Merrick Garland what the hell are you doing? — Common Sense and Politics

COMMON SENSE SAYS: The AG is supposed to be the highest law enforcement officer in the country, yet there is a laundry list of crimes that haven’t been investigated or prosecuted. Mr. Garland has disappointed me and needs to be a lot more aggressive.

Brett Kavanaugh was living a lifestyle on the outer edge of his means, mingling with the 1 percent social circles in a Chevy Chase neighborhood with the highest median incomes in the country.

Kavanaugh has reported credit card debts that exceeded $15,000 for six of his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. At the end of 2016, those debts ranged between $45,000 to $150,000 and were spread among three credit cards before being paid off sometime last year. A White House spokesman has said that Washington Nationals baseball tickets and home improvement costs accounted for those debts but has not provided a detailed breakdown. Where did the money pay off those debts, and what about the over 4,000 tips to the FBI that disappeared into the Trump White House?

Then there is the information coming out about Trump’s attempted coup. Trump knew he lost the election yet tried to get his staff and others to say the election was invalid. One of Trump’s lawyers even had a plan to invalidate the election.

Finally, Gaetz has been in trouble for some time for alleged “sex trafficking”. Rumors have been swirling for over four months that he will be arrested, yet he continues in his role. Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert paid utility and rent bills with campaign funds, according to a new filing the Republican lawmaker made this week with the Federal Election Commission.

The report, submitted to the FEC on Tuesday, details a series of four payments this year totaling $6,650 to John Pacheco. His address is the same as Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado — the gun-themed restaurant Boebert owns. The payments are described as rent and utilities that had been erroneously billed to the campaign. Yeah, right. They got caught.

I understand that Mr. Garland doesn’t want the Justice Department to be political, but these crimes need to be investigated and punished. Mr. Garland has, to his credit, gone after Texas for their illegal abortion law. Still, while he’s doing that, Republicans continue their march to eliminate laws to make voting harder to cheat on the next election.

The January 6th commission is an excellent start to understanding who was complicit in the terrorist attack, but Republicans already say they will ignore subpoenas.

The other issue which should be investigated is how Mitch McConnell goes from a net worth of $250,000 to over $35 million. The New York Times reports that Chao, McConnell’s wife, has blatantly leveraged her position in Trump’s Cabinet to benefit her family’s shipping business, the Foremost Group. In 2017, she had planned a visit to Beijing, ostensibly on government business, and has also arranged for family members to attend government meetings. This so alarmed the U.S. embassy that staffers there got in touch with the State Department to find out how to handle it. That visit was canceled, but according to this Politico article published last month, Chao has held at least a dozen interviews with Chinese media, with her father by her side, clearly associating his business with her position as transportation secretary.

At a minimum, the head of the FBI needs to be fired. I respect Mr. Garland, but it’s time to punish the people flushing our democracy down the toilet.

Originally published at https://commonsenseandpolitics.com on September 25, 2021.