Really?

Has McCarthy and the Trump cultists been asleep under a rock since 2016 or are they simply deceiving-- hoping that his angry mob will not care about the truth and would retaliate at the polls?

Yes, yesterday’s government operation was unprecedented as no president has been judicially searched. Then again, no president has made efforts to destroy papers he was under a legal duty to preserve. No president has taken classified information to his home well beyond his legal term in office and has refused to readily turn them over, when requested.

Trump, McCarthy and their media voices are in a state of outrage over the “unprecedented actions” and their words, once again are resulting in frightening social media threats of violence, civil war and revolution.  

Unprecedented? Let’s talk about unprecedented. So was the October 2016 shocker by the FBI to publicly open an investigation into Hillary Clinton, two weeks before the elections. At that time, Trump, Kevin McCarthy, the GOP praised the FBI for doing its duty. Fox News went into political orgasms over the prospects of the feds hitting Clinton with a last-moment criminal torpedo at a time in which Clinton would never be able to recover. That was fine. Then, they screamed “lock her up”. Now, some of them want to lock up federal law enforcement or shut it down altogether. So much for being anti-crime.

If they were interested in even a particle of truth, they would take a short trip down presidential memory lane to see what real militarizing the federal judicial system looks like.  I won’t even address the former president’s attempts to politicalize the military which has been closely documented and proven.  Here’s a short moment in history:

President Trump pressured then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down any investigation into Flynn despite Trump claiming he had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.

In February, the president tweeted his objection to the Justice Department's sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone and within hours, the DOJ reversed the prior recommendation to make it more lenient.

In December 2017, Trump said "I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.

Throughout the Russia investigation, Trump made numerous attempts to fire his attorney general and acting attorney general. According to the Mueller report, he engaged in 10 acts that investigators cited to be evidence of obstruction of justice. Whose justice? Obstruction of the Department of Justice’s investigation justice. Bill Barr refused to prosecute Trump claiming the president could do whatever he wanted to do if he felt aggrieved.  In other words, according to Barr, Trump could never engage in obstruction of justice. He was the president.

At the president’s urgings, the Justice Department intervened in a defamation lawsuit against President Trump

Trump pressured Barr to speed up the DOJ finalization of the investigation into the Russia probe.  After all, what good is an investigation if the results come after the election? 

After he lost, the president made every attempt to force his Attorney General, Bill Barr to investigate the elections.

Days before January 6, he urged the DOJ top officials to approve a letter claiming concern about election impropriety. When the acting Secretary refused to do so, he asked them to just do it and said he and his republican Congress would take it from there.

The former president tried to install a completely unqualified but willing accomplice, Jeffrey Clark, to become DOJ secretary in replace of Jeffrey Rosen. Clark, who came out of DOJ nowhere, caught Trump’s eye because he was willing to open last-minute investigations into the 2020 elections. That effort failed when the DOJ leaders and the entire house counsel office threatened to quit.  Trump was told the DOJ and the House Counsel office would be a ghost town. As a result, Trump declined to appoint Clark. Days later came January 6.

Laughingly, Trump has perverted history by equating a legal warrant with a burglary into Watergate. That effort involved covert operation to obtain election secrets.  The Mar A Lago warrant required the head of the FBI, DOJ and most importantly, a federal judge to approve the action.  Watergate was not a government-sanctioned operation. This was a judicially approved procedure, accomplished not to get political poop for election purposes but to investigate a crime involving national security.

The Republican Party and its media mops claim the Biden administration is weaponizing the FBI. Not once has Biden called for any action by his Attorney General against Trump. By comparison, almost daily, Trump screamed on twitter, at press conferences, in front of foreign officials, on TV, at political rallies that his former AG Jeff Sessions never should have recused himself from the Russia investigation. He likewise threatened his DOJ to prosecute members of the FBI who had been involved in investigation of his campaign.  He almost daily slammed the acting DOJ Rosenstein for the Russia investigation and threatened to fire him.  None of this was in furtherance of public policy. All of it was to further Trump’s personal power.

Which makes me wonder: Do you think the right-wing media and minority leader McCarthy will ever bring up Trump’s bullying to weaponize the DOJ? Ever?

After the Mar a Lago search, McCarthy, smelling mid-term changing of the guards, tweeted that the Attorney General should essentially wait until January 2023, make his schedule available and in the meantime, maintain all records.  He complained of Democratic overreach of investigations, yet he and his committee leaders have vowed to return the favors.  He has made investigating the current investigators into a political pledge, not ever admitting that denouncing political investigations by promising political investigations is straight out of School of Orwellian thought.

Considering Kevin McCarthy’s blatant political hypocrisy, that’s not unprecedented, one bit.