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Merrick Garland

officially a target 6/18 pruitt rule of law

see LEO JCN CNP Severino

also dirty tricks

see mar-a-lago

too late too timid on trump prosecution? jack smith will not publish findings?

prolly neglected, several recent announcements about crim invest of j6, grand jury active;

timing coincidental?

AN 11 25

Critics were right about Merrick Garland — and this new book proves it

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MMA

Jesse Watters: “The Democrat reaction to January 6 was worse than January 6”

Watters: “What they need to do is either appoint a special counsel or have some sort of Senate select committee”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 10/07/25 6:39 PM EDT

Video

Citation

From the October 7, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): The Democrat reaction to January 6 was worse than January 6. We only know this from a whistleblower. Wray buried this inside some secret vault somewhere. A whistleblower had to come bring this to our attention. Imagine what else we're about to find out.

So, they cracked into these phones. That means you know where the senator was, exactly, who was calling him, who he called, how long the phone conversation was, and that's an incredibly abusive overreach. And what they were probably trying to do is cast this wide net to create some grand criminal conspiracy and indict the entire Republican Party. And they used the guy that prosecuted war crimes in the Hague to do it.

This guy should be in prison. And what they need to do is either appoint a special counsel or have some sort of Senate select committee to go up, do hearings, put Wray, put Garland, put Smith under oath, and if they lie, you throw them in prison.

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1 25 politico

special counsel Jack Smith’s just-released report provides fresh insights into his bid to hold Donald Trump responsible for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Smith insisted he amassed enough evidence to win a conviction if the case had made it to trial, and he laid out a comprehensive compendium of the facts he might have presented to a jury. At the same time, his report struck a defensive tone, as he sought to explain why the case never made it that far.

The public report is also incomplete. Its second volume, which pertains to Smith’s investigation of the classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office in 2021, remains secret.

Attorney General Merrick Garland does not intend to publicly release that portion of the report, though he wants to share it with select lawmakers. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked any dissemination of it outside the Justice Department. And once Trump is inaugurated next week and assumes control of the department, it will be easy for him to forestall any formal release of Smith’s final assessment of the documents case.

Trump slams 'nut job' Jack Smith after judge temporarily blocks report

Still, the 137-page write-up on the election case is a final accounting of how Trump sought to derail the transfer of power four years ago, how investigators built and litigated an unprecedented conspiracy prosecution against a former president, and how that prosecution fizzled when Trump won back the White House.

Here are POLITICO’s top takeaways from the historic document.

Smith comes to Garland’s defense

A common sentiment on the left is that Garland was too deferential to Trump after Joe Biden took office and failed to unleash the full might of the department on the former president for nearly two years. The delay, critics say, made it much more difficult for Smith — once he was appointed in November 2022 — to bring Trump to trial before the 2024 election.

But Smith’s report emphasized that the Justice Department was aggressively investigating leads related to Trump long before the special counsel’s tenure began. Litigation tactics by Trump and his allies, Smith argued, were the key factors that slowed the process to a crawl.

For example, Twitter, newly purchased by Elon Musk, delayed Smith’s effort to access Trump’s account data for weeks despite a court order that ultimately resulted in the company being held in contempt and fined $350,000.

It took Smith more than a year to obtain text messages between Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. And the department spent months fighting to access communications of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped devise Trump’s last-ditch efforts to remain in power.

The most protracted battles of all stemmed from Trump’s “broad invocation of executive privilege to try to prevent witnesses from providing evidence,” Smith wrote. It took months of secretive legal proceedings to secure testimony from Trump White House aides such as Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Pat Cipollone. Former Vice President Mike Pence also resisted testifying until a court ordered him to reveal some — but not all — details about his interactions with Trump. Smith noted that judges broadly rejected Trump’s privilege claims, with one holding that he was engaged in an “obvious” effort to delay the investigation.

Smith also drew attention to what may have been his biggest foil: the Supreme Court. He pointed out that the justices rebuffed his effort to put Trump’s presidential immunity claims on a similar timetable to the one the court adopted five decades earlier in litigation over Watergate and President Richard Nixon’s tapes.

And Smith argued that the Supreme Court’s resolution of Trump’s immunity assertion essentially guaranteed another round of litigation that would have been all but certain to return to the justices if Trump had not won the election and the prosecution had continued.

Smith’s path not taken: An insurrection charge

Much of Smith’s report amounts to a justification of the special counsel’s “charging decisions” — his reasons for bringing four felony counts against the former president. Smith also explained publicly for the first time his decision not to charge Trump with one of the gravest potential crimes in DOJ’s arsenal: inciting insurrection.

The bottom line, Smith said, was legal uncertainty about the federal insurrection statute. The law had not been used in 100 years. It may not have applied to a situation in which a sitting president sought to illegally retain power rather than an outside force seeking to depose a lawful administration. And, in a notable concession to Trump, Smith acknowledged the evidence didn’t show that Trump intended to cause “the full scope” of violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The evidence established that the violence was foreseeable to Mr. Trump, that he caused it, that it was beneficial to his plan to interfere with the certification, and that when it occurred, he made a conscious choice not to stop it and instead to leverage it for more delay,” Smith concluded. But federal investigators, he said, “did not develop direct evidence — such as an explicit admission or communication with co-conspirators — of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence.”

A few tantalizing tidbits of evidence

Much of the evidence that Smith recounted has already appeared in prior court filings or was unearthed by the congressional investigation into Jan. 6. But there were a few striking new details in Smith’s report:

Will the public get to see the primary documents?

Smith’s report described the trove of evidence he assembled in narrative form. But the fate of the trove itself could be even more significant than his ultimate conclusions.

The House Jan. 6 select committee similarly mounted a two-year investigation and produced a voluminous final report. But it was the committee’s enormous cache of witness transcripts and primary source documents — drawn from Trump’s files in the National Archives, emails obtained through subpoenas and evidence produced during court battles — that has proved more enduring.

Smith reached into areas the select committee could not, getting grand jury testimony from Pence, Meadows and other top aides, including some returning to the White House next week. Those transcripts remain sealed, but there are several legal efforts underway to bring them into public view.

The Justice Department is due to respond to two of those efforts this week, a potential window into whether prosecutors may deem the public interest in the underlying materials of greater value than their continued secrecy, particularly now that the criminal case has been dropped.

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an 11 24

Despite his unpopularity among the American electorate, dozens of felony convictions and a failed coup attempt, Donald Trump still managed to not only win the Electoral College but also the national popular vote. One former Republican White House staffer is offering three main reasons why Trump defied the odds in 2024.

In a Friday essay for the Atlantic, David Frum — who was a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush — noted Trump "waged a relentless campaign against any and all rules that restrained him" in his third bid for the presidency. He also pointed out that Trump notched three "all-important successes" that paved the way for his eventual November 5 victory.

"First, he frightened [President Joe] Biden administration’s Justice Department away from holding him to account in courts of law in any timely way," Frum wrote. "Second, he persuaded the courts themselves — including, ultimately, the Supreme Court — to invent new doctrines of presidential immunity to shield him."

READ MORE:'Going to pay a lot more': Here's how Trump's deportations will lead to huge tax increases

"Third, he broke all internal resistance within the Republican Party to his lawless actions," he continued. "Republican officeholders, donors and influencers who had once decried the January 6 attempted coup as utterly and permanently debarring — one by one, Trump brought them to heel."

As if to illustrate Frum's point, Trump's sentencing in the New York hush money cover-up case has now been indefinitely postponed. Judge Juan Merchan issued a one-page ruling on Friday announcing that the late November sentencing date for Trump's 34 felony convictions had been scuttled, and did not announce a new date. His two federal cases will likely be officially dismissed once Trump takes office on January 20, and his Fulton County, Georgia election interference trial will likely be delayed until 2029, after Trump's final term ends.

Frum observed that because American institutions and the courts failed to hold Trump accountable, whether the ex-president (and now president-elect) would ever face any consequences for his actions ultimately came down to the election. He opined that regardless of how the American electorate may have felt about the importance of preserving democracy, a majority of voters viewed the economy as a higher priority — hence Trump winning with voters who ranked that issue as the most important.

"So the ancient struggle resumes again: progress against reaction, dignity against domination, commerce against predation, stewardship against spoliation, global responsibility against national chauvinism," Frum wrote. "No quitting."

READ MORE: Day one: Trump planning 'largest mass deportation operation'

:{Click here to read Frum's essay in its entirety (subscription required).

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an 12 23

Trump's unofficial Supreme Court advisor who was actively involved in all three of his justice nominations has been revealed as the sole trustee of a perplexing group that generated more than $80 million in dark money in 2018.

A unfiled tax return for Rule of Law Trust (RLT) shows the name of Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo, according to CREW. The mysterious tax return also includes a number of questionable details that raise alarms about the origin of the money.

In its first year of operation, there were no employees or volunteers working the firm's main address which appears to be a virtual office located in Virginia. The only people associated with RLT have statuses similar to Leo being Federalist Society officials who now work as "consultants" or have a long history of ties to companies circulating dark money.

The company's mission statement also notes that it strives "to advance conservative principles and causes through communications, research, strategy and assistance to other organizations."

In addition to the mysterious cash circulating and the business' hallow history, it also appears to have funneled nearly $2.7 million in company expenditures through another business known as the BH Group.

*"The filing vastly expands the amount of money known to be flowing into the growing constellation of dark money groups tied to Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo."

Leo is also listed as the partial owner of that firm. While there has been speculation of Leo's affiliation with the company, his true status within the company had not been confirmed until recently. The BH Group garnered attention back in 2016 after it donated a cool $1 million to Trump's first presidential election campaign. The firm also has a history of funneling funds for the purpose of campaign contributions.

Wellspring Committee and Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), both 501(c)(4) social welfare groups relatively similar to RLT, also funneled money through the BH Group to sway elections and Supreme Court nominations.

Here is a quick timeline of how dark money has influenced politics over the last four years:

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projection:

we know trump doj acted as his pvt atty and went after enemies, vs MG very hands off yet BS:

an 6 23

house Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) suggested on Monday that the House of Representatives might consider impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Merrick Garland over unsubstantiated allegations from a whistleblower at the Internal Revenue Service regarding Hunter Biden.

“If it comes true what the IRS whistleblower is saying, we’re going to start impeachment inquiries on the Attorney General," McCarthy told the hosts of "Fox & Friends."

This comes after McCarthy made a similar impeachment threat on Sunday ifDavid Weiss, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who brokered a plea agreement with Hunter Biden over late taxes and improperly obtaining a firearm, is not allowed to testify to Congress.

The agreement, which could subject the president's son to probation, was the culmination of years of investigation, and is unusual in that most people accused of similar offenses are rarely prosecuted as standalone crimes; tax charges in particular are highly unusual if the unpaid taxes were already paid back.

FROM EARLIER:**'You throw crap against the wall': Former RNC head slaps down Kevin McCarthy for trying to rewrite history**

However, Republicans have complained the charges don't go far enough. House investigators have for years pushed an unfounded claim that Hunter Biden accepted bribes from foreign governments, and that President Joe Biden, then the vice president, was in on the scheme.

The House Ways and Means Committee further alleged last week that a whistleblower at the IRS has alleged the Justice Department under Garland interfered with Weiss' investigation; however, House investigators havenot put forward any evidence supporting this claim, and Weiss himself has not made any such allegation against Garland.

Watch the video

abc local oddly no AN?

WASHINGTON (TND) — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has announced she intends to introduce articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.

Greene said during her press conference on the matter on Thursday that Biden should be removed from his office due to his failure to secure the southern border and because he has "deliberately compromised our national security by refusing to enforce immigration laws and secure our border."

It is with the highest amount of solemnity that I announce my intention to introduce articles of impeachment today on the head of this America-at-last Executive Branch that has been working since January 20th, 2021, to systematically destroy this country: the President of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden," Greene announced Thursday.

Greene added that Biden has allowed "approximately six million illegals from over 170 countries to invade our country," and that "his administration has willfully refused to maintain operational control as is required by law."

The impeachment articles against President Biden cap off what Greene calls "impeachment week," during which the congresswoman has also made moves to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,

FBI Director Christopher Wray

and Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Greene has yet to release the text of her proposed impeachment articles against Biden, but did share on social media a photo of a piece of paper that reads "NEXT NO. H. RES. 420" in bold printed text with the number being handwritten. The words "Impeaching Joseph R. Biden" are scribbled in handwriting at the bottom of the paper.

The impeachment articles against President Biden come as his administration faces what The Washington Post called "one of his thorniest policy challenges yet" as Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration policy that restricted incoming migrants coming from countries where communicable diseases were present, came to an end on May 11.

Over 10,000 migrants were encountered along the southern border on May 9 alone, according to Homeland Security officials. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told The National Desk that community leaders have been told there will be "just too many people to even process."

President Biden has already said that "we’re doing all we can" in regard to the U.S. southern border, but added that "it’s going to be chaotic for a while."

More than 2.6 million people have been reportedly expelled from the U.S. under Title 42. Since Title 42 has ended, the impending migrant crisis that so many have warned of seemingly has yet to occur.

The National Desk reports that while the border is still backed up and the reported number of crossings remains high, other than a last-minute surge experienced near the end of Title 42, the situation has been "on par" with the numbers experienced over the last several months.

However, events at the border continue to make headlines and draw criticism. Less than 24 hours before Title 42 was set to end, an Afghan national who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) terror watchlist was arrested at the U.S. southern border. On Wednesday, an 8-year-old child reportedly died while in Border Patrol custody.

rww 8 22 leo got 1.6b$ last year

[pix JCN President Carrie Severino criticized the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson in a March 2022 Fox News appearance.

Just days after FBI agents carried out a search warrant for secret documents wrongly being held at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, a right-wing dark-money group that helped secure a far-right majority on the Supreme Court launched a $1 million digital and cable ad campaign attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Judicial Crisis Network has been at the core of the massive and secretly funded dark-money campaign by right-wing funders and groups like the Federalist Society to secure ideological domination of the Supreme Court and federal judiciary. The group backed former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s abuse of power to prevent the Senate from considering former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Garland to the Supreme Court, and then spent tens of millions promoting confirmation of Trump’s nominees. More recently, JCN led attacks on the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and dishonest smears against several of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department nominees.

The new JCN ad seeks to undermine Garland’s credibility, accusing him of “cowering to the woke mob.” A press release announcing the ad buy claimed that Garland has “consistently bowed to the radical left’s agenda.” In a statement, the group’s president Carrie Severino repeated a false right-wing talking point accusing Garland of “calling concerned parents ‘domestic terrorists.’”

The ad also claims that Garland has betrayed his former judicial colleague Brett Kavanaugh by not stopping activists from protesting outside the Supreme Court justice’s home. As CNN noted, the rarely enforced law that JCN and right-wing politicians are demanding Garland use against protesters could also be interpreted to forbid the kind of protests at the Supreme Court that anti-abortion groups mobilized for years. The JCN ad notably does not mention that Garland supported recent legislation to beef up security for Supreme Court justices and their families.

Right-wing media outlets have given JCN’s campaign a boost, with Fox News reporting JCN’s assertion that the Garland ad is part of a broader $10 million campaign attacking Democrats over the court that will include “paid advertising, earned media, research, grassroots activity, and a coalition enterprise.”

Tags: Carrie Severino Donald Trump Donald Trump Supreme Court Judicial Crisis Network

https://www.mediamatters.org/mar-lago-search/fox-news-pushes-dishonest-smear-campaign-against-merrick-garland-over-threats

no lnx vid

Fox News pushes dishonest smear campaign against Merrick Garland over threats against public officials

Fox personalities promote the lie that Garland refused to protect right-wing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.The Justice Department is actually prosecuting a man who threatened him.

WRITTEN BY ERIC KLEEFELD

PUBLISHED 08/16/22

Fox News personalities are now dishonestly engaging in rhetorical whataboutism in response to threats against federal law enforcement from supporters of former President Donald Trump after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago resort. In their fictional retelling, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland has taken a hard line against Trump and his supporters, yet has done nothing to protect right-wing Supreme Court justices such as Trump-nominated Justice Brett Kavanaugh who have also received violent threats.

In fact, when an armed suspect was arrested outside Kavanaugh’s home in early June for allegedly threatening to kill Kavanaugh, Garland strongly condemned threats of violence against the justices and described the measures that the Justice Department has taken to protect them.

“Threats of violence and actual violence against the justices of course strike at the heart of our democracy, and we will do everything we can to prevent them and to hold people who do them accountable,” Garland said on June 8. He further outlined actions he had taken the previous month to increase security at the justices’ homes “24/7,” and a meeting he had with court security and law enforcement officials “to ensure every degree of protection available as possible.”

Fox News, however, is telling a different story now. Last Thursday, the network posted an article on FoxNews.com promoting a million-dollar ad buy from the right-wing activist group Judicial Crisis Network attacking Garland for neglecting to protect Kavanaugh, specifically. The article quoted Carrie Severino, the group’s president and a frequent Fox guest, who accused Garland of “continuing to not enforce the law,” apparently referring to a federal law prohibiting protests outside judges’ homes. Many experts believe, however, that this law poses serious constitutional difficulties on free speech grounds regarding protests of Supreme Court justices, and in response the Justice Department has resolved to prosecute any threats of violence or actual violence.

The ad itself, however, did not even discuss the specific law about protests at judges’ homes. Instead, it simply declared that Kavanaugh was being “harassed,” and “threatened,” adding, “even an armed assassin was after him.” The ad then falsely concluded that Garland “could stop it, but doesn’t.” It currently has nearly 1.2 million views on YouTube in addition to viewers who may have seen the commercial airing on TV.

Video file

CitationJudicial Crisis Network, via YouTube, August 11, 2022

Other Fox News programs have pushed the same flagrantly dishonest talking point in the past several days, attempting to discredit Garland and the Justice Department in the wake of the search at Mar-a-Lago.

On Jesse Watters Primetime, a program which has pushed multiple conspiracy theories following the search at Mar-a-Lago, Watters wrongly claimed Friday night that Garland “wouldn't lift a finger to protect Supreme Court justices, even after a lunatic showed up at Brett Kavanaugh's front door trying to assassinate him.”

Video file

CitationFrom the August 12, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime

Likewise, Fox host Mark Levin claimed on his show Sunday night that Supreme Court justices were being threatened by people gathered at their homes, “and we have an attorney general who will not enforce federal criminal law against them.” In fact, the man who allegedly threatened Kavanaugh is currently facing federal charges.

Video file

CitationFrom the August 14, 2022, edition of Fox News’ Life, Liberty & Levin

And, on Tuesday’s edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co., host Stuart Varney asked former Trump administration Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker about a man who was just arrested for posting online threats to kill FBI personnel. Whitaker at first claimed that “the American people, I think, are upset, especially Donald Trump supporters are upset,” essentially reiterating similar comments he had made on Monday blaming the FBI.

He then pivoted to the spurious claim that threats to Supreme Court justices were not being similarly punished. “In my experience, we need to make sure that we treat all political violence as not only abhorrent, but treat it similarly,” Whitaker said. “And there are examples where that hasn’t always been the case, including the threats to, you know, Supreme Court justices.”

Video file

CitationFrom the August 16, 2022, edition of Fox Business’ Varney & Co.

The entire point here is that the Justice Department is addressing far-right threats against the FBI just as it is treating far-left threats to conservative justices. But this whole story has revealed the extent to which conservative media have demanded that the laws may not be applied against their side.

rww 8 22

Just days after FBI agents carried out a search warrant for secret documents wrongly being held at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, a right-wing dark-money group that helped secure a far-right majority on the Supreme Court launched a $1 million digital and cable ad campaign attacking Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The Judicial Crisis Network has been at the core of the massive and secretly funded dark-money campaign by right-wing funders and groups like the Federalist Society to secure ideological domination of the Supreme Court and federal judiciary. The group backed former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s abuse of power to prevent the Senate from considering former President Barack Obama’s nomination of Garland to the Supreme Court, and then spent tens of millions promoting confirmation of Trump’s nominees. More recently, JCN led attacks on the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and dishonest smears against several of President Joe Biden’s Justice Department nominees.

The new JCN ad seeks to undermine Garland’s credibility, accusing him of “cowering to the woke mob.” A press release announcing the ad buy claimed that Garland has “consistently bowed to the radical left’s agenda.” In a statement, the group’s president Carrie Severino repeated a false right-wing talking point accusing Garland of “calling concerned parents ‘domestic terrorists.’”

The ad also claims that Garland has betrayed his former judicial colleague Brett Kavanaugh by not stopping activists from protesting outside the Supreme Court justice’s home.As CNN noted, the rarely enforced law that JCN and right-wing politicians are demanding Garland use against protesters could also be interpreted to forbid the kind of protests at the Supreme Court that anti-abortion groups mobilized for years. The JCN ad notably does not mention that Garland supported recent legislation to beef up security for Supreme Court justices and their families.

Right-wing media outlets have given JCN’s campaign a boost, with Fox News reporting JCN’s assertion that the Garland ad is part of a broader $10 million campaign attacking Democrats over the court that will include “paid advertising, earned media, research, grassroots activity, and a coalition enterprise.”

an 7 22

Republican outrage was described as a “small political side circus,” after U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) succeeded in having several fact-checking articles exposing Republicans’ false claims made part of the Congressional Record.

The articles all debunked the false and baseless claims conservatives and the far right have been making for nearly a year, that **Attorney General Merrick Garland** called parents speaking at school boards “domestic terrorists,” and was investigating them.

Cicilline first tried to read the articles into the record, but Republicans immediately objected.

The Democrat from Rhode Island appeared genuinely surprised that the Judiciary Committee Republicans would object to the very basic and standard procedure. He was forced to describe the articles to have them included in the official record – something the Republicans also caused a commotion over.

Referring to **Congressman Jim Jordan** (R-OH), Rep. Cicilline said that “the ranking member made reference to a Department of Justice whistleblower memo and grossly mischaracterized its content. So I’d ask unanimous consent that I’d be permitted to read the memo into the record.”

Republicans objected.

“You object to reading into the record the memo?” Cicilline, shocked, asked. “Then I ask unanimous consent that the document that the Republicans were afraid to have be read aloud be introduced into the record.”

He read the titles into the record (NCRM has linked to those titles online below.)

“No, the federal government isn’t using the Patriot Act to treat parents like domestic terrorists,” which refutes a claim Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) made last year in October during another Judiciary Committee hearing.

“:{McCarthy’s:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{ false claims that Garland called parents ‘terrorists’:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:” was the title of another article made part of the record.

“Attorney General never called concerned parents ‘domestic terrorists’” was yet another article.

“Kevin McCarthy keeps repeating false claim that attorney general called parents terrorists for wanting to attend school board meetings,” was the final article.

Cicilline then asked “unanimous consent” that Republicans “read these documents and stop making false claims,” to which the Chair responded, “Good luck with that.”

Republicans were outraged.

“Point of order!” yelled one.

“The gentleman just impugned our integrity!” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) decried.“I would demand that his words be taken down. He is not allowed under the rules to impugn false statements by this side.”

Gohmert literally pointed his finger at Cicilline as he yelled.

“And as far as Politifact, and some of those, they couldn’t find the truth with both hands,” Gohmert, making what would likely be a “pants on fire claim,” also charged.

The Jim Jordan Louie-Gohmert part of the GOP caucus did not appear to have the full support of their fellow members.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a far-right Republican of Texas, held his head in his hand during part of the outbreak, and later ignored it by using his cell phone. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was laughing toward the end.

Watch below or at this link.

DOJ sues tex on abortion bounty hunters

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921

tx

AG Ken Paxton serves up incoherent attack on Merrick Garland: His job is to 'worry about Afghanistan'

donziger

rudy pal mastrro

aoc etc ltr but no action by AG garland

https://kpfa.org/episode/a-rude-awakening-june-4-2021/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/biden-doj/

drain swamp digby

various obstruct biden? impeach? merrick garland

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/lindsey-graham-2650261965/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/merrick-garland/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/03/right-wing-groups-gearing-up-onslaught-merrick-garland-supreme-court/

no lnx

Wednesday, President Barack Obama picked Merrick Garland, a federal court of appeals judge with a stellar and moderate reputation, to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. His strategy was obvious: present obstructionist Republicans with a nominee with little or no baggage. But Senate Republicans immediately signaled that the Garland nomination would not change their calculations—that the fight to block any nominee was on. And prior to Obama’s announcement, conservative groups were already gearing up for this crusade, perhaps the last big battle of the right’s war on Obama.

The political players leading this effort are the usual suspects. The Republican National Committee had already announced plans to oppose Obama’s nominee—whoever it might be—and to run ads in competitive Senate races in Colorado, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and elsewhere, in addition to targeting Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The tea party group FreedomWorks is rallying grassroots voters to the cause. On the other side of political spectrum, liberal advocacy groups such as the Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way are girding for a massive fight.

This face-off could well be nastier and more expensive than past confrontations over the Supreme Court. It’s the first political fight of this kind since the controversial Citizens United decision allowed money to flow freely into the political system. The influx of money has also helped create a well-funded extra-party political infrastructure that is now turning its sights on the SCOTUS fight.

Thanks to Citizens United, campaign finance rules that once limited the use of corporate and union money for certain advertisements no longer exist. Meanwhile, dark-money groups—which can get involved in campaigns but don’t have to disclose their donors—are supposed to spend slightly more than half of their money on nonelection activities to keep their nonprofit status. As a result, they “may funnel a lot of the rest of their money into Supreme Court-related ads,” says Rick Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California-Irvine law school

Here’s a look at the groups launching the assault against Garland:

Judicial Crisis Network: Perhaps the biggest player in the Supreme Court fight is the Judicial Crisis Network, launched in 2005 and long a dark-money conduit for a number of rich conservative donors. Founded by Ann Corkery, a low-profile conservative fundraiser and lawyer, the group reportedly launched with startup money from California foreclosure king Robin Arkley II, a wealthy conservative who helped bankroll the effort to unseat former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle (D). Corkery’s husband Neil is JCN’s treasurer.

Other early JCN supporters included Jay Sekulow, a longtime culture warrior and chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (which was created by televangelist Pat Robertson), and Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, a leading conservative legal group. Originally called the Judicial Confirmation Network, the group was formed to help push through George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. After Obama was elected in 2008, the group shifted its focus to blocking his federal court nominees.

In 2008, JCN ran ads attacking then-candidate Obama for associating with former Weatherman Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The group went all in to oppose the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, setting up state-level opposition groups to pressure vulnerable Democratic senators. It also ran attack ads against Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan the following year.

Since Citizens United, JCN has become more heavily involved in elections,particularly judicial and attorney general elections at the state level. It has spent millions of dollars to swing state supreme courts to the right and to elect business-friendly attorney generals. The group is a beneficiary of significant amounts of dark money.The bulk of its budget in 2014 came from an outfit called Wellspring Committee, a secretive nonprofit group that isn’t required to disclose its donors.

According to Wellspring’s most recent tax filing, it gave JCN nearly $7 million that year. Wellspring was a creation of the Koch brothers, the billionaire industrialists who have pumped millions of dollars into conservative political campaigns over the past several years. According to Ken Vogel’s book Big Money, Wellspring was one of the Kochs’ first forays into using a nonprofit entity to funnel money secretly to other political organizations to obscure the source of the funding. The Koch brothers reportedly broke with Wellspring in 2008 and moved on to other projects, but Wellspring still apparently maintains ties with members of their donor network.

Within a week of Scalia’s passing, JCN announced the launch of a $1 million ad campaign calling on Senate Republicans to refuse Obama a hearing on any Supreme Court nominee.The ads praised senators in competitive 2016 races who had already pledged to block any Obama nominee. (Last week, the group ran ads attacking Judge Jane Kelly, a federal appeals court judge who was briefly on Obama’s Supreme Court short list, for once having represented a “child molester.”) After Obama announced Garland’s nomination, JCN disclosed that it would spend another $2 million on ads opposing his confirmation.

Carrie Severino, a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who serves as JCN’s chief counsel and policy director, said last month, “We cannot allow President Obama turn the Supreme Court nomination process into another partisan game, where Obama’s goal is to dominate the court with extremist liberal ideologues.”

America Rising:A super-PAC, America Rising was founded in 2013 by Mitt Romney’s former campaign manager, Matt Rhoades. The PAC’s biggest donor this cycle is Republican hedge fund mogul Paul Singer. Close behind is Mike Fernandez, a big Jeb Bush donor. The outfit has made a name for itself by sending out trackers to follow Democratic congressional candidates during the 2014 election—looking for material for attack ads. The trackers scored a big hit when they captured Senate candidate Bruce Braley calling Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school,” a comment that hurt Braley’s campaign.

America Rising’s involvement in the Supreme Court fight is coming largely through a subsidiary, America Rising Squared, run by a former communications director for Sen. John McCain, that was created to do opposition research on Democratic candidates. Before the Garland pick was announced, JCN and the Republican Party each hired American Rising to dig up dirt on potential Supreme Court nominees. After Garland’s nomination, America Rising Squared executive director Brian Rogers released a statement warning of the judge’s liberal leanings. “Merrick Garland has been called the ideal judge to move the Supreme Court to the left and cement President Obama’s liberal legacy for decades into the future.” And he told the Washington Post, “We’ve done a good deal of research on Judge Garland so far and now we’re in the midst of a big surge to get after the record to make sure the American people have all the information they need to weigh this debate.”

One Nation:Republican strategist Karl Rove’s dark-money monster, Crossroads GPS, will be a key player in Senate elections, though under a less familiar name. That outside spending group, created in the wake of Citizens United, has lately been operating using an entity called One Nation. The new group is headed by Crossroads’ President Steven Law, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has made obstructing Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a priority. One Nation has already spent several million dollars trying to help endangered GOP senators such as Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.).

The group has said it will likely focus its Senate campaign efforts on the Supreme Court fight, honing in on the impact of a new potential liberal justice and the effect on core conservative issues. Ian Prior, a spokesman for the group, told Politico last month, “The consequences of our next Supreme Court justice and what that will do to shape the court for 20 years is certainly an issue that One Nation will be front and center in addressing over the next several months.”

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eg omg

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/01/11/pruitt-helped-block-garland-confirmation-supreme-court-fundraised-special-interests-benefited/

no lnx

PRUITT HELPED BLOCK GARLAND CONFIRMATION TO SUPREME COURT, THEN FUNDRAISED FROM POLLUTERS THAT BENEFITED

Nick Surgey

By Nick Surgey | January 11th, 2017 at 11:55 AM (CDT)

Featured Investigations, RAGA

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President-elect Trump’s choice to be the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), coordinated an effort by Republican state attorneys general to oppose the confirmation of Merrick Garlandto the Supreme Court.

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Pruitt then used this effort as a basis to request financial support for his federal Political Action Committee (PAC), called Oklahoma Strong.

In a March 2016 email (see below) that he sent to supporters of Oklahoma Strong, Pruitt boasted of his effort to block Garland’s confirmation.

Donors to Oklahoma Strong include major energy interests and leading D.C. law firms. Many of these donors have interests before the courts that could have been significantly affected by the confirmation of Garland.

Oklahoma Strong has raised more than a quarter of its total funds from the energy industry, according to reporting by Politico. These have included contributions from Joe Craft, the President of the coal firm Alliance Resources, and from J. Larry Nichols, the founder of the fracking giant Devon Energy.

Pruitt is well known to have strong ties to the energy industry. A 2014 New York Times investigation revealed that Devon Energy lobbyists had drafted letters for Scott Pruitt, which he in turn sent to the EPA and to the Department of the Interior under his own name and with almost no changes. Eric Lipton of the Times received a Pulitzer Prize for this reporting.

Other donors to the PAC have included David Green, the CEO of Hobby Lobby, and Harlan Crow, the billionaire real estate developer from Texas who is reported to be a close personal friend of Justice Clarence Thomas. Partners from major U.S. law firms with interests at the Supreme Court, including Reginald J. Brown at Wilmerhale and David B. Rivkin at Baker Hostetler have also contributed.

On March 16, 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland to become a Supreme Court Justice, taking the seat vacated by the late Antonin Scalia. The next day, a letter was sent to Senator Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and to Senator McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, urging them to block Garland’s confirmation. That letter was signed by 21 state attorneys general, all Republican.

According to the email fromOklahoma Strong, Pruitt had asked his fellow Republican attorneys general to sign the letter, acting in his role as board chair of the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF).

The RLDF is a so-called “501C4” organization,which means it is not required to publicly disclose any information about its sources of funding. It was created in 2014 by the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), with which it shares staff and office space and holds some joint events.

RLDF is highly secretive about what it does. For example, it does not put any details about its activities or meetings on its website.

Despite this, the Center for Media and Democracy obtained an agenda for one RLDF meeting via a public records request. This meeting, held in April 2016, featured a session about blocking the Clean Power Plan. Scott Pruitt was a speaker on that panel, which also included David Rivkin, a partner at the law firm Baker Hostetler. Rivkin, also a donor to Oklahoma Strong PAC, is representing the state of Oklahoma in the lawsuit against the Clean Power Plan, which will likely end up at the Supreme Court.

Currently, only two funders of RLDF have been identified, both with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.

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One is Freedom Partners, the mega-fund created by Charles and David Koch, which gave RLDF $175,000 in 2014. The Kochs own Koch Industries, which operates a network of oil and natural gas pipelines and refineries.

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That isn’t the only connection of RLDF to the Kochs. In 2015, RLDF appointed Samantha Dravis as its President, in a shared position with RAGA where she serves as Policy Director and General Counsel. Dravis joined RLDF from Freedom Partners, where she had been the organization’s Legal Counsel.

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The other known RLDF donor is theEdison Electric Institute (EEI), which gave RLDF a $25,000 contribution in 2014. EEI is the trade association for the utility sector, and has also engaged in litigation in an attempt to block the Clean Power Plan.

Unlike RLDF, RAGA must publicly disclose its funding sources. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s analysis of IRS filings, RAGA has raised almost $4 million from fossil fuel industry connected entities since 2014, including ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy and the American Petroleum Institute.

The Center for Media and Democracy has previously released other materials on both RAGA and RLDF. These materials demonstrate the efforts of the two organizations to block the Clean Power Plan, and to help stall state investigations into ExxonMobil for its role in promoting climate change denial.

A Senate confirmation hearing is expected soon on Scott Pruitt’s nomination to be Administrator of the EPA. Following his selection by President-elect Trump, Pruitt has announced that he has stepped down from his position at RLDF, and has said that he will close down his Oklahoma Strong PAC. Despite this, little is known about what RLDF did during Pruitt’s time as board chair. As part of the confirmation process, Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have written to Pruitt asking him to disclose information about his role as board chair of the RLDF.

[doc]

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http://www.ecowatch.com/nuclear-option-gorsuch-2347867635.html

Senate Republicans Rig System, Trigger 'Nuclear Option' to Push Through Gorsuch

Senate Republicans rushed through a confirmation vote Thursday on President Donald Trump's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Neil Gorsuch has been met with widespread criticism both across the country and from the Senate before, during and after his confirmation process.

For more than 200 years, the Senate has honored a 60 vote margin for Supreme Court nominees to be confirmed. Gorsuch only received 55. According to existing Senate procedure, Gorsuch's nomination would be defeated and the Senate would move forward without confirming him to the court. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell changed the rules and triggered the so-called "nuclear option" for what had been deemed the "greatest deliberative body" to force Gorsuch's nomination through.

The Senate rightfully rejected Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. It is their duty to advise and consent on judicial nominees and with this vote, they refused their consent and advised President Donald Trump that Gorsuch is not fit to be granted a lifetime appointment to America's highest court..

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U.S.

FEB 18, 11:44 AM EST

BUSINESS

Food Labeling Laws Could Be Undermined By First Amendment Court Challenge

BY CONNOR ADAMS SHEETS @CONNORASHEETS ON 05/20/14 AT 12:24 PM

The meat processing industry’s drive to overturn revised country-of-origin labeling (COOL) laws continued Monday, when the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considered the industry’s argument that the regulations violate free speech laws.

If the court sides with the meat industry, the fallout could have far-reaching consequences, as it would potentially undermine a wide range of labeling laws, particularly COOL regulations, which require companies to disclose where their products and ingredients are produced and manufactured through the display of packaging labels. Most American consumers are familiar with common COOL labels like "Made in China" or "product of the United States" from everything from sneakers to frozen hamburger patties, even if they are not aware of how exactly they are regulated.

The meat industry made its case during Monday’s en banc review -- an uncommon type of proceeding conducted before all 11 judges on the court rather than the typical three-judge panel -- that the COOL laws as revised in 2013 infringe on companies’ First Amendment rights by compelling speech.

An upcoming court decision could undermine a whole host of food labeling laws that serve to inform consumers about the origins of what they eat.

Chief Judge Merrick Garland said that in order to decide that First Amendment rights were being violated under the regulations, the court would “have to strike down at least half a dozen statutes on the books since the 1930s,” according to Politico. He also pointed out that many products far beyond the scope of the meat industry, including the razor he shaved with Monday morning, are required to display COOL labels, Politico reported.

As such, a decision by the court that the COOL labels infringe on companies’ free speech rights could mean changes for industries that rest far beyond the food realm.

A three-judge panel of the court handed down a decision on March 28 suggesting that the en banc hearing on just the First Amendment issues be held at a future date, but otherwise affirming a district court’s decision not to allow a preliminary injunction against the 2013 COOL laws. The case is known as American Meat Institute vs. U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We suggest that the full court hear this case en banc to resolve for the circuit whether, under Zauderer, government interests in addition to correcting deception can sustain a commercial speech mandate that compels firms to disclose purely factual and non-controversial information,” the three-judge panel wrote in the March 28 decision.

The National Farmers Union and other American farmers’ and food production industry groups like the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association and the Consumer Federation of America continue to support the laws, which provide clarity about food origins.

“The information required by the regulation to be provided is factual and noncontroversial,” NFU President Roger Johnson said, according to the Ohio’s Country Journal agricultural publication. “I am hopeful that the full Circuit will affirm the panel’s prior decision and continue to deny the preliminary injunction requested by appellants.”

But the American Meat Institute has consistently argued that the laws will have serious negative impacts on the meat industry.

Related Stories

Vermont Becomes First State To Mandate GMO Labeling

Pro-GMO Bill Could Repeal Rules To Label GMOs In Food

“It is incomprehensible that USDA would finalize a controversial rule that stands to harm American agriculture, when comments on the proposal made clear how deeply and negatively it will impact U.S. meat companies and livestock producers,” AMI Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel Mark Dopp said last year. “This rubber stamping of the proposal begs the question of the integrity of the process:  many people spoke, but no one at USDA listened.”

Food labeling is a major issue in food and agriculture circles, as food safety advocates and right-to-know groups have gone head-to-head with food manufacturers and industry groups over whether foods containing GMOs should be labeled, as well as what exactly labels like “natural” or “organic” should really mean.

The GMO labeling debate has made headlines in recent months, particularly in Vermont, where Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the nation’s first unconditional mandatory GMO labeling bill into law on May 8.

The Vermont law is the first in the nation to require a state to begin labeling foods that contain genetically modified ingredients no matter how other states' lawmakers decide to address the issue. Connecticut and Maine had already passed GMO labeling laws, but the launch of their labeling regimes does not begin unless other states pass similar bills.

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