FBI turns over details of 5000 employees who worked on January 6 cases
cnn.com
cnn.com
"Regime purges security forces it deems disloyal"
https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/musk-s-junta-establishes-h...
I'm honestly not sure if things can get bad enough for a general American revolt. I think we've pushed that threshold so far back that the people won't do anything until the country is well past the tipping point of total collapse.
I'm happy to be wrong, but living in America, you develop a very low opinion of Americans.
Musk and Co. are betting on people to stay home and not get involved, and if they do, that they'll be peaceful protests that can be ignored. because they will ignore them, basically.
shit, even the Jan 6th coup protesters killed a cop and assaulted others.
Also that article is a bit silly with "Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government". There's an orange looking guy who would dispute that biggly.
*Why Moderates Should Vote for Harris*
" People on the far left and the far right have already decided who to vote for in the next election. Voting for the other party would be unthinkable. But what if you’re a moderate?
I’m a moderate, and I’m voting for Harris. The reason is not that I love the Democrats’ policies. Both parties’ policies seem a roughly equal mix of good and bad. The reason I’m voting for Harris is that this election is about character.
As far as I can tell, Harris is a typical politician. That may not seem much of a recommendation. But Trump is something far worse. He seems to be completely without shame.
We saw that the last time he was president. He ran the White House like a mob boss, choosing subordinates for loyalty rather than ability. No one knows that better than the people who worked for him. Almost half the cabinet-level appointees from his previous administration have refused to endorse him. They’re warning us what he’s like.
The worst thing he did, in my opinion, was when he tried to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election. He knew he’d lost, but he called Mike Pence and tried to get him not to certify the election. Thank God Pence had the character to stand up to him. I don’t like to think what might have happened if he hadn’t.
Trying to remain in power after losing an election is banana republic stuff. You don’t do that in America. Conceding gracefully when you lose an election is more important than any policy a politician might have, because it’s only this principle that allows us to get rid of politicians whose policies don’t work.
So sure, Harris is a typical politician. But Trump is a crook. You can’t have that sort of person as president. It’s too risky."
I think of the modern FBI as generally straight-laced people, who take their sworn duty seriously.
Among all the crazy coup-like dismantling and subversion of government going on in recent weeks... starting purges of principled people who might still have some power to help keep a rogue branch in check... I guess would be one of the moves.
* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
"FBI agents sue DOJ to block release of who worked on Trump, Jan. 6 cases":
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/04/...
- Responding to the agency-level decision to pursue these doesn't need the info on these 5k staff
- The decision to investigate these is part of the FBIs job. Very obvious, visible crimes took place. It doesn't matter whether you agree with the perpetrators on some things; they broke the law as written. The outcome of investigations was convincing enough to get a lot of convictions (btw should we expect judges to be targeted next?).
There have been times when the FBI pursued stuff where it wasn't clear that a crime occurred. I recall seeing stuff about the FBI tailing casual environmental activists going to some small peaceful protest. Those politically motivated wastes of resources when there was a lot of room for discretion are perhaps cause for concern. Jan 6 people who broke into a federal building, attacked police officers, and destroyed property are not such a case.
- your analogy to shop-lifting seems like quite a stretch. Unlike shoplifting, assault is a violent crime. To my understanding, no Jan 6 convict was executed or sentenced to death. Prison sentences for assaulting an officer don't seem wildly out of line. The defendants had in some cases explicitly expressed their plan to e.g. abduct congressional representatives. This was not shop lifting.
The FBI also has a reputation as populated by generally very straight laced conservatives, so this is an odd situation to watch unfold.
Perhaps an american movie quote can explain it better, given HN demographics is made by nerds like me: This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applauses
We quite literally put American citizens in camps because of their race and nationality.
> “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless ― if the left allows it to be”
~ Kevin Roberts - President of Heritage Foundation
Now maybe we can stop pretending that we all want the same thing and just have different ways to get there. People have very different value systems and it has been on clear display for decades now.
But a key part is that there has to be an in-group and an out-group [2], which pretty much requires some great moral panic or perceived threat. For this reason you may hear the description that fascism is a "suicide cult". Why? Because the in-group continually shrinks as out-groups are eliminated and new out-groups are found.
A good example of this is describing the "Judeo-Christian" country. If there's one thing I can guarantee, it's the Christian fascist movement ever succeeds in eliminating its perceived enemies, they'll turn on Jewish people next.
Attacking those who worked on J6 prosecutions does two things: it feeds into the narrative about the "deep state" and identifies a new out-group to rally around.
American conservatism is fascism. It's only purpose is to punish one's perceived enemies. Cruelty is the point. Chaos is the point. All of this distracts from the true purpose: looting from the public purse. $8 trillion of the nation's ~$35T in national debt in the almost 250 year history of the US happened between 2016 and 2020. The vast majority of this was wealth transfer to the ultra-wealthy. 2024 to 2028 will be that on steroids.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
[2]: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-10-23/how-fascism-wo...
Trump, 4 years: 7.8
Biden, 4 years: 8.4
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/mar/12/joe-biden/...
https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and...
It’s not that I don’t think the debt is a problem, but it’s also typically a conservative talking point. Given your rhetoric on conservatism, and your representation of the facts, it seems unlikely to me you actually care about this.
In the first Trump administration, people talked about the emoluments clause and all the ways Trump was getting extra revenue from charging the Secret Service for hotel rooms at his properties when they were protecting him, or pressuring foreign diplomats to stay at his hotel to curry favor, etc etc. But the scale of this stuff was tiny in comparison to federal spending and wouldn't show up on any graph of the national debt or the federal budget.
But then he not only got away with everything, the SCOTUS ruling on immunity for "official acts" gives him broad protection for basically anything going forward. If he was directing Musk to use that Treasury Department payment system to send huge deposits directly to Trump's accounts, there would be no consequences. There's no reason not to milk the office for everything he can, and the institutional safeguards have collapsed.
How is this any different than the qualified immunity given to many law enforcement officers? I mean, personally I am in favor of qualified immunity going away…but why is it surprising that the president wouldn’t have something similar?
Seems to me that both a LEO as well as the president can lose their immunity if it’s determined that what they have done that they need immunity from falls outside of “official acts”. Might be harder to prove for the president, but not insurmountable.
- to my understanding, qualified immunity of law enforcement or other government officials is from civil lawsuits; if I get injured while being arrested, I can't sue the arresting officer. It also only applies while they're actually doing their job, and not violating clearly established law.
- the presumptive immunity that SCOTUS claims the president enjoys is a shield from criminal prosecution. The definition of "official acts" is unclear but seems to extend to tweeting to a mob during one's term in office.
But further, I think in context the SCOTUS recognition of such an immunity was surprising because it came after the DOJ had maintained that even if Trump was committing crimes in office, it was against department policy to prosecute him while in office, and then once he's out of office and charges are pursued, the court claimed that charges still could not be pursued.
> the president can lose their immunity if it’s determined
Determined by the 6-3 conservative court? I think that's unrealistic.
He said in his first campaign that he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and not suffer any consequences, and it turns out he was right.
To a degree law enforcement officers are immunized by their official acts. Where as some of those same acts are inherently criminal if a civilian was to do them. The argument being that police need an assurance that a violent act they must undertake (that would be criminally illegal for a civilian to do) in the course of doing their duty will not be, by default, prosecuted as if they were a civilian.
I think it’s not that different an argument for the president. A good example is President Obama’s drone strike against Al-Awlaki which essentially was a pretty stark violation of the 6th Amendment. That same immunity protection applies here as well. By arguing that fighting the war on terror as an official duty of the president, the President has immunity from the criminal act of intentionally killing a US citizen as a part of that duty.
> He said in his first campaign that he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and not suffer any consequences
Obvious bluster about his popularity and not relevant. However even to do that today he would need to have the predicate of it being an official act, without that he would be liable…and from what I have seen of this court, the conservative justices do not always vote in lockstep with each other.
Actually, that would probably be one of the few things that fail the "official act" test. Ordering the military to shoot someone, however....
But the outgroup can't be too big. Otherwise it becomes capable of real (rather than just apparent) resistance. Making "those who think crimes were committed on January 6th, and that those crimes should be prosecuted" the outgroup may be a strategic error, because that's far too many people.
I think, if this is following the fascist playbook, it's doing so accidently and badly. I think he's just trying to punish everyone who ever told him he did something wrong. (And make it so no one will do so ever in the future, so maybe that is part of the fascist playbook.)
> American conservatism is fascism. It's only purpose is to punish one's perceived enemies. Cruelty is the point. Chaos is the point.
That's not conservativism. That's the shell of conservativism after a hostile takeover. There's plenty of conservatives who are appalled at all this.
> $8 trillion of the nation's ~$35T in national debt in the almost 250 year history of the US happened between 2016 and 2020.
True. Now do 2020-2024.
Sure it is. You may not like it, but the hostile takeover was successful and you can't pretend it wasn't by disclaiming it. Today's conservative GOP are what they are, and pretending otherwise or playing semantics does no one any good -- except if you're defending those fascists.