Signs of life!

February 9, 2023

          In a positive development, special counsel Jack Smith has subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence to testify regarding Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. ABC News broke the story and reported that Smith resorted to a subpoena after weeks of unsuccessful negotiations with Pence’s legal team for a voluntary interview. Those negotiations apparently stalled over issues relating to executive privilege, but special counsel Jack Smith lost patience with Pence’s temporizing. The NYTimes described Smith’s actions as “the most aggressive yet” in the investigation of Trump’s responsibility for the January 6th insurrection.

          As always, it is challenging to interpret the significance of individual investigative steps, but it is hard to see this development as anything other than positive. A deposition of Mike Pence is the most concrete sign to date that the special counsel is focused on the leaders of the attempted coup. Moreover, prosecutors usually defer depositions of important witnesses until the final stages of an investigation. Thus, the most reasonable inference is that the investigation of Trump is nearing completion.

          The hopeful interpretation that the subpoena signals a mature investigation should be tempered by the expectation that Pence may seek judicial relief to delay or limit his deposition, which could add weeks or months to the timeline to an indictment. Per ABC, Pence has not yet agreed to comply with the subpoena, although as Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks wrote on Thursday, the law gives Pence “no option” but to comply.

          Like you, I am weary of the delay and proliferating investigations of Trump that seem never to conclude. But I see this development as a “sign of life” in the effort to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. As long as Jack Smith is taking substantive, “aggressive” steps to learn the truth, timing becomes secondary—to a point. The first GOP primary caucus is in early February 2024. Jack Smith must indict Trump by October 2023 to comply with DOJ policy that discourages indictments “near the time” of an election that might affect its outcome. See The Justice Department's Policy Against Election Interference is Open to Abuse - Lawfare.

          Indicting Trump will not save us; it will not prevent him from running; it will not disqualify him from holding office if he wins, but it will demonstrate that we have the fortitude and willingness to defend the Constitution and the rule of law. In that, we have no choice. But victory on the legal battlefield is not enough; we must also win convincingly at the ballot box in 2024 to help heal the wound of January 6^th.

          The signs of life from the special counsel’s office should lift our spirits and sustain us during the hard-fought battles that lie ahead.

Republican “show-trials” off to a slow and shaky start.

          For the last year, many major media outlets have been writing breathless accounts of the dreaded GOP “revenge” hearings that would occur in a Republican-controlled House. See, e.g., Axios, (July 6, 2023), Republicans plot vengeance on Jan. 6 committee.

The volume and frequency of such stories created an expectation that the GOP hearings would be high-profile, drama-filled, made-for-television blockbusters rivaling the January 6^th hearings. Republicans are only two days into their long-awaited revenge tour, and things are not going as expected. Indeed, as one Fox commentator said on Thursday, “I am sick of these hearings. Make me feel better. Tell me this is going somewhere.”

          How did the hearings turn into a debacle for Republicans so quickly? First, in the words of Gertrude Stein, “There is no there there.” Holding hearings into baseless conspiracy theories is a sure-fire way to expose the lack of substance and lunacy that underlies the imagined conspiracies. That structural problem will be a permanent feature of the hearings for Republicans.

          But Republicans did not plan for the ferocious pushback from Democratic committee members who were prepared with eloquent and passionate speeches that provided compelling “sound-bites” that were too good for Fox News to ignore. Fox News ran two stories on Thursday that acknowledged the strong response by Democrats. See Fox News, Raskin slams Durham probe as a ‘total flop,’ asks Weaponization subcommittee to investigate origins. Fox reported the following to its readers:

Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin on Thursday eviscerated Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe as a “total flop” and urged the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization to investigate the “abusive ways” the special counsel team keeps pressing for information

After four years and millions of dollars spent, the Durham investigation closed as a total flop without unearthing anything like the deep-state conspiracy that Republicans have been denouncing around here for years,” Raskin said, adding that Durham “couldn’t find anything of substance to it.

          See also Fox News, Top Democrat on House Weaponization Subcommittee blasts GOP-created panel: 'Weaponization of Congress'. Fox informed its readers

The top Democrat on the House Weaponization Subcommittee [Rep. Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I] said there is a "difference" between "legitimate oversight and weaponization of Congress," slamming the GOP-created committee as one that will be used to "showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda."

Plaskett, who served as an impeachment manager in the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, said she is "deeply concerned" that the Weaponization Subcommittee will be used "as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risk undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy."

          Democrats showed up to the Committee hearings prepared to aggressively cross-examine the fake “experts” proffered by Republicans. In one notable exchange, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz cross-examined Professor Jonathan Turley, who was presented by Republicans to testify as to the alleged censorship at Twitter. Rep. Shultz demolished Turley in this exchange: This didn’t go so well for Turley.

          One reason that Republicans are reduced to relying on incompetent witnesses like Turley is that Twitter employees with knowledge of Twitter’s practices denied that Twitter engaged in alleged “censorship” at the request of the Biden administration. Indeed, those witnesses established that it was the Trump administration that pressured Twitter to remove or re-publish content. See Mother Jones, Republicans Swing and Miss on Hunter Biden and Twitter, which reports as follows:

House Republicans spent much of their first big oversight committee hearing Wednesday attacking Twitter for denying American voters the chance to look at Hunter Biden’s penis. The lawmakers’ pro-dick-pic position was probably inadvertent. But that is where they landed. The hearing failed to produce any evidence to support the central allegation advanced by committee chair, Rep. Jim Comer: That Twitter “colluded” with the Biden campaign in October 2020 to suppress a New York Post story on Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian gas company. Instead, the former Twitter executives who testified made the opposite point: Neither the Biden campaign nor the FBI had asked Twitter to suppress the Post’s story, they all testified. They said that it was simply Twitter’s decision—a decision the company has already conceded was a mistake.

          To be clear, I am not criticizing the Republican performance for comedic effect. The GOP’s Weaponization committee is dangerous regardless of their ineptitude. Dennis Aftergut makes this point in his op-ed in The Hill, New arrests show why the coming MAGA house attacks on the FBI endanger law and order. Aftergut notes that on Monday of this week, the Justice Department announced that the FBI disrupted the plans of two neo-Nazis to attack power stations that provide electricity to the people of Baltimore—the ninth such attempted attack in the US in three months.

          The baseless “Weaponization” hearings are directed, in part, at the FBI. In the MAGA universe, extremists believe that the FBI is exaggerating the threat of domestic terrorism from bad actors like the two neo-Nazis arrested earlier this week. As Aftergut notes,

The impending MAGA Congress attacks on the FBI for allegedly exaggerating domestic terrorist threats — designed for partisan gain to undermine trust in the nation’s premier law enforcement agency — pose a serious risk to all of our safety.

Monday’s allegations suggest that the threat is no illusion.

          Despite the GOP’s buffoonery at the hearings, some MAGA extremists will believe the baseless conspiracy theories advanced by GOP members of the committee. Worse, some will act on those dangerous theories. Democrats must continue their efforts to rebut, undermine, and ridicule the baseless theories until Republicans on the committee recognize that even Fox News has lost interest and is annoyed by their pathetic efforts.

My new grammar blog!

          I am considering starting a new blog focusing on language and grammar. Why? Because my comment in yesterday's newsletter on the pronunciation of the word “dour” generated hundreds of responses! Clearly, people are more interested in language and grammar than politics!

          I am, of course, joking (which I do at my peril in this newsletter). So, to get to the point: there are two accepted pronunciations for the word “dour” in English: One that rhymes with “tour” and one that rhymes with “tower.” Although English originally had only one pronunciation (rhymes with “tour”), a second pronunciation of “dour” evolved because of its similar spelling to words like “sour.” A reader sent a link to this helpful explanation on the evolution of the pronunciation of “dour”: The Grammarphobia Blog: A dour pronunciation.

          On this issue, as with all issues relating to grammar, usage, style, and pronunciation, I firmly side with those who believe that language should be free to evolve despite the best efforts of purists to impose prescriptive rules. I was guilty of prescriptivism in yesterday’s newsletter, and I admit my error. I hope that everyone who wrote in to say, “That’s not the way we pronounce it in [Connecticut, Florida, Cleveland, Boston, Texas . . . .] will demonstrate a similar openness to variations in pronunciation, grammar, usage, and style when they encounter such differences in daily interactions. I know I will; yesterday’s newsletter reinforced that point for me!

Concluding Thoughts.

          My wife and I had dinner with friends on Thursday evening. One guest said that he saw a bumper sticker (in San Diego) that said, “DeSantis 2024 / Make America Florida.” My first reaction was that the slogan was intended as a joke, but a quick internet search shows that the slogan is available on bumper stickers, yard signs, and tee shirts. In other words, someone believes that telling Americans that Ron DeSantis will turn America into Florida is a winning strategy. I suspect that “someone” is Ron DeSantis.

          As always, we cannot count on Republicans to defeat themselves, but “Make America Florida” is a worse campaign slogan than Trump’s slogan, “I am a victim.” If there is one thing everyone hates, it is being told that their state should be like another state. Worse, the slogan suggests that there is a difference, even an opposition, between Florida and America. That is no way to persuade independent voters hoping for a candidate like Joe Biden, who promises to be a president for all Americans.

          The slogan is another example of the lack of self-awareness of Republicans in general and Ron DeSantis in particular—a weakness that is undermining their “revenge” hearings from the outset. Like the ill-advised line in Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ speech on Tuesday, “The choice is normal or crazy,” DeSantis’s slogan suggests a retort that is the opposite of his intended message—that is, that we must “Make Florida America.”

          I will be in touch on Friday with a short newsletter to kick off the weekend! Talk to you tomorrow!