Of course, it’s no surprise that the efforts to rewrite a past that casts ill thoughts on Donald Trump’s legacy are still the subject of intense attempts to rewrite history.
After all, Trump simply wants to wish away Jan. 6, 2021, as an insurrectionist stain, and continue to argue that he never lost the 2020 election. He even wants to rewrite the more recent past, like why we ended up in a war with Iran from which we see no easy exit that preserves international safety, unburdened commerce and diplomatic face for Trump.
The news this week, again, was that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence efforts that Trump so easily set aside in war fervor, is among the chief historical rewriters, along with the Justice Department.
She offered announcements this week of referring an unnamed whistleblower and the former inspector general for the Intelligence agencies to the Justice Department for criminal charges to erase the underlying idea that Trump’s 2019 phone call to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy should have prompted an investigation that led ultimately to Trump’s unsuccessful, first impeachment vote.
In short, the call, which amounted to blackmailing Zelenskyy for adverse information about Joe Biden, his 2020 political opponent, should never have seen the light of day, Gabbard’s investigation found. Gabbard, in effect, came to the opposite conclusion of the rest of the legal and political world – that misconduct by Trump’s investigators outweighed any wrongdoing on Trump’s part.
Basically, Gabbard contends that former Inspector General Michael Atkinson should not have flagged a whistleblower report about the Zelenskyy call to Congress, that it was too flimsy a piece of evidence. Atkinson has said repeatedly he did what statutes required, to let people know that someone had witnessed a likely crime by the president.
This is the same Tulsi Gabbard that turned up in Atlanta last month to witness the FBI seizure of ballots and records from voting headquarters in Fulton County, where Trump still believes – despite multiple recounts by machine and hand – that he was cheated of a win in Georgia, and thus for the presidential Electoral College.
What Gabbard never addressed, nor has Trump, is why the director of national intelligence, who has been left out of the war decision-making in the Middle East, is justifiably spending her time with a political eraser as her principal tool. Indeed, if the intelligence community’s job is to keep us safer, why is she spending her time re-polishing the Trump apple?
Indeed, the one actual intelligence job involving Gabbard –renewal of a warrantless FISA authority — hit the congressional skids late Friday night, with enough Republican defections from a Trump demand for unanimity to allow only a 10-day renewal. Gabbard had warned Trump he needed more protections for U.S. citizens in the authorizing bill, but was ignored.
Erasing Convictions
Meanwhile, the Justice Department this week asked a federal appeals judge to erase convictions for pardoned members of the far-right groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were previously found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their parts in the violence at the U.S. capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It was the Capitol riot that spurred the second, still unsuccessful impeachment.
The request came from Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney in Washington and applicant for Attorney General. Again, despite commutations and pardons covering 1,600 or so insurrectionists, Pirro asked that history be rewritten to say the convictions never took place. Several Proud Boys and Oath Keepers’ leaders were granted clemency as part of that action.
Apparently, Donald Trump thinks we’re stupid and never watched television that day. Still, it remains unclear how erasing the convictions is supposed to make us feel better about Trump, who clearly was the organizer for the full election denial campaign for the months that had led up to the Capitol riots.
What makes it more rankling are the persistent plans being discussed by this very same Trump to limit, interfere or disrupt election voting and counting this year in an increasingly desperate attempt to control the outcome of balloting that looks at this point to be heavily favored against his policies.
Of course, the trials that followed Jan. 6 had been meant to seek accountability for violent crimes against those responsible for what prosecutors described as an attack on the heart of democracy. Charges against Trump himself were dropped after he won reelection.
The Trump administration has sought to portray the rioters as patriots and peaceful protesters, being used as pawns by his political rivals, and repeating baseless claims of widespread election fraud. “In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters,” reads the White House’s web page on Jan. 6.
At least 10 pardoned for Jan. 6 have been re-charged since with crimes that range from crimes plotting murder of FBI agents, to child sexual assault, possession of child sexual abuse material and reckless homicide while driving drunk.
Two postscripts: The California Supreme Court permanently has disbarred John Eastman, a key architect in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The high court declined to intervene after lower courts found that Eastman had repeatedly misled courts and advanced baseless claims in service of Trump’s last-ditch effort to cling to power after losing the presidency in 2020.
Meanwhile, Medetis Long, a career prosecutor in Justice and the lead in the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan has walked away from the case, CNN reported, apparently because she has serious reservations that there is no case to be made, despite orders from Trump.
“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.
