‘Preposterous’: Federal judge decries efforts to downplay Jan. 6 violence, label perpetrators ‘hostages’
Judge Royce Lamberth, who has handled dozens of Jan. 6 cases, lamented the false rhetoric spread by Donald Trump and his allies.
Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee to the bench, said the “destructive” misinformation, spread by political leaders who have downplayed and misrepresented the attack, had become pervasive.
“In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” Lamberth lamented in a seven-page public court filing.
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The Trump defense industrial complex goes a bit quiet after Carroll verdict
‘Trump chaos is baked in the cake at this point,’ one Republican strategist said.
The most notable thing about the Republican call-and-response following the E. Jean Carroll verdict was that there was barely any response at all.
On Friday night and into the weekend, the story of former President Donald Trump being ordered to pay the writer $83.3 million in damages stemming from her defamation case against him didn’t lead Fox News, which was consumed instead with the immigration crisis on the Southern border. The Daily Caller was busy flogging Hunter Biden. And on the right-wing network Newsmax’s pages, the verdict ran beneath reporting on a bathroom bill in Utah, Israel and Vince McMahon.
“Everyone is just trying to pretend it didn’t happen,” said Jason Roe, the former executive director of the state Republican Party in Michigan.
In the past, when prosecutors or the courts have smacked Trump, the former president fumed and the GOP rage machine spun itself into overdrive, framing the court developments as acts of political persecution. In the Carroll case, the first part happened, but not the second.
That most Republicans were not talking about $83 million in damages reflects both a discomfort with, and an uncertainty about, the political implications of the verdict. It also hints at a latent fear: that the ruling may prove to be a turnoff for some independent or conservative-leaning women in the suburbs.
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Amy Berman Jackson blasts former Attorney General William Barr’s spin on the Mueller report as “disingenuous.”
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued that ruling in a withering opinion that accused Barr of being “disingenuous” when describing Mueller’s findings and found that the Justice Department was not candid with the court about the purpose and role of the 2019 memo prepared by Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Justice Department attorneys argued that the memo was part of the process of advising Barr on whether Trump should be prosecuted, but Jackson said the analysis consisted of a post hoc rationalization of a decision already made.
“The review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not then engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given,” wrote Jackson, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
Jackson linked Justice Department’s effort to keep the memo secret to Barr’s initial descriptions of Mueller’s conclusions, declaring both efforts misleading.
“Not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege,” she wrote. “The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the Attorney General to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time.”
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10 Counts - Obstruction Of Justice
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