"The Power to Protect the Guilty"

We're watching as William Barr and Donald Trump turn the Department of Justice into David Frum on Twitter: 

"The main benefit of controlling a modern bureaucratic state is not the power to persecute the innocent. It is the power to protect the guilty.”

Maybe we should have guessed it, but I mean, "Who would have guessed it?" Today Donald Trump jumped the final shark, saying Barack Obama and Joe Biden should be in jail, serving 50 year sentences. 

If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would’ve been in jail a long time ago, and I’m talking with 50-year sentences. People should be going to jail for this stuff ... this was all Obama. This was all Biden.” 

Obamagate! Trump won't tell us what it is exactly, but apparently it has to do with Joe Biden knowing that the FBI was looking into Michael Flynn, Trump's future National Security Advisor, as a national security threat. Flynn was "unmasked," meaning that his identity became known beyond the tight circle of people investigating him. Someone leaked to the Washington Post.

Never mind that Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI, a sweet deal because he'd actually worked as a paid agent for Turkey without filing the required paperwork. He'd also been on the payroll of Russia Today, a Putin propaganda outlet. So maybe the FBI would be interested about a guy with those connections who was lying to the future vice-president about his conversations with Russia? 

Never mind, too, that the NSA receives tens of thousands of unmasking requests every year, more in the Trump administration than under Obama. 

According to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, there were 9,217 unmasking requests between September 2015 and August 2016 - the latter days of the Obama administration. The number of such requests has risen during the Trump administration. There were 9,529 requests in 2017, 16,721 in 2018 and 10,012 last year.

And remember, no White House official could have known the FBI was talking about Flynn, who was masked, until after he was unmasked. Flynn literally could not have been targeted.

Here's a helpful summary of the facts. 

When you can free the guilty and prosecute the innocent, democracy is approaching its end state. 

For example, we all know Donald Trump hate Amazon because its owner, Jeff Bezos, owns the Washington Post. So Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is calling to investigate Amazon for antitrust violations. 

And we all remember the fiasco in which Republican senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler, and maybe California senator Dianne Feinstein, came under suspicion for selling securities just before the pandemic tanked financial markets. Trump hates Burr because Burr maintains that, yes, Russia did meddle in the 2016 election in Trump's favor. But Trump loves him some Kelly Loeffler. Well, the FBI has visited Burr, who has stepped down as chair of Senate Intelligence. They've visited Feinstein. But there's no indication they've visited Loeffler. 

What do you think of David Frum now?

Maybe it's all a smokescreen to cover for Trump's failure to address the coronavirus threat decisively. He still says testing is overrated. And today whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright told Congress how badly the Trump administration handled things and how dangerous this fall could be if we don't get on the ball.

But if it's a smokescreen, it's a very dangerous smokescreen. An arrow aimed straight at the heart of democracy, the rule of law.

In other news, we see the right wing pressuring swing state governors to open their states, with no particular plan to mitigate the risks. PA State Senator Scott Martin is part of that crowds, but his brother has called out the hypocrisy. Just for fun, check this out.