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President Joe Biden's administration must hold his predecessor to account to restore public confidence in the law, according to several legal experts.
Merrick Garland vowed to "supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6," and at least one legal expert said former president Donald Trump and his enablers are "the common denominator" behind that violence, as well as other crimes great and small that led to hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths and nearly toppled U.S. democracy, wrote columnist Wajahat Ali for The Daily Beast.
<p>"The Biden administration needs to bring what I call a 'season of reckoning' for the corruption and grift that we have suffered through the last four years," trial attorney Katie Phang told Ali.</p><p>Phan believes the new administration must eliminate the Office of Legal Counsel's guidance that sitting presidents cannot be indicted for crimes, which prevented special counsel Robert Mueller from holding Trump accountable for obstruction of justice described in his report on Russian election interference.</p><p>"The easiest thing for Garland to do is to pick up <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-report-heat-map" target="_blank">those obstruction charges [articulated in the Mueller Report]</a>, literally all the investigative work has already been done," said Elie Mystal, justice correspondent for <em>The Nation</em>.</p><p>Mystal encouraged Garland to "follow the money" that would eventually lead to Trump's adult children, who he believes are "complicit in the entire graft and corruption of everything that's gone on."</p><p>Legal experts also agreed that Garland charge all 800 individuals who set foot inside the Capitol as Congress certified Biden's election win.</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/23/senate-capitol-riot-hearing-testimony" target="_blank"></a>"It would be a big mistake to adopt a 'Too Divisive to Jail' message," said law professor and author Jennifer Taub. "While some people may believe moving on and ignoring the offenses committed by Trump and his enablers would bring the country together and encourage harmony, quite the opposite is the case. If being too divisive creates immunity, it will only encourage the worst behavior and partisan based violence and crime."<span></span><br/></p>
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'The Everlasting Gobstopper of lies': CNN's Brianna Keilar perfectly destroys Trump's CPAC speech
March 01, 2021
CNN host Brianna Keilar on Monday dismantled former President Donald Trump's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Keilar began her remarks by describing CPAC as "candy for conspiracy theorist headlined this past weekend by the Everlasting Gobstopper of lies himself, former President Donald Trump."
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After playing a clip of Trump claiming that Republicans had been doing "a lot of winning," Keilar noted that former president's claim is a "straight-up lie."
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"Republicans lost the presidential election, they lost control of the Senate, they still don't control the House," the CNN host explained. "Donald Trump lost the popular vote twice. The House impeached him twice, though he was acquitted both times in the Senate. Twitter and Facebook banned him after he incited the insurrection on Jan. 6."
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Keilar topped it off by pointing out that Trump and his allies have lost nearly 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 election.
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The CNN host went on to observe that Trump's CPAC speech "does not play like somebody who's worried about inciting another insurrection."
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Keilar said that at another point in the speech, Trump sounded "like a mob boss reading his enemies list."
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"He knows what he's doing when he singles out Republicans who put their country before him," she explained. "He did it on Jan. 6. Trump told his followers where to go, lying to them that he would be there with them and then he turned the opposite direction and retired to the comfort of the White House to watch it all go down on TV."
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Keilar added: "The only difference is this time he's returning to the comfort of Mar-a-Lago."
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Watch the video below from CNN.
</p><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_mZyrRgIVuU" width="560"></iframe>
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In a column for CNN, a former adviser to both President George W. Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warned the Republican Party to not be fooled by the rousing reception Donald Trump received at CPAC over the weekend, saying the reality outside the conservative bubble is quite different than how the ex-president was viewed at the Florida Hyatt Hotel ballroom.
According to conservative Scott Jennings -- who also serves as a CNN political analyst -- Trump would likely lose in 2024 for the same reasons he lost in 2020.
<p>The analysts suggested that what dogged Trump in 2020 was his inability to bring new voters into the tent because of his alienating rhetoric and actions. Jennings explained the simple truth that a successful campaign depends on adding voters, not driving them away.</p><p>"As a practical matter, the GOP is currently <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/republicans-2020-gains-in-the-house-set-them-up-well-for-2022/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">capable</a> of winning majorities in the 2022 midterms because of geographic, jurisdictional, and redistricting advantages -- along with the strong possibility that President Joe Biden will be far more liberal than advertised," he wrote before adding, "But there's no evidence the GOP can win the 2024 presidential campaign unless it embraces a more elastic brand, which welcomes country clubbers, white and blue collar workers, young and old, White and non-White."</p><p>With that in mind, he claimed Trump is not <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-gop-is-trapped-in-trumps-rendezvous-with-yesterday/2021/02/28/976e1f70-7a12-11eb-85cd-9b7fa90c8873_story.html" target="_blank">the right candidate to fix what ails the GOP</a>.</p><p>"There is direct empirical evidence that putting Trump at the center of our party in 2024 is a probable loser, as Trump twice got a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/11/how-trumps-electoral-loss-compares-prior-11-elections/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">smaller percentage </a>of the vote than Mitt Romney. And that was before the failed insurrection wherein Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/11/how-trumps-electoral-loss-compares-prior-11-elections/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">violated</a> his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution," he explained before elaborating, "Some Republicans (especially those most loyal to Trump) make the mistake of believing politics to be a game of subtraction when it is really a game of addition. It is entirely possible to construct a rational, center-right policy platform that attracts a broad coalition that includes Trump supporters."</p><p>He then cautioned Republicans to discretely put distance between themselves and the former president because his minuses outweigh his pluses.</p><p>"Trump actually <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016" target="_blank">ran</a> on a policy platform in 2016 -- immigration, trade, drain the swamp. He <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2020" target="_blank">ran</a> on virtually nothing in 2020 and has left the Republican Party searching for an identity beyond blind loyalty to him," he wrote. "Where do we go from here? It's going to take a while to sort it out but running on nothing but '<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/opinion/trump-cpac.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage" target="_blank">more Trump</a>' and shrinking the party for the sin of joining a club like Trump's is unlikely to put a Republican back in the White House."</p><p>You can <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/28/opinions/trump-cpac-gop-jennings/index.html" target="_blank">read more here</a>.</p>
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