The Daily Populous Thursday November 14th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by slate.com and submitted by Quirkie

On Wednesday, Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Republican Congressman Matthew Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice—the same agency that once investigated Gaetz for the sex trafficking of an underage girl. Trump’s desire to nominate Gaetz for attorney general marks an effort to simultaneously degrade and weaponize the DOJ, subverting its mission of principled, nonpartisan law enforcement while punishing those who pursued charges against Trump (and, perhaps, against Gaetz himself). It is a shocking choice, surely by design, that reflects an obvious desire to corrupt the agency from the top down. If Gaetz is confirmed, it’s no exaggeration to say that the Justice Department will be permanently damaged, as civil servants flee (or face termination), partisan loyalists take their place, and the entire agency reorients around settling old scores against Trump’s perceived enemies. If Senate Republicans do not draw the line here, then a line does not exist.

What makes Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general so deeply Trumpian is the fact that Gaetz himself is under investigation for serious misconduct right now. He is just about the last person that a rational citizen would want to put in charge of the nation’s law enforcement apparatus. (He also has no qualifications for the role, which is somehow not even in the top five reasons to oppose him.) But he does have experience with the DOJ: In 2021, a Justice Department investigation probed whether Gaetz had engaged in sexual acts with a 17-year-old girl and then paid her to travel with him. The allegations were clearly credible: Three women reportedly testified that they witnessed Gaetz attending a drug-fueled sex party with the 17-year-old. His friend, Joel Greenberg, accused Gaetz of paying for sex with a minor, and provided damning information about him to prosecutors; Greenberg was eventually sentenced to 11 years in prison on felony charges, including sex trafficking of a minor. Multiple women also told CNN that they saw Greenberg and Gaetz attend sex parties featuring very young women. (Gaetz denies all these allegations.)

But Gaetz was not charged—prosecutors eventually dropped the case after concluding that they did not have strong enough evidence to secure a conviction. The House of Representatives, though, is likely continuing the probe into Gaetz’s behavior: As of Wednesday, the House Ethics Committee was still reviewing allegations of sexual misconduct against the congressman. Last year, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin alleged that Gaetz would show videos of “girls that he had slept with” to colleagues on the House floor, and “brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.” And just over a month ago, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told a reporter that he had not recently spoken with Gaetz because “I don’t hang around with pedophiles.”

As targets of criminal investigations, Gaetz and Trump share an impassioned hatred for the Department of Justice. Their bond goes deeper: Gaetz, who represents the Florida panhandle, won his first race for the House in 2016 as a Trump-style firebrand who loathed the establishment. He spent his first four years defending Trump and condemning special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the president. In 2020, Gaetz refused to accept President Joe Biden’s victory and cast his vote in the House to overturn the results of the election. He has relentlessly condemned Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general, as well as special counsel Jack Smith, who charged Trump with election subversion and theft of classified documents. Gaetz regularly appears on TV accusing Garland and Smith of engaging in a witch hunt against Trump and attempting to interfere with his reelection. With Wednesday’s announcement, it seems the congressman’s aggressive defense of the former president has paid off.

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In his Truth Social post revealing the news, Trump promised that Gaetz would end “the partisan Weaponization of our Justice System.” Ever the projector, Trump more likely intends for Gaetz to simply weaponize the justice system against his perceived enemies—as the former president promised throughout his campaign. The congressman has already been trying to identify all members of the DOJ involved with Smith’s prosecution so they can be interrogated and punished. He would, as attorney general, almost certainly try to fire many of the agency’s 115,000 employees—career civil servants who pride themselves on integrity and independence—so he can replace them with staunch partisans. Trump’s allies have already begun promoting the idea of mass termination of career staff at the DOJ. Gaetz would gladly carry out such a purge.

To what end? There’s no question that Gaetz shares Trump’s desire for revenge against everyone who helped prosecute the former president under Biden. Trump has also proposed charging New York prosecutors who brought charges against him under state law, along with judges, police officers, members of Congress, election workers, journalists—in short, everyone who stymied his 2020 power grab or sought accountability afterward. We should absolutely expect a spree of political prosecutions under an Attorney General Gaetz. With the vast machinery of the Justice Department at his disposal, Gaetz could create a living hell for everyone against whom Trump holds a grudge, subjecting them to arrest and pretrial detention, even if the bogus charges later fizzle out in the court.

But Gaetz offers a whole lot to the less revenge-driven Republican base, as well. He is extraordinarily conservative on virtually the entire range of issues that motivates the GOP, with the exception of marijuana and psychedelics, which he supports legalizing (and allegedly uses himself). Gaetz would throw the Justice Department’s might behind Trump’s mass deportation plan, assisting in the identification and removal of millions of unauthorized immigrants. His congressional record suggests that he would decline to bring charges against corporations that engage in financial malfeasance, pollution, and corruption. And he would undoubtedly carry out the Trump administration’s coming crackdown on abortion: As congressman, Gaetz has consistently supported draconian anti-abortion laws, including severe restrictions on medication abortion. Americans should not be surprised if he launches prosecutions against abortion providers under the Comstock Act, including those located in blue states, if confirmed.

Will he be confirmed? Republican senators are already questioning the nomination, with some already preparing to oppose it. The GOP’s apparent 53-seat majority in the chamber will not allow even four defections, and even staunch conservatives are balking at the pick. The New York Times’ Ezra Klein may be correct that Gaetz is a sacrificial nominee—meant for Senate Republicans to shoot down so they have more political leeway to confirm other nominees who are extreme but not so off-the-wall. Maybe. But it could also be that Trump has fewer guardrails than ever before. Why wouldn’t he shoot for the moon with an attorney general who gleefully defies everything the Justice Department once stood for? One thing is certain: Gaetz will serve as a trial balloon, even if his nomination is deadly serious. If Senate Republicans can’t say no to Gaetz, the Department of Justice as we know it will be gone, quite possibly forever.

DrBucket on November 14th, 2024 at 14:24 UTC »

If you read the Heritage Foundations Presidents new book, At Dawn's Early Light, it has excerpts like "America's Institutions are like deadwood that only need to be lit by Republicans brave enough to do so" and "The 2nd American revolution will be bloodless as long as the left allows it to be" meaning "as long as you let us fuck everything up, there will be no war". Sound familiar?

SuperFlyAlltheTime on November 14th, 2024 at 14:02 UTC »

First pro Rape government in history

AdLast2785 on November 14th, 2024 at 13:59 UTC »

> would destroy the agency, quite possibly forever

Obviously that’s the reason he was picked