With the supreme arrogance that comes from too much privilege, it seems to have never occurred to @hawleyMO and @tedcruz that all their lying could expose them to criminal liability.
People who follow me know I've been very resistant to using criminal law. I've often argued that punishment doesn't gain the desired results and that political problems can't be solved through the criminal justice system.
But Wednesday crossed a line.
In fact, over the years, many people have angrily unfollowed me because I am so resistant to using the criminal justice system in a political arena.
The attack on the Capitol was a foreseeable result of the lies told by GOP leaders.
I am not making a statement about whether there exists sufficient evidence to actually bring charges against @HawleyMO and @tedcruz.
The evidence is stronger against Giuliani and Trump.
But their lies link them to a crime. Cruz seems to realize it.
Hawley, not yet.
There are advantages to civil suits. For one, the standard of proof is lower.
At the very least, their political careers should be over.
Don't think that isn't a severe consequence, particularly for the power-hungry.
I have experience as a criminal defense lawyer (mostly writing appeals). I represented only indigents, so in this case, my clients would be the rioters and not the inciters.
Given my bias, if I were in charge of everything, I'd bring charges against the ringleaders.
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It's much harder to fire a president than a person in a regular because the job itself was obtained through Constitutional procedure (a nationwide vote) but it makes no sense for it to be as hard to remove a president as it is to get a criminal conviction.
Voting earlier on impeachment will not make another riot less likely.
The best situation is for Trump to resign. Pelosi wants to give Trump the chance to resign, or Pence the chance to evoke the 25th.
For people wondering a vote might be delayed until Monday, one reason is to allow support to build. Give more newspapers and governors a chance to weigh in. Let people process what happened Wednesday.
The event was so shocking, and shocking details are still coming out.
Trump "willfully made statements that encouraged—and foreseeably resulted in—imminent lawless action at the Capitol, injured law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress and the Vice President, interfered with. . .
. . . the Joint Session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the election results, and engaged in violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts."
His conduct "was consistent with prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election."
2/
"Prior efforts" includes the call to Raffensperger.
In all of this, Trump:
🔹"gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government"
🔹"interfered with the peaceful transition of power"
He had spent so much time among like-minded people who hated Lincoln, and he had read so many accounts denouncing Lincoln as a tyrant bent on destroying the Constitution and "personal liberty" that he expected to be hailed as a hero.
2/
Instead he was stunned to learn that he was being hunted down like a beast, while Lincoln was held up throughout much of the nation as a martyred saint.
Source for this: The bibliography in my biography of Lincoln.
Turley's focus on his own feelings prevents him from seeing his bias. He doesn't see himself as a white supremacist: he just feels a tug of sympathy for what Trump stands for.
"Ethnic majorities rarely give up their power without a fight." Ziblatt and Levitsky.
This explains why they can spend years investigating Benghazi but excuse yesterday.
They had a visceral hatred for Hillary Clinton and a visceral sympathy for Trump.
The best explanation is in Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
The current GOP trajectory was in put in place during the Reagan era, but our current problems began with the Supreme Court decision in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, the case that desgregated the schools.