The Dots Are Getting Connected

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari) 

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take." -John Eastman in an email

Trump Has Now Officially Lost All Of His Postelection Challenges In The Supreme Court, -headline, Buzzfeed News.

That's by design. 

     I'd made the observation many years ago that deep investigations often have two phases- Proving enough dots to connect then providing so many dots that they begin to form a picture like pixels on a TV or monitor. The January 6th Select Committee in its three public hearings has thus far quickly graduated from merely connecting the dots to providing such a surfeit of them that pictures firm up and get sharper, increasing in resolution.

    Today's hearing included live testimony from retired federal judge Michael Luttig, a judicial superstar in Federalist Society circles and videotaped testimony from the wonderfully ironic yet blunt Eric Herschman, who had warned Eastman that telling over 74,000,000 Republican voters that their votes didn't count could create bloodshed. (Eastman, in true right wing, authoritarian fashion, shrugged that off by saying that violence and bloodshed have always been a part of American history.)

    Luttig also dished on his old law clerk Eastman and basically laid out the case that he should be disbarred for his role in the insurrection.

    Yesterday, the January 6th Committee revealed that they had possession of emails written between Ginni Thomas and Eastman, thereby providing the barest, most tenuous degree of separation between Eastman and Clarence Thomas. Eastman was apparently of the opinion that any bloodshed on January 6th will light a fire under the asses of the SCOTUS and force them to do the right thing, the right thing, in his warped world view being the annulment of a free and fair election.

     Eastman sought to use as a wedge issue a court case then being waged in Wisconsin that he wanted the high court to hear, one that Eastman had hoped would be used as a legal precedent and stepping stone to overturn the Electoral College results in the battleground states that Trump had lost. He sought to use as a wedge an alleged schism between the justices regarding hearing the Wisconsin case.

     Where, O where could Eastman have gotten the idea that the justices were divided? Ginni, do you have any thoughts on that?

      Eastman, remember, used to also be a law clerk for that same Clarence Thomas to whom Ginni has been married for decades. It's not outside the realm of possibility or even plausibility that Ginni Thomas was feeding SCOTUS scuttlebutt she was getting from her hubby Clarence.

"Heated Fight"

In all his public appearances, including his incendiary speech at the Ellipse on January 6th, John Eastman always looks as if his nuts are trapped in a red hot vise. This comports perfectly with a bug-eyed, sociopathic right wing lunatic who was fanning the embers for a conflagration he wouldn't have to douse because his boy didn't win his election. Nine people, including five cops, directly or indirectly died as a result of the riots. Herschman informed Eastman of that possibility. He didn't care.

    While the January 6th Committee seems to be zeroing in on Ginni Thomas, it won't be enough without judicial, criminal followups. While John Roberts is running his ass ragged looking for the leaker of the Alito draft opinion regarding Roe v Wade's imminent demise, he doesn't seem terribly interested in learning whether or not there's a Fifth Columnist on his own court. As disgusting as a visual for us to contemplate, is it really beyond the realm of possibility that Ginni and Clarence Thomas would include John Eastman in their pillow talk? (Maybe fucking democracy through bug-eyed shyster surrogates is one of their sexual role-playing games.)

     Then there's Barry Loudermilk, a true Fifth Column rat fucker if ever there was one. In the nearly year and a half since the insurrection, Loudermilk never once even hinted that he'd given an illegal tour of the Capitol on January 5th. Then the news broke that he had and angrily denied that he had. In fact, he'd even had the gall to file a House Ethics complaint against Mikie Sherrill.

     Then the videotape came out plainly showing Loudermilk giving a recon tour to a group of 15 people using two of their kids as cover. At least one of them was on the Committee's video marching toward the Capitol, specifically the one threatening Pelosi. Schumer's and AOC's lives. That would be the redneck goon taking cell phone pictures by the dozens of hallways, stairwells, security check points, you know, the places most of interest to people visiting the Capitol for the first time.

     Loudermilk's had to walk back so many things that he's virtually back on January 5th, 2021. First there was no tour, then there was a tour, but it wasn't a recon tour. Then, OK, maybe it was a recon tour for him but that wasn't my intention, I don't know him, I never met him, agh! Then he tried to claim the first letter sent to him a month ago by the January 6th Committee never got to his office.

     One is amazed he didn't then blame Louis DeJoy for that.

     So, Eastman calls for violence, as had Trump, Giuliani and countless others. Loudermilk and other Republican scum provide precise recon, recon that was so precise that the rioters knew exactly which windows were not reinforced and went through just them. Ginni Thomas finds out through hubby Clarence that there's a schism in the court about the Wisconsin case and passes that on to Eastman. It's one big, greasy, incestuous right wing clusterfuck.

     Legally, the soft coup never had a chance. But Loudermilk's "tour group", as Andrew Clyde had likened them, came much closer to permanently destroying our democracy and transfer of power than most people realize. And Democrats are fast running out of precious time to ensure this never happens again because Republicans damn sure aren't going to help them shore up our sagging democratic republic.