The astounding arrogance

I knew going into Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearings that there would be fireworks, but I didn't expect the explosion.

Or was it an implosion?

Attorney General Pam Bondi (center) ignores survivors.

 Attorney General Pam Bondi was grilled by a bipartisan panel of lawmakers about the Department of Justice's handling of the Epstein files. Playing to a crowd of one, Bondi tried her best to be evasive and, I think, deliberately contentious as she attempted to cover up the DOJ's obvious cover up over the mishandling of the release of the files.

Mishandling?

Not all of the files have been released. There is said to be at least three million more files still to be seen. Many are still redacted without explanation. All of this defies a recently-signed law to release the files in full by felon president Donald Trump, whose own name may appear more than a million times in the files.

So there's your motive for a DOJ cover up. That's especially true when you consider the DOJ is now working for Trump and not the American people.

The DOJ has yet to prosecute a single person related to the Esptein files. Meanwhile, Epstein survivors – some of whom were underage when they were being trafficked – are treated more like criminals than victims.

At times, the hearings turned into unbecoming screaming matches between Bondi and the lawmakers – especially toward the Democrats on the panel. Bondi would occasionally smirk, or laugh, or insult the members in a shocking display of uncivility. Her strategy, it seemed, was to deflect and obfuscate each five-minute segment of questioning from each lawmaker without giving a straight answer.

She had no answers. 

She even brought with her a "burn book" to which she could reference each (Democrat) questioner, bringing to the surface yet another potential scandal. Bondi and the DOJ are being accused of spying on the lawmakers as they reviewed the unredacted files on the DOJ's computers, which they are allowed to do. It's not clear if this surveillance of elected officials is legal or not. Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson thought the DOJ's actions could be inappropriate, adding, "although it probably wasn't intentional."

Pfft. 

Perhaps the most dramatic – and disturbing – moment of the day came when Representative Pramila Jayapal asked Bondi if she would apologize to the 10 or so Epstein survivors who sat behind her during the proceedings. They have yet to meet with the DOJ after years of humiliation and pain.

Bondi, behaving more like a petulant child than a 60-year-old adult, would not even look at them. She then tried to shift blame to Merrick Garland, President Biden's attorney general and then theatrically told the panel that she "would not get in the gutter for her (Jayapal's) theatrics."

At one point in the hearings, Bondi absurdly referred to how well the Dow Jones stock market was performing under Trump, suggesting perhaps there was something more pressing to talk about than rape, pedophilia and human trafficking.

I'm not sure the survivors waiting for Bondi's apology would agree. 

 

 

Unhinged

Now what?

A day or two after convicted felon president Donald Trump suggested that maybe it's a good idea to federalize elections in a dozen or so blue states – which would violate Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution – he tries to evict the African American living perpetually rent free in the back of his brain by posting a racists meme.

It was pretty vile. It took me a moment to find it on Facebook because 12 hours after he posted it on his Truth Social (Untruth Anti-Social),platform, the meme came down. But I did find it. It was a picture of President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle – both African Americans – with pictures of their heads transposed over the images of apes.

It doesn't get any more racist – or vile – than that. Trump said the image that a staffer – but not he –  posted was that of Trump as the King of the Jungle full of Democrats and that it should not be taken out of that context. Why post it at all? 

And that he won't apologize for it. He knew what he was doing. 

A few weeks ago an apologist for Trump dared folks to find anything at all racist about Trump, as if Trump was the squeakiest clean person ever. But this particular meme by Trump is nothing more than a racist trope with roots dating back not only to Jim Crow, but to the era of slavery and beyond.

Part of the autocrat's playbook is to dehumanize your opponent to make them look weak or subservient. Equating them with animals is a time-tested way to do that.

There are other glaring examples of Trump's racist tendencies. In 1973, Trump and his company, Trump Management, were sued by the Department of Justice for housing discrimination against African American renters. Trump settled the case, but the stench lingers. Then there's the Central Park Five case where Trump said five African American teenagers were responsible for the 1989 rape of a white woman, even calling for their execution even after they were exonerated.

And here comes Obama again, living in Trump's brain, when he basically invented birtherism, claiming falsely that Obama was not born in the United States and thus was Constitutionally prohibited from serving as President.

As if that wasn't enough, Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign in a speech where he said Mexico was sending criminals to the border, bringing drugs and crime with them. Scare tactics.

Then I started to think a little more about what's going on here, and how interconnected all of this stuff might be.

Everything – and I mean everything – serves as a distraction for Trump as he tries to justify his administration's mostly anti-Constitutional impulses.

There are a number of things Trump doesn't want to discuss, most prominently the Epstein files, in  which his name appears at least 38,000 times and thus implies he was engaged in pedophilia. So create a distraction. How about annexing Greenland? Striking Venezuela and seizing its oil? Or maybe nationalize the vote? Better yet, maybe invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the ICE protests in order to declare martial law? How about the government-sanctioned murder of protestors to distract from the Epstein files?

Could Nancy Guthrie's kidnapping be connected to the Epstein files? After all, her daughter, Savannah – who is an NBC co-anchor of Today – has been involved in covering and interviewing survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. Anything is possible, I suppose.

None of this is normal. None of this is a reflection of the American soul or of the American essence, even in our faults. We are not perfect. But we generally know what's right and what is wrong. We make our course corrections. It's in our DNA. 

Just not in Trump's.

 

 

Lemon aid

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

                                    – The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution

 

When I first heard Friday morning that journalist and former CNN anchor Don Lemon had been arrested and taken into federal custody for covering an anti-ICE protest in a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, my immediate thought was, "Uh-oh, here we go. Trump is going after the media big time now."

I don't think I'm wrong. 

Lemon and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort of Minnesota, were indicted by a grand jury on charges of interrupting a religious service at the Cities Church in St. Paul, where the pastor happens to be an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. More on that later.

Lemon and Fort were once co-workers at CNN from 2017-2023. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges and released on their own recognizance.

Lemon was charged with one count of conspiracy against the right of religious freedom and one count of violating the FACE Act for interfering with the exercise of religious freedom. The indictment says Lemon physically obstructed a pastor and intimidated congregants. It also claims he planned the protest.

(The FACE Act of 1994 is the acronym for the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. It was enacted to prevent violent or threatening conduct that hinders access to reproductive health services or religious institutions).

If you've seen the video of Lemon in the church, it becomes obvious how flimsy the charges really are. Lemon, an independent journalist, followed a group of protestors into the church where the protestors interrupted a service. Lemon, clearly announcing he was not part of the protest but there only to cover it, began interviewing participants about what was happening.

He was practicing journalism, as per the 1st Amendment, asking legitimate questions and nothing more. He was hardly an agitator.

Another indication of how weak this case is, is the fact that United States Attorney General Pam Bondi went through two prosecutors who refused to press charges before finding one who would. Bondi, a minion of president Trump, isn't practicing law. She's practicing her boss' retribution campaign.

What has amazed me throughout this episode is how a certain percentage of the population is celebrating the arrest of Lemon. I don't get it. Without the freedom of the press, how are you going to be an informed voter? Who is going to seek accountability from those in office?

It's also amazing to me how many people are suddenly experts in journalism without ever having tracked down a story, dealt with uncooperative subjects, or faced pressurized deadlines. Just because a story may not align with your own agenda doesn't mean it was faulty or malicious journalism. It's probably more likely that you are not open to different perspectives.

In Trump's retribution campaign, there's other stuff going on. Lemon and Fort are both independent Black journalists, an easy target for the convicted felon president because those journalists don't have the legal resources of a large media firm behind them. It's following the anarchist's blueprint to chip away at the foundations of our democracy.

Nevertheless, Trump is still attacking the 1st Amendment here in his painfully obvious Project 2025 shift toward autocracy and fascism. Although the case appears to be flimsy at initial glance, it isn't really the point. Instead it's Trump sending a chilling message to all media that the Constitutional protection provided to journalists (journalism is the only profession actually named in the Constitution. See "of the press") might only be a chimera. 

It's an attempt to stifle dissent.

It's a threat. On purpose.

•   •   •

When I learned that the pastor of Cities Church was also an ICE official,  the first thing that went through my head was "how can that be?"

What church actually supports deportation? Christian Nationalists?

I'm the son of a Moravian minister. And while I've admittedly lapsed in my devotions and Daily Texts, I still lean on some of the things I was taught by my parents as well as by the church. And one of the things I remember is that Jesus taught us to welcome the stranger.

I'm not a Bible thumper, but you can read all about it in Matthew 25:31-45. It's the passage where Jesus, speaking from the Mount of Olives outside Jerusalem, teaches that welcoming a stranger is equivalent to welcoming Him. 

 "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Jesus then admonishes those who did not feed and clothe the stranger.

"Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me." 

And here's a kicker for you: Jesus was a refugee from Egypt as a child.

I suppose in Trump's America, Jesus – a laborer (carpenter) with brown skin who doesn't speak English, and thus who fits the ICE profile – would be asked for his papers and deported anyway.

I wonder what it is they teach at Cities Church?