Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz Put on a Clown Show in the United States Congress—Again
This latest tirade is in service to the latest Republican theory on why the former president* is not a career criminal but rather the unfortunate victim of a broad conspiracy. Jesus, these people.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...testimony/
By Charles P. Pierce PUBLISHED: JUN 04, 2024 5:23 PM EDT
It was Attorney General Merrick Garland’s turn in the monkey house on Tuesday, as he was called to testify in front of Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee. It went about as well as expected. Come on down, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who hollered at the AG, “I have given my life to the law!”
I will give you a moment to sift through the thousands of wisecracks available to you as a result of what Gaetz said. Take your time.
We continue.
This latest tirade is in service to the latest Republican theory on why the former president* is not a career criminal but rather the unfortunate victim of a broad conspiracy in which the current administration used its Jedi Mind Tricks to get local prosecutors like Alvin Bragg to do their bidding. Both Gaetz and Jordan pretended to believe the fairy tale, and at the top of their lungs, too.
Gaetz: Attorney General, you’ve told us that it’s a dangerous conspiracy theory to allege that the Department of Justice is communicating with these state and local prosecutions against Trump. You can clear it all up for us right now. Will the Department of Justice provide to the committee all documents, all correspondence between the department and Alvin Bragg’s office and Letitia James’s office?
Ah, yes. The Clinton Gambit, based on the famous Clinton Rules. There are always more documents, and in those documents can be found the hammer that cracks the case, and if it’s not there, then it’s somewhere in the next batch of documents.
Here’s the thing: You come in here and you lodge this attack that it’s all a conspiracy theory, that there’s coordinated lawfare against Trump....Just give us the documents, give us the correspondence, and then if it’s a conspiracy theory, that will be evident. But when you say, well, we will take your request, and then we will sort of work it through the DOJ accommodation process, then you are actually advancing the very dangerous conspiracy theory that you’re concerned about.
Gaetz went on through the greatest hits of the former president*'s I Am Not a Crook Tour ’24—Judge Merchan; his daughter; Matthew Colangelo, the former DOJ lawyer whom Gaetz believe was “dispatched” by Garland to join Bragg’s team as part of the general cabal.
Meanwhile, Jordan went off on a very weird tangent about why Garland picked Jack Smith. He dragged out the moldy and roundly debunked corpse of the Obama administration’s so-called targeting of phony 501(c)(3) operations. (An aside: One of the alleged “victims” of this perfidy was True the Vote, the voter-suppression outfit from Texas. TTV was back in the news this week because of its involvement in Dinesh D’Souza’s transparently fake “voter fraud” documentary, 2000 Mules, which was pulled by its distributor on the grounds of it being a towering pile of bullshit.)
Things took a great step forward into the past when Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, who cited an amicus brief opposing Smith’s appointment submitted by Edwin Meese, who, now that Henry Kissinger is rotating on a spit at the Gehenna BBQ, has ascended to the position of Holy Shit, He’s Still Alive?
We will never plumb the full depths of the inexhaustible reservoir of phantom conservative grievance. We’ll never get out of Mena Airport. Rep. Eric Swalwell summed it up well.
Swalwell: My colleagues, none of this that you are bringing up today makes sense. You might be in a cult. If you’re supporting a guy whose felony convictions prevent him from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult. And if the guy you are supporting for president has felony convictions that prevent him from going to Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand...
Jordan: Your time has expired.
Swalwell: ...South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan. Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, you might be in a cult.
I mean, Edwin Meese? Jesus, these people.
This latest tirade is in service to the latest Republican theory on why the former president* is not a career criminal but rather the unfortunate victim of a broad conspiracy. Jesus, these people.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politic...testimony/
By Charles P. Pierce PUBLISHED: JUN 04, 2024 5:23 PM EDT
It was Attorney General Merrick Garland’s turn in the monkey house on Tuesday, as he was called to testify in front of Rep. Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee. It went about as well as expected. Come on down, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who hollered at the AG, “I have given my life to the law!”
I will give you a moment to sift through the thousands of wisecracks available to you as a result of what Gaetz said. Take your time.
We continue.
This latest tirade is in service to the latest Republican theory on why the former president* is not a career criminal but rather the unfortunate victim of a broad conspiracy in which the current administration used its Jedi Mind Tricks to get local prosecutors like Alvin Bragg to do their bidding. Both Gaetz and Jordan pretended to believe the fairy tale, and at the top of their lungs, too.
Gaetz: Attorney General, you’ve told us that it’s a dangerous conspiracy theory to allege that the Department of Justice is communicating with these state and local prosecutions against Trump. You can clear it all up for us right now. Will the Department of Justice provide to the committee all documents, all correspondence between the department and Alvin Bragg’s office and Letitia James’s office?
Ah, yes. The Clinton Gambit, based on the famous Clinton Rules. There are always more documents, and in those documents can be found the hammer that cracks the case, and if it’s not there, then it’s somewhere in the next batch of documents.
Here’s the thing: You come in here and you lodge this attack that it’s all a conspiracy theory, that there’s coordinated lawfare against Trump....Just give us the documents, give us the correspondence, and then if it’s a conspiracy theory, that will be evident. But when you say, well, we will take your request, and then we will sort of work it through the DOJ accommodation process, then you are actually advancing the very dangerous conspiracy theory that you’re concerned about.
Gaetz went on through the greatest hits of the former president*'s I Am Not a Crook Tour ’24—Judge Merchan; his daughter; Matthew Colangelo, the former DOJ lawyer whom Gaetz believe was “dispatched” by Garland to join Bragg’s team as part of the general cabal.
Meanwhile, Jordan went off on a very weird tangent about why Garland picked Jack Smith. He dragged out the moldy and roundly debunked corpse of the Obama administration’s so-called targeting of phony 501(c)(3) operations. (An aside: One of the alleged “victims” of this perfidy was True the Vote, the voter-suppression outfit from Texas. TTV was back in the news this week because of its involvement in Dinesh D’Souza’s transparently fake “voter fraud” documentary, 2000 Mules, which was pulled by its distributor on the grounds of it being a towering pile of bullshit.)
Things took a great step forward into the past when Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, who cited an amicus brief opposing Smith’s appointment submitted by Edwin Meese, who, now that Henry Kissinger is rotating on a spit at the Gehenna BBQ, has ascended to the position of Holy Shit, He’s Still Alive?
We will never plumb the full depths of the inexhaustible reservoir of phantom conservative grievance. We’ll never get out of Mena Airport. Rep. Eric Swalwell summed it up well.
Swalwell: My colleagues, none of this that you are bringing up today makes sense. You might be in a cult. If you’re supporting a guy whose felony convictions prevent him from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult. And if the guy you are supporting for president has felony convictions that prevent him from going to Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand...
Jordan: Your time has expired.
Swalwell: ...South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan. Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, you might be in a cult.
I mean, Edwin Meese? Jesus, these people.
