Elijah Cummings Just Asking SDNY If There's Anybody's Ass He Ought To Beat Right Now (Hint Hint!)
Jerry Nadler's not the only one pissed at the abrupt and weird end to the SDNY's investigation into Donald Trump's campaign finance crimes.
We barely just finished telling you that House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler was super-pissed after seeing this week's unsealed Michael Cohen documents, and has requested the honor of Hope Hicks's presence back in Congress, so they can clear up whether she lied to their faces about her knowledge of the booby peener porn payoff campaign finance crimes committed by Michael Cohen and orchestrated by President Individual-1. And now another Democratic committee chair is super-pissed and has fired off his own letter, now that the Southern District of New York (SDNY) investigation into those crimes is apparently over, without anybody besides Michael Cohen going to prison for the crimes Individual-1 directed.
Elljah Cummings, chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has sent a letter directly to the SDNY, specifically to Deputy US Attorney Audrey Strauss, who oversaw the investigation, and boy oh boy he has some damn QUESTIONS.
Specifically, Cummings would like to know if it's true, as has been reported in USA Today , that a large part of the reason the investigation ended was because of the stupid damn fucking wrongheaded DoJ policy that says you can't indict a sitting president. Did they just quit investigating because it's pretty clear that the primary person who should be rotting in prison, either with or instead of Cohen, was Trump, but because of some dumbass memo (not a law) that Attorney General Bill Barr keeps folded up inside his grundle for safekeeping, they couldn't do anything about it so fuck it?
Therein, Cummings points out something important:
If prosecutors identified evidence of criminal conduct by Donald Trump while serving as President -- and did not bring charges as they would have for any other individual --this would be the second time the President has not been held accountable for his actions due to his position .
Well holy shit, Chairman Cummings, when you put it that way!
Or as former US Attorney Joyce Vance put it:
If the only reason you don’t get prosecuted for committing crimes - twice- is that you’re the president, maybe you… https: //t.co/PJD1DNxnQJ
— Joyce Alene (@Joyce Alene) 1563533505.0
She is just saying. And we are just saying. And this is just what we know of so far . We know that Robert Mueller found beaucoup instances of in-your-face criminal obstruction of justice, and that he painstakingly laid them out in his 448-page report, but that he ultimately decided he could not adjudicate the question of guilt, because of the DoJ's stupid goddamned shit-scribble toilet paper memo. And now here, if the reporting is correct, part of why this investigation -- which implicated so many people, including Donald Trump Jr. who signed reimbursement checks to Cohen -- is over is because we "can't" indict a sitting president.
Speaking of that memo, and speaking of Bill Barr's stanky grundle, where that memo now lives, Cummings has a very specific question for Audrey Strauss and the prosecutors of SDNY, and it's the question we've been asking the Sovereign District of New York all week: ARE YOU OK? BLINK ONCE FOR "WELL, ASIDE FROM THE FACT WE ARE SCARRED FOR LIFE AFTER LOOKING AT THE CONTENTS OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN'S SAFE," BLINK TWICE FOR "BILL BARR IS GRABBING US BY THE PUSSY AND TAKING US FURNITURE SHOPPING AIYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEE !"
Cummings worded it a little bit more politely:
The Committee ... requests the evidence your office has amassed relating to these crimes, as well as information regarding whether Attorney General William Barr or other Department leaders influenced the decisions in this case in any way. [...]
You serve in a parallel capacity to that of Special Counsel Mueller, who issued a detailed report to Congress about his investigation and will be testifying next week about his findings.
The Committee is also writing to you directly [emphasis ours -- Ed.] because Attorney General Barr failed to relay information to Congress and the American people in an independent, neutral and factual way regarding prosecutors' findings relating to [President Shitweasel McGillicuddy] when he fundamentally mischaracterized the findings of the report issued by Special Counsel Mueller.
In other words, Barr is clearly a fucking liar and a piece of cat shit. You know this. We know this. Everybody who's ever seen his face knows this. Also he was pretty clearly hired not to be America's lawyer (the traditional role of the attorney general) but to be Trump's sad low-rent version of Roy Cohn's bloated corpse. He fuckin' with you? Elijah Cummings would like to know.
Cummings briefly runs through what we know about the SDNY investigation, including the part about how it mysteriously went dark and unfinished just about the time Bill Barr was confirmed. He also runs through the DOJ policy of letting criminal presidents go free, we guess just to underline how fucking stupid it is.
Cummings is requesting all the evidence, and all the non-prosecution and immunity agreements SDNY might have entered with anybody in this case. He also has a bunch more questions, like for instance, whether SDNY actually did make any prosecutorial judgments on whether Trump should be indicted, were it not for that dipshit memo.
In closing, Cummings reminds Deputy US Attorney Strauss who the fuck the House Oversight Committee is, since so many members of the Trump administration seem so confused about that lately:
In other words, Elijah Cummings is your real dad, and when your real dad gets home, he's gonna be PISSED.
We know Bill Barr will try to ban SDNY from cooperating, but we really hope they at least try. If not, there's always Washington Post reporters and Rachel Maddow to egregiously leak to. YOLO!
OK, time for your end of week open thread, goodbye!
[ Cummings letter ]
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Elijah Cummings Just Asking SDNY If There's Anybody's Ass He Ought To Beat Right Now (Hint Hint!)
I don't know if this counts, but on Saturday she ate a piece of band-aid backing which got stuck in her throat, and cost us $568 at the emergency vet. You are a wise guy, Herr Doktor.
Oh dear. Thank goodness I'm over that magical thinking problem (holds rabbit's foot)