Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

You have to remember who made that claim in the first place. I've explained to him time and time again that every administration is staffed with people who make up the chief executive's team, flesh out his proposals, advise him on policies, and help plan strategy. I mean, does anyone think that Trump wrote those tax-cutting bills himself?

I was thinking about not paying any attention to it. Is there any reason why I should bother??

NUTS!

(Just to be clear and avoid misunderstanding, I'm not calling you a Nazi.)

As one person said, "To take down a bad man with a gun you need gay people with no guns".

Funny how the most delegating of almost all President's, never gets called a puppet for being staged managed by the first and self admitted "imperial" vice President, Dick Chaney.

No GOPer ever says tha Ronald Reagan wasn't in charge for the last two years, that Nancy was a de facto President while Ronnie smeared his poop on the walls of the Lincoln Bedroom.

We have a good President. We have an accomplished adult in the room with him, and besides, I get the feeling that Dr Jill Biden would have made a good President herself.

While it is quite legitimate to suggest that American politicians are often directed by big money and lobbyists in the policies they advocate or support, the "puppet" charge is rather different.

That term when applied to American political leaders seems to be particularly a right wing derogation. I think the genesis of this was the agitprop device of trying to equate Dem leaders as witting or unwitting tools of communism. Joe McCarthy is the obvious example. In the present, it manifests a la georgeob's claims that Biden is a puppet of the far left.

Kevin McCarthy Promises to Block These Lawmakers From Serving on Committees





They'll need all their votes, probably get it, I guess.

Interesting! I did not know that.

But my guess would be that they cannot get their full caucus to agree.

We'll see.

Buy popcorn stock.

Bob Iger Return Puts Disney on Collision Course With Ron DeSantis

Bide [sic] pardoned the Thanksgiving turkeys. Read the strange truth behind the tradition

Manhattan Prosecutors Move to Jump-Start Criminal Inquiry Into Trump

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/nyregion/trump-bragg-stormy-daniels.html

The district attorney’s office is investigating Donald J. Trump’s role in a hush-money payment to a porn star, an approach that previously failed to bear fruit.

By Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum
Nov. 21, 2022Updated 1:22 p.m. ET

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation into Donald J. Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter, seeking to breathe new life into an inquiry that once seemed to have reached a dead end.

Under the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, the prosecutors have returned to the long-running investigation's original focus: a hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

The district attorney’s office first examined the payment to the actress, Stormy Daniels, years ago before changing direction to scrutinize Mr. Trump’s broader business practices. But Mr. Bragg and some of his deputies have recently indicated to associates, supporters and at least one lawyer involved in the matter that they are newly optimistic about building a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

The renewed scrutiny of the hush money comes amid an intensifying swirl of legal and political drama around Mr. Trump. On Friday, Merrick B. Garland, the U.S. attorney general, appointed a special prosecutor who vowed to proceed quickly with two federal investigations into the former president. It is unclear whether Mr. Bragg or the special counsel will ultimately seek charges against Mr. Trump, who just announced a third presidential run.

For Mr. Bragg, the hush-money developments suggest the first signs of progress since he took office at the beginning of the year, when he balked at indicting Mr. Trump in connection with his business practices.

But in bringing the inquiry full circle to the hush-money payment, Mr. Bragg is focusing on an aspect of the investigation that previously failed to bear fruit.

The idea of building a case around the hush money had resurfaced with such regularity in recent years that prosecutors came to refer to it as the “zombie theory,” an idea that just wouldn’t die, one of the people said.

Under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, the district attorney’s office rejected the idea of focusing a case solely on the hush money, concluding, with the help of outside legal experts, that it would hinge on a largely untested and therefore risky legal theory. And if Mr. Bragg were to charge Mr. Trump without uncovering any new evidence or relying on a more conventional theory, he would risk having a judge or appellate court throw out the case.

To help build the hush-money case, prosecutors are revisiting another strategy that has yet to work: pressuring a top Trump lieutenant, Allen H. Weisselberg, to cooperate.

While Mr. Weisselberg has already pleaded guilty to unrelated tax charges and testified last week against Mr. Trump’s company at its trial for the same tax crimes, he has not turned on Mr. Trump. To ramp up the pressure, the prosecutors are considering a new round of charges against Mr. Weisselberg in hopes of securing his cooperation against the former president, the people said. Those potential charges concern insurance fraud and are unrelated to the hush money.

Donald J. Trump is running for president again, being investigated by a special counsel again and he’s back on Twitter. Here’s what to know about some of the latest developments involving the former president:

Special counsel. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel to take over two major criminal investigations involving Mr. Trump, examining his role in events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot and his decision to retain sensitive government documents at his home in Florida.

2024 campaign. Following disappointing midterm elections for Republicans that many blamed on the former president, Mr. Trump announces his third White House bid. But days after, key allies are inching away from him and a crowd of possible G.O.P. rivals has emerged.

Manhattan D.A. investigation. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has moved to jump-start its criminal investigation into Mr. Trump. Prosecutors are returning to the long-running inquiry's original focus: a hush-money payment to a porn star who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.

Oman real estate deal. The government of Oman is partnering with Mr. Trump and his family on a $4 billion real estate project in the Middle Eastern country. The deal with a foreign government creates new conflict-of-interest questions for Mr. Trump’s just-launched presidential campaign.

Twitter reinstatement. Elon Musk, who recently bought Twitter, reinstated Mr. Trump to the platform as part of a shake-up of the social media service. Whether Mr. Trump will agree to return to Twitter is not clear. He has started his own social network, Truth Social, in which he has a financial stake.

Mr. Weisselberg, who has direct knowledge of the hush-money payment, has long resisted the prosecutorial pressure campaign, repeatedly stymieing the investigation into Mr. Trump. There is little indication that the loyal executive, the former president’s financial gatekeeper for decades, will suddenly give in to Mr. Bragg.

The district attorney also may face some time pressure. Several other investigations into Mr. Trump appear to be heating up, including those overseen by the new special counsel.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors, however, are in the midst of the tax fraud trial and have not presented evidence to a grand jury about the hush money, suggesting that, if they decide to seek charges, it won’t happen this year, the people with knowledge of the matter said.

And so, even as Mr. Bragg may secure a conviction of the former president’s family business in the tax trial, which would mark a major milestone for his office, the district attorney still faces a daunting path to charging Mr. Trump himself.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg declined to comment, as did Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyer, Nicholas A. Gravante Jr.

Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing and said he never had an affair with Ms. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. Michael van der Veen, a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s company, said: “I really don’t believe that they’re going back and conducting these investigations, and if there’s any truth to it, it would show poor judgment,” adding, “The millions of taxpayer dollars they’ve spent on countless investigations, it’s a big waste of time and money.”

The investigation into Mr. Trump has touched on a wide range of his business practices over the last four years, but it all began with the $130,000 in hush money.

Michael D. Cohen, who served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, paid the money during the final days of the 2016 campaign to buy the silence of Ms. Daniels. Federal prosecutors, concluding that the payment amounted to an illegal campaign contribution, extracted a guilty plea from Mr. Cohen, who said that he was following orders from Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump and his company reimbursed Mr. Cohen for the $130,000, further raising questions about their involvement in the hush-money deal.

Although it came in federal court, Mr. Cohen’s plea provided the impetus for the district attorney’s office to investigate whether Mr. Trump ran afoul of state laws with the hush-money payment. In particular, they examined whether the company falsely accounted for the reimbursements to Mr. Cohen as a legal expense — in violation of a New York law that prohibits the falsifying of business records.

The investigation gained steam when the district attorney at the time, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., subpoenaed Mr. Trump’s accounting firm for his tax returns and other financial records, spurring a long legal battle that resulted in a United States Supreme Court ruling in Mr. Vance’s favor. But by the time Mr. Vance obtained Mr. Trump’s tax returns in early 2021, he had developed concerns about indicting Mr. Trump on charges of falsifying Trump Organization records related to the hush money.

Falsifying business records can be charged as a misdemeanor in New York. To make it a felony, prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump falsified the hush-money records to help commit or conceal a second crime.

Mr. Vance’s office examined several secondary crimes Mr. Trump might have been seeking to conceal, people with knowledge of their discussions said, and concluded that the most promising option for an underlying crime was the federal campaign finance violation to which Mr. Cohen had pleaded guilty.

But with help from the outside legal experts, the prosecutors ultimately concluded that approach was too risky — a judge might find that falsifying business records could only be a felony if it aided or concealed a New York state crime, not a federal one.

It is possible, legal experts said, that Mr. Bragg is pursuing a violation of a New York State election law to underpin a potential case. Under Mr. Vance, the prosecutors briefly mulled using a state election law violation, but rejected it: Since the presidential race during which the hush-money payment occurred was a federal election, they concluded it was outside the bounds of state law.

It is unclear how Mr. Bragg might resolve that issue. For Mr. Vance, the challenge of the hush-money case provided a reason to shift gears.

His prosecutors began to build a broader case aimed at Mr. Trump’s net worth, drilling down on whether he falsely inflated the value of his hotels, golf clubs and other assets to obtain better loan terms and other benefits. The values, which appeared on annual financial statements that Mr. Trump’s company provided to his lenders, were also at the center of a long-running civil investigation by the New York State attorney general, Letitia James.

Before leaving office, Mr. Vance instructed his prosecutors to begin presenting evidence about Mr. Trump to a special grand jury, putting them on the path to indicting the former president.

But within weeks of Mr. Bragg’s taking over in January, he became uncomfortable with the office’s ability to show that Mr. Trump intended to break the law, a necessary element to proving the case.

Mr. Bragg eventually ended the grand jury presentation, prompting two senior prosecutors to resign in February. His decision left the investigation’s fate in doubt and many of his liberal supporters furious.

While prosecutors had long hoped to secure Mr. Weisselberg’s cooperation, he has insisted that Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. And when Mr. Weisselberg initially refused to cooperate last year, the district attorney’s office indicted him and the Trump Organization on the tax charges.

The case centers on the company doling out luxury perks under the table to various executives, including Mr. Weisselberg, who received a rent-free apartment, leased Mercedes-Benzes and private school tuition for his grandchildren, all without paying any taxes on those perks.

Mr. Trump has not been personally accused of any wrongdoing in that case.

Mr. Weisselberg’s plea deal on the tax charges required him to testify truthfully against Mr. Trump’s company and possibly serve a few months at the notorious Rikers Island jail complex.

Any new charges could extend Mr. Weisselberg’s time behind bars, strengthening the hand of prosecutors as they pressure him to implicate Mr. Trump.

To escalate their pressure campaign on Mr. Weisselberg, prosecutors might threaten him with the insurance fraud charges, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.

The possible basis for such a charge was first revealed in a January court filing in the attorney general’s civil investigation and laid out in more detail in the lawsuit her office brought in September. In the lawsuit, she accused Mr. Trump and his company of committing “staggering” fraud by overvaluing its assets by billions of dollars on his financial statements.

Both documents accused Mr. Weisselberg of lying to an insurance underwriter when he claimed that the value of the Trump Organization’s real estate holdings had been assessed by an independent appraiser, when in fact they had not. Because the insurer, Zurich North America, relied on Mr. Weisselberg’s assurances about the valuations to renew its coverage, his misrepresentations could be used as evidence in an insurance fraud case, according to legal experts.

The district attorney’s office has subpoenaed Zurich and questioned the appraiser, according to people with knowledge of the previously unreported developments, who added that there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by either the insurer or the appraiser. A spokesman for Zurich declined to comment.

In recent months, at the direction of Mr. Bragg, the prosecutors also sought documents from New York City that the Trump Organization submitted for its skating rink in Central Park and golf course in the Bronx, city facilities that it has operated, according to people with knowledge of the matter. They had initially subpoenaed other related records this year. While is it unclear why they sought the records, it is a felony to lie on the documents, some of which were filed with the city’s contracting agency under Mr. Weisselberg’s name.

Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails. @jonesieman

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. @benprotess

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and law enforcement. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. @WRashbaum • Facebook

In New Special Counsel, a Prosecutor Schooled in Corruption Cases

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/us/politics/jack-smith-trump-special-counsel.html

A veteran public corruption and war-crimes prosecutor, Jack Smith will take over two Trump-related criminal investigations.


By Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer
Nov. 19, 2022

When Jack Smith was appointed to lead the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in 2010, he recommended closing a series of high-profile investigations into members of Congress without charges — attracting criticism that the division had lost its nerve. He rejected that idea.

“I understand why the question is asked,” Mr. Smith said at the time. “But if I were the sort of person who could be cowed — ‘I know we should bring this case, I know the person did it, but we could lose, and that will look bad’ — I would find another line of work.”

On Friday, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to a role that is almost certain to test his fortitude like few others: As special counsel, he will oversee a pair of criminal investigations involving former President Donald J. Trump, thrusting him into a political firestorm that will doubtlessly accompany the job.

Mr. Smith appears as prepared for the task as anyone could be, those who know him say: He has been prosecuting criminal cases, including politically charged corruption investigations involving public officials, for nearly 30 years.

At the start of his career, Mr. Smith was a Justice Department lawyer out of central casting, a clean-cut prosecutor from upstate New York who played well in front of juries. Now in his mid-50s — and with the grizzled mien to prove it — he will bring both the experience and patient demeanor required to deal not only with the legal challenges of scrutinizing Mr. Trump but also with the fierce partisan rancor that is sure to follow.

“Jack has a way about him of projecting calm,” said Kelly Currie, who worked with Mr. Smith in the Brooklyn federal prosecutor's office. “People look to him for steady guidance.”

Raised in suburban Syracuse, Mr. Smith was a high-school football and baseball player who finished his undergraduate degree at the State University of New York at Oneonta before making his way to Harvard Law School, where he graduated with honors in 1994. Instead of pursuing a career in big law, he opted to work as a prosecutor — first for the Manhattan district attorney’s office and then for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. There, he served in a number of supervisory positions and worked on an assortment of cases.

Among the most prominent was one of a series of prosecutions of a group of New York City police officers involved in an attack on a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima in 1997. Several of the officers were ultimately convicted on federal civil rights charges and the main assailant, Justin Volpe, was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Colleen Kavanagh, who worked with Mr. Smith in Brooklyn, described him as a “quintessential public servant” who was preternaturally driven to pursue big cases, the kind of man who did only two things outside of spending time with his wife, a documentary filmmaker, and their daughter: work and work out.

“There’s no mystery here,” Ms. Kavanagh said. “He’s a hardworking, smart person who knows how to move cases. That’s who he is: He comes in and gets things done.”

Ms. Kavanagh was Mr. Smith’s partner in a 2007 murder case in which a Staten Island man, Ronell Wilson, was sentenced to death for killing two New York police detectives with shots to the backs of their heads during an undercover sting operation.

Three years later, however, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence, ruling that the prosecution had violated Mr. Wilson’s rights by telling the jury in his case that his decision not to speak on his own behalf during the penalty phase of his trial suggested that he had not shown remorse about the murders.

From 2008 to 2010, Mr. Smith worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. As the investigation coordinator, he oversaw cases against foreign government officials and militia members accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

In 2010, Lanny Breuer, then the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, recruited Mr. Smith to return to the United States to run the public integrity section, which investigates politicians and other public figures on corruption allegations.

Shortly after taking the position, Mr. Smith told The Associated Press that he saw his role as one that served people like those he grew up among in central New York.

“They pay their taxes, follow the rules and they expect their public officials to do the same,” he said.

At the time, the section was reeling from the embarrassing collapse of a criminal case against former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, because prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence favorable to the defense. Mr. Breuer had reassigned Mr. Smith’s predecessor after the judge overseeing the Stevens case ordered an investigation into its handling.

“It was important to me we had integrity in our cases and that we were perceived as not being scared to bring tough cases,” Mr. Breuer recalled, adding: “Jack is not political at all. He is straight down the middle.” The Justice Department has described Mr. Smith as a registered political independent.

Soon after arriving at the public integrity section, he recommended that Mr. Breuer close several investigations into congressional lawmakers without lodging charges — including into Senator John Ensign of Nevada and Representatives Tom DeLay of Texas, Jerry Lewis of California, Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia and Don Young of Alaska.
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Mr. Smith said at the time that one of his first steps had been to review every open case and push for a conclusion, saying it was not fair to let inquiries linger. Mr. Breuer said then that he had wanted the new chief to help him “make the tough decision and move on” if cases were too old and the facts were not sufficient to bring charges.

As the unit under Mr. Smith went on to develop new cases, they drew mixed results.

In 2012, a jury in Alabama acquitted a slate of defendants charged in connection with what was said to be a bribery and corruption scheme involving an effort to legalize some forms of gambling there.

And later that year, the section lost a campaign finance case against John Edwards, the former Democratic senator of North Carolina and 2004 nominee for vice president. A jury acquitted Mr. Edwards on one charge and failed to reach a verdict on five others.

At the time, Melanie Sloan, then the director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that the Justice Department deserved “to get slammed” for undertaking a risky prosecution against Mr. Edwards that relied upon a novel interpretation of campaign finance laws, even as it shied away from more traditional corruption cases.

“The cases that they are deciding to prosecute, and not prosecute, reflect an incoherent strategy,” she said. “At some points, they are willing to be incredibly aggressive, like with John Edwards, and on the other hand they are overly cautious in refusing to prosecute people like John Ensign and Don Young.”

But in an interview with The New York Times in 2012, Mr. Smith noted that only a few of the unit’s recent cases had attracted national attention. He said those did not fully reflect how the unit was faring under what he portrayed as a renewed emphasis on litigating cases under his direction.

“We’re trying more cases than ever before in the section, and winning more than ever,” Mr. Smith said. “Overall, we are effectively litigating cases and going to court more, which is what people expect our section to do. We are doing cases all around the country.”

The public integrity section prevailed in other high-profile investigations. In 2013, it won a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican of Arizona, who spent about two years in prison. The case, whose origins predated Mr. Smith’s arrival, centered on extortion, bribery and an illegal federal land swap. (Mr. Trump would later pardon Mr. Renzi among a flurry of clemency actions in January 2021, in his last hours as president.)

Mr. Smith also helped oversee the prosecution of Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former C.I.A. officer who was convicted of mishandling national security secrets and obstruction of justice. He was accused of leaking information about a purportedly botched secret operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program to a Times reporter.

Mr. Sterling was convicted in 2015 under the Espionage Act and an obstruction statute. Notably, both of those are potential charges at the center of the investigation of Mr. Trump’s handling of government documents.

The case involving Mr. Sterling, which the public integrity section shared with the office of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was marked by an aggressive approach to press rights. Prosecutors obtained a subpoena to force the reporter, James Risen, to testify about his sourcing, and went to an appeals court to uphold its legitimacy. (Ultimately, they did not force Mr. Risen to testify about his interactions with Mr. Sterling.)

That same year, prosecutors supervised by Mr. Smith won a corruption conviction against former Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, a Republican. Along with his wife, he was found guilty of trading favors in return for $177,000 in loans, vacations and gifts from a wealthy family friend who was trying to promote his vitamin supplement business.

But the next year, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned Mr. McDonnell’s conviction in a ruling that narrowed the scope of what favors can justify corruption charges and led to convictions being overturned in several other cases.

The fact the court effectively used the case to change the law, one former colleague noted, complicates any perception that the case’s collapse reflected negatively on Mr. Smith’s approach.

Mr. Smith left the public integrity section in 2015, moving to Nashville where he held top positions at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee. Three years later, he returned to The Hague, becoming the top prosecutor for a special court investigating war crimes committed between 1998 and 2000 during the war in Kosovo.

It is a successor to an earlier international tribunal that prosecuted war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

Colleagues there describe Mr. Smith as well-liked, with a reputation as meticulous and modest.

“You want an idealist and a brilliant independent thinker and a gutsy lawyer, then you got him,” said Alan Tieger, a senior American prosecutor at the Kosovo tribunal.

A triathlon enthusiast, Mr. Smith routinely bikes to the office, eschewing a driver or bodyguards, as is typical of some other senior officials at international courts in The Hague, according to people who know him.

But Mr. Smith recently fractured his leg after a scooter ran into him while he was cycling. Until he recovers, he will run the Trump investigations from the Netherlands, according to the Justice Department.

Mr. Breuer, recalling his experience in bringing Mr. Smith back from Europe 12 years ago, echoed Mr. Garland in describing him as the right person for the job.

“I needed someone who would bring in new blood to that section,” Mr. Breuer said. “And all roads led to Jack. He was practical, an excellent lawyer and leader, and he really moves cases along.” He added, “I’ve got to assume that some of those criteria were why they made the decision they made today.”

Marlise Simons contributed reporting from Paris.

Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” @charlie_savage • Facebook

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence. He joined The Times in 1999. @alanfeuer

Love it, thanks. They sure are regal looking turkeys.

I’m sorry for being the one to say so, but this is one pitiful ******* display.

People seem to have such short memories. Or they’re willfully lying to themselves.

The EXACT same kind of résumé roll/out and hyped up heralding came before the last two government legal superheroes that we were told that we could rest assured would doggedly pursue justice regarding Trump.

It was done with Robert Mueller. He was touted as a real “prosecutor’s prosecutor”. His stellar success with previous cases were all laid out. He had been a fearsome assistant attorney general for the criminal division. Served as FBI director for 12 years. Served faithfully in various appointed positions for four presidents. What’s more, it was pointed out, he was a war hero who’d received the bronze star and Purple Heart.

This was a Lion for justice that would not let us down.

What did he do? Investigated and reported on about a dozen instances of clear obstruction by Donald Trump. These were all indictable offenses. He got the goods, then meekly offered up that he would not buck tradition and indict a sitting president.
But assured us that Donald Trump should be indicted the minute he became a private citizen. What he did compared to how he was hyped was a big fat zero.

Then we got Merrick Garland, and oh did the accolades and stellar praise come flowing forth, telling us about his “100% prosecution record” (a cherry-picked lie). He had smoothly and efficiently brought down the Oklahoma City bomber. He was a chief circuit judge. He was a district judge. He was tough as nails. He would surely bring a case against Trump that will be airtight.

What did he do? Pass Trump’s case to a special counsel because Trump had announced he was running for president, and “other extraordinary events”.

Now the hype is all about Special Counsel Jack Smith. Once again, we are being given assurances that this is our man. If anyone can bring this thing together, Jack Smith can.

And people are lapping it up like thirsty pets.

You know that much-repeated definition of insanity, about doing the same thing, etc., etc.?

Well this hero-for-justice Kabuki is starting to feel pretty crazy.

I don't really disagree with you. I'm not sure about the ending either. From what I can tell, this guy Smith doesn't promise anything. Just promised to follow the facts and go where it leads. (something like that) He seems sincere to me. I personally don't think Garland had too much of a choice. It isn't that Trump is so important, it is the state of our country right now, it is like on the edge of a powder keg. In my opinion, better to err on the side of caution.

I reckon you've answered your own question right there.....
Once these investigators start digging, they find information they don't want to divulge,
about the people who are paying them to do the investigating.

Do you have evidence of that occurring with any regularity? I think snood is saying that these investigators never had any intention of bringing serious charges in the first place.