I don't believe that that ideal has ever really been true. But the F you in your face of these Trump era violations of our ideals has been heartbreaking. However, I'm not curling up in despair and giving up. We are at war and I am not dead yet.
Any minority person could have told you that. (I'm white, BTW). I started losing faith in the Justice system back in the 80s. It was gradual for me, but the evidence kept piling up.
There are two tiers of American justice, one for the rich who most often are exonerated or have reduced sentences and one for the not so rich who usually are convicted with harsher sentences. In America money buys justice
It's not our legal system per se that failed us, but the misapplication of our legal system. If everyone did their job, be it the Senate (conviction of Trump upon impeachment); the House (rejection of the certification of a manipulated election on behalf of a constitutionally disqualified candidate); an antidemocratic, anti-constitutional US Supreme Court (purposefully delaying the application of justice on behalf of Trump & invoking the ridiculous, unconstitutional, antidemocratic presidential immunity); the DOJ (the inexcusably long delay in the prosecution of Trump for clearly planning, organizing & inciting an insurrection against the Capitol); the DOJ & FBI (failure to imprison Trump based on his repeated threats to our national security); all of government (failure to enforce the supposedly self-enacting Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that disqualified not only Trump but numerous members of his administration & Congress from holding office); the DOJ, FBI & Biden (failure to investigate or to call for an investigation of an election rife with irregularities, including bomb threats from Russian sources, peculiar behavior by Trump & his allies regarding the election, particularly powerful tech-savvy billionaires like Musk with access to the electoral apparatus, anomalies in election results, especially in swing states, suggesting rigging by algorithm, & calls by cybersecurity experts for forensic audits); Harris (failure to call for any recount as was her right & duty); & Biden (failure to use his powers, including the immunity granted to him by the Supreme Court, to prevent Trump from regaining power or to either pressure the DOJ & FBI to do their jobs or fire their heads for dereliction of duty & replace them with qualified people who would). So that's all 3 branches of the federal government & both parties, who shirked their moral & constitutional responsibilities of bringing Trump & his accomplices to justice & preventing them from holding government office. We had plenty of stopgaps in our legal & justice systems to prevent Trump from getting back in office, just not enough people in authority to do what our legal & justice systems required.
100% correct on every single point Jaime. I'll never get over the magnitude of catastrophy done to this nation by the people and institutions, organizations that utterly failed us over and over.
James Comey is also worthy of a dishonorable mention in this tragedy. If he hadn't selfishly needed his 15 minutes of fame and stardom 2 weeks before the 2016 election, there never would have been a Trump presidency.
I’m referring to men who refused to vote for a woman in the 2016 general election v. Trump - not women who voted Bernie in the primary. Bernie refused to fully support Hillary in the general because of his personal spite, ego & misogyny. Hillary would not have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths & the huge hit to our healthcare system - Trump did that. The men who refused to vote for Hillary in the general voted against women’s healthcare & against a fair Supreme Court. If healthcare is the defining metric - we all lost the 2016 general election.
Bernie did everything he could to support Clinton & oppose Trump. Stop scapegoating him! That unnecessarily perpetuates division within the opposition to Trump & republofascism.
In 2025, Bernie is a nonentity. There’s nothing to divide. He’ll never be a national candidate again. (I worked on the 2016 campaign & saw his attitude toward campaigning for Hillary in the general first hand.)
Bernie has done more to advance progressive causes than any other single individual since Martin Luther King. He is by no means a "non-entity". Shame on the DNC & Democratic establishment for doing everything they could to sabotage Bernie & elect Trump! If you want to blame anyone for Trump now & then, that's whom you should blame. They didn't do a single thing this time to prevent Trump from getting back into power.
Yes, Comey and Garland are both complicit in the fiasco that is Trump's first and second presidencies. It sickens me to think that Trump will hold his hand on a book that he doesn't read and swear to an oath he has no intention of keeping and We The People have to watch this in horror.
Worse! We will pay for protection of a seditionist-rapist Felon. He will be eligible for great benefits. He can’t even travel to some countries because he is a FELON! I despise any foreign leader who meets with him as if he’s legitimate. And trump’s presidency is illegitimate based on our Constitution, Amendment 14 article 3. Anyone involved in sedition is ineligible! Therefore his orders MUST be disobeyed.
Hal Schwalbe, it's funny how the "policy" (not binding law) to say nothing/investigate a candidate so close to an election didn't bother that SOB Comey when it came to Hillary, but regarding that foul orange bastard, it's a major deal and must be strictly enforced by all agencies. 🤬
That Comey didn’t think to ask someone how long it would take to do a key word search of emails shows his incompetence. He believed that it would take a couple weeks so he “had” to notify Congress when it actually took a weekend to discover that there were no new emails. Arrogance and ignorance.
I hear Comey was trying to get out in front of a DSNY leak. And I find that plausible, because DSNY seemed to be a continuous source of information damning to only one of the 2 candidates from New York that year. Whether that was (part of) his true motivation, we'll never really know.
But if that's what he was actually trying to accomplish, I'd rather he'd have done it by saying "if you hear something funky about Hillary and it's coming from DSNY, be aware there's the possibility of partisan action" instead of just blurting out the funky thing then after the election, when it no longer mattered, announcing it wasn't an actual thing.
That Comey couldn’t control the SDNY is all you need to know. It is against DOJ policy to interfere in an election which includes leaks. Dismissal or disbarment are penalties. He could have reminded the SDNY of that. Yet Comey believed a public announcement was the better course of action!
Jack Smith is very impressive. I respect him highly for the work he does as well as for his courage. We need more people like him in our government. I don't know how Garland gets away with refusing to look into an obvious major crime against our country.
The three biggest spineless idiots who could have done something immediately after the J6 committee hearings were over, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy (via his trip to Mar-A-fantasyland) and Merrill Garland. We are in this nightmare because of these three. I lay the blame on all three equally. They were each in a position to effectively facilitate the orange man-baby’s deserving jailing but failed us all. Full stop.
These profiles in cowardice have severely destroyed this country. When my girlfriend asked me to let it go and move on with my life I did as she said and made her my ex girlfiend.
After being screwed over for a seat on the Supreme Court you might think Garland would have an axe to grind with Republicans and would go after Trump with guns-a-blazing. But as a Democrat he has to worry about how it would look to people if he went after Trump. Justice should be blind. The man committed crimes. You pursue that. Plain and simple. Failure.
So true. I think Garland obeyed in advance, thinking it was his duty to avoid even the appearance of partisanship—which is exactly what Trump was after. That’s one reason why he gets away with so much, making threats to gin up the MAGA machine to get people to succumb in a confusion of conscience. I know some think Garland is somehow complicit, but I’d venture that it’s more likely that Trump’s relentless mob boss tactics were enough to overwhelm Garland’s scrupulous adherence to DOJ norms. BUT. News flash: We are beyond all that! There comes a time when you have to do the right thing regardless of whether people will scream partisanship or call you a liar. You have to stand on your own island and not give in.
While I too am appalled that Trump escaped accountability for most egregious crimes against voters and the US, let's put the blame where it actually belongs: on the blatantly partisan and corrupt SCOTUS. Even with the delay, the case was scheduled to go to trial in plenty of time for a conviction -- March 2024 -- had SCOTUS not stepped in and delayed their presidential immunity decision to the latest time possible in order to keep the election subversion case from going to trial before the election. Progressives should stop pointing at each other and act like a true opposition party, since there is so much material!
They indeed should get a major share of the blame. They are so corrupt, antidemocratic & anti-constitutional! Exactly what you mustn't have in the highest judicial body in the land. They are a huge factor in the decline in democracy & national unity in America, ever since their very corrupt, partisan antidemocratic decision in Bush v. Gore. And they've only gotten worse ever since.
Fully agree Garland needs to be held accountable, but there is no mechanism for that. Garland gets to wander into retirement giving $300k speeches about the complexities of the law, while democracy burns down around him due to his cowardice.
It would be fitting to see the felon president throw Garland in prison anyway, just because he wants to. Apperantly he could do that with no repercussions because of that terrible unamerican sc ruling that makes a president a king. I wouldn't want to see a fascist step like that (though we all know much worse is headed our way) but I bet that would make Garland wish he could go back in time so he could have another shot at it, this time without his head up his ass.
I expect Trump to persecute the very best people we have, & Garland certainly isn't 1 of them. Trump has a lot to be grateful to Merrick for, & he must in some way realize that.
And he perpetuated that mistake by never firing him. So Biden has a lot to answer for, too. Such a pity because other than that unforgivable piece of negligence, Biden has had a relatively remarkable presidency. It's the equivalent of Buchanan's failure to ward off the Civil War, Hoover's failure to prevent the Great Depression & Johnson's failure to end the Vietnam War in its impact on his legacy.
I applaud Jack Smith- a man of great courage and integrity, who is demonstrating to all that he is not going to be silenced. I cannot imagine how he feels at this time- to have devoted so many hours and such energy into this investigation, only to have it be shut down. I pray that he and his family are safe.
If he’s smart he’ll go back to Europe and out of the grasp of T’s DOJ. I’d be long out of this country. He could go back to The Hague, where he was valued. In retrospect, Garland would have fit in perfectly with the mealy-mouthed toadys on SCOTUS today.
There is no accountability. Might as well forget the word.
Might be wise to recall that the responsibility really rested with Biden. Even after J6, Biden said aloud that he preferred Trump be held accountable at the ballot box. Instead of addressing the underlying weaknesses in our constitutional system that were revealed by the Trump candidacy, presidency, and insurrection, Biden focused on a legislative agenda that did NOT include necessary reforms. He didn’t press for holding all of those responsible for inspiring the insurrection and he didn’t use his presidential authorities to prevent them from doing it again. So what we’re left with wasn’t insurrection that lasted four years and ended with Trump‘s reelection.
Yes, Garland failed to defend our democracy, but so did his boss
What's even worse about this is the courage it took for many people who were in the "inner circle", who laid their reputations and careers on the line to come forth and speak their truth (Hutchinson, et al), and now have zero to show for their courage. AND, may have repercussions for doing so.
This fucking country makes me sick to my stomach that it has allowed this to happen. I can't escape this ugly, unforgivable truth.
I don’t ever again want to hear someone say “Here in America no man is above the law” or “justice for all”. It’s simply not true.
I don't believe that that ideal has ever really been true. But the F you in your face of these Trump era violations of our ideals has been heartbreaking. However, I'm not curling up in despair and giving up. We are at war and I am not dead yet.
Any minority person could have told you that. (I'm white, BTW). I started losing faith in the Justice system back in the 80s. It was gradual for me, but the evidence kept piling up.
There are two tiers of American justice, one for the rich who most often are exonerated or have reduced sentences and one for the not so rich who usually are convicted with harsher sentences. In America money buys justice
Point taken
Amen to that!
Merrick Garland never more. He should be fined or something.
He should be barred from practicing law and shunned by the world. His failure to carry out his duty will literally kill people all across the planet.
It is terrible that he could have been convicted but we have a legal system that prevented that from happening. He has escaped justice.
I could not agree more!
It's not our legal system per se that failed us, but the misapplication of our legal system. If everyone did their job, be it the Senate (conviction of Trump upon impeachment); the House (rejection of the certification of a manipulated election on behalf of a constitutionally disqualified candidate); an antidemocratic, anti-constitutional US Supreme Court (purposefully delaying the application of justice on behalf of Trump & invoking the ridiculous, unconstitutional, antidemocratic presidential immunity); the DOJ (the inexcusably long delay in the prosecution of Trump for clearly planning, organizing & inciting an insurrection against the Capitol); the DOJ & FBI (failure to imprison Trump based on his repeated threats to our national security); all of government (failure to enforce the supposedly self-enacting Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution that disqualified not only Trump but numerous members of his administration & Congress from holding office); the DOJ, FBI & Biden (failure to investigate or to call for an investigation of an election rife with irregularities, including bomb threats from Russian sources, peculiar behavior by Trump & his allies regarding the election, particularly powerful tech-savvy billionaires like Musk with access to the electoral apparatus, anomalies in election results, especially in swing states, suggesting rigging by algorithm, & calls by cybersecurity experts for forensic audits); Harris (failure to call for any recount as was her right & duty); & Biden (failure to use his powers, including the immunity granted to him by the Supreme Court, to prevent Trump from regaining power or to either pressure the DOJ & FBI to do their jobs or fire their heads for dereliction of duty & replace them with qualified people who would). So that's all 3 branches of the federal government & both parties, who shirked their moral & constitutional responsibilities of bringing Trump & his accomplices to justice & preventing them from holding government office. We had plenty of stopgaps in our legal & justice systems to prevent Trump from getting back in office, just not enough people in authority to do what our legal & justice systems required.
100% correct on every single point Jaime. I'll never get over the magnitude of catastrophy done to this nation by the people and institutions, organizations that utterly failed us over and over.
Amen!
James Comey is also worthy of a dishonorable mention in this tragedy. If he hadn't selfishly needed his 15 minutes of fame and stardom 2 weeks before the 2016 election, there never would have been a Trump presidency.
Yes! And Bernie & his “bros before hos” gang of morons who refused to vote for a super qualified human because she didn’t have a dick.
I still believe we'd be much better off if Dems would have chosen Bernie.
Those “bros” were mostly bots programmed to be awful so people would turn against Bernie, and it worked.
I am a woman and I wanted National Healthcare so I wanted Bernie. It had nothing to do with misogyny.
I’m referring to men who refused to vote for a woman in the 2016 general election v. Trump - not women who voted Bernie in the primary. Bernie refused to fully support Hillary in the general because of his personal spite, ego & misogyny. Hillary would not have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths & the huge hit to our healthcare system - Trump did that. The men who refused to vote for Hillary in the general voted against women’s healthcare & against a fair Supreme Court. If healthcare is the defining metric - we all lost the 2016 general election.
Thank you for the correction, I apologize for my misunderstanding.
You’re not a mindreader. It’s an important distinction (general v. primary). I’m also for National Healthcare.
Hillary made plenty of blunders on her own. Hillary was not that much better then Trump
Most supported Hillary, and she herself made some incredibly bone headed moves, neglecting key battlegrounds
Bernie did everything he could to support Clinton & oppose Trump. Stop scapegoating him! That unnecessarily perpetuates division within the opposition to Trump & republofascism.
In 2025, Bernie is a nonentity. There’s nothing to divide. He’ll never be a national candidate again. (I worked on the 2016 campaign & saw his attitude toward campaigning for Hillary in the general first hand.)
Bernie has done more to advance progressive causes than any other single individual since Martin Luther King. He is by no means a "non-entity". Shame on the DNC & Democratic establishment for doing everything they could to sabotage Bernie & elect Trump! If you want to blame anyone for Trump now & then, that's whom you should blame. They didn't do a single thing this time to prevent Trump from getting back into power.
Yes, Comey and Garland are both complicit in the fiasco that is Trump's first and second presidencies. It sickens me to think that Trump will hold his hand on a book that he doesn't read and swear to an oath he has no intention of keeping and We The People have to watch this in horror.
Worse! We will pay for protection of a seditionist-rapist Felon. He will be eligible for great benefits. He can’t even travel to some countries because he is a FELON! I despise any foreign leader who meets with him as if he’s legitimate. And trump’s presidency is illegitimate based on our Constitution, Amendment 14 article 3. Anyone involved in sedition is ineligible! Therefore his orders MUST be disobeyed.
Nope, not watching.
Not watching doesn't mean we as Americans won't feel the effects that come from decisions made by the illegitimate executive office.
Hal Schwalbe, it's funny how the "policy" (not binding law) to say nothing/investigate a candidate so close to an election didn't bother that SOB Comey when it came to Hillary, but regarding that foul orange bastard, it's a major deal and must be strictly enforced by all agencies. 🤬
I thought that policy came about because of Comey’s announcement about investigating Hillary’s emails two weeks before the election.
shee-rah, no, I think it was started in the Nixon era. I might be wrong, but that's my recollection.....
That Comey didn’t think to ask someone how long it would take to do a key word search of emails shows his incompetence. He believed that it would take a couple weeks so he “had” to notify Congress when it actually took a weekend to discover that there were no new emails. Arrogance and ignorance.
I hear Comey was trying to get out in front of a DSNY leak. And I find that plausible, because DSNY seemed to be a continuous source of information damning to only one of the 2 candidates from New York that year. Whether that was (part of) his true motivation, we'll never really know.
But if that's what he was actually trying to accomplish, I'd rather he'd have done it by saying "if you hear something funky about Hillary and it's coming from DSNY, be aware there's the possibility of partisan action" instead of just blurting out the funky thing then after the election, when it no longer mattered, announcing it wasn't an actual thing.
That Comey couldn’t control the SDNY is all you need to know. It is against DOJ policy to interfere in an election which includes leaks. Dismissal or disbarment are penalties. He could have reminded the SDNY of that. Yet Comey believed a public announcement was the better course of action!
Absolutely!
Jack Smith is very impressive. I respect him highly for the work he does as well as for his courage. We need more people like him in our government. I don't know how Garland gets away with refusing to look into an obvious major crime against our country.
Susan Stone, you know, I really have to seriously question Garland's loyalties...... Something is just not right with this picture 😒🤬
I agree and have said so many times on Substack.
Same here
Garland is, or has been, a member of the Federalist Society. What else needs to be said?
The three biggest spineless idiots who could have done something immediately after the J6 committee hearings were over, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy (via his trip to Mar-A-fantasyland) and Merrill Garland. We are in this nightmare because of these three. I lay the blame on all three equally. They were each in a position to effectively facilitate the orange man-baby’s deserving jailing but failed us all. Full stop.
Bill Barr
My bad. I forgot about him.
These profiles in cowardice have severely destroyed this country. When my girlfriend asked me to let it go and move on with my life I did as she said and made her my ex girlfiend.
Good choice, makes sense. I'm putting together my tribe. No outsiders. It's working for me.
Hahaha!
Democratic leadership that could have used the 14th amendment to disqualify Trump after the hearings.
Criminal charges could have been pursued at Garland’s leisure without the risk of Trump returning to office.
After being screwed over for a seat on the Supreme Court you might think Garland would have an axe to grind with Republicans and would go after Trump with guns-a-blazing. But as a Democrat he has to worry about how it would look to people if he went after Trump. Justice should be blind. The man committed crimes. You pursue that. Plain and simple. Failure.
So true. I think Garland obeyed in advance, thinking it was his duty to avoid even the appearance of partisanship—which is exactly what Trump was after. That’s one reason why he gets away with so much, making threats to gin up the MAGA machine to get people to succumb in a confusion of conscience. I know some think Garland is somehow complicit, but I’d venture that it’s more likely that Trump’s relentless mob boss tactics were enough to overwhelm Garland’s scrupulous adherence to DOJ norms. BUT. News flash: We are beyond all that! There comes a time when you have to do the right thing regardless of whether people will scream partisanship or call you a liar. You have to stand on your own island and not give in.
As far as I know, Garland is not a Democrat. He's also been associated with the fascist Federalist Society.
While I too am appalled that Trump escaped accountability for most egregious crimes against voters and the US, let's put the blame where it actually belongs: on the blatantly partisan and corrupt SCOTUS. Even with the delay, the case was scheduled to go to trial in plenty of time for a conviction -- March 2024 -- had SCOTUS not stepped in and delayed their presidential immunity decision to the latest time possible in order to keep the election subversion case from going to trial before the election. Progressives should stop pointing at each other and act like a true opposition party, since there is so much material!
They indeed should get a major share of the blame. They are so corrupt, antidemocratic & anti-constitutional! Exactly what you mustn't have in the highest judicial body in the land. They are a huge factor in the decline in democracy & national unity in America, ever since their very corrupt, partisan antidemocratic decision in Bush v. Gore. And they've only gotten worse ever since.
Fully agree Garland needs to be held accountable, but there is no mechanism for that. Garland gets to wander into retirement giving $300k speeches about the complexities of the law, while democracy burns down around him due to his cowardice.
It would be fitting to see the felon president throw Garland in prison anyway, just because he wants to. Apperantly he could do that with no repercussions because of that terrible unamerican sc ruling that makes a president a king. I wouldn't want to see a fascist step like that (though we all know much worse is headed our way) but I bet that would make Garland wish he could go back in time so he could have another shot at it, this time without his head up his ass.
Would be the truest definition of irony come to life.
I expect Trump to persecute the very best people we have, & Garland certainly isn't 1 of them. Trump has a lot to be grateful to Merrick for, & he must in some way realize that.
Who would want to hear from the soulless piece of shit who watched over the coup and yawned.
And who would pay to listen to his whining voice???
Garland was in on the whole affair. How could he have not been. Any AG that would sit on their hands for four years and look the other way.
Bottom line nothing will happen to any of these assholes. Hasn’t before. Won’t now.
Let’s not waste our breath.
He's just a coward, that simple.
Biden made a mistake in appointing Garland.
It was Biden's worst mistake as president, for sure.
Agreed.
And he perpetuated that mistake by never firing him. So Biden has a lot to answer for, too. Such a pity because other than that unforgivable piece of negligence, Biden has had a relatively remarkable presidency. It's the equivalent of Buchanan's failure to ward off the Civil War, Hoover's failure to prevent the Great Depression & Johnson's failure to end the Vietnam War in its impact on his legacy.
Buchanan didn't just fail to ward off the civil war; he actively favored the south and pushed things to war
I applaud Jack Smith- a man of great courage and integrity, who is demonstrating to all that he is not going to be silenced. I cannot imagine how he feels at this time- to have devoted so many hours and such energy into this investigation, only to have it be shut down. I pray that he and his family are safe.
If he’s smart he’ll go back to Europe and out of the grasp of T’s DOJ. I’d be long out of this country. He could go back to The Hague, where he was valued. In retrospect, Garland would have fit in perfectly with the mealy-mouthed toadys on SCOTUS today.
Jack Smith is a hero.
💯 !
We still need him
There is no accountability. Might as well forget the word.
Might be wise to recall that the responsibility really rested with Biden. Even after J6, Biden said aloud that he preferred Trump be held accountable at the ballot box. Instead of addressing the underlying weaknesses in our constitutional system that were revealed by the Trump candidacy, presidency, and insurrection, Biden focused on a legislative agenda that did NOT include necessary reforms. He didn’t press for holding all of those responsible for inspiring the insurrection and he didn’t use his presidential authorities to prevent them from doing it again. So what we’re left with wasn’t insurrection that lasted four years and ended with Trump‘s reelection.
Yes, Garland failed to defend our democracy, but so did his boss
It is so disgusting. And they elected him in again. I am so sick of American politics.
He got back into power through cheating with the help of his powerful tech-savvy billionaire friends like Musk, Thiel & Putin.
What's even worse about this is the courage it took for many people who were in the "inner circle", who laid their reputations and careers on the line to come forth and speak their truth (Hutchinson, et al), and now have zero to show for their courage. AND, may have repercussions for doing so.
This fucking country makes me sick to my stomach that it has allowed this to happen. I can't escape this ugly, unforgivable truth.
And good luck getting witness cooperation in the future.
Greg, 💯🎯 on everything you said. This country now disgusts me. I'm nauseated at what the voters did too.
Thank you for repeatedly stating the obvious. My question is WHY did Garland obstruct justice and what can be done about it. Now, in this reality?