Just watched excellent @Morning_Joe interview with @AWeissmann_. Weissmann was thoughtful and direct. But I came away boiling, once again, at the manifold failures of Mueller and their costs. Whether motivated by decency or not, he profoundly let down the American people.
More importantly, Weissman made it clear, yet again, that Trump, with the help of Barr and McConnell, made obstruction of justice the central organizing principle of this Administration. The entire executive branch was focused on protecting Russia and hiding Trump's many crimes.
It all seems so much more trenchant in the context of understanding the president's financial situation better as we do today, how vulnerable he was to manipulation, and how egregiously wrong it was for Mueller to fail to press at a full financial investigation of the president.
As I often say, working with Russia to undermine our democracy was the original sin of the Trump Administration...and we are little closer to achieving justice in that case than we were when the crimes were occurring. When you consider not only the profundity of that crime...
...but its cascading consequences, the crushing compound tragedies of the Trump Administration, this is the greatest single instance of the failure of our system of justice in its history. (Institutional bias against the poor, people of color, and women & on behalf of the rich...
...the powerful and the rule white majority is the greatest systemic failure.) Barr and McConnell and their supporters, minions and enablers serially betrayed the first principles of our justice system--that no man is above the law, that there is equal justice for us all, and...
...that those in charge of that system place their commitment to impartiality and the Constitution before that to any individual or political party--and then actively undercut our national security, empowering our enemies and a man who was profoundly unfit to be our president.
But not only is this a gross miscarriage of justice, not only is it a series of crimes that are still be committed to this day, but it enabled Trump to achieve his Russian sponsors ultimate goal of profoundly weakening America both internationally and at home.
Think of the 200,000 souls who would still be with us if it were not for this failure of our system. Think of the anguish of their families. The individual losses. The torment as they died alone. That horror can be traced to Putin, Trump, Barr and McConnell.
The same can be said for the tens of million struggling without work, the American cities straining under economic catastrophe...as it can be for those who will suffer in future because of gutting environmental protections or who suffer worldwide as democracy is weakened.
Would Jamal Khashoggi be alive today if Trump had been stopped? Would 3000 people in Puerto Rico? Would thousands of families not have been broken up, tens of thousand thrown into cages, some children left to die in sorrow, squalor and isolation?
The list of consequences of letting Vladimir Putin's candidate for president, a serial criminal unfit for the office and unconcerned with the fate of the country or anyone in it other than himself and his equally criminal family, is too long for this brief thread.
The scale of the human costs is almost impossible to fathom unless we take the time to imagine victims, their families, their last hours, their current struggles, one by one, in human terms. But if we do, we realize that our system of justice has failed us.
Our leaders have corrupted it and made it an extension of their criminal undertaking. And there is now just one way to bring it back--a way made even less certain due to their corruption and ability to manipulate and abuse our system. And that is to vote for @JoeBiden.
The one path to justice and to preserve what is worth preserving in America is to vote for @JoeBiden, vote for @KamalaHarris, vote in place a Democratic majority in the Senate, build on the Democratic majority in the House. But that is just a first step.
We will not achieve justice nor will our institutions be able to recover if we do not ensure that the corruption of these past four years does not become the precedent for the years to come. Trump and his enablers must be fairly and impartially investigated.
The facts they have long sought to cover up must be uncovered. And if crimes were committed and are revealed those who committed them must be held accountable. A Democratic victory in November alone is essential but it is not adequate.
Our justice system must succeed under Biden and Harris where it failed under Trump and Pence. That must be a priority. And we must discount efforts to say such investigation and prosecution would be divisive. Quite the contrary is true.
Only through proving no man is above the law, that there is equal justice under law in this country, that our justice system is impartial, that we are committed to truth, that we will actively defend ourselves against threats foreign and domestic, that we can begin to heal.
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