Joe Conason

In the days since Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unveiled his office’s 34-count indictment of Donald J. Trump, arguments about the likelihood of conviction have erupted on every cable news program, as the former president spews fusillades of lies and threats.

Most of this noise is pointless and hardly worth engaging. The only opinion that matters may someday be announced by a jury foreperson in a court of law.

Yet there is one defense of Trump, repeated even by people who aren’t his sycophants, that does demand closer examination – the claim that Bragg, a local prosecutor, shouldn’t bring charges that the Justice Department already rejected.

To establish that Trump committed felonies, they note, Bragg must prove that he not only concocted fake business records to cover up hush-money payoffs to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but that he intended to conceal violations of federal campaign or other laws. And they will say that the prosecution of presidential campaign finance crimes is usually the responsibility of federal law enforcement agencies.

That rationalization elides the central question: Why should Trump escape accountability for the same crimes that sent his former attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen to prison? It’s a hard question to answer in a system that supposedly upholds equal justice for all.

And the canned response doesn’t hold up well under scrutiny.

It begins to fall apart when we recall that in the sentencing memorandum that urged a harsh punishment for Cohen, the Justice Department identified a co-conspirator it called “Individual-1,” a thin scrim used to disguise Trump, as the actual instigator of the payoff scheme.

It disintegrates completely when we remember who really made the decision to abandon the case against “Individual-1.”

That was William Barr, the former Attorney General who has tried to shine up the terrible reputation he earned on the job by stating the obvious fact that Trump’s claims of election fraud were “complete bullshit.” That acknowledgment of reality, no more or less than his position demanded, only serves to highlight the abject cowardice of nearly all his fellow Republicans. But it doesn’t absolve Barr of his other horrifically unethical actions in office.

According to Geoffrey Berman -- the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office oversaw the guilty plea and sentencing of Cohen -- Barr sought to undermine any potential prosecution of Trump from his first day as attorney general in 2019. To protect Trump, he even considered overturning Cohen’s campaign-finance convictions, as the astonished Berman recounted in his memoir.

On several occasions, Barr sought to take control of the investigation. He ordered Justice Department lawyers to come up with reasons to abandon the case. He tried more than once to force Berman to drop it. When none of those tactics worked, he attempted to move the case from Berman’s office in the Southern District of New York to the Eastern District, where he evidently believed that the U.S. attorney would help him to bury it.

This kind of misconduct became a pattern for Barr when he interfered outrageously in the cases against Trump adviser and dirty trickster Roger Stone and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Infuriating career prosecutors, he behaved more like a mob defense counsel than the chief law enforcement officer, sworn to uphold the law and stand guard against national security threats. Among other things, he had Trump fire Berman and tried to replace him with a toady.

So what Alvin Bragg actually did by bringing the Trump indictment was to vindicate the constitutional system that Bill Barr corruptly sabotaged over and over again.

We must remind ourselves often that the former president, like any other accused suspect, is innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But we should also remember what the Justice Department said about Michael Cohen in its sentencing memorandum, which insisted on a prison term despite his cooperation: “His offenses strike at several pillars of our society and system of government: the payment of taxes; transparent and fair elections; and truthfulness before government and in business.”

Those words apply with equal if not greater force to “Individual-1,” as Trump was called in that same document – and the chance to hold him accountable is at last drawing nearer.

Anyone who was cynical or dismissive about Fox News Channel before now has suddenly learned that they weren't cynical or dismissive enough. Astounding evidence emerging this week from the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox, Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan and others shows, in excruciating detail, how the "fair and balanced" network actively lied to its viewers about purported "fraud" in the 2020 presidential election.

In their 192-page motion for summary judgment against Fox, the Dominion attorneys cite dozens of instances of Fox hosts and news executives consciously broadcasting truly outlandish falsehoods manufactured by former President Donald Trump's election team. Nobody with any sense could possibly have believed the nonsense claims of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and nobody at Fox News did — as the internal messages and testimony cited by Dominion prove.

If it was ever possible to believe anything on Fox News, it isn't anymore. What these documents demonstrate beyond question is that from Murdoch down, the Fox apparatus prizes ratings above all else, and in their greed will readily trash the truth night after night. They know that they're lying, and they just don't care.

Actually, that's not entirely fair: The evidence shows that the Fox knaves knew they were lying and cared a little bit, because they realize how bad it all looks. But they lied anyway, over and over, because that's what hypnotizes the Trump cult.

"That whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second," Fox host Sean Hannity testified about Powell, whom he described as a "lunatic" in a text message. Yet Hannity broadcast her claims repeatedly, no doubt inspiring viewers to believe violence might be required to restore Trump's "stolen" victory.

Evidently the Fox primetime hosts discussed their doubts among themselves. Laura Ingraham texted Hannity and Tucker Carlson that Powell "is a bit nuts. Sorry but she is." Carlson texted that "Sidney Powell is lying," mocking her conspiracy theories as "ludicrous" and "totally off the rails." Yet that wasn't what they told the gullible Fox audience, who yearned to believe that Trump could nullify Biden's election somehow.

Nearly every Fox host colluded in this immoral scheme.

The behavior of Maria Bartiromo, who had built a reputation as a competent business journalist, was so disturbing that her colleagues began to question her mental condition. In the days following the election, when she first promoted Powell's mad theories about Dominion software switching votes from Trump to Biden, Bartiromo received a startling email from the Trump lawyer about her "source" on the Dominion fraud accusations.

In that message, titled "Election Fraud Info," the source also claimed that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was purposefully killed at the annual Bohemian Grove camp during a weeklong human hunting expedition and that the late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch were secretly meeting to decide how to trash Trump.

"Who am I? And how do I know all of this?" wrote Powell's source. "I've had the strangest dreams since I was a little girl, was internally decapitated, and yet, I live. The Wind tells me I'm a ghost, but I don't believe it."

Former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, who received (and concealed) that same insane message, likewise reinforced the loony conspiracies articulated by the Trump lawyers. On Twitter and on air, he echoed Powell's warning that the 2020 election represented a "cyber Pearl Harbor" and berated Attorney General William Barr for debunking the president's fraud claims. "We have tremendous evidence already," Dobbs said — a remark he later admitted, under oath, was simply never true.

In a limited space, it is impossible to convey the full impact of these disclosures, which have vaporized the reputations of Dobbs, Bartiromo, Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham and their bosses like a nuclear blast. While their deranged viewers may remain, they are forever diminished. Neither Fox News nor its personnel have ever retracted their grotesque lies.

More important than the fortunes of Fox News — which should suffer a summary judgment and a multibillion-dollar penalty — was the malignant purpose of that fraudulent "election fraud" campaign. Steve Bannon, a convicted fraudster himself, articulated its aims in a message to Bartiromo within days after the election.

Bannon confided to her that "71 million voters will never accept Biden. This process is to destroy his presidency before it even starts; IF it even starts. We either close on Trumps (sic) victory or delegitimize Biden. THE PLAY."

That was indeed the "play" for the anti-democratic Right — and Murdoch's minions will do it again next year, without a twinge of conscience, for money and power.

During his FBI career, McGonigal oversaw investigations of Deripaska and other oligarchs suspected of various crimes, including espionage. Now the exposure of his illegal connection with Deripaska may provide fresh insights into Trump's tainted victory.

On October 4, 2016, a month before Election Day, FBI director James Comey appointed McGonigal as special agent in charge of the FBI counterintelligence division in New York City, an exceptionally influential job that he took over at an extraordinarily sensitive moment. The bureau already had open investigations of both Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican adversary Trump. The Clinton investigation concerned "her emails," of course, and the Trump investigation involved his campaign's Russian connections.

What followed McGonigal's sudden ascent to power in the New York FBI office were two seemingly separate incidents, occurring days before the election, that had a fateful impact. On October 28, Comey sent a letter to the Congress publicly announcing that the bureau had resumed its investigation of Clinton due to the discovery of a laptop owned by former Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose spouse Huma Abedin was a top Clinton aide.

Months earlier the Justice Department had cleared Clinton of any crime, but Comey violated Justice Department guidelines in accusing her of being neglectful about classified information, though it was later revealed that her emails contained no classified documents. (That means zero, zilch, nada, none, nothing.) But then Comey was driven to examine Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop.

Comey's announcement stopped the Clinton campaign's forward momentum and almost certainly cost her the election — even though the FBI director acknowledged on November 2, days before the election, that nearly all of the data on the Weiner laptop duplicated emails the FBI already had seen. None contained any damaging information. Just as Clinton was severely damaged among swing suburban voters, Trump's base voters were galvanized.

While Comey's broadside against Clinton stunned the nation, perhaps nobody should have been shocked. Trump crony Rudolph Giuliani —who for decades maintained a close relationship with Republican-leaning officials in the New York FBI office as the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — had repeatedly hinted on Fox News in the weeks before the election that the bureau was sitting on a "big surprise" that would vault his candidate to victory.

Meanwhile, on October 31, 2016, the New York Times published a front-page story on that other FBI investigation, known internally as "Crossfire Hurricane," which unlike her emails had gotten no public attention (and inspired no leaks). The headline was declarative and conclusive: "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia." That false story, exonerating Trump of Kremlin connections that we now know were extensive and incriminating, was pushed by Trump operatives and agents and clearly originated in the New York FBI counterintelligence division — which had played a key role in the beginning of Crossfire Hurricane. It quoted anonymous "law enforcement sources," which did not mean a local police lieutenant.

Before he moved on to other positions at FBI headquarters, McGonigal's career had begun in New York, where he worked closely with James Kallstrom — the right-wing ideologue who headed the New York office for decades. A bosom buddy of Giuliani and Trump, Kallstrom is suspected of leading the pressure campaign that induced Comey to reopen the Clinton investigation. The explicit threat of leaks by agents and former agents like Kallstrom, who reportedly hated Clinton, spurred Comey's disastrous decision and his public announcement, which again violated department policy against election interference.

Damning as those facts may seem, they only get us so far. There is much more to learn before we can understand the full story of 2016. The scrupulously nonpartisan presidential historian Michael Beschloss asked this week whether McGonigal's indictment will lead us closer to the truth. Will the prosecution of McGonigal reveal the details of his relationship with Deripaska, whom he had once investigated before becoming his corrupt stooge? Will Comey provide a full and honest accounting of what happened in the New York FBI office before the election? Will the New York Times examine — and disclose — how that misleading story about Trump and Russia appeared on its front page? Who briefed the Times for that bogus story?

With Trump seeking to return to the White House, the answers to those questions do not merely reckon with the past but are critical to democracy's future. The malign conspirators who first brought that would-be tyrant to power, both foreign and domestic, are still at large.

One of Donald Trump’s Big Lies has just been debunked, no less than by a federal jury. For years, Trump has been claiming that he is the blameless victim of what he derides as the “Russia Russia Russia hoax” – a sinister conspiracy perpetrated by former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as well as a host of other Democrats, aided by shadowy figures in the FBI.

Now America can be certain that this is all untrue because, after days and weeks and months of costly probes and prosecutions, a jury has decisively rejected Trump’s conspiracy claims this week – for the second time. It was a humiliating verdict, with ramifications both domestic and global.

Three years ago, William Barr, then the United States attorney general, appointed John Durham, the US Attorney in Connecticut, as a Justice Department special counsel to investigate Trump’s“hoax” claims against the FBI. The mere announcement of Durham’s appointment immediately lent an undeserved patina of plausibility, at least on Fox News, to the notion that something was very wrong in 2016 when FBI counterintelligence officials opened a file on Trump’s Russia connections. Supposedly, Durham’s investigation would prove it.

Unfortunately for Durham (and Trump), both of the major cases he brought against individuals who blew the whistle on Trump’s disturbing relationship with the Kremlin ended badly.: The first acquittal came five months ago, when a jury rejected charges that an attorney named Michael Sussmann had lied about the identity of his client when reporting his concerns about Trump to the bureau. The second came on October 18, when another jury acquitted Igor Danchenko, charged with lying to the FBI about the sources behind the legendary “dossier” about Trump and Russia assembled by former MI5 agent Christopher Steele. (Durham did win a guilty plea from an FBI lawyer for misrepresenting minor details in an email seeking a surveillance warrant, but that plea resulted in no jail time.)

The jury deliberations in both of these convoluted cases required only hours, not days. When Durham summed up his case to the jury in the Danchenko case by unfurling the “Russia hoax” conspiracy theory, he was rebuked by the judge and silenced.

So, despite millions of dollars spent, with all the resources of the Justice Department behind him, Durham failed to prove any of his big claims. The only thing he established beyond doubt is that his own judgment was seriously flawed.

In the Danchenko case he did contrive, no doubt by mistake, to show that the FBI had very sound reasons to investigate Trump’s Russia ties that had nothing to do with the Steele dossier. When asked by the prosecution why the counterintelligence division opened that case, FBI analyst Brian Auten gave a simple and, truthful answer: The United States had received a reliable tip from a friendly foreign government about a Trump campaign aide who bragged that the Russians had offered to help defeat Hillary Clinton. In that moment, Auten exploded Trump’s outrageously false attacks on the US intelligence and law enforcement, along with the entire rationale for Durham’s snipe hunt.

Why does this still matter? In a world imperiled by Russian aggression, not only its invasion of Ukraine but also its continuing disinformation campaigns against democracies, the resilience and unity of Western governments remain our best defense against an increasingly grim, authoritarian future. At the core of that defense is NATO, an alliance that depends on the steadfastness of the United States. As midterm elections approach, the painstaking effort by President Joe Biden to maintain NATO support to Ukraine against the war criminal Vladimir Putin is under threat from a potential Republican Congress.

Trump’s lies about Russia, which damaged US relations with Ukraine during his presidency, were always designed to conceal his dubious relationship with Putin. He and his semi-fascist MAGA Republicans, who will hold important positions if the Republicans win control, talk about abandoning Ukraine and perhaps wrecking NATO, all in service of the Kremlin. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the man who would become Speaker, has said that his caucus would reduce or eliminate military aid to Ukraine – a diplomatic disaster of historic dimensions.

In his quest for power, the spineless McCarthy has cast aside his own insight into Donald Trump’s character and loyalty, which he privately disclosed to Republican members in June 2016, when he told them that he believed Putin was paying Trump, and added, “Swear to God.” Trump’s subservience to Putin and his sway over the Republican Party’s “semi-fascist”leadership matter enormously. The real investigations of “Russia Russia Russia” have revealed a grave threat to US and world security – and that threat has not receded an inch.

In Washington, acrimonious public disagreements among congressional leaders of the same party are unusual, which was why reporters took note not long ago when Sen. Mitch McConnell publicly spanked Sen. Rick Scott for what he considered an act of monumental stupidity.

What infuriated the Senate minority leader, who yearns above all to become the majority leader again, was Scott's unveiling of a 60-page "plan" describing what the Republicans will do if and when their party regains the majority. As chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott's job is to ensure victory in the November midterm by doling out tens of millions to candidates. But McConnell saw Scott's plan as the equivalent of a loud emission of noxious gas: unpleasant, unhelpful and very much to be avoided. McConnell has steadfastly refused to state what Republicans would do if they win the Senate; now, the lunkhead Rick Scott has let the cat out of the bag.

Especially irksome to McConnell were two aspects of Scott's blueprint. "Let me tell you what would not be part of our agenda," snapped McConnell. "We will not have, as part of our agenda, a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years. That will not be part of the Republican Senate majority agenda."

Of course, McConnell just doesn't want to tell voters what his party will do, because their ideas are deeply unpopular and always get them in trouble, like when Newt Gingrich proposed privatizing Medicare and former President George W. Bush proposed privatizing Social Security.

Scott's scheme to raise income taxes on most households struck McConnell as politically insane, and so did the plan's endorsement of allowing "all federal legislation," including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, to simply expire within five years.

Scott, for his part, has portrayed himself as a "bold" visionary victimized by conventional thinkers. Polling, however, indicates that the Scott scheme is profoundly unpopular among all voters, including Republicans, with majorities north of 65% rejecting it. No more than 15% like it.

So, the Florida senator has simply lied since then. "No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security," he insists, although that's exactly what his plan urges.

Perhaps McConnell was too polite to mention the other utterly politically crazy aspect of the Scott proposal: namely, the likelihood that attacking Medicare and Medicaid will remind America about the massive health care fraud underlying Rick Scott's enormous personal fortune, estimated at $300 million.

Beginning in 1987, Scott founded and built Columbia/HCA, a hospital chain that included hundreds of health care providers across multiple states and engorged itself on billions in Medicare and Medicaid fees. Unfortunately, this lucrative business involved truly gigantic levels of fraud, which by early 1997 drew the attention of federal investigators. Columbia/HCA illegally scammed billions of dollars intended for patient care, perpetrating what remains the biggest fraud on government ever by any health care institution.

The company's board forced Scott to resign within months after the federal investigation became public. He pleaded ignorance, barely escaped indictment and walked away with vast wealth. He claims to have accepted "responsibility," although he consistently blamed others, adding piously that the experience "made me a better leader."

Somehow, Florida's voters narrowly elected him governor in 2010 and then to the U.S. Senate in 2018. The words of his 2010 primary opponent Bill McCollum, a former Navy prosecutor and Florida attorney general, still ring true. During the campaign McCollum denounced Scott as "the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA who is inseparably associated with one of the most massive Medicare fraud schemes in American history."

Scott's sordid narrative raises an obvious question. How did this come to pass? We know that Florida voters have a habit of electing some truly awful politicians, and that Scott spent $60 million to win his first election. We know that Republican leaders in Washington have no problem with fraud or corruption, so long as it accrues to their own power. Just ask "Moscow Mitch," who was in the tank with Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch with Kentucky investments. We know that the Republican concern for ensuring the fairness and stability of our health care system is nil, given their long war against Medicare and, more recently, the Affordable Care Act. Now, they won't even act to reduce the cost of lifesaving insulin.

Voters should be aware that this corporate malefactor is in charge of handing out the big campaign bucks from the Senate Republican campaign — and that he aims to destroy the nation's most successful and popular domestic programs. Somebody better tell them before November. Buyer beware.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Amid the pandemic's grim tableau of death, illness and disinformation, a moment of comic relief broke through in December. It was the darkest kind of comedy, to be sure, but we'll take whatever we can get these days. The occasion was Donald Trump's belated endorsement of the coronavirus vaccines — which almost instantly provoked an eruption of panic and fury among his cultists.

No doubt this conflict has raged within the former president's head for many months now, while he vacillated between glomming credit for the vaccines his administration supported and pandering to the ignorance and paranoia of his Republican political base. Trump needs to boast constantly about himself and his presidency, yet he also depends on the kind of conspiratorial deceptions promoted by the anti-vaccine movement. It must have been a torturous quandary for him.

Suddenly, however, he blurted the truth at an event in Dallas on December 19, when Bill O'Reilly asked whether he had gotten a booster shot. "Yes," he said, as some in the audience began to boo him. Trying to quiet the jeering, he urged his followers to "take credit (for the vaccines). Take credit for it. It's great. What we've done is historic. Don't let them take it away. Don't take it away from ourselves. Don't let them take that away from you."

What he meant, of course, was don't let "them" — whoever they may be — take credit away from him. While whether his administration's role in fostering vaccine research was essential or not is a matter of dispute, he seems determined to secure his own place in that historic development. He reiterated the point during an interview with the fanatical anti-vaxxer Candace Owens, who promotes toxic "cures" such as colloidal silver instead.

Why Trump adopted a more forthright position now isn't obvious. Is it because he wants to run again in 2024, and knows his mismanagement of the pandemic has hurt him among swing voters? Is it because he realizes that his craziest supporters are too narrow a constituency to win another national election?

Whatever his motive, Trump's decision to speak out on behalf of vaccination has irked some of his most sycophantic fans, creating hilarious consternation on the far Right. Owens, for instance, suggested that he is "too old" to "do his own research" on the internet, presumably where she finds the perilous falsehoods that she purveys for profit.

That stinging insult was amplified by a denunciation and then a threat from Alex Jones, the Texas conspiracy theorist who notoriously claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was a staged event. On Christmas Day, Jones said the man he once promoted as the nation's savior is "ignorant or one of the most evil men who ever lived." A few days later, Jones warned that he may "dish all the dirt" on Trump, whom he said is surrounded by "bad advisers," and urged his followers to "move on" from the "pathetic" ex-president.

Meanwhile in another precinct of Cuckooland, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene struggled to defend her "favorite president of all time." The Georgia congresswoman has not only vowed never to get vaccinated but has also accrued tens of thousands of dollars in fines for refusing to wear a mask in the Capitol as required by House rules. Having spread lies about the dangers and efficacy of vaccines for months, Greene comforts herself and her followers by noting that Trump opposes any vaccine mandate — and then changing the subject to the Big Lie about the 2020 election and the perfidy of less insane Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Finally, President Joe Biden heightened these contradictions when he praised Trump for promoting vaccinations. This clever intervention left Trump "appreciative," and also flabbergasted and flat-footed.

Had Trump only possessed the courage to urge his followers to vaccinate as loudly as he lies about the election, he might have saved many thousands of lives. But if he now rejects his most conspiratorial and crazed backers — and they push him away too — that will be a healthy and entertaining turn for our politics.

Of all the lurid nonsense circulating among conspiracy-addled Republicans, none of their theories is viler than the libel of child sexual abuse that began under the rubric of "Pizzagate" and became the basis of the cult ideology of QAnon. So successful was the smear campaign begun by followers of Donald Trump that millions of deranged people now believe those gothic horror tales targeting the likes of Hillary Clinton, Chrissy Teigen, and Tom Hanks, with the connivance of Republican politicians in search of Jewish space lasers.

Then there's real life, in which actual, detestable pedophiles and other sex offenders can depend on their reliable defender Kenneth W. Starr to shield them from the punishment they deserve. Yes, it's that Ken Starr, the Savanarola of sexual propriety, who is the pedophiles' best friend.

What we have learned in recent days about the sanctimonious Starr, from his alleged sexual infidelities to his zealous defense of the late Jeffrey Epstein, not only strips away his pious pretensions as sheer hypocrisies but also raises serious questions about his conduct that must still be answered.

A former public relations executive named Judi Hershman opened the latest inquest into Starr's iniquities on July 13 when she published an essay on Medium titled "Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me" that detailed, among many other things, her own illicit affair with the former independent counsel. Her account of an episode with the borderline Kavanaugh and his uncontrollable temper when they both worked for Starr on the Clinton prosecution, as well as her disillusionment with the misogynistic Starr, is worth reading. Yes, that Ken Starr, who, she says, took her hand and "placed it on his crotch."

Hershman recalls Starr's attempt in 2010 to deceive her into "counseling" Epstein, whom he whitewashed as "a very wealthy, very smart businessman who got himself into trouble for getting involved with a couple of underage girls who lied about their ages." He explained that "everyone deserves representation" and that the very smart businessman had "promised to keep it above 18 from now on." By then Epstein had raped scores of underage girls, and thereafter continued to do so.

Hershman writes that at the time, it didn't occur to her that Starr himself would be lying about Epstein, or that he might have been involved in executing the "secret and egregious sweetheart deal" that allowed the very smart businessman to evade justice for so many years.

But according to a new book by Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown, who first blew the lid off that deal, Starr was zealously committed to the Epstein defense. Her earlier reporting led to the dismissal of Alex Azar, the U.S. Attorney in Florida who signed off on that agreement, from former President Donald Trump's cabinet.

In Perversion of Justice, Brown writes that Epstein brought on Starr and Jay Lefkowitz, his longtime associate and partner at Kirkland & Ellis, because of their connections in the Bush Justice Department. Starr's campaign on behalf of Epstein included a "brutal" smear of a female prosecutor and an insider lobbying effort at the department's Washington headquarters.

Apparently, Starr has a strangely protective attitude toward molesters and rapists, even when he isn't being paid big money to defend them. A few years after his crusade on Epstein's behalf, he and his wife sent a letter to a county judge urging leniency for Christopher Kloman, a retired school administrator and friend of the Starrs who pled guilty to molesting five girls at the Potomac School in McLean, Virginia. They thought he should be sentenced to community service, but the judge instead gave him 43 years in prison.

Americans first glimpsed the dark side of Starr's character when he published the salacious Starr Report (co-authored by Kavanaugh) that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. They learned more about him when he was booted from the presidency of Baylor University for covering up the rampant sexual abuse of women on campus, including a gang rape by football players. With his partisan fanaticism and his bogus religiosity, he was a natural for Trump's impeachment defense.

Considering the smears perpetrated against Hillary Clinton in recent years, it is ironic indeed to review the unsavory conduct of a man who spent so much public time and money attempting to frame her for crimes she didn't commit as first lady. But these revelations about Starr should evoke more than bemused contempt.

What Julie Brown's book demands is a full investigation of an authentic conspiracy to pervert justice by Republican prosecutors and lawyers, including Starr. The Justice Department and the House and Senate judiciary committees must not let them get away with it.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

Conspiracy has replaced policy as the motivating force of the Republican Party and its media minions — but only the most flimsy and imaginary conspiracies qualify for partisan attention. Actual criminal conspiracies that threaten the nation merit no concern.

That's why congressional Republicans killed the independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection but now insinuate that the terrible events of that day were secretly instigated by the FBI. While there is no shred of evidence to support that fraudulent and insulting claim, the Party of Trump can say anything to its moronic cultists without fear of contradiction. They're faithful supporters of law enforcement, except when they're insulting law enforcement officers, accusing them of felonious schemes or perhaps trying to maim them.

Such fabrications ought to be familiar to anyone who has been paying attention over the past few years. Concocted to distract from real events and issues, they have become the standard Trumpist retort whenever a troubling question arises.

When the collusive relationship between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin became too obvious to ignore, the response from the suspected perpetrators (and traitors) in the White House was to scream "conspiracy." Somebody was conspiring to mount a "witch hunt" against Trump, whether it was the Deep State, the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, the fake news media, or all of them combined. Investigators and subpoenas uncovered the facts, which included Trump Tower meetings with Russian agents, interference by Russian intelligence assets to support Trump, and even a handoff of sensitive campaign materials to a Russian spy. Then came the cover-up, with Trump promising (and eventually delivering) pardons to Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and other crooks who might incriminate him.

Dismissing all of that, Attorney General Bill Barr pretended to see a possible conspiracy against Trump — and even deputized a U.S. Attorney named John Durham to uncover it. By the time that probe came up empty, however, everyone had presumably moved on.

Now the Republicans want to avoid a thorough investigation of the January 6 insurrection — and the malign and traitorous actors behind it — at any cost. Any serious probe will not only incriminate Trump and certain figures around him but may well implicate members of the House Republican caucus who encouraged the violence. We already know at least a few of their names, including Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. All of them are frantically trying to conceal the horror of that day. Their actions scream consciousness of guilt.

Equally troubling for the Republican leaders is the prospect of testifying under oath about their own knowledge of what went down. They don't want to discuss the very strange failure by Trump to respond to pleas for help while the rioters hunted for members with intent to kill — as recounted by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. It's just too sickening, and so is their cowardice.

The Justice Department is prosecuting extremely violent conspiracies by members of the Trump-affiliated groups that attacked the Capitol, notably the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the QAnon cult. When all of the connections between those scummy outfits and Trump's circle are finally revealed, McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pray that America will no longer be paying attention.

If the fascist faction in the House — and their spokesman Tucker Carlson, the Fox News fabulist — believe their own slanders of the FBI, they should be clamoring for an independent investigation. But they're manufacturing a lie — and they know it.

Fortunately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just announced the formation of a House select committee to mount a full investigation of the January 6 insurrection. That special committee will have subpoena authority and, hopefully, a Democratic chair who will pursue the facts without remorse or fear. Unlike the independent commission, which Republicans rejected despite concessions to all of their demands, this committee will face no deadlines, nor require bipartisan agreement on investigative decisions.

Yes, there was, and is, a conspiracy against democracy, whose ringleaders will be exposed — despite the Republican leadership's desperate attempts to shield them.

Now that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has confirmed reports that he is under investigation by the FBI for alleged campaign finance violations, ordinary postal customers who have suffered under his regime may rightly wonder why he is still in office. That is an urgent question — and has been an urgent question ever since President Joe Biden's inauguration — but it is worth examining how DeJoy got the job, and how he abused a position of constitutional trust.

The FBI probe concerns an alleged "straw donor" scheme undertaken by DeJoy to illegally funnel over a million dollars in excess contributions to the Republican Party and Donald Trump's presidential campaign. It's an obvious form of trickery designed to evade federal limitations on individual donations by urging others to support a campaign or candidate and then reimbursing them under the table. Corporate executives with political ambitions like DeJoy have committed this particular felony over and over again — and if DeJoy is indicted and convicted, he won't be the first suit sent to prison for it.

During and after the 2016 election, DeJoy raised upwards of a million dollars each for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. For that he was named one of the party's three deputy finance chairmen — along with Michael Cohen, then still Donald Trump's personal attorney, and venture capitalist Elliott Broidy.

By then, Broidy had already been convicted on public corruption and bribery charges, while Cohen would soon plead guilty to campaign finance crimes as well as bank fraud. DeJoy would complete a dubious trifecta.

Last fall, a Washington Post investigation found that DeJoy had used the straw donor technique for over a decade to raise his profile as a Republican fundraiser in North Carolina. Former employees of New Breed Logistics, the supply chain firm he founded and then sold, said they had been pressured to make donations and repaid with bonuses and other compensation. The pattern dated back to the Bush administration — and appeared to have won at least two ambassadorial appointments for DeJoy's wife, Aldona Wos.

Yet while DeJoy's appointment as postmaster general was obviously greased by his massive donations, his alleged violations of election law are not the worst aspect of his regime. Even more troubling are major conflicts of interest that he has failed to resolve — and that some experts have described as potentially criminal.

When DeJoy sold New Breed to XPO Logistics, he held onto large amounts of stock and options in the merged company — which is a U.S. Postal Service contractor and might well profit from decisions made by him as postmaster. Policies promoted by DeJoy to diminish and even destroy postal delivery last year became controversial because of their effect on mail balloting — which his patron Trump blatantly sought to impede for partisan gain. But DeJoy is suspected of devising policies destructive to the Postal Service for his own self-serving purposes, too.

DeJoy and his family have invested tens of millions of dollars in companies, including XPO, that either contract with USPS, compete directly with USPS or both. Their investments in those competing firms, such as United Parcel Service, Forward Air and JB Hunt Trucking, are estimated between $30 million and $76 million, according to their own financial disclosures. Holding those interests in competing companies while serving in government is a serious violation of the law.

As Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, said last year, "the idea that you can be a Postmaster General and hold tens of millions in stocks in a postal service contractor is pretty shocking." Except that the behavior of Trump, his family, his treasury secretary and many other conflicted employees lowered ethical expectations below zero.

Incredibly, DeJoy has only pretended to shed those conflicts since they were exposed last summer — by "divesting" his XPO holdings to his adult children. He continues to represent a holdover of the corrupt administration that voters ousted in 2020. And his plans to wreck the U.S. Postal Service remain a grave danger to an agency founded in Constitutional authority.

Biden could take action to have the Postal Service Board of Governors remove DeJoy from the board, which would mean he could no longer serve as postmaster general by law. Americans who depend on the mail for their livelihoods, medications and so much more need reform now. They can't wait until the last crooked Trump appointee is taken away in handcuffs.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

When House Republicans deposed Liz Cheney from her leadership post, they were widely mocked for that display of abject servility to former President Donald Trump. But the motives behind her abrupt removal are more profound — and far more sinister — than the Wyoming representative's penchant for angering Trump.

Only a few months ago, Trump's irritation wasn't enough to undo Cheney, who easily survived a vote to remove her that was promoted by the ex-president's surrogates, notably the disgraced Rep. Matt Gaetz. Back in February, she had just voted to impeach Trump but nevertheless retained the support of two-thirds of her fellow Republicans and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

So why did the Republicans, spurred by McCarthy, feel so compelled to oust her now?

According to Byron York, a veteran right-wing columnist well-connected with GOP leaders, Cheney lost her colleagues by continuing to confront Trump's attacks on American democracy. York suggests that her opposition to the big lie about the election and its aftermath "had become a distraction from the GOP's mission to oppose the Biden agenda and win back the House." Said one Republican who switched from supporting Cheney to opposing her, "I think a lot of people have changed their minds since the first vote because she just kept it going. We're trying to go forward."

To those Republicans, going forward means never looking back — and burying the January 6 assault on the Capitol, the events leading up to that attack, and especially the embarrassing and potentially incriminating involvement of their own members, leaders and supporters.

Immediately after the caucus vote, Cheney told NBC's Savannah Guthrie what she believes is provoking "real concern" among her colleagues: the prospect of a full and independent investigation into the January 6 insurrection, like the 9/11 Commission Report. "I've been very public that that commission needs to be bipartisan. It needs to look only at Jan. 6 and the events leading up to it, not at the BLM" — Black Lives Matter — "and antifa riots last summer," Cheney said on the Today show. "I think that that kind of intense, narrow focus threatens people in my party who may have been playing a role they should not have been playing."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has advocated a bipartisan commission of inquiry into Jan. 6 for months, but the Republicans are blocking it. McCarthy seems particularly unenthusiastic about examining that day of shame, perhaps because he does not wish to testify under oath himself.

Much has changed for the minority leader since he confronted Trump on the phone during the attack — and discovered firsthand that the then-president was pleased to let his mob sack the Capitol. "Well, Kevin," Trump reportedly said, "I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are." A week later, McCarthy was still furious enough to say on the House floor that Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters" and "should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding."

Today, McCarthy pretends that Trump acted promptly to quell the insurrection and deserves no blame at all. Unburdened by principles of any kind, or even a rudimentary sense of dignity, the Republican leader has become wholly complicit in Trump's betrayal of the Constitution.

Overseeing McCarthy's cooperation in the cover-up is his new political director, one Brian Jack, who held the same job in the Trump White House. Jack was directly involved in the events of January 6, including the recruitment of Rep. Mo Brooks to speak at the White House rally that preceded the riot, where the Alabama representative infamously incited the mob to "start ... kicking ass" at the Capitol.

These seditious miscreants want no part of a serious investigation of January 6. They fervently wish that it will never be mentioned again. Their own polling warns that reminding swing-district voters across the country of the insurrection — and Trump's election lies — will do grave damage to their campaign next year.

All the more reason why every patriotic American should join Liz Cheney in demanding a real investigation and complete accountability — and why Democrats should talk about Trump's onslaught against democracy every day from now through November. 8, 2022.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Before Merrick Garland took office last week, the new attorney general surely understood that he would face a difficult and almost-overwhelming set of problems — including reconstruction of the Justice Department after the ruinously partisan rule of his predecessor William Barr; overseeing hundreds of federal prosecutions of Jan. 6 insurrectionists; and dealing with the scandal detritus of the Trump regime, which may eventually involve indictments of the former president, his associates and even members of his family.

But this week, we learned of still more troubling issues that may require Garland's attention, when the department of homeland security and the director of national intelligence released declassified reports on foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. The classified versions of those reports were on the attorney general's desk when he arrived for his first day of work, and what they indicate is the worst U.S. intelligence scandal since the fabricated reports that justified the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence summarized the views of the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies concerning foreign interference in the 2020 election. They found that yet again, Russia undertook strenuous measures to assist Donald Trump and his campaign, with the express purpose of keeping him in power. Law enforcement officials and counterintelligence analysts gathered substantial evidence showing that the Kremlin's spy apparatus, both military and civilian, used Trump's network of associates — including Republicans in both the House and Senate — to spread false stories about Ukraine, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. And as the report stated, the directive came from the top: "We assess that President Putin and the Russian state authorized and conducted influence operations against the 2020 US presidential election aimed at denigrating President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US."

As might be expected, the report dismissed the fantasy propaganda spread by Trump's attorneys in the election's aftermath about mysterious communist entities that somehow controlled voting machines — and padded Joe Biden's vote totals from abroad. "We are aware of multiple public claims that one or more foreign governments — including Venezuela, Cuba, or China — owned, directed, or controlled election infrastructure used in the 2020 federal elections; implemented a scheme to manipulate election infrastructure; or tallied, changed, or otherwise manipulated vote counts," it noted, adding that investigations by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security found no evidence whatsoever to bolster those claims. It doesn't name Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani or any of the other legal and media figures who trumpeted those lies, but it doesn't need to.

Debunking those ridiculous characters is amusing and may prove interesting to state bar authorities with ethical jurisdiction over them. But the report's most disturbing implication concerns the behavior of government officials who misled the public and Congress about the role of China — and Russia.

Last summer, as Election Day drew near, the Trump administration's top officials, including the president himself and then-Attorney General William Barr, then-director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe and then-national security adviser Robert O'Brien, publicly misled the nation with false claims about alleged Chinese interference.

On two occasions, O'Brien asserted that Beijing's intelligence agencies were seeking to influence voters, even more than the Russians. "(T)he Chinese have taken the most active role," he claimed. Barr said the same thing, citing "intelligence" sources that showed China was superseding Russian as an electoral threat. And so did Ratcliffe, who proved himself to be a partisan Trump crony when he insisted on national television that "China is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing."

Yet according to the declassified report, there was no Chinese effort that came close to the scale or intention of the Russian campaign for Trump. "We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy intelligence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election," the report concluded. So those loud warnings from Barr, Ratcliffe and O'Brien — as well as Trump — were knowing falsehoods.

The lies about China were part of a much broader scheme by Trump administration officials and cronies to rig the election, which can be traced back to the Ukraine blackmail scheme that led to the president's first impeachment. But the attempt by the nation's highest law enforcement and intelligence officials to minimize an actual foreign-influence campaign by fabricating a false one steers perilously close to aiding a hostile power.

Was the falsification coordinated by those officials and others? Were they ordered to disseminate the lies by the president? What statutes, if any, are implicated by their misconduct? What sanctions, if any, should be brought against them?

Attorney General Garland needs to learn the answers to those questions if he means to restore integrity to America's law enforcement and counterintelligence agencies — which, in this era, remain vital to our democracy

With their cowardly refusal to discipline Marjorie Taylor Greene, the retreat from integrity of the House Republicans is now complete. Only under the threat of sanctions against Greene by House Democrats did Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) even pretend to address the Georgia representative's many offenses against decency, comity, and sanity. And when the Republican caucus met behind closed doors, McCarthy's weak leadership allowed Greene to take over the meeting, which reportedly concluded in applause for her.

What were the Republicans applauding? The gun-toting Greene has not apologized for any of her endorsements of violence, including those spittle-flecked threats to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She hasn't withdrawn any of her racist slurs against Blacks and Muslims, or her gutter excursions into anti-Semitic fantasy. Only under duress has Greene admitted the reality of the 9/11 attack and the school shootings upon which she had cast paranoid doubt, after inflicting renewed grief on the families of the dead. She didn't apologize to them, either.

Behind closed doors, Greene reportedly told her Republican colleagues that she is sorry for embarrassing them. Her alibi was that she was drawn to QAnon only because she was suffering a "dark period" in her life. Yet that too was a lie. She praised the conspiracy cult on Twitter as recently as December 4.

So this wretched character deserves to be booted off the prestigious budget and education committee assignments that McCarthy had unaccountably awarded her. But with little intellectual aptitude and no interest in policy, she will hardly suffer from that sanction. Instead she now gloats that all the attention to her baneful idiocies is elevating her profile, a boast that is surely accurate. She will bask in attention – and rake in money – from the aggrieved bigots for whom she stands.

There can be no doubt that Greene and others like her pose a continuing threat to democracy, as they proved with bloody ferocity on January 6. In their psychotic fantasies -- as she hinted in her own social media posts -- they would exterminate every Democrat and liberal in America, because "freedom" is only for them and nobody else.

But what these violent extremists are much more likely to destroy is conservatism.

In one of her many defiant public rebukes to her critics, Greene wrote that Pelosi persecutes her because she is "a Christian" and "a conservative." Obviously her brutal style does no credit to Christianity, but it is conservatives who should worry more about her claim to being one of them.

At their best, conservatives are supposed to defend American institutions and values. They are supposed to believe in civility, protocol, manners, and traditional standards. The conservative instinct is to reject excess and uphold personal responsibility. They valued reason and logic over maddening emotion. Or at least those were the things they believed about themselves.

In recent decades, however, that venerable sort of conservatism has increasingly given way to a coarser and uglier version, which is now epitomized by Trump and his followers such as Greene. If she is a conservative, with her crazy theories about a Jewish space laser and her stupid prejudices, then conservatism is intellectually bankrupt and merely a political scrim for fascism.

This was the same danger perceived by William F. Buckley, the framer of modern conservatism, when he sought to isolate the authoritarian and conspiratorial John Birch Society from his movement. With its wild accusations against Dwight Eisenhower and its hatred of democracy, he knew that the society would poison conservatism in its cradle.

Some Republicans, notably including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a handful of Senators and Representatives, seem to recognize this peril. The question is whether they have the courage and energy for a sustained fight against it.