply or challenge the subpoena on certain legal grounds or claim the documents are privileged. What they cannot do is ignore the subpoena and that is what Holder did. For months, Holder ignored the subpoena. When Darryl Issa asked if the documents had been assembled within the Justice Department, Holder refused to answer. This was Contempt of the Congress. If a person fails to comply with a subpoena, that person can be jailed until he or she does comply. A person can also be jailed for Contempt as a separate offense. In the case of Eric Holder, the Obama administration announced after the Contempt vote that it would not prosecute Eric Holder for Contempt. He resigned from office before the impeachment took effect. He would be replaced by another politically corrupt attorney, Loretta Lynch.
2016
On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly. Hours after Scalia's death was announced, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would not consider any appointment by the sitting President, Barack Obama. He said the next Supreme Court justice should be chosen by the next president—to be elected later that year. Undeterred, on March 16, 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia. At the time of his nomination, Garland was the Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The 11 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican majority refused to conduct the hearings necessary to advance the vote to the Senate at large, and Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, just before the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.
Under President Trump, the hold-overs of the Obama Justice Department and FBI did great damage to the Nation. The Democrat Party regained control of the House following the 2018 mid-terms and the evil percolated to the surface almost immediately with the false Russian Collusion investigation initiated by Nancy Pelosi and her henchmen-Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler. On January 25, 2019, Roger Stone, a past advisor to the Trump campaign, was arrested by a DOJ SWAT team at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation. The arrest timing had been leaked to CNN who had a broadcast crew on site in the early morning hours. Stone was charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements. None of this warranted the SWAT team take-down. In November 2019, a biased jury convicted him on all seven felony counts. It was the continuation of a politically charged proxy vendetta against President Trump. It was wrong.
2021
Fast forward to 2021 following the George Floyd death-inspired BLM/Antifa riots, the continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and tumultuous Presidential Election of 2020. Newly elected President Joe Biden nominated Merrick Garland to be the U. S. Attorney General in January 2021. He was confirmed by the Senate and took office on March 10, 2021. The Senate had voted to confirm Garland “to uphold the integrity of the Justice Department after its actions over the past years threatened to undermine it.” Garland was confirmed in a 70-30 vote. He was praised by members of both parties. He had pledged in his nomination hearing to “fend off any effort by anyone” to politically influence the Justice Department’s investigations, and that his first priority would be to fully prosecute the “heinous” crimes committed in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th. So, in other words, he was already politically influenced.
The 20 Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Garland were Blunt, Burr, Capito. Cassidy, Collins, Cornyn, Ernst, Graham, Grassley, Inhofe, Johnson, Lankford, McConnell, Moran, Murkowski, Portman, Romney, Rounds, Thune and Tillis. This was a mix of the senior Establishment, RINOs and anti-Trumpers as well as some Republican senators who should have known better. Their disconnect from American Heartland values is why the Republican party remains weak. It will always lose to the lock-step, voting bloc of the Democrats. The Republican defectors put Merrick Garland in office.
While Chief Justice Garland would seem to have been a defender of the Law, Attorney General Garland would weaponize the DOJ against the average citizen of the United States while catering to the far-left politicians in power as well as the National School Board and Teachers unions. This would become obvious in the labeling of concerned parents as “domestic terrorists.” As a result, he was asked to resign by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas). He should have.
2022
The partisan nature of the Garland DOJ would continue with the unwarranted, armed arrest of Peter Navarro, past advisor to President Trump. He was dragged off of a plane and placed in handcuffs and leg irons. Like Eric Holder, Navarro had rejected a Congressional subpoena by the partisan and perhaps unconstitutional January 6th Committee. He claimed Executive Privilege, just like Holder did.
The members of this House select committee are Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), Adam Schiff (D-California) Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), Zoe Lofgren (D-California), Elaine Luria (D-Virginia), Pete Aguilar (D-California), Stephanie Murphy, D-Florida., Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), and Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming).
Adam Schiff was the corrupt co-Chairman of the Trump “Russian Collusion” and impeachment proceedings and lied to the American people on multiple occasions. He has never been held to account. The people of California have elected him to office 11 times. He is a confidant of Pelosi and is sometimes mentioned as her possible replacement. He could also run for a statewide office such as governor or senator. Are California voters that stupid? Hope not.
Kinzinger and Cheney are RINOs and open anti-Trumpers. Both have aspirations for higher office. Cheney thinks she could be President as early as 2025. Kinzinger may think likewise. Not on Heartland America’s watch. Cheney has about the same appeal as Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda to the people of the Heartland. The reason is because both Kinzinger and Cheney have participated in the weaponization of the DOJ against the American people. They both took an oath to protect the Constitution of the United States. They both violated that oath by their actions on the January 6th Committee. Innocent Americans have been jailed under their watch and they have done nothing. Their focus has been on prosecuting Trump and Trump supporters.
The Congressional Hearing theater is being produced by Hollywood. The director is Nancy Pelosi, the worst Speaker of the House in American history. Not sure what the Rotten Tomatoes ratings will be. VOTEdemsout2022
How soon we forget.
Read twice. ..a very clear narrative of what is happening (going wrong), with your usual lucid analysis. Thanks.