I am not a lawyer, but after viewing Judge Amy Berman Jackson's unredacted memo, I think it is pretty clear that Merrick Garland is not protecting Bill Barr.
The parts that I have highlighted here are the parts that were previously redacted; Garland agreed to unredact this.
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Unredacted: Jackson's clear opinion that Barr's DOJ was intentionally dishonest, concealing the content of the OLC memo and misrepresenting its purpose to the court.
Recurring theme here: Jackson exposed the OLC memo for what it was - part of a political PR strategy.
Unredacted: The memo was crafted - at Bill Barr's request - to "recommend" that Barr make a judgement call about Mueller's report.
Why? Because the underlying motivation behind the memo was, "getting a jump on public relations."
Unredacted [my own paraphrasing of the OLC memo]:
'Now that Mueller's hands are tied, and he can't do anything that might remotely be perceived as levying an accusation against POTUS, we "recommend" that you step in and tell the public what you want them to hear.'
Unredacted: Again, what they were trying to conceal here was that this was all about public relations - i.e. politically motivated.
(Even the redacted version of this section is extremely important; it showed that Barr, Rosenstein, and OLC worked together to deceive Congress):
Unredacted:
-"the agency [Barr's DOJ] was girding for a preemptive strike on the Mueller report"
-Section 1 of the DOJ memo didn't offer legal advice at all - it offered "strategic, political, and public relations," advice.
Unredacted (footnote):
The purpose of the DOJ memo "was to provide legal analysis to help shape the assessment of the Special Counsel’s report that the Attorney General was planning to announce for the reasons set forth in Section I of the memorandum"
i.e. help the PR effort.
Those are all of the redactions, so I will stop there.
As I said above, even the redacted version of this ruling/memo was damning, as it exposed DOJ & OLC coordination (collusion?) to mislead the public and Congress.
In addition to the above, Merrick Garland has agreed to release Section 1 of Barr's OLC memo. That is the section that Jackson took issue with, and is what we should want to see.
As someone who has long taken issue with "OLC memos" in general, I'm not clear about Section 2.
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The Epoch Times started their money laundering operation sometime in 2020.
After the 2020 election, they began producing more propaganda for Trump and becoming involved in stop the steal efforts.
Somewhat symbiotic. Trump massively boosted them, and they helped him.
The highly polished propaganda video that Holehouse (an Epoch Times alum until 2015) published, seemed custom made for the Trump campaign, and he boosted it four times. 2 million views.
Trump supporters began driving up the company’s stature. 6 million followers on Facebook.
As early as Dec 1 2020, Epoch Times subsidiary NTD began broadcasting the “Kraken” press conferences (Jenna Ellis, Phil Kline, Tony Shaffer).
By March, Lauren Boebert was promoting them as the most trusted source of information when people wanted Dems locked up.
I’ve always said that while there were some normal human bad decisions in Fani Willis’ relationship, they weren’t enough to justify all of this - and what *should* get way more coverage is the crusade against her, and against the rule of law.
I think it’s important for people to see Ben Smith’s interview with Joe Kahn, Executive Editor of the New York Times, so I’m posting screenshots of the full article here.
The fact that he misrepresents and strawmans people’s issues with their reporting is really concerning.
🧵
I appreciate that @semaforben got Kahn to answer questions about this, but I’m also disappointed at the soft touch questions that tiptoe around elephants in the room, which IMO silently confirms that NYT is avoiding real accountability for any of this.
@semaforben At one point in the interview, after claiming that the NYT’s role is to inform the public, Kahn even admits that citizens are woefully uninformed or misinformed about highly important issues.
But then he walks right past it, making clear that isn’t really his priority at all.
I try my best not to weigh in on topics that I’m not well versed on, and don’t weigh in on divisive, emerging events until I can share what I believe is reliable info. The same goes for the Palestine protests.
If anyone cares about my personal views, I will say this much.
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What is happening in Gaza is a humanitarian nightmare. I blame Netanyahu, Likud, and the right wing extremists who control the government.
They are Israel’s Trump and MAGA. Bibi is corrupt. His actions harm Israel on the world stage. An authoritarian who inflames divisions.
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I believe Bibi let the people of Israel down. He shuffled funds to Hamas to keep Gaza & the West Bank divided b/c he wants to undermine the very idea that Palestinians should have their own state.
He pulled resources to help extremists push more settlements, ensuring a 10/7.
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