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Conservative demands Justice Department be investigated it if refuses to hold anyone accountable for spying
June 21, 2021
After it was revealed that President Donald Trump's Justice Department spied on reporters, members of Congress, their staff and families, many are demanding an investigation to uncover who was behind the warrants, the gag order and the investigation.
Writing for the Washington Post on Monday, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin argued that if the DOJ is refusing to investigate itself and hold people accountable, then Congress must do it.
"I had to hear from Apple and not the Justice Department about what had gone on in the last four years," said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who chairs the Intelligence Committee. "The inspector general is doing an investigation. I talked with the attorney general about going beyond that. I think he really needs to do a wholesale review of all of the politicization of the department over the last four years. What happened to our committee, what happened to members of the press, that's just a subset."
Schiff, who spoke to "Face the Nation" Sunday, went on to say that the former president and attorney general specifically intervened in criminal cases to help their allies and offer pardons in exchange for loyalty.
"These are gross abuses of the independence of the Justice Department, and we don't know how far . . . they run. And our new attorney general has to find out," he said.
Rubin explained that there are still unknown victims in the DOJ's abuse over the leak investigation. She also noted that Americans still don't know the degree to which the DOJ objected to Trump on ethical grounds or agreed to comply with demands they knew were illegal or unethical. There's also the problem of the DOJ misrepresenting things in court, which she said deserves "consequences or legal accountability."
"We, therefore, lack a full picture of events and have no way of knowing whether any attorney deserves censure, termination or even prosecution," she wrote.
She agreed with Schiff's demand for new Attorney General Merrick Garland to restore the DOJ's credibility and put safeguards in place to ensure the abuse can never happen again.
"If Garland does not rise to the occasion, however, Congress is not off the hook," she continued. "Members have a constitutional obligation to conduct oversight. The department's past conduct is not past if those who participated in wrongdoing remain or if others have absorbed the wrong lessons. A congressional investigation might take place under the auspices of the House and Senate judiciary committees; alternatively, a select committee could be formed to undertake the task."
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Claims that 'QAnon is dead' are premature -- the conspiracy cult is evolving into something even worse: report
June 21, 2021
As the U.S. Capitol was being attacked on Jan. 6, Mike Rothschild was finishing up his book "The Storm is Upon Us," his book about the QAnon conspiracy cult. Speaking to VICE News, Rothschild said that the events of Jan. 6 were a culmination of lies and conspiracy theories that had been spreading online since Donald Trump's surge to the presidency.
"Once I realized what was going on and how connected to QAnon [the Capitol riot] was, I realized I had to throw out the entire introduction I'd already written and completely rewrite the first chapter," Rothschild said.
"The central thing to understand about QAnon is that the QAnon that existed from October 2017 to January 2021 is done," Rothschild said. "There is no storm, there's not going to be a great awakening, Joe Biden is not going to enact a purge of the deep state. That's over. There's no more Q drops, you know that most of the big Q promoters have been run off of popular social media. So all of that is done."
But despite claims of the decline of QAnon's influence, Rothschild says the conspiracy theory's adherents "are still hanging on to this idea of this great change event, making everything better."
"It's just that what that event is has changed. For three-and-a-half-years, it was Donald Trump is going to tweet that the storm is upon us, the indictments are going to be unsealed, the arrests are going to happen, the worst people are going to be hanged on TV or whatever, and everything's going to be great," he said.
According to Rothschild, the true threat of QAnon is how it's moved from a fringe movement to an increasingly mainstream presence in American politics.
"You have a major party in this country where the majority of the people who are in this party do not think that the President was legitimately elected," he said.
"I'm very concerned about true believers, getting to a point where they realize that Donald Trump is not going to be the president. And they're going to take it out on somebody."
Read the full interview over at VICE News.
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Jen Psaki whacks Jim Jordan's complaint about gas prices with a reminder of Trump's disastrous economic record
June 21, 2021
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Monday complained about gas prices being higher now than they were a year ago -- and got promptly shut down by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
Writing on Twitter, Jordan complained that the average price of gas now is just over $3 a gallon, while it was only $2.21 per gallon a year ago.
What Jordan failed to mention, of course, is that gas was so cheap because the COVID-19 pandemic had left tens of millions of Americans unemployed and stuck at home.
"You forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June 2018," Psaki informed him. "Or that this time last year unemployment was 11.1% -- today it's 5.8%."
For good measure, Psaki also whacked Jordan over Republicans' proposals to pay for the president's infrastructure package by raising the gas tax.
"[President Biden] agrees families shouldn't pay more at the pump -- that's why he's opposed to GOP proposals to raise the gas tax," she wrote.
You forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June 2018. Or that this time last year unemp… https://t.co/iPYfdnG80t— Jen Psaki (@Jen Psaki) 1624293923.0
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