Lawless Republicans Coddle Insurrectionists And Treasonous Traitors, And Want To DefundThe FBI

Jennifer Rubin writes at the Washington Post, Democrats have never had a better defense against the GOP’s anti-crime canard:

Judging from the hyperbolic headlines and cable news chyrons, you might think Republicans have never campaigned on crime before. After all, it’s not as though Republicans have found some new, devilishly clever way to attack Democrats. Republicans have been trying to frighten voters with these tactics for more than half a century.

Richard M. Nixon first tried it in 1968 with his “Southern strategy.” Republicans tried it again in 1988 with their reprehensible Willie Horton ads. So it’s no surprise that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has reprised the game plan, declaring at a rally in Nevada on Saturday that Democrats “want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. Bulls—. They are not owed that.”

What has changed — other than Republicans not even bothering to disguise the racism underlying their attacks — is that crime remains far below historic highs (peaking around 1991). Crime did increase during the coronavirus pandemic, but as Vox reports, the big rise took place under the Trump administration. “The FBI data showed an estimated increase in murder nationally in 2021 of roughly 4 percent, after a nearly 30 percent increase nationwide from 2019 to 2020.” (Figures for 2021 are unclear because of a new reporting system that went into place last year as well as margins of error in estimates. Vox explains the 2021 rate “could have been up 17 percent or down 7 percent, and there is no way to know for sure which is right.”)

Moreover, the Republicans’ recent crime messaging takes place at a moment when crime rates are statistically higher in red states. Plus, Republicans remain opposed to getting weapons of war off the streets.

With the mainstream media all too willing to regurgitate Republican talking points claiming Democrats are vulnerable on crime, Democrats must respond intelligently.

Their strongest case begins with candidate selection. If Democrats nominate a candidate vulnerable on the issue, the crime attack ads will receive far more traction. But if they nominate a candidate such as Rep. Val Demings, the former Orlando police chief who is running for the U.S. Senate in Florida, or Cheri Beasley, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court who is running a no-nonsense message on crime, they would be in a much better position to turn the tables on Republicans. Likewise, House members who previously served in the military or the intelligence community (e.g., Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Reps. Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia) can seize the high ground on public safety and security.

Second, Democrats can make an effective case that they funded police via the American Rescue Plan, which Republicans unanimously opposed. Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, consistently touts his votes to bring dollars back to local law enforcement. Likewise, in Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer continues to highlight her ample funding for public safety.

Perhaps more importantly, Democrats have plenty of material with which they can skewer Republicans for fomenting lawlessness. This include the GOP’s defense of the insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and its smearing of the FBI following the search of former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Ryan did this effectively at his recent debate with Republican opponent J.D. Vance, who promoted the fundraising efforts for a legal defense fund for insurrectionists. “Can you imagine one guy saying out of one side of his mouth he’s pro-cop,” Ryan said, “and out of the other side of his mouth he’s raising money for the insurrectionists who were beating up the Capitol police?” In a similarly aggressive approach, the Lincoln Project is going after Demings’s Republican opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio, for backing Trump and “defending criminals.”

President Biden has underscored this argument, telling a crowd in Pennsylvania in August, “It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI.” He also denounced calls from some Republicans to “defund the FBI.” Calling out the GOP for its hypocrisy on policy is particularly effective in an atmosphere in which the MAGA crowd continues to fan the flames of [political] violence.

With the right candidates, voting record and aggressive messaging, Democrats need not fall prey to perennial GOP attacks on crime. After all, Democrats aren’t the ones who have described violence at the Capitol — much of it directed toward police officers — as “legitimate political discourse.”

UPDATE:

Congressman Schweikert appears to have very specific plans for carving up FBI. He spoke w other GOP candidates Sat at @cathiherrod-backed event. (Schweikert cradling new adopted child.) #AZ06 https://t.co/1yRaNbFGMD

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) October 17, 2022

The Guardian reported last month, Trump’s increasing tirade against FBI and DoJ endangering lives of officials:

Donald Trump’s non-stop drive to paint the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago to recover classified documents as a political witch hunt is drawing rebukes from former justice department and FBI officials who warn such attacks can spur violence and pose a real threat to the physical safety of law enforcement.

But the concerns have not deterred Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and other Trump allies from making inflammatory remarks echoing the former US president.

The unrelenting attacks by Trump and loyalists such as McCarthy, senator Lindsey Graham, Steve Bannon and false conspiracy theorist Alex Jones against law enforcement have continued despite strong evidence that Trump kept hundreds of classified documents illegally.

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Trump’s high-decibel attacks on law enforcement officials for trying to recover large quantities of classified documents, including some that reportedly had foreign nuclear secrets, was palpable in Pennsylvania recently when Trump at a political rally called the FBI and justice department “political monsters” and labelled president Joe Biden “an enemy of the state”.

The day before in Pennsylvania, to coincide with a major Biden speech about threats to democracy posed by Trump and some of his allies, McCarthy mimicked Trump’s attacks on the court-approved FBI raid by calling it an “assault on democracy”. [That was January 6, 2021 , traitor.]

Former law enforcement officials and scholars warn that using such conspiratorial rhetoric impugning the motives and actions of the justice department and the FBI runs the risk of inciting threats of violence and actual attacks, fears that have already been proven warranted.

Consider Trump supporter Ricky Shiffer, who posted angry messages about the Mar-a-Lago raid on Trump Social, and then on 12 August armed himself with an assault rifle and attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati. After fleeing the scene he was hunted down and killed by police.

In another sign of potential violence, federal judge Bruce Reinhart in Florida, who had approved the FBI warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, reportedly received death threats after his name was cited in press accounts.

“I have been dealing with law enforcement and the criminal justice system for close to 40 years. I have never seen the type or virulence of attacks being made every day against the FBI, DoJ lawyers, and judges,” former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich told the Guardian. “It’s a chorus led by Trump but that includes elected officials at every level. It is dangerous and unacceptable.”

Bromwich added: “It’s one thing for professional rabble rousers, liars, and nihilists – such as Bannon and Jones – to attack law enforcement and DoJ in the way that they have since the search; it’s quite another for so-called respectable political figures such as McCarthy and Graham to do so. Their recent actions and words reflect that theirs is a politics detached from facts and principle.”

Similarly, Chuck Rosenberg, a former US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia and ex-chief of staff to former FBI director James Comey, told the Guardian: “The attacks on federal law enforcement are sickening and reckless.”

To historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, who has studied authoritarian leaders and wrote the book Strongmen, Trump’s attacks on the FBI and justice department and his retention of classified documents are consistent with his “authoritarian” leadership style.

“It’s very typical of authoritarians to claim that they’re the victims and that there are witch-hunts against them,” Ben-Ghiat said.

Trump’s furious assaults on law enforcement also targeted the National Archives and Records Administration, causing a notable uptick in threats against the agency, according to sources quoted by the Washington Post.

“No NARA official involved in negotiating the return of presidential records from Mar-a-Lago would have acted with any motive other than to ensure the safe return of all of the presidential records back into the custody of the government,” said Jason R Baron, the former director of litigation at the US National Archives. “It is unfortunate that some would impugn the motives of NARA staff in simply doing their job.”

The frenzied attacks on law enforcement began almost immediately after the raid and included some especially rabid Trump supporters.

Former White House adviser Bannon, who has been convicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 panel, made unsupported claims to conspiracy monger Jones on Infowars that the FBI planted evidence against Trump during the Mar-a-Lago raid, and that the “deep state” is planning to kill Trump.

“I do not think it’s beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump,” said Bannon, who on 8 September was charged by New York prosecutors with fraud, money laundering and conspiracy for his role in a private fundraising scheme to fund the US-Mexico border wall.

Right before he left office, Trump pardoned Bannon, who had been indicted on similar federal charges involving fraud and the border wall.

Graham provoked heavy criticism for making the suggestion in a Fox News interview that the FBI raid and investigation would lead to “riots in the street”, if charges were filed against Trump.

After critics noted Graham’s comments could fuel violence, Graham doubled down a week later, saying he was just trying to “state the obvious”.

In a twist, some veteran justice department prosecutors point out that predictions of violence can be criminal.

“The risk is that predictions of violence can easily become threats of violence bordering on extortion,” former justice department prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig told the Guardian. “Explicitly calling for violence against the government can, in context, become criminal. When Trump loyalists like Bannon and Graham seem to cross that line, they are risking criminal prosecution.”

* * *

For Bromwich, the attacks on law enforcement by Trump and his ardent allies is unprecedented and very dangerous.

“For those of us who have spent time with federal law enforcement personnel, the idea that they are members of the deep state or doing the bidding of the radical left is ridiculous. In my experience, the majority are conservative and Republican. Whatever their politics, they don’t let their political views affect their work.

Well, maybe some members of the Secret Service did. “Less than truthful”: Jan. 6 committee members call out Secret Service “inconsistencies”.

“The search of Mar-a-Lago was indeed unprecedented. It was preceded by an unprecedented and colossal theft of government property by the former president.”

And that was preceded by the first insurrection against the U.S.Goverment led by the president of the United States against the Congress in which his private militia of domestic terrorist organiztions and MAGA/QAnon supporters sought to execute the Vice President of the United States and members of Congress. That they failed in their coup d’état attempt because of the heroic defense ofthe Capitolby the cpi to poice and D.C. Metropolitan police should not diminish the serious criminality of Donald Trump and his personality cult, and those who continue to excuse or seek to justify their criminality.