Step Back and Remember How Bonkers This Is

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I was just reading this article in Roll Call and it contained this passage. It’s not at all surprising but still worth stepping back and absorbing for its sheer magnitude.

In letters, statements and media comments over the past days and weeks, Republicans in both chambers previewed their criticism of a possible indictment that some legal experts say could come as soon as this week from grand jury probes supervised by Special Counsel John L. “Jack” Smith.

Congressional Republicans have cast Attorney General Merrick B. Garland as biased, threatened to strip funding from the FBI, questioned the role of the FBI in that special counsel probe and moved to impeach FBI Director Christopher Wray.

As I said, not surprising. This is after all the world of Trump we’ve been living in for years. But as I said, it’s worth stepping back, shaking off that impact of repetition, and seeing how totalizing it is. Just a few short years after Trump came on the political scene basically the entire GOP is ready to uproot the whole federal law enforcement system, even impeaching Trump’s own FBI director, to discredit any and all of what they expect will be the variety of charges he’ll face.

Needless to say this is just the federal charges — not the more mundane but still consequential indictments in New York City or the extremely serious ones that are expected in Atlanta. It’s stunning and worth remembering that it’s stunning, despite the fact that in some ways it now almost feels normal.

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