The Daily Populous Wednesday January 15th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by esquire.com and submitted by Esquire

Long about 1:00 A.M. on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland finally reached into his apparently bottomless bag of fcks and found it empty. So he dropped 137 pages of light reading on the country and, while the special counsel’s report on the once and future president’s involvement in the insurrection of January 6, 2021, tells us very little that we didn’t already know, it bristles with enough detailed evidence to fill in any remaining gaps in the public knowledge, especially in regard to the white-shoe element of the insurrection. When Smith writes the following, he’s not selling wolf tickets. The man had the goods.

The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

Buried in those 137 pages is a considerable subtext that needs to be understood. First, the accumulation of evidence against the white-shoe conspirators who worked overtime, and at the behest of the White House, to find some mendacious legal basis to throw out legal votes and propose “alternate” slates of presidential electors completely shreds the rationale undergirding the Supreme Court’s preposterous ruling on presidential immunity.

Instead, the Court placed greater weight on the risk to the administration of government from excessive caution by a President who might face criminal accountability for official acts, reasoning that “[w]ithout immunity, such types of prosecutions of ex-Presidents,” for example over claims of insufficient enforcement of federal law, “could quickly become routine,” thus “enfeebling” the presidency through “such a cycle of factional strife.”

Smith’s report clearly shows that very little of these maneuverings were part of the president’s core constitutional powers, which is the point on which the court monkey-wrenched a good part of Smith’s original case. Part of the president’s core constitutional powers is the ability to commit unconstitutional acts? Remember what the Dormouse said...

In addition, Smith’s report takes an oblique shot at the DOJ’s policy against indicting a sitting president no matter how egregious his crimes.

As described above, it has long been the Department’s interpretation that the Constitution forbids the federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President, but the election results raised for the first time the question of the lawful course when a private citizen who has already been indicted is then elected President. The Department determined that the case must be dismissed without prejudice.... The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind. Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

Between the lines, you can read that, as regards the unique criminality of the once and future president, Smith found this department policy ... unhelpful.

In fact, the unique nature of the crimes under discussion is the primary subtext of this report. Smith and his team faced an unprecedented, protean duck-dodge-and-hide pursuit of a multipronged assault on the institutions of American self-government. White-shoe or duckboot, they all walked on the Constitution.

mike0sd on January 14th, 2025 at 19:26 UTC »

2016: illegal coverup schemes, hush money payments, and foreign collusion 2020: elaborate plot to overthrow the outcome of the election described by the House and Jack Smith 2024: Donald Trump has a change of heart and decides to play fair and square?

jander05 on January 14th, 2025 at 18:24 UTC »

Forcing half the country to have a criminal president, after years of grief about Hillary and the "Biden Crime Family" etc. Fking hypocrites.

Dianneis on January 14th, 2025 at 17:42 UTC »

TL;DR:

> The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind.

> Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.