The Beginning Of The End For The Big Grift

The shocker came when former attorney General William Barr testified at the Jan. 6 Congressional hearings on the Capitol insurrection. I frankly found the profanity refreshingly blunt, to the point and an unadulterated truth. 

This is exactly what Barr said:

I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. I didn’t want to be a part of it.

This he testified was said just before he resigned in December 2020 before the attack on the Capitol.

And I think he repeated it a couple more times and then called his former boss delusional and out of touch with reality. Well welcome to the club Mr. Barr. Most of us have been calling BS on Don-the-Con long before he tried to steal the election. But why is it only now that you come off the bench to say this publicly?

Oh, yes. Not telling the truth after swearing an oath can result in a felony conviction and a five-year sentence in prison. If every Republican who has testified and will testify were asked, “Why didn’t you say something back when the crime was being committed?” Democrats would likely have veto-proof control of congress.

Now with the circle of justice narrowing around the real conspiracy to steal the election, all of the rats are starting to jump ship. The testimony of leading conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig reveals the threat: 

The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on Jan. 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America. It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead. Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost. The treacherous plan was no less ambitious than to steal America’s democracy.

Again Judge Luttig just didn’t wake up yesterday with this epiphany and say “Ah hah, insurrection!” However, he did come to the late conclusion that the ex-president is a “clear and present danger” to our democracy, something any good lawyer would call prima facie evidence.

So now the Mar-a-Lago house of cards is starting to collapse, but the grifter is still doubling down on his failed attempt with his unhinged speech recently at a conservative Christian political conference in Nashville, Tennessee where he repeated his false claims of election fraud which now sound even more bizarre than before.

The conclusion becomes increasingly clear as most major media sources  (except Fox News) are repeating that, “The former president was directly involved in a scheme to put forward false pro-Trump electors in states won by President Biden,” the Jan. 6 committee revealed.

The testimony couldn’t be more clear in this report from the New York Times,” The committee played deposition video from Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, who testified that Mr. Trump had personally called her about helping further the scheme. Mr. Trump put the conservative lawyer John Eastman [the one who got shot down by Judge David O. Carter] on the phone with Ms. McDaniel “to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors,” she testified.

Still, there will be die-hard Trumpsters who will just never admit, like the Grifter-in-Chief himself, that he actually lost. This is very reminiscent of both Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s legacy and followers who dismiss their crimes of Watergate and Iran Contra scandals and fawn over opening trade with China or 1980s tax cuts with trickle-down voodoo economics. Just look around at what both of these have left us. We can’t let the crimes of Trump go unpunished.

It’s time to end this sad saga of betrayal and just get to the indictments — not just of Trump but of everyone who was in on his game of Three-card Monte. 

His truest believers will now sign on to attacking any Republican who tells the truth like a circular firing squad — Republicans who told the truth out of conscience or loyalty to the U.S. Constitution and who just couldn’t bring themselves to abridge the law and their oaths of office. The next six months will be some of the most viscously strained political campaigns since perhaps the ones leading up the American Civil War. And if Trump is not convicted and jailed, he would likely follow the path of Confederate President Jefferson Davis promoting his lost cause for the rest of his life.

People, it’s time to call it like it is. The next time somebody starts going on about the stolen election, just end it by saying BS and walk away!

(James Preston Allen, founding publisher of the Los Angeles Harbor Areas Leading Independent Newspaper 1979- to present, is a journalist, visionary, artist and activist. Over the years Allen has championed many causes through his newspaper using his wit, common sense writing and community organizing to challenge some of the most entrenched political adversaries, powerful government agencies and corporations.)