Given the disturbing news out of a D.C. Appeals Court today in the Michael Flynn case, we begin today’s BradCast with a few words of warning about what is likely to come between now and November 3rd (and even beyond), and how we all must now collectively approach that day in order to save this Republic. This is not a test. This is the real thing. And, as our darkest hour gets darker still — and it will — we must stay focused on the only thing that offers hope right now, the only thing that matters: making very real changes at the White House and Congress this November.
After that serious-as-a-heart-attack public service announcement/warning, we break down just why the surprise ruling by two Republican appointees to the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. today — in response to an unprecedented motion by Donald Trump’s former National Security Advisor and confessed federal felon Michael Flynn — is so damning, dangerous and unprecedented.
The three-judge panel’s majority ruling [PDF], ordering Flynn’s case to be dismissed — as Trump demanded and as corrupt Attorney General Bill Barr facilitated in opposition to the career prosecutors who successfully obtained Flynn’s guilty plea (twice, before two different judges) — was written by Judge Neomi Rao, a former White House staffer who Trump recently appointed as a federal appeals court judge. The entire matter is about as corrupt as it can get, but it may not be over yet. The full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may decide to rehear Flynn’s unprecedented motion, given “the question of exceptional importance” raised by the matter, as allowed by law. The lower U.S. District Court was not even allowed to hold a hearing on the Dept. of Justice’s Motion to Dismiss their own case before Flynn filed for a writ of mandamus to force U.S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan to approve the DoJ’s motion before it was even heard.
As Judge Robert Wilkins, the lone Democratic-appointed judge on the three-judge appellate panel wrote in his dissent, his colleagues “grievously” overstepped their judicial powers with their order. If the surprising ruling holds, it will, as BRAD BLOG legal analyst Ernie Canning wrote last week, mean that the court has become “complicit in the President’s corruption of the rule of law,” which is “tantamount to an abandonment of the Judiciary’s constitutional function to act as a check against Executive Branch abuses of power.”
At the same time as that stunning order was issued by the D.C. Court of Appeals panel, two DoJ whistleblowers were testifying about similar cases of corruption at the Department by senior political appointees working at the behest of Barr and Trump in the case of Roger Stone, another Trump crony found guilty of lying to federal officials (just as Flynn had admitted he did as well) in relation to the Robert Mueller Special Counsel probe into Russian inference in the 2016 election. We share some of today’s disturbing testimony by Aaron Zelinsky, one of the career prosecutors who refused to sign off on the DoJ’s attempt to reduce the sentencing recommendation for Stone, Trump’s pal and longtime dirty-tricksters (found guilty here on all seven counts), despite what he described as “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice,” including senior political appointees who, he alleged, were “afraid of the President.”
“It’s very important that we recognize what’s happening now,” warned Donald Ayer, another witness at today’s hearing and a former Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush. “What’s happening now is much worse than what happened in Watergate — much worse. It’s across-the-board. It’s a systematic effort to undo the checks that were put in place in Watergate and others that existed in the Constitution. And we need to do something about it.”
The corruption of the Flynn and Stone prosecutions are now so far off the rails from what the U.S. Department of Justice is supposed to stand for that it is difficult to fully express how much dark trouble this now portends for our nation. Thus, we have one hope left — our last firewall against full-blown authoritarianism in this country — this year’s critical general elections. To that end, there were primaries held on Tuesday in Kentucky, New York and Virginia along with a few other key races elsewhere. We’re joined today by longtime progressive political blogger and Congressional campaign expert HOWIE KLEIN of Down With Tyranny to discuss a number of election results from Tuesday in New York and Kentucky which appear to suggest some very good news for progressives. We say “appear” because several of those elections are currently reported to be very close and, due to the coronavirus (which had its single biggest day of new infections in the U.S. on Wednesday), it will take some time for officials to tally the unprecedented number of absentee mail-in ballots cast. We run through several of the key races with Klein (he details many more here today) why they matter, and how a number of them they are likely to scare the hell out of the establishment on both the Left and Right.
“There were wins and losses,” Klein tells me. “It wasn’t like the progressives wiped out the [Democratic] conservatives. But thank goodness it didn’t go the other way. So yes, it was a good night for progressive Democrats.”
Also worth a quick mention today: The 24-year old Republican dude named Madison Cawthorn, who defeated the Trump-endorsed candidate in the GOP runoff to become the nominee to fill former Congressman turned White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ seat in North Carolina. And ALL of the electronic pollbooks in Virginia Beach, Virginia’s 100 precincts failed on Tuesday…
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[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman-FlynnDismissal-ZelinskyTestimony_HowieKlein-PrimaryResults-NY-KY_062420.mp3]
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Brad, it is easy to agree this point of peril is unprecedented. However, I can’t make sense of this sentence you wrote.
“Thus, we have one hope left — our last firewall against full-blown authoritarianism in this country — this year’s critical general elections.”
An analogy: you have no money left in the bank, no cash on hand, and you’re about to hit your credit limit. But rather than investing in food, shelter, and finding a reliable source of income, you bet on three-card monte.
More than anyone, you know what passes for “elections” have increasingly been a charade for at least 20 years.
From the way “votes” are supposedly cast and counted, and the way in which “official results” get reported and implemented, the actions citizens take cannot be shown to have an actual bearing on the outcome.
We only perpetuate the illusion. We may as well cheer louder or make bigger signs for our favorite pro wrestlers. There is zero chance of influencing who “wins.”
I couldn’t have imagined the BLM message cutting through and having the impact it is having, changing the fundamental dialog of the country and the world.
We must do the same about “elections” in the US.
I have no questions about your honesty and integrity, Brad. Please reflect on whether you are having the common human experience of cognitive dissonance. What else could allow you to expose the charade more thoroughly than anyone yet continue to claim “elections” are our “one hope left”?
Please know this is not an attack on you. You are in a very important position and I’m encouraging you to align the actions you recommend with what you know to be true.
In my opinion, we are where we are now because, more than any other reason, we’ve repeatedly given a veneer of credibility by participating in unverifiable sham “elections,” then accepting the “results” reported through opaque actions and communication between “government” (election officials) and corporate owned media.
Immediately implementing hand-counted paper ballots does not currently seem like a complete solution to me because the pandemic makes it unsafe and impractical (whereas HCPB is otherwise, of course, the gold standard).
I don’t know what we have to do overall, but I do know we have to stop acting and speaking as if “elections” are real and a source of hope.
Please take this into consideration as you do your part to facilitate well informed and reasoned public discussion.
Dave –
Good to see from you, amigo! I had hoped to share your note (and my response to it) on air on today’s show, but breaking news (as usual) meant I had to push it off to — hopefully — another day.
But, my quick response here is that, no, I don’t agree with you that elections are a “charade” or that “the actions citizens take cannot be shown to have an actual bearing on the outcome.”
I don’t feel that way now, nor have I ever felt that way. If I did, I would have quit all of my efforts long ago.
You wrote:
Because they still are (and always have been.) I have never argued that elections are a “charade”. I have argued that the public is being pushed out of them. That we are not allowed to oversee our elections, despite that being the only fighting chance for a secure election in which the public may have confidence.
Yes, elections can be stolen and gamed. That does not mean that they all are. It may even mean that none are (though we know that’s not true.) My fight is for public oversight of elections, to fight like hell to do all that we can to assure our elections are legitimate — or as much as we can possibly make them.
So, yeah. Democratic elections are our only hope left. And I think we need to fight like hell for them. I hope you will reflect on whether you’ve made a mistake — or have been misguided — into giving up hope, especially at a time when you absolutely should not.
Perhaps I’ll have more to say about all of that on air, if time allows at some point in the near future, because I suspect you’re not alone in your thinking and/or in misinterpreting my own.
Hey Brad, thanks for your reply. I’m not misinterpreting your thinking here. I’m owning the claim US “elections” are charades comparable to other simulated competition such as three-card monte and pro wrestling (or The Harlem Globetrotters).
I’m not claiming you ever used the word charade, but rather that you should. All your reporting illustrates the nature of the charade, even if you still want to call it an election.
This is a great thing for us to differ on, really, because it is the perfectly framed debate the whole country should have been having for the last 20 years.
If we are having real elections, what minimum criteria have to exist for us to know they are legitimate?
If we’re not having real elections, what is the maximum amount of perversion the process can allow and still be legitimate?
Hope is not relevant in the same way trust is not relevant. Unverifiable means illegitimate. US elections have been gaslighting the American people and the world since at least 2000.
To make the case otherwise, you have to disregard all the reporting you’ve ever done. This is why I, respectfully, raise the question of cognitive dissonance.
How can you know what you know but not call it a charade?
How can you present all the evidence of “election” conditions and argue they amount to legitimate elections with a basis for confidence in the reported results?
Dave @3:
I’ll hit a few pieces of your response piece by piece here, for clarity…
Fair enough, even if I do not necessarily agree. Given the barriers to public oversight, I’m not surprised that you (or anyone else) feels that way. That is the core of what I have been, and am still, fighting to avoid/correct. Namely, elections that even when legitimate, cannot be known to be legitimate. That is a shameful problem with American elections — which even most election experts cannot seem to wrap their brains around — even in cases where every voter is allowed to vote and every vote is counted accurately!
You are certainly welcome to call it a “charade”. I don’t. But, obviously, I may see it differently. I believe it can be a charade (perhaps even often is), and I believe we must fight like hell, every single election, to try and prevent that, because elections, at this time, is all we’ve got left barring violence and war (which I oppose.) You may notice that in all my years of covering elections, there is only one that I was willing to actually report as having been “stolen”. (The 2012 GOP Presidential Primary in Maine, as I recall.) Describing an election as “stolen” is a very serious charge, obviously, So, unless that can be independently verified, I do not report it as such. You, however, are not a reporter and may choose to see it any way you like, obviously.
Well, unverifiable means unverifiable. It doesn’t necessarily mean illegitimate, even as I wouldn’t blame anyone who chooses to view an unverifiable election as such. (In other words, to be clear: If Candidate X, in reality, received more votes than Candidate Y and is named the winner, that’s a legitimate — as in actual, as in mathematical — election victory, whether that’s verifiable or not.)
US elections have been gaslighting the American people and the world since at least 2000. To make the case otherwise, you have to disregard all the reporting you’ve ever done.
Well, I disagree with you on that last point. I certainly don’t “disregard all the reporting [I’ve] ever done.”
I think we just see things (including my reporting) differently. And, yes, that is fine and with all due respect. I certainly don’t blame you if you see it differently than I might. I report. You decide…as they say. 🙂
See above. 🙂
As I haven’t described elections as “stolen” (though I do point out how they easily can be), you’ll also be hard pressed to find me calling them “legitimate” anywhere either, for the very same reason. I call them “reported” victories (or losses) more often than not. Whether you or me or anyone else has “confidence” in those results is very much a personal matter. And, I suspect, you and I can both agree that is an outrage and exactly what we have both worked to try and correct for many years.
Hope that at least clears up how I see things and why I don’t see it as “cognitive dissonance” at all.
Brad, I see both of your responses point out you do NOT describe elections as “stolen.” Perhaps it went unnoticed that neither do I. However, what you’ve mentioned about this word seems to illustrate a key distinction in our thinking.
It seems you are looking past the close of polls on “election” night as the time when judgment can be formed about the legitimacy of an election.
In contrast, it looks to me like we can see in advance “election” conditions preclude the possibility of legitimacy.
To me, that argument can begin and end with the impossibility of verifying reported results. We further add insult to injury by all the other ways conditions guarantee inherent uncertainty about the outcome.
This speaks to your point that even if a reported outcome is actually and mathematically correct we still wouldn’t know and be able to prove it. This is a priori systemic illegitimacy.
It does not depend on the candidates, the voters, the media, political parties, history, or anything other than the “election” conditions themselves. We seem to agree about what those conditions are, yet reach different conclusions about the implications of those conditions.
This disagreement can be an important opportunity to frame the national and even global discussion.
If, for example, the general public were to come to the same conclusion as me, we might stop rushing headlong into a no-win situation (a win being a knowable and verifiable result).
On the other hand, if the general public were to accept your conclusion, we’ll continue to see the equivalent of Charlie Brown trying to kick a football Lucy pulls away every single time.
No amount of voter registration, voter turnout, campaign ads, debate performances, or anything else will influence the outcome and we’ll never be able to prove what does.
With my interpretation, we stand a chance of changing how things are done. With yours, we can only continue to look back and say we’re getting screwed yet again. Leopards can’t change their spots, and elections can’t be deemed legitimate because of who apparently wins.
It is shameful and sad how the US got to this point, and worse every time we allow it to perpetuate.