Thread by @CapitalistOppre

It’s nice that a lot of the #Resistance has started to get mad about Garlands seeming reluctance to investigate the activities of Trumps inner circle during Jan 6.

I was kind of alone on that for a long time and it’s nice to see the change.

But it’s worse than you think. /1

I did a thread about this awhile back, but my thinking is a bit more refined now and I have a little free time today so I will take another hack at it.

https://twitter.com/capitalistoppre/status/1458910833090523137?s=21

Please check out the previous thread, because it is still entirely valid even if the main conclusions have since been validated.

But now I want to expand on the evidence showing that neither Biden, nor Democrats in the Senate, want Jan 6 to be investigated. /3

Unlike the issues with Garland where there was always some small grey area where some small but important investigations could have been hidden in the shadows, the abdication in responsibility by Biden and the Senate are right out in the open. It just isn’t treated as a scandal/4

Specifically, when Biden was deciding on the Garland nomination the Senate was also considering Trumps impeachment for Jan 6. /5

The House had conducted a hasty impeachment because Republicans were arguing you can only impeach a sitting President. While not true, the House took this seriously and so impeached based solely on the public record, while planning to use the trial to conduct an investigation.
/6

So, that is what they did. They sent the articles of impeachment over to the Senate, expecting Democrats there to do the obvious thing and conduct a real trial where witnesses could be questioned and the Senate could weigh all of the evidence. That didn’t happen. /7

Instead, this happened. /8

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/01/12…

Then this happened. /9

npr.org/sections/trump…

Then this happened. /10

abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/p…

Whatever. Biden didn’t want his agenda derailed. Democrats in the Senate apparently agreed and killed the investigation.

Around the same time Biden also nominated, and Democrats in the Senate confirmed, Merrick Garland.
/11

The #Resistance was happy enough. The law was coming after all. Garland would take command of DOJ and sic the FBI on Trumpworld. /12

Except, that almost certainly did not happen. There were reasons to suspect that, as I argued for most of last year. But that isn’t the point of this thread. We can be reasonably certain that until recently there wasn’t a DOJ investigation of Trumps inner circle. /13

Instead, I want to look at the scandals hiding in plain sight. Specifically the failure of Biden to appoint a Presidential Commission and of the Democratic Senate to do any investigation beyond their narrow look at security failures. /14

Start with the Senate. This is easy. They did an investigation. Here is the AP report - /15

apnews.com/article/donald…

It’s truly scandalous. It is also an exceedingly narrow and shallow look at security failures. Here is the actual report /16

documentcloud.org/documents/2080…

Shockingly, they don’t appear to have even interviewed many of the major players. They certainly didn’t interview Trump or anyone in his inner circle about why such security failures occurred, and seemingly took the Army at its word. /17

But even if they had interviewed those people it is clear that a report about security failures is not the main reason to investigate Jan 6. Jan 6 was an attempted coup that was a complex undertaking that lasted for months and arguably is still ongoing. /18

Yet still to this day, Democrats in the Senate haven’t investigated any of it. As I write this they are negotiating changes to the Electoral Count Act, yet haven’t held any hearings to examine how Trump attempted to subvert it. /19

It’s an absolutely historic abdication of their responsibilities and the oath they took to uphold the constitution, and they have done it right in plain sight. /20

But they aren’t the only ones. This story from last year kinda went under the radar because it was assumed DOJ was investigating (they weren’t) /21

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/03…

Presidents don’t always create Presidential Commissions, but they absolutely are a way for the President to force an broad investigation of a topic of national importance. /22

There could hardly be a more important problem than Jan 6, yet Biden treated it as only a matter affecting congress. That is bizarre. Jan 6 was an attack on the constitutional transfer of power that included massive failures of executive agencies that Biden controls. /23

A Presidential commission would be a great vehicle to use to reform those agencies to help prevent future coups. But Biden refused to create one, after having previously opposing a broader investigation during impeachment because it could derail his agenda. /23

Maybe that is just the bottom line. Whether conducted by congress, DOJ or a Presidential commission any investigation of Trump would have been a distraction from passing the Agenda. /24

In any case, from the beginning it is clear the House disagreed with both Biden and the Senate. The House pushed impeachment, and wanted a real trial. When they failed they wanted a joint committee with the Senate. When that failed they launched their current investigation /25

Now that it has become clear there wasn’t a DOJ investigation the House has been trying to force one by exposing the criminal conspiracies the DOJ refused to look at. /25

I suppose it’s also helpful that just a week after Manchin killed the Agenda suddenly both Biden and Garland did big speeches about Jan 6 and then this happened. /26

amp.usatoday.com/amp/6514543001

And then this happened right after

apnews.com/article/joe-bi…

As a formal referral DOJ couldn’t continue to ignore a crime that occurred fully in public view, so then this happened. /27

thehill.com/policy/nationa…

So there might actually be a fully predicated DOJ investigation looking at Trumps inner circle over at least one aspect of the Jan 6 coup. So that’s cool. /28

But it still remains the case that neither Biden, nor the Democrats in the Senate took even basic actions to uphold their oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States.

Whatever Garland did or didn’t do, it likely was exactly what elite Democrats wanted. /29