Friday, January 14, 2022

The Wheels Of Justice Grinding Slowly

As I've said before, I'm not a prosecutor, and I don't play one on TeeVee.  But real prosecutors are announcing interesting investigations which I suppose we were all supposed to know about a year ago; but I'm fine with how things are going:

"I will tell you that we've been evaluating charges for nearly a year now based on these activities," Nessel told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "I will say that under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense. But what we have decided to do with the investigation, in light of the fact that of course we have seen ... various different false slates of electors from several different states, in what seems to be a coordinated effort between the Republican parties in various different states, we think this is a matter that is best investigated and potentially prosecuted by the feds."

Nessel added that she hopes the U.S. Department of Justice will become involved and "use the information they already have to better understand exactly what happened that day, so that federal charges can be evaluated."

"We had thought that it was very possible that we would be bringing charges, and we still might," Nessel said. "Of course there's no double jeopardy if you are to bring both state and federal charges for the same offense. But obviously this is part of a much bigger conspiracy, and our hope is that the federal authorities, the Department of Justice and United States Attorney General Merrick Garland will take this in coordination with all of the information they've received, and make an evaluation as to what charges these individuals might face. I mean, I can think of many — forgery of a public record for the purposes of defrauding the United States, or conspiracy to commit an offense to defraud the United States — and there are so many others, but that will be up to the feds to decide."

Adding a few publicly known facts to that:

According to the Detroit News, Nessel's announcement "demonstrated the potential seriousness and ongoing nature of the investigation and could have repercussions throughout state politics, as the 16 Republicans in question, include high-ranking members of the state GOP, like Co-Chairwoman Meshawn Maddock."

"On Dec. 14, 2020, Michigan's 16 presidential electors met inside the state Capitol to officially cast their ballots for Biden. A group of Republicans, including some of the GOP electors, attempted to enter the building, after meeting at party headquarters, but were blocked by the Michigan State Police," the newspaper reported. "According to a Dec. 14, 2020, memorandum, obtained by The Detroit News, Kathy Berden, a Republican national committeewoman from Michigan, sent the GOP electors certificate to the U.S. Senate, the U.S. archivist, Benson's office and Robert Jonker, the chief judge of U.S. District Court for Michigan's Western District. The 16 Michigan Republicans who signed the certificate inaccurately claimed they were the 'duly elected and qualified electors' for Michigan. They also stated that they 'convened and organized' in the state Capitol, which they did not."

There are very few acts in public office, or affecting government function as a private citizen, that you can take without repercussions.  Just because the shit is taking a while to reach the fan, doesn't mean the fan isn't already spinning.

Meanwhile, in Arizona: 

That tweet dates to before Christmas of 2020; and it's still up.  But now nobody in Arizona knows anything about this:

The Arizona Republic spoke to multiple Republicans who signed the document and reported "none would detail exactly how they and the other official Trump electors came to sign a document that was sent to Congress with a false avowal that they constituted Arizona’s official vote in the Electoral College. That document, and recent revelations from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, raise new questions about how the group was organized and how the false document came to exist."

I don't know what laws Arizona has regarding election fraud and election tampering, though I doubt they are substantively different than those in Michigan.  When it comes to state laws about these matters, most states tend to look at what other states are doing, and follow suit.  Still, there are federal laws; and the DOJ may be inclined to enforce them.  After all, filing false documents with government offices is a serious offense, and should be taken seriously.

And this is not the sign of something beginning, it's the sign of something ending:

"Now they called the race, I did not win, so they say, but that does not mean that they lost either, it does not mean that we lost," said Mariner.

“And we’ll also have some stuff coming out that we’ve recently discovered,” he said.

The Democrat Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick won the seat formerly held by Alcee Hastings, who died in April of last year.  If you know nothing about Florida politics, odds are you've still heard of Alcee Hastings, and you know Hastings was a Democrat. McCormick won 78.7 percent of the vote; Mariner won only 19.6 percent. 

It's his money, he can waste it in court. The precedent he will set is how stupid he is.

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1 comment:

  1. The Thought Criminal11:34 AM

    I'm greatly encouraged by the seditious conspiracy indictments yesterday, I hope that there are more coming. I don't regret anything I said among the chorus of us who were impatient with the Department of Justice and its traditions and policies which had been used so effectively by Republican-fascists to protect criminals in the Trump regime and the Congress and elsewhere. There's a reason that Hamlet listed "the law's delays" among the overwhelming burdens of life. It goes hand in hand with the "arrogance of office" and "the proud man's contumely." If the DoJ and Merrick Garland shift into holding them accountable I will gladly and loudly eat my own words.

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