Every worker and any serious analyst of American society knows this is not true. There are “two systems of justice,” as the Republicans claim, but those systems are divided by class, not political party.
Right-wing political theater at House hearing for Attorney General Garland
An oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee was a display of the mounting crisis of the US political system. Fascistic Republican House members branded Attorney General Merrick Garland an instrument of the Biden White House in whitewashing the president’s son, Hunter, over his corrupt business activities in Ukraine and China.
Meanwhile, Democrats sought to defend Biden and rebut the Republicans’ promotion of conspiracy theories, while saying virtually nothing about the crimes of ex-president Donald Trump. These are of infinitely greater political and constitutional significance than the money-grubbing of Hunter Biden, whether or not some of the payoffs were subsequently passed on to his father, who was then vice president in the Obama administration.
The hearing was dominated by ultra-right Republicans, including the committee chair, Jim Jordan, and fascist representatives such as Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Dan Bishop, Chip Roy, Thomas Massie, Troy Nehls and Ken Buck. For the most part, they did not permit Garland to answer their questions, voicing various charges and conspiracy theories, demanding he respond, and then cutting him off to go to the next “question” before he could do so.
There was little effort by the Democrats to object to this procedure, which more resembled a kangaroo court or a Star Chamber proceeding than an actual hearing.
In his prepared statement and during the few occasions where he was able to actually address the charges over Hunter Biden at any length, Garland did little more than repeat a description of the Department of Justice worthy of a children’s textbook.
“There is not one set of laws for the powerful and another for the powerless; one for the rich, another for the poor; one for Democrats, another for Republicans; or different rules, depending upon one’s race or ethnicity or religion,” he claimed.
Every worker and any serious analyst of American society knows this is not true. There are “two systems of justice,” as the Republicans claim, but those systems are divided by class, not political party.
Hunter Biden was able to get away with transparently corrupt influence peddling under the Obama-Biden administration, and the Trump administration only began an investigation when it seemed politically advantageous to the White House. Even then, the Justice Department found that his relations with Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese billionaires were unseemly, but not illegal.
Donald Trump pursued a corrupt business operation over many decades in Democratic-controlled New York, without any repercussions. In the Trump administration, his son-in-law Jared Kushner established lucrative relationships with the Saudi royal family that netted him billions, not millions, without any legal consequences.
No one on the Judiciary Committee, however, was interested in pursuing the issue of two systems of justice from that standpoint. That is because both parties, the Democrats as much as the Republicans, represent the class interests of the corporate elite, the financial aristocracy that dominates American society.
The very day of the hearing, President Biden was in New York City, spending much of his day schmoozing with the super-rich at two well-attended fundraisers for his reelection campaign. In remarks to his audiences, he declared, “I’m running because democracy is at stake and because, 2024, democracy is on the ballot once again. And let there be no question. Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy.”
These remarks were made largely out of sight. No Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee sought to indict his or her Republican “colleagues” for the assault on democracy which Trump and his supporters are spearheading.
In response to repeated questions from Republican members, and threats to find him in contempt or even impeach him, Attorney General Garland refused to answer questions about internal discussions within the Department of Justice on the Hunter Biden case, including any discussions he has had with US Attorney David Weiss, who has been leading that investigation.
He noted that Weiss was appointed a US Attorney for Delaware by Donald Trump, and that he had retained Weiss in office in order to preserve continuity in the investigation. When Weiss requested it, Garland said, he named him a special counsel, allowing him to extend his investigation and bring charges against the younger Biden in other states, if warranted.
The only charges made public so far against the president’s son are comparatively minor: two counts of failure to pay income tax, and one count of filing a false application to obtain a gun permit. No charges have been brought over either the Ukraine or China financial dealings, which have been the main focus of the right-wing media and the Republican Party, although these may still be under investigation.
Garland said that he had pledged during his Senate confirmation hearing not to interfere in any way with Weiss’s investigation and he claimed that he had not done so, and that the White House had not put any pressure on him to intervene.
These claims were assailed by the committee chair, Jim Jordan, who began the hearing with the declaration, in a near shout, that “The fix is in. Even with the face-saving indictment last week of Hunter Biden, everyone knows the fix is in.”
Jordan was referring to the indictment of Biden on gun charges, after the collapse of a plea deal during the summer which would have allowed the president’s son to take a delayed plea, with the charge to be dismissed if he remained drug-free for the next two years.
The unedifying spectacle continued for five hours, with Republican members raising a series of conspiracy theories popular on right-wing media, such as the claim that Ray Epps, one of those arrested for the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, was a secret informant or agent provocateur of the FBI. This is an effort to paint the entire mob assault, instigated by Trump, as a “false flag” operation by the “deep state.” Epps actually pled guilty to misdemeanor charges the day before the House hearing.
In one of the more bizarre episodes, fascist Republican Matt Gaetz pressed Garland on the burning issue of Hunter Biden’s art work, including a painting he sold to a major Democratic financial supporter. Eight months later, President Biden appointed the donor to an unpaid position on the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.
Democrat Steve Cohen then sought to raise the issue of the FBI’s investigation of Gaetz on sex-trafficking charges, which was closed without any charges being brought—a demonstration of the Democrats’ embrace of the method of political mudslinging, and their refusal to raise the issue of the attempted political coup by Trump to establish himself as a dictator-president.
In fact, there was virtually no mention at the hearing of the name of the ex-president, now the heavy favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, as the entire Republican Party moves drastically towards fascist authoritarianism.
The Republicans spent little time questioning Garland about his decision to name Jack Smith a special prosecutor, leading to federal criminal charges related to January 6 and to Trump’s unauthorized retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office.
Democrats made barely any reference to the attempted coup, and none at all about the role of the congressional Republicans, including many members of the Judiciary Committee, in the events leading up to January 6.
The Sad State of Legal Ethics in the Age of 'Get Trump'
John Eastman is a distinguished constitutional expert who had the temerity to advise Donald Trump on legal theories by which suspect electoral results in the 2020 election could be challenged. These are perfectly valid theories, one should note, and, in a better world, they would have been addressed by the Supreme Court.
For this, he has been viciously attacked by the legal academy, indicted by a rabid Georgia grand jury, and subjected to disbarment proceedings by the California Bar Association. In a recent American Thinker post, Monica Showalter describes the lynch-law nature of the California proceeding, linking to excellent reporting by Rachel Alexander in the Arizona Sun Times.
If the U.S. courts of appeal and the Supreme Court have any sense of obligation to the law (a debatable assumption, to be sure), Eastman will ultimately be vindicated.
But that is of little moment to his persecutors. Any vindication will be years in the future, while in the present, Eastman must find lawyers willing to represent him and thus risk the ire of the organized bar. When he does, he will be crushed by legal fees and deprived of opportunities to make a living. He is also distracted from using his great talents to contribute to the national debate over past and future election fraud and other important legal topics, which is a serious harm to the nation and the profession. California is treading upon my First Amendment rights, and those of the public, to obtain information.
The objective of the persecutors is not just to get Eastman, but to send a message to everyone in the legal world that if people publicly challenge the dominant narrative, they too will be broken on the wheel of financial ruin. Judging by the tone of the mainstream media, the tactic is working fine. The only people who know the truth are those attuned to such sites as American Thinker. Readers of the NYT or WSJ assume that the inquisitors are righteous.
The action against Eastman is part of a comprehensive program of filing ethics complaints against attorneys who question the 2020 election results. The leader of this enterprise is Project 65, which says it has filed 77 of them. It portrays itself as a defender of legal ethics:
[A] bipartisan effort to protect democracy from these once-and-future abuses by holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and by working with bar associations to deter future abuses by establishing clear standards for conduct that punish lies about the conduct or results of elections.
The Project 65 website gives no clue about its funding sources. As a 501(c)(3) organization, it holds itself out to the public and the government as a non-political charity and solicits donations. But of the three staff members it lists, the managing director "was General Counsel of a national advocacy organization [unnamed] dedicated to expanding ballot access"; the communications strategist is "a veteran of Democratic and progressive political and legislative campaigns"; and the senior adviser "served as a political appointee in the Clinton Administration," was a founder of "a non-profit dedicated to supporting and protecting the Mueller Investigation," and was the "Finance Director of the Democratic National Committee."
The managing director, Michael Teter, bears the same name as the lawyer for Ray Epps, of Jan 6 fame.
Several of the Project 65 complaints are against state attorneys general who filed amicus briefs in Texas v. Pennsylvania, which challenged the 2020 results on the basis of a number of irregularities in key states. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case on procedural grounds, but Texas certainly documented many serious deficiencies that were never tested in court. To complain that support for the case was unethical brands the complainer as either legally inept or, himself, unethical.
This latter possibility gets to the nub of the matter. The American Bar Association code of conduct specifies that "a lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous." In civil litigation, a lawyer signing a document certifies that "it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation."
The post-2020 election period was chaotic. Many lawsuits were filed, some probably frivolous, many quite good. Unfortunately, all were tossed on procedural grounds and none decided on the merits, which has left the nation in its current state of festering rancor. For the legal establishment to assert that anyone who raised questions during this time was acting unethically strikes me as itself unethical, because these complaints seem to be the epitome of actions designed to harass and increase costs.
The final question is, what is the state of mind of these complainants? Are they so wrapped in their own propaganda that they think that they are the good guys? Did they not read between the lines of the Time article on the election? Are they incapable of understanding the testimony of a retired Wisconsin Supreme Court judge in support of Eastman? Do they think the cause of getting Trump is so righteous that it trumps any obligation to the Rule of Law? What does it say about the state of the legal profession that this narrative has become dominant?
My hope is that what we are seeing is a layer of well funded progressive activists determined to stampede the legal profession, in the equivalent of a political coup, and that we will see a reaction and a reassertion of real rather than faux legal ethics.
If not, then it is time to quote the famous words from A Man for All Seasons: "and if you cut [the laws] down ... d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
James V DeLong is a former book review editor of the Harvard Law Review and a former research director of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
Image via Picryl.
Sen. Ted Cruz: This ‘Babylon Bee’ Piece About Hunter Biden Isn’t Satire
“This is not satire,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declared Thursday, in a social media post commenting on a “Babylon Bee” piece mocking the Justice Department’s determination to ignore the growing number of serious scandals involving First Son Hunter Biden.
Cruz posted a link to “Relieved Biden Family Celebrates Hunter Only Being Indicted On Gun Charges” (https://buff.ly/48iAaOY).
The satirical piece includes “quotes” from Biden family members and a “source” expressing relief that Hunter wasn’t indicted on more serious charges, such as the contents of his infamous laptop, bribery, sex trafficking, drug dealing, or conspiracy to defraud the United States, treason:
”‘This will definitely cramp Hunter's style a little bit,’ said one family source. ‘But come on. He's not only a Democrat, but he's also a Biden. He's untouchable. He'll be back out on the street, smoking a crack pipe and taking selfies with hookers before you know it.’”
As MRCTV reported, Hunter Biden was indicted on three gun charges on Thursday, after a sweetheart deal he was previously given, which would have enabled him to avoid jail time, was rejected by a judge.
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