I guess Garland slowly building the case from the bottom up
worked out great!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Equal just-us, all right.
Plus having to deal with the threats and BS from MAGATs, which won't cease even if prosecution ends.
He never planned to hold trump accountable. I'm trying to think of any other attack against our country where the perpetrators were allowed to just walk off into the sunset as if nothing happened. 
and Adobe. He didn't keep us safe from trump's criminal / fascist movement, but I can sleep soundly knowing that Google will be forced to sell off the Chrome browser. We must give credit where it's due.
Along with the country and ..... whatever .....
Who's old enough to remember the breakup of ATT?
Microsoft?
...not that he was needed to lead a team of investigators, but that it would be a conflict of interest for Garland to continue the prosecution.
It's not as if he waited on Smith before he acted. Smith took on over 20 Garland prosecutors already working on what was described as a 'fast moving investigation.'
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html
...most of the evidence seized as early as 2021 was tied up in challenges and appeals for at least a year afterward, like Guiliani's phone.
It's not as if Garland's prosecutors were just sitting around waiting for Smith. There wasn't any need for him until Trump had declared.
It's just not valid to say that appointing an SC from the start would have solved anything about the time it took for evidence to become available, either in appeals courts, or in Garland's fight for the successful removal of attorney'client privileges from KEY witnesses in the indictment which took YEARS for the courts to resolve, fighting those court battles in severalsuccessive courts up to the SC, all fought by GARLAND's prosecutors well into Smith's term as SC.
The stuff about Smith doesn't measure up with the facts. There's nothing all that special about what an SC does, other in the different requirements they have in reporting to Congress. Smith inherited a 'fast moving case' with over 20 prosecutors working on the investigation.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html
...or delayed anything.
There's evidence though, that the Jan 6 committee refused to share the product of their LESSER investigation with DOJ, actually delaying court cases as they performed their toothless tv show.
This was always going to be a political challenge, but too many people believed foolishly that it was the Justice Dept's job to win the election for us and keep Trump from being elected again and ending the prosecutions.
What's interesting to me is that no one has actually come up with a scenario where the prosecution of Trump could have been completed sooner. That's likely because all critics are charged with doing is pointing fingers, notably away from themselves, and at people making extraordinary progress in bringing TWO historic, multi-felony indictments in the first place.
Despite the claims by people outside of the investigation with absolutely no way of knowing the details of the state of evidence seized outside of court filings or what perps admit in public, it was far from a slam dunk that ANY prosecution of Trump would be completed before the election.
It's such an absurd expectation, that it's a scandal how little the public was told about the prospects. It's not as if it wasn't said, but there were people who invested their opposition to Garland on that improbability, knowing full well that they were in the catbird seat with their disingenuously cynical refrains, delivered over and over as if DOJ was actually supposed to win the election for Democrats.
For example, there's zero evidence DOJ's investigation was hindered by the reported inter agency squabbles that Carol Leonning at WaPo and others following her clickbaited about years ago in an abandoned and discredited investigatory reporting effort.
There's much more evidence that Garland not only proceeded directly to WH perps finances, he tied that effort to communications with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers; including the Willard Hotel meetings; fleshing out what the vaunted Jan. 6 committee focused almost exclusively on without congressional members coming to any conclusion or proof of Trump's complicity.
Even with all of the early effort by Garland, this wasn't the slam dunk so many like to portray it as. DOJ prosecuted well, and voters pulled the rug out from under them. It's that simple.
To the point, his critics haven't shown any proof other than time-passed to the election to support their complaints. Justice doesn't have a political timetable, and it shouldn't.
What happened was an extraordinary prosecution effort unlike any other in history, which was blocked and hindered by Trump allies on the bench (up to the SC) advantaging obstructive appeals, often frivolous ones. Period.
May 2021:
Prosecutors took 18 electronic devices from Rudy Giuliani’s home and office in April raid
As part of the same investigation, agents last month also executed a search warrant at the home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer and Giuliani ally.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/20/politics/rudy-giuliani-raid/index.html
Jeffrey Clark's electronic devices were seized by federal agents in June 2021 "in connection with an investigation into violations of 18 U.S.C. 1001, which relates to false statements, 18 U.S.C. 371, which relates to conspiracy, and 18 U.S.C. 1512, which relates to obstruction of justice". The agents were looking for evidence of crimes of making false statements, criminal conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The raid took place at Clark's house in Northern Virginia, and his electronic devices were seized.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/jeffrey-clark-trump-considered-ag-phone-seized-obstruction-probe-rcna47923
...a year later:
April 14, 2022
Giuliani helps feds unlock devices as charging decision looms
Giuliani unlocked several devices, or gave investigators possible passwords.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/giuliani-helps-unlock-electronic-devices-feds-decision-looms/story?id=84081611
...emptywheel on the evidence seized early on and the challenges brought by the perps:
In cases of privilege, DOJ first gets grand jury testimony where the witness invokes privilege, and then afterwards makes a case that the needs of the investigation overcome any privilege claim. DOJ first started pursuing privileged testimony regarding events involving Mike Pence with grand jury testimony from Pence aides Greg Jacob and Marc Short last July, then with testimony from the two Pats, Cipollone and Philbin, in August. It got privilege-waived testimony from Pence’s aides in October and from the two Pats on December 2. That process undoubtedly laid the groundwork for this week’s DC Circuit ruling that people like Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino must likewise testify to the grand jury.
By the time DOJ first overtly subpoenaed material in the fake electors plot last May, it had done the work to obtain cloud content from John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark. If DOJ had obtained warrants for the already seized phone content from Rudy — which is likely given the prominence of Victoria Toensing from the start of the fake elector subpoenas — then it would have built on content it obtained a year earlier in another investigation.
Some of this undoubtedly benefited from the January 6 Committee’s work. I would be shocked, for example, if DOJ didn’t piggyback on Judge David Carter’s March 28, 2022 decision ruling some of John Eastman’s communications to be crime-fraud excepted. As NYT reported in August, in May 2022, DOJ similarly piggybacked on J6C’s earlier subpoenas to the National Archives (and in so doing avoided any need to alert Joe Biden to the criminal, as opposed to congressional, investigation); this is consistent with some of what Mueller did in the Russian investigation. Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, obtained via trust earned by Liz Cheney, has undoubtedly been critical. But the January 6 Committee also likely created recent delays in the January 6 and Georgia investigation, thanks to the delayed release of transcripts showing potentially exculpatory testimony.
But much of it preceded the January 6 Committee. I’ve shown, for example, that DOJ had a focus on Epshteyn before J6C first publicly mentioned his role in the fake electors plot. Toensing’s involvement came entirely via the DOJ track.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/06/the-testimony-jack-smith-gets-this-week-builds-on-work-from-over-a-year-ago/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/11/politics/jack-smith-special-counsel-high-profile-moves-trump-criminal-investigations/index.html
...Smith obviously didn't believe the teevee clips we all saw were enough to convict because, he made clear in his latest filing that he was seeking to use “forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to corroborate his assertions Trump instigated the riot.
Not just clips from teevee, which the DOJ team of career prosecutors obviously didn't believe would suffice (like critics want us to believe), but through corroborated evidence.
Besides, neither charges or a conviction is legally enough to keep Trump or anyone from running, being elected, or assuming office, even from jail. Or that voters just now elected a convicted felon/adjudicated rapist.
What did folks think was going to happen? These high profile cases regularly take two to three years in appeals to completely resolve (after conviction), minimum.
This is the hush money case, arguably less complex than the federal ones:
How long could this appeals process take?
It’s hard to say exactly, but the first layer of the appeal, which is just to the First Department, I would expect to take about a year. If that appeal is unsuccessful, then after about a year, he would have an opportunity to file what’s called a leave application with the New York Court of Appeals, which is confusingly the name of New York’s highest court. The lowest court was where Trump was just convicted and is called the Supreme Court. The middle layer court is called the Appellate Division.
Since the Court of Appeals is the highest court, they don’t take cases as of right—so after Trump’s first layer of appeal, he may not get another appeal. He would have to ask the New York Court of Appeals to allow him to appeal, and if they grant his leave application, only then can he actually file an appellate briefing, saying, “I was denied my constitutional rights under either the New York Constitution or the U.S. Constitution.” He can also say there was some sort of failure to follow criminal procedure. The Court of Appeals would typically decide the leave application after three to five months, and if granted, then the appeal could take probably another year, maybe a little less. And if the Court of Appeals’ decision is adverse to Trump, he could then file a petition for certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, and the basis for that would have to be limited to the U.S. Constitution, rather than New York law or the New York Constitution.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/donald-trump-whats-next-jail-prison-appeals-process-explainer.html
This was always OUR responsibility as voters to keep Trump out of office and allow the already proceeding prosecution to continue.
So many are running from that responsibility today, including legislators, that it's not surprising to me that the only people they can think of to blame are their own allies in that fight; people who worked harder than ANYONE ELSE in Trump's entire life to hold him accountable to the law.
Voters and legislators, not so much, as they're still talking like they expected Garland to overcome everything they allowed politically to obstruct him, from the Jan 6 committee's own delay in working with DOJ as they proceeded to stage a legal show with no teeth at all while keeping DOJ at bay until they finished almost a year later - then complaining about too much time passed - to voters who couldn't be bothered to show up and keep an ALREADY convicted felon out of the WH with their participation in the election.
But, Garland's to blame? The man who prosecuted over 1200 white supremacist Trump supporting rioters and riot leaders on charges up to the crime of Sedition, obtaining their cooperation manifested in the last report from Smith to Chutkan as instrumental in the filing's characterization of Trump as responsible for the Capitol riot.
The man who fought each and every appeal and challenge of evidence he'd collected since 2021 and secured through myriad appeals and challenges on privilege and standing through several successive courts with dozens of republican and Trump appointed judges and Justices setting court dates far in the future as possible to accommodate the obstruction of perps and keep Trump out of federal court.
When DOJ was cut off by the election, one case was nearing to trial and the other was tied up in a dismissal that was expected to be reversed. DOJ did their job.
Everyone outside of that process failed DOJ. Period. No other explanation holds any water, because no other explanation comes with the receipts I provided, just these imaginings of an internet fantasy prosecution that only exists in these projections.
They don't come with facts about evidence available, because they can't sustain anything more consequential than this finger-pointing drivel that is supposed to pass for analysis; or rather, divert from any serious discussion of the actual investigation.
Watch the responses to this post of mine that come without a shred of proof of claims, as if substantive details of a mostly secretive prosecution they have no way of knowing is the gossip, and the gossip the substance.
