Marc Elias: "Something has gone tragically wrong in the GOP and in the legal profession."

[CousinIT]

https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/a-stain-not-easily-removed/

Republican lawyers are back in the news and are bringing disgrace to the party and profession. Even before the indictments in Georgia, it had been widely reported that at least five, and perhaps all six, of former President Donald Trump’s co-conspirators were Republican lawyers. Now in Georgia, we add several lawyers, some familiar and some new, to the list of Trump’s co-defendants.

The one common theme in each of Trump’s indictments is the central role that lawyers play in facilitating, excusing or covering up his malfeasance. They are his enablers, co-conspirators and now co-defendants.

Something has gone tragically wrong in the GOP and in the legal profession. At this pace, CPAC will need to hold its next convention in a prison yard. The Federalist Society may soon have to create a category of membership for the disbarred and criminally convicted.

You might think that the Republican establishment would recoil from these disgraced lawyers, but you would be wrong. As the Washington Post recently reported, “After trying to use the Justice Department to delegitimize the 2020 vote,” one of the co-conspirators in the federal case and co-defendant in Georgia, Jeffrey Clark, “has become a rising legal star for Republicans.”

[TheRealNorth]

1. GOP states will probably soon pass laws...

Preventing their lawyers from being disbarred.

[Sky Jewels]

5. Except for the lib lawyers.

[sanatanadharma]

2. Reminds me of the shyster roles in Cheney-Bush war crimes and torture

"... the central role that lawyers play in facilitating, excusing or covering up ... malfeasance."
Torture is OK, the lawyer said.

That lawyer in classrooms, not in jail.

[maxsolomon]

3. LOL, there's nothing new "going wrong".

Republicans have been horrible people my entire life.

There have always been shady Conservative lawyers.

What's changed, Marc Elias? Why would you expect anything else?

[Caliman73]

4. They are proceeding as Conservatism must...

I will keep saying this until people understand it.

People keep wanting to think that Conservatism is just about "slowing down" or Fiscal Responsibility, and all that other bullshit that politicians have been talking about the last 50 years.

Conservatism is a political ideology and worldview that is the direct descendent of ROYALISM and the idea that society is best organized by a hierarchy with a ruling elite at the top and the rest of us subservient to those at the top.

In the United States, we had "Loyalists" who wanted to remain part of the British Empire. We also had people who wanted to get out from under the British boot, but to maintain the racial and economic hierarchy established in the hundred and fifty or so years between the colonization and Independence movement. Some wanted full democracy, but those were a minority. No one wanted "mob rule", and certainly no one wanted to extend rights to women and Black people in deciding how we govern ourselves. We have ALWAYS had a hierarchy in the US even while striving for equality.

The "standard" conservatives (Wealthy White Men) have been doing a dance since the founding, to keep themselves at the top of society while not drifting in to the kind of totalitarianism that brings about Revolution. They have always been the actual Minority in the US while pitting women, racial minorities, labor, and other groups with less power against each other. They have never had the numbers, but they have held the money, power, and influence in society. In order to remain in power, they have had to partner with Fundamentalist Christians, and White Supremacists, both of whom want a more totalitarian form of government. As their numbers continue to diminish they have had to become more extreme.

They absolutely cannot stay on power by being honest about what they want. So, they lie and they cheat, and they work to keep the majority of people either ignorant or apathetic about involvement in politics.

The rule of the world is change, and if lucky, Progress toward a better world where more people are living well and involved in their own governance. Conservatives DO NOT want that because that means giving up their wealth and power. They have used their resources to hold that progress at bay for as long as they have been able. That means using the law, using economics, and social strife to keep people disoriented, apathetic, and fighting the "wrong" enemies. These Conservative lawyers never really had a chance at legitimately arguing the law, not in the sense of fitting into the "American Tradition" which seeks a "more perfect Union" and more equity. They were bound to run afoul of traditions as they adapted the more extreme needs of the leaders of the Conservative movement.

[Joinfortmill]

6. It's greed, plain and simple lust for enrichment at any price.

[TwilightZone]

7. Trump's lawyers are only indicative of Trump's lawyers.

And to the degree that they're pushing the Federalist Society agenda, representative of that.

They're not representative of the legal professional as a whole.

The assertion that they are is silly and hyperbolic, not to mention tiresome.