Tweeter and the Monkey Man
Welcome to a Gaslit Nation special episode that wil bury you with stone cold facts! Over the past eighteen months, we have faced incredulity and even threats when detailing the shady background of Merrick Garland and his ineffectiveness as Biden’s attorney general. But unlike the DOJ, we welcome requests for proof and have provided it here!
This episode puts all our Merrick Garland exposes in one place, including segments on 1) his failures to bring justice in Biden’s DOJ 2) his decades-long history with corrupt operative Jamie Gorelick, the lawyer for Ivanka and Jared and a protégé of Alan Dershowitz 3) the decades-long propaganda campaign to present him as a stalwart crusader who solved the Oklahoma City bombing 4) his refusal to use the Mueller Report to indict Trump and members of his cohort for obstruction of justice 5) his lackluster pursuit of white supremacist militants 5) why certain GOP operatives, including those in the Trump Crime Cult, want him in charge.
It’s been a long eighteen months, and Americans have found out the hard way that nobody gives a damn. Officials have feigned shock to avoid accountability: when the walls came down, all the way to hell, the reaction of the DOJ was: “Never saw them when they’re standing, never saw them when they fell.” Here at Gaslit Nation, we would like to respond that everyone of you’s a liar, and if you don’t surrender now, it’s going to go down to the wire. We do not abide a system in which anything is legal as long as you don’t get caught (and apparently, even if you do get caught!)
Gaslit Nation will be back with a new episode next week, but be sure to check out our recent episodes including “Handle With Care”, “Rattled”, “End of the Line” and “Dirty World”!
As usual, we have a Q & A bonus episode this week for Patreon subscribers at the Truth-Teller level or higher, in which we answer listener questions. And be sure to come to our live taping on August 9 at 11am EST, open to subscribers at the Democracy Defender or higher. You will witness us wrestle with basic technology while solving international crimes, and you’ll have the chance to ask us questions in person!
This episode features ‘I Quit’ by Meljoann. Want to hear your music featured on Gaslit Nation? Submit your song here and we may feature it on a future episode.
Download Transcript
[intro music features ‘I Quit’ by Meljoann]
I quit
This deal is really shit
I just get to subsist
You're gonna miss
My labour power
I quit
I was your favourite
But uniforms don't ever fit
When you get rich
From my labour power
Sarah Kendzior (00:00:41):
I'm Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best sellers, The View from Flyover Country and Hiding in Plain Sight and of the upcoming book, They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent, which is available for pre-order now. I’d also like to recommend folks to order this book or my other books from Left Bank Books in St. Louis, which was hit by the floods but is still doing online orders and they could really use some support right now. So if you’re interested in getting it, that’s a good place to shop.
Andrea Chalupa (00:01:12):
I’m Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin’s genocide famine in Ukraine. And this Saturday, August 6th at sundown, Mr. Jones, the film, is going to be projected on the side of the Russian embassy press office in Washington, DC. It’s going to be a public screening for anyone to come watch. You could see the great propagandist in the pocket of the Kremlin, Walter Duranty, blasted onto the side of the Russian press office. This event is going to open with a live streamed Q&A between myself and the wonderful, intrepid Agnieszka Holland, legendary filmmaker and director of Mr. Jones. This is all made possible by my now old friend, Benjamin Wittes. Thank you, Ben, for that. So look out for the live steam on my Twitter this coming August 6th, Saturday. You can watch it from anywhere. Thank you so much.
Sarah Kendzior (00:02:21):
Alright, and this is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa (00:02:27):
And this week we are back with our monthly song. The song you just heard was ‘I Quit’ by Meljoann. Meljoann is an experimental pop producer and video artist from Ireland looking at identity, relationships and gender under capitalism with a comic and surreal gaze. HR, her anti-capital concept album, is out now and she’s got music coming out September 16, so look out for that.
Meljoann shared this statement about the song:
“‘I Quit’ is a breakup ballad about trying to break up with capitalism. I feel powerless but uplifted by community and activism and that’s why I follow your work.—” Thank you so much. That’s great to have listeners around the world, especially in a place like Ireland that Sarah and I could relocate to if things got really dark. I’m just kidding, but that’s what I always think. I’m like ooh, a safehouse in Ireland. “—I’m an Irish artist living in the UK. Thanks, and I loved the Tori Amos episode.” Well, we love Tori Amos, too, so thank you for that.
We’ll post a Bandcamp link along with the show notes for this episode on our Patreon page. You can also find Meljoann on Twitter @Meljoann and Instagram @_meljoann_. Thank you so much, Meljoann, for letting us share your song.
Sarah Kendzior (00:03:43):
Alright, and so this week is a special episode. This is the best of the worst of Merrick Garland. In the past, for the past I guess 18 months, we’ve done a number of exposés on Merrick Garland, on his shady partners and backers, in particular Jamie Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general of the Clinton administration who then spent the next few decades involved in nearly every major crisis to hit America, from 9/11 to the financial collapse to the election of Donald Trump, where she served as Ivanka and Jared’s lawyer after being trained by Alan Dershowitz. So there’s a lot of back story here. We’ve also been quite critical of Merrick Garland, looking into his actions in the Biden administration.
Sarah Kendzior (00:04:40):
In response, we ended up receiving a barrage of propaganda and threats from a troll bot farm. And since we are Gaslit Nation, we analyzed the source of these propaganda, trying to figure out where these myths are coming from, why are all of these people using identical phrases and telling identical lies all over Twitter? This is really, really strange behavior. They were saying things like, “Merrick Garland personally tried and caught Timothy McVeigh. He caught the unabomber.” There are accounts that repeat these things on a schedule so we dug deep and we found a propaganda apparatus stretching back at least 15 years and all sorts of other stuff.
Sarah Kendzior (00:05:27):
What we’ve decided to do here, since we’re often hit with so many questions about this particular topic of Merrick Garland and his career, is put all those excerpts chronologically in one place so if you are encountering disinformation about Merrick Garland and you need a quick link to send to your friend to say what’s really going on, this is a one-stop-shop for your Merrick Garland and DOJ-debunking needs. So, I think with no further ado, let the recap begin.
[ticking clock SFX]
[excerpt from Running Out the Clock, 12 October 2021]
Sarah Kendzior:
What the Democrats are showing in how they react to Bannon is that you cannot fight hate speech with weasel words, and you cannot defeat an accelerationist with inertia. As we have said many times on this show, they are running out the clock. Everyone in the situation is running out the clock. The GOP and the transnational crime syndicate that backs them is running out the clock and the Vichy Democrats—the enablers within the party—are running out the clock. I don't know if it was us, I doubt it, but, you know, the House Committee insists that, in their own words, “They are not going to let anyone run out the clock.”
Sarah Kendzior:
But I’ll believe it when I see it, because this is what they said on October 8th in response to Bannon's defiance of the subpoena and to general public frustration with the inaction toward the biggest attack on the Capitol since 1812. This is a statement from Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the chair and vice-chair of the committee. They write, “While Mr. Meadows and Mr. Patel are so far engaging with the select committee, Mr. Bannon has indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former president. The Select Committee fully expects all of these witnesses to comply with our demands for both documents and deposition testimony. Though the Select Committee welcomes good faith engagement with witnesses seeking to cooperate with our investigation, we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock. And we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral. We thank those many patriotic Americans who are coming forward voluntarily to participate in our inquiry. The Committee is making rapid progress”—[laughs]—”and will not be deterred by those who seek to obstruct our efforts.”
Sarah Kendzior:
Again, you know, we've heard this so many times. We heard this all through the Mueller probe. We heard this all through both of the impeachments and what does it lead to? It leads to the same people running around with utter impunity, plotting new coups, plotting more destruction, threatening public officials, doing all the same stuff that they have done and have threatened to do, because there isn’t action, there's just rhetoric.
[whoosh SFX]
[excerpt from Running Out the Clock, 12 October 2021] (00:08:30)
Andrea Chalupa:
They’re flooding the zone with shit. That is what all of these Big Lie audits and candidates for local office are doing. They're flooding the zone with shit. That is what all of these maniacs who are literally flooding these school board meetings and harassing local officials, educators, over mask mandates and the vaccines that are going to be increasingly available for school-aged children. All of this is being fueled by the far-right terror network that is increasingly taking over America's institutions. They've taken over the Supreme Court. They've taken over a lot of the media space that is increasing. We have AT&T, one of the largest corporations in America, that funded One America Network, which is driving out all sorts of hate speech, including violence, political violence, at a time of increasing political violence, very concerning links to Russian disinformation, that's being funded by AT&T. How many of you listening are clients of AT&T? Your phone, the way you communicate with the outside world, with your family, with your children, how much of that is going through AT&T? And they're funding a major misinformation weapon against American democracy right now.
Andrea Chalupa:
The Democrats have to understand, as we keep saying on this show, you can't play by the same rule book that you have for decades in Washington because you've been steamrolled for decades in Washington, and you're up against people who are being very efficient in chipping away at our democracy. The only way to overcome the dictator's playbook is to be relentless, is to be ruthless in the name of good, to use all the power at your disposal and to take bold measures, and to ensure that people see what you are doing in their everyday lives, to see changes, because if Democrats are demoralized by what's going on, if they're tired of this Sinema and Manchin Groundhog's Day, where all we're hearing about is Sinema and Manchin’s obstructionism, all the great things we could have in this country, all the quality of life builders and climate crisis aggressive action that we could have if it weren't for Manchin and Sinema. If we don't get past those 2, if we don't get some accountability for the den of thieves that actively destroyed America and actively destroyed America’s standing in the world for so long, for a terrifying 4-year term that culminated—naturally, of course—in a violent coup attempt to overthrow our democracy, where several people were murdered by a violent white mob.
Andrea Chalupa:
If we don't have accountability for that, if we don't have accountability for Trump, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and all those complicit in their crimes and criminality, you're going to have a dampening of anger. You're going to have a lot of Democrats saying, “What is the point in being demoralized?” and overcoming them, steamrolling over them to the polls are going to be the disinformation-fueled anger of Bannon's foot soldiers. And that's what's coming for Democrats in 2022. And if Bannon's army takes over Congress, then you're going to have a Republican Party that is better positioned in 2024 to steal the White House, even if a Democrat should fairly win the White House in 2024. Because remember, it's Congress that certifies the election results and they could challenge it and finally be effective this time. So everything we've lived through under Trump, everything we've lived through under Reagan, all the positioning they've had in place going back as far as Nixon, how they've really damaged the culture, they've really shifted the culture where they told the whole lie about a Reaganomics and trickle down theory, which created the largest income inequality gap we've seen in this country that has surpassed even the Gilded Age.
Andrea Chalupa:
All of the institutional failure we've been suffering under has been decades in the making, and we're certainly not going to get out of it overnight. But the way we are going to get out of it is by Democrats owning their power and grassroots organizers and communities owning their power, and that has to include us as well, as tiring as that is, as exhausting as it is. The reason why we highlighted Maria Ressa and the other Nobel Peace Prize winner who we'll talk about later today, Dmitry Muratov, is because these are two incredibly brave reporters who are working in some of the most dangerous countries today for anybody who cares about facts and accountability, and they're doing so relentlessly. They're doing so even against great odds. And it's a reminder to us to get out of the fog of this Groundhog's Day, because we really do have to hold the line no matter what. No matter what our disappointment is, no matter what disillusionment is setting in, we have to have to own our power as well.
Andrea Chalupa:
If we want Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders to own their power, to step up, we have to own ours as well. And remind ourselves that all progress in America has come from the bottom up. It has come from grassroots movements. It has come from diverse coalitions. It has come from inclusivity. It has come from courage from the ground up demanding change, because nobody—nobody—gives up power willingly. So, we're up against a system of white male patriarchy refusing to die, refusing to be outnumbered—which is inevitably going to happen if you look at the studies of the shifting demographics in America—and they're fighting like a cornered dog right now. But never, ever, ever forget that there's more of us than there are of them. If we are going to get through this, we have to demand more of ourselves. We have to demand more of our elected officials. And if they're not willing to do the job, we must replace them because without accountability, without real life-changing programs seen and experienced and lived in our lives from our public officials, we're never going to get through this, and the Bannon hate machine is going to destroy whatever is left.
[whoosh SFX]
[excerpt from Running Out the Clock, 12 October 2021] (00:14:54)
Sarah Kendzior:
This is a war that needs to be fought on multiple fronts in order to avoid an actual civil war, which is something that these folks are also clamoring for, because as we’ve said, their goal is to have the country collapse.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's to strip it down and sell it off for parts, ownership by oligarchs and plutocrats, and it's a very dangerous situation. There is not room for error here. And so I'm going to start a little bit talking about Merrick Garland. So, let's review what Merrick Garland has been doing at the DOJ. A lot of people had high hopes for him (I did not), hopes that were dashed because Merrick Garland is a mafia state enabler. He is an anti-America attorney general at this point, not only because he fails to take action on things like the January 6 attack, on the crimes committed by the Trump administration, but because he goes out of the way to protect players from that administration and to protect the deeply, deeply corrupt institution of the DOJ, refusing to do the necessary reforms. He should be fired. Biden should fire Merrick Garland and replace him with someone who will actually do the job of protecting America.
Sarah Kendzior:
So a little Greatest Misses rundown here of things Merrick Garland has done in office, briefly; he has used the power of the DOJ to protect sexual predator Donald Trump in a personal legal battle against E. Jean Carrol, a woman who says that Trump raped her. I believe her on this. He defended Trump and Bill Barr when they ordered the beating and gassing of protesters in Lafayette Square and got the military involved in the summer of 2020. Merrick Garland covered up Bill Barr's obstruction of the Mueller probe. He has refused to release the full OLC memo that Barr has been using as a pretext for his lies and that he used when he held the attorney general position. Garland defended the DOJ spying on the Washington Post, CNN, and other media outlets for Trump. He defended Don McGahn against congressional Democratic subpoenas.
Sarah Kendzior:
So that's pretty notable. That's pretty ominous, as it speaks to a current refusal to act. He has, as we've mentioned, refused to prosecute any of the high level operatives involved in an enormous amount of Trump crimes, but in particular, the January 6 attack and the 2016 election and aftermath, including Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon. He appealed a ruling that the Democrats had won seeking to expose corruption at Trump hotels. So again, you see Merrick Garland personally protecting Donald Trump like this isn't even a state matter. He's basically doing the same thing Bill Barr did. He's being his personal lawyer. He refused to follow up on a House investigation of Barr and former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that, of course, had been shut down by Bill Barr. When Barr was in the Trump administration, he shut down an investigation into himself. Garland could pick it back up. He won't do it.
Sarah Kendzior:
And then this one is really interesting: Merrick Garland and his DOJ wants to implement a 50-year delay on when courts can consider releasing materials from federal grand juries. And just to give you an example, had this policy been implemented during Watergate, no one would have known what Nixon was doing. This is an anti-transparency policy. It is a pro-corruption policy. And this policy, if it is implemented, will also mean we will not find out the full information from the Mueller probe until 2069. So, we'll be dead. And so that's the tip of the iceberg. You may be wondering yourself like, well, what the hell is wrong with this guy? Like, why is he so terrible? I'm going to give you the beginning of the Merrick Garland villain origin story. To hear the rest of it, I think you're going to have to go to Patreon because we're running out of time here.
Sarah Kendzior:
So yeah, let's begin a little review of Merrick Garland's life. He is a friend of political and corporate operative, Jamie Gorelick. And so you might be like, who is Jamie Gorelick? Well, basically, she is Merrick Garland's Roy Cohn. She is to Merrick Garland what Roy Cohn was to Trump and Manafort and Stone. She is an exemplar of the Big Law corruption that we have discussed so much on this show, this nexus where state corruption, organized crime and corporate corruption meet under the protection of a broken system of lawyers and lobbyists. Gorelick has been a friend of Garland since college. They went to college together and in a large part she's been responsible for his career. She was a member of the Clinton administration and she was who hired him when she was serving as the deputy attorney general. He was her top deputy. He was her right hand man.
Sarah Kendzior:
And so again, who is Jamie Gorelick? She is the Forrest Gump of corruption and has been at the edges—and sometimes at the center—of the worst political crises of the past 30 years. Again, very much like Roy Cohn. I'm going to give some examples. Andrea, cut me off when we're running low on time so you can explain—
Andrea Chalupa:
Will do!
Sarah Kendzior:
Alright. So, let's go back to the Clinton administration. In 1995, Gorelick wrote a memo that created a wall between the FBI and the CIA and therefore, to some degree, made the 9/11 attacks possible by blocking this kind of communication. She wrote in 1995, and I'm quoting here, “We believe that it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counterintelligence investigation from the more limited, but continued criminal investigations. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, would prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards, which would apply in a criminal investigation.”
Sarah Kendzior:
And so her doing this… Sometimes the right wing will call this the Gorelick Wall. And I hate admitting that they have a point on anything, but they do. They do have a point on this. This memo made it very difficult for law enforcement and intelligence to share information about terrorists, and in particular about Al Qaeda. And later on when the 9/11 Commission was formed, a commission that she participated in, she refused to talk about any of this. All right. So what does she do after leaving the Clinton administration? She is appointed vice chairman of Fannie Mae in 1997 and served there until 2003. And if you have loans, you know what the hell this is. During that period, Fannie Mae developed a $10 billion accounting scandal. This scandal helped earn Gorelick $26.5 million in income.
Sarah Kendzior:
So, you've got her on that scandal. In 2010, she went on to get a new client, British Petroleum, and defended it after multiple oil disasters. And so here, she's rather reminiscent of Alan Dershowitz. This is somebody who is a lawyer who just seems to be drawn to the absolute worst people on earth and makes the great effort to represent him. This is not a coincidence because Gorelick is Garland's mentor. Who is Gorelick’s mentor? Oh my God, it was Alan Dershowitz! And I'll get more into that in a bit. And so Politico wrote a bit about this. They quoted Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, on this issue saying, “Speaking generally, the reliance on high powered insiders results in corporations escaping penalties that are not as severe as they would otherwise face.” He's talking about the possibility of federal prosecution of Big Oil.
Sarah Kendzior:
He was right to worry about this because during the Obama administration, Gorelick ultimately got BP off the hook for the economic distress that it had brought to the Gulf region of the United States and dodged demands that the company helped pay to restore the Gulf of Mexico. And this was something that just shocked onlookers at the time. And so she just keeps on going. In the mid 2010s, when everybody was taking a great interest in racist police brutality and there were protests all over the countries, Gorelick decides to represent the cities of Chicago and Baltimore against probes into the police murders of Laquan McDonald and Freddie Gray respectively for each city. In addition to doing that on the side, she was working as an opponent of student loan forgiveness doing work for the predatory for-profit college, the University of Phoenix, while also lobbying against Obama administration efforts to curb subsidies to private student loan firms.
Sarah Kendzior:
So that's the Obama years, and I'm even leaving stuff out, but I want to just get this in and then I think I'll wrap this up and put the rest in the bonus because this is important, and I know it will be of particular interest to Andrea. So what does Jamie Gorelick do when Trump is elected? She becomes Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's personal lawyer and helps them get their White House positions, and I'm going to quote the Huffington Post here. It says, “In order to get Jared and Ivanka into their White House jobs in the first place, Gorelick had to push the legal envelope hard, insisting that the federal anti-nepotism law did not apply to White House staff, a position with which many experts on legal ethics and Democrats in Congress disagree. Gorelick also helped structure the financial arrangements of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.”
Sarah Kendzior:
If you're a listener to the show, you know what that entails. She promised divestments that did not happen. And quite frankly, she should be subpoenaed. Jared and Ivanka should be under federal investigation for the multitude of crimes that they committed in plain sight. But she's not being subpoenaed, and Jared and Ivanka are not being investigated because her friend and her protegé is Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States. And I'll talk about this more because it keeps getting worse.
[ticking clock SFX]
[excerpt from Merrick Garland Both-sides the Coup, 11 January 2022] (00:26:06)
Andrea Chalupa:
In his speech, Garland announced there have been over 700 arrests related to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The speech also focused heavily on voting rights as Republicans legislate the Big Lie on the all-important state government level, where our elections are certified. The speech—I kid you not, you can listen to it yourself—Garland's speech both-sides the coup by pointing out there's political violence on both sides, when in reality we've been hearing for several years now from the FBI and others that white supremacy terrorism, AKA Trump's base, is the most dangerous terrorist threat America faces. It's very clear that the political violence and determination to turn our democracy into an authoritarian prison is overwhelmingly coming from one side, a danger Garland did not acknowledge. Instead, he stressed that he does not have an agenda. If that is true, why did his DOJ approve funding for Durham's agenda-driven witch hunt investigation of anyone who dared to warn or provide assistance to law enforcement about Trump and Russia?
Andrea Chalupa:
Allowing the Durham investigation to continue, funding that farce—so the taxpayer dollars is very much a stink on Garland's DOJ—Garland is allowing himself to be used for a right-wing agenda. And so, in his statement that his department “has no agenda”, that is proven false by his DOJ support of the Durham charade. Those who want to believe that American democracy is like Disneyland and that we’ll eventually have our happy ending, nevermind the decades of institutional decline and none—or very little—accountability for such dangerous disasters as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Wall Street crashing the global economy in 2008, and rampant greed and corruption that allows disinformation machines like Facebook and Fox News to thrive while hedge funds gobble up and destroy newspapers and other local news outlets that expose corruption at the root. There is no democracy Disneyland. People can comfort themselves all they want, stick their heads in the sand and listen to other white people reassuring them that everything is fine, but for non-white communities, especially Black and Indigenous people who know American history as authoritarian history and the legacy of those threats in our lives that continue today, everything is not fine.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our system is broken and therefore Garland and the DOJ should not be given the benefit of the doubt. We are the ones—Sarah and I, here on the show—we warned well in advance that Robert Mueller's investigation was a sham. So prepare yourselves now for Trump to get away with his crimes. We want to be wrong about this. We always want to be wrong about these things. We want to believe in democracy Disneyland, because it feels good, but we have kids who have to inherit this mess and we want them to grow up in a safe country where the system actually works for everybody and people are comforted by meaningful action from a strong federal government that protects democracy, not PR statements. Alright? That's very important to understand. Yes, we're going to unite in the big, messy, big tent of the democratic coalition. We're gonna fight like hell in the 2022 midterms. We are going to do everything we can to reverse the historical trend of the president's party losing the midterms.
Andea Chalupa:
We're gonna fight like we are going to win. We're gonna fight on every single front. We're gonna bring our community of listeners together. We're gonna show up. We're gonna do what we can because we've done that every major election since the start of this show, because we need to do that for our democracy to survive. We have no choice. Sarah and I point out what’s wrong, and then we point out what we need to do, and then we fight like hell to hold the line. We do that for our children and your children. We do that for all the people who have suffered far too long in vulnerable communities. We do that to brace for impact and stand a fighting chance for when the worst of climate change starts to hit. Alright? So we're not saying any of this to demoralize you. We actually feel it's very healthy and normal to shine a light on what's wrong. That way, you can address it and confront it and get rid of the darkness.
Andrea Chalupa:
So we're just here shining our light because that's what we know to do, and we're gonna stand in our truth. It would be a lot more lucrative for us—it'd be a lot more fashionable—we would certainly not be on some blacklist at MSNBC—if we were to say that everything's fine, Garland will save you, here are all the ways that Garland is doing the right thing and everything's great. If we were to sell you that Kool-Aid, it's actually better for us. It's much better for us, financially. But instead, you know, Sarah and I remain the goth girls in the high school cafeteria that no one wants to sit with.
[whoosh SFX]
[excerpt from Merrick Garland Both-sides the Coup, 11 January 2022] (00:31:31)
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah, I also want to go back to something you said about the way he's been going light on neo-Nazi groups and white supremacist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, because this is actually completely in the tradition of how Merrick Garland behaved when he was at the DOJ working under his longtime friend and mentor, Jamie Gorelick. I'm going to review her history, but we did an entire episode about this horrible, corrupt woman who shaped Merrick Garland's tactics and beliefs. You can go and listen to the episode. It's from October. There's a big myth out there about Merrick Garland, one that was put out by Gorelick and by a variety of media outlets when Biden nominated him for the attorney general position, which is that Garland played a seminal role in catching Timothy McVeigh and in the Oklahoma City bombing in general.
Sarah Kendzior:
And, you know, this is a myth that gets passed around largely through the massive troll bot farm that exists to protect Merrick Garland from the slightest hint of criticism on the internet. This is a troll farm that recites identical talking points. And we've gone over some of this troll farm's language before. It relies on cliches, on phrases like “Dotting the eyes and crossing the t’s, Reeling in the big fish, If you come for the king, you best not up miss” instead of analysis. This troll farm has been at it for years because it is the same group of bots, the same sort of collectives—you can see this if you click on who they're following and who they follow, it's all these weird anonymous accounts—it's the same ones that did this to defend Mueller probe.
Sarah Kendzior:
And, of course, the Mueller probe failed as we at Gaslit Nation warned it would, as it was failing in real time. The only thing that wasn't a failure was the report itself which, as Andrea noted, documented Trump's many acts of obstruction of justice and provided a roadmap for indictments. But Garland refuses to even consult the Mueller report, much less pursue indictments for obstruction of justice. So, anyway, as I said, one of the tactics that this troll bot army uses is to bring up Oklahoma City, which happened when Garland was working for the Clinton administration DOJ in the 1990s. Their claims about his role, however, are total horseshit. And it is also an abject lesson here in why paywalls are dangerous. Earlier this year, we discussed so much of the news that was publicly available during the years of the Trump administration is now paywalled. So, people are left with headlines.
Sarah Kendzior:
They are left with glowing headlines like, “Out of the horror in Oklahoma City, Merrick Garland Forged the Way Forward”, or, “How Did the Oklahoma City Bombing Shape Obama Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland?” And then they can't read the actual article which, as I will reveal to you now, contains some pretty damning information. It also contains a shitload of quotes from the aforementioned mentor, Jamie Gorelick, who seems to have been responsible for this PR campaign that has bamboozled people into thinking that Merrick Garland is the kind of guy who would crack down on militants, crack down on white supremacists, uphold justice, pursue people who are a threat to this country. No. So to briefly review the background of Gorelick: She is the quintessential Big Law corruption lawyer, much like her mentor, Alan Dershowitz.
Sarah Kendzior:
She seeks out the worst people in the world to represent in court. This goes far beyond everybody's right to legal representation. She serves to protect deeply corrupt individuals. For example, she volunteered in 2017 to be Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's lawyer. This is in part how they got their security clearance which, of course, they shouldn't have had because of their endless shady foreign ties. She profited from a massive student loan corruption scheme while representing Fannie Mae. She lobbies for fossil fuel companies after they do oil spills. She lobbies for the most corrupt Big Tech companies. I mean, I could just go on and on. Pick a villain of the last 25 years and she has represented them. She is a modern Roy Cohn or, you know, a contemporary of Alan Dershowitz, because that's who trained her. And then she went on to train Merrick Garland.
Sarah Kendzior:
And then finally, another interesting thing she did: In the years before 9/11, Gorelick wrote a memo that created a wall between the FBI and the CIA, making it difficult for law enforcement and intelligence to share information about terrorists. When she was asked by the 9/11 commission to testify about this, she refused to do so. So just, uh, remember that as I tell you what I'm about to say. Alright. So, first what I want to do is refresh our memories of the Oklahoma City bombings because the Garland defenders like to come out with this narrative of, “Oh, the coup is just like Oklahoma City. It took years to prosecute. You had to be very slow. You had to be very patient, dot all the i’s, cross the t’s and then Timothy McVeigh was captured and went to prison, thanks to the heroic work of Merrick Garland.” Total bullshit.
Sarah Kendzior:
It is baffling to me that people are accepting this because, first of all, unlike other incidents in American history—like Watergate—that people lie about, I was alive for this one. I was a teenager when the Oklahoma City bombing happened and this is the timeline of the case and Merrick Garland’s role in it. So, on April 19th, 1995, a 4,800 pound bomb made of fertilizer and fuel oil exploded in front of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 90 minutes after the bomb went off, an Oklahoma state trooper arrested Timothy McVeigh, the bomber, for driving without a license and carrying a concealed weapon. And also, McVeigh was, like, decked out in a T-shirt commemorating John Wilkes Booth. He was like the guys on January 6th with their January 6th Civil War T-shirts. He was really, really blatant about doing this crime because he was proud of it.
Sarah Kendzior:
You know, he was a true believer militant, so it was not very hard to catch him and it was not hard at all to get him to admit that he did this. So, April 20th, 1995, Merrick Garland arrives in Oklahoma City to lead the FBI investigation and supervise the case against McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols. At this point, Merrick Garland—a young Merrick Garland—gets his picture taken in a whole bunch of newspapers, which is what likely led to this current propaganda campaign that he was a seminal figure in solving the Oklahoma City bombing being effective, because people love to drag that black and white pic out. So then the next day, April 21st, federal authorities arrest McVeigh on probable cause and Nichols surrenders. So, that's it. That is a two-day manhunt in which both of the key players were like, “Yeah, I did that. I did that and I'm super proud.”
Sarah Kendzior:
It is hard not to arrest them. Or, you would think it would be. I mean, you would think it would be hard to not arrest the coup plotters who are just as blatant as McVeigh was about their actions, just as proud, but he's not doing it. This was one of those cases where they really didn't have any excuse, but notably, a notable discrepancy here is at that point, McVeigh, a domestic terrorist who committed a brutal crime against this country and its people, was put in prison because he was a danger. He was an active threat. It was not Merrick Garland who put him there. It was other people and it was largely due to the efforts of the Oklahoma City police and courts that did this. But, notably, that is not what's happening now.
Sarah Kendzior:
And what we are dealing with now is basically like what if a thousand Timothy McVeighs were allowed to go free after they committed a crime? That's the current stance of the DOJ. So, how did we get this myth? What did Garland actually do there? Let's hear from the defense lawyer, Michael Tigar, who is quoted in The Atlantic’s paywalled article about, you know, “How Did the Oklahoma City Bombing Shape Obama Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland?” That article, by the way, is back, obviously, from 2016. And so Tigar says that he remembers the government lawyer—that is Merrick Garland—as being a distant figure in the case. And then I'm gonna quote him here: “Garland showed up for a bail hearing and that's the only time I can remember him doing anything in the case. He was sent out from Washington DC and that was it. How he got the reputation as having a great deal to do with it, you couldn't prove it to me.”
Sarah Kendzior:
And so then there's another real interesting thing in this six-year-old article, which is a quote from Benjamin Wittes, whose name I'm not probably pronouncing right, so I guess apologies for that, but not apologies for what I'm about to say. Wittes, you may know. He writes for the blog “Lawfare” and he's been a defender of Bob Mueller, Bill Barr, Brett Kavanaugh, and other corrupt institutionalists. If you are a corrupt institutionalist who has worked for the DOJ, you can usually rely on Wittesi for glowing praise and excuses for your terrible behavior. But even he was more ambiguous about Garland. And this is his quote from The Atlantic article. The Atlantic writes: “Ben Wittes, who has tended to back greater government powers in the Fed against terrorism writes on ‘Lawfare’ that Garland was Gorelick’s righthand man at a time when Gorelick was attempting a certain degree of integration between spies and cops, the Justice Department faced major espionage cases and it sought and received expanded surveillance authorities under FISA.” So, that's an interesting quote.
Sarah Kendzior:
It's an interesting description of what Gorelick was up to at the DOJ, especially given her silence to the 9/11 commission about that memo she wrote separating the sharing of information between the FBI and the CIA. She wrote that in 1995 which, of course, is the same year as the Oklahoma City attacks. And this is interesting because back in 2010, what had been viewed up until then to be a baseless conspiracy theory that the CIA was involved in investigating Oklahoma City, even though the CIA is not supposed to investigate domestic terrorism, you know, that's supposed to be the purview of the FBI, it turned out to be true.
Sarah Kendzior:
And that information came to light only after a decade of lawsuits from a Utah attorney named Jesse Trentadue, whose brother was murdered in custody after being mistaken for an Oklahoma City suspec. And note here they already had McVeigh and Nichols. So they were, you know, the FBI was ostensibly looking for others. And this is a quote from the Utah Deseret News: “The CIA collaborated with the US Justice Department in the prosecution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, according to a recent ruling by a federal judge in Utah. The ruling by US District Judge Clark Waddoups was issued as part of litigation by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who has been struggling for nearly 15 years to unearth more information about the August, 1995 death of his brother. Trentadue believes his brother was tortured by FBI agents who were under pressure to find those responsible for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.”
Sarah Kendzior:
The documents Trentadue wants include various faxes, letters, and cable transmissions, including one from May 10th, 1995 that relayed “information provided by a foreign government about the possible identification of a suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing, to other documents contain information provided by a foreign contact in regards to the bombing, and background on a source who provided details to the CIA about the attack.” And everything I just read was a quote from the Deseret News. So this is very interesting. I want to review again what Garland actually did in Oklahoma City besides show up, do a press conference, and leave. He acted in a very similar way to what he's doing now, except for the fact, of course, that the case was quickly prosecuted. Garland buried documents. He would not let the media have access to basically any facet of the case, even though McVeigh had confessed and he was sentenced. He sealed hundreds of documents, making it difficult for Trentadue and others to get information about it.
Sarah Kendzior:
He scheduled one of the quickest executions in US history. McVeigh was executed in 2001, two months before 9/11, a mere six years after the attack. But most importantly here, Merrick Garland refused to look at the big picture surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing, which includes McVeigh’s white supremacist ties to groups like the militants which were assembled in places like Elohim City, Oklahoma, also includes the likely ties of his associates to foreign neo-Nazis and terrorists abroad. That may be why the CIA was secretly involved in this investigation. Garland, instead, framed it as a low level operative acting as a lone gunman, that it was basically just McVeigh and his accomplice, Terry Nichols. And that is exactly how he is handling the investigation of the coup. He is only looking at these low level QAnon people. He is avoiding evidence that was displayed in plain sight.
Sarah Kendzior:
I don't know what he would've done about McVeigh had McVeigh not immediately confessed and been proud of his terrible crime. I mean, maybe… I don't know. All I'm saying is that he is letting the most dangerous people in America off the hook. And then I'm just gonna leave you with one more quote, in case you have been, also, harassed by the Merrick Garland troll bot farm. This is from the NPR article called “Out of the Horror and Oklahoma City, Merrick Garland Forged the Way Forward”, which is riddled with Jamie Gorelick praise. And this is just a little quote: “From the get go, Garland was looking down the road at the eventual trial and the appeals that would follow. ‘My own experience”—This is Garland talking—”’My own experience had been several years after even very bad crimes, it looks different. So you want to make sure that every i was dotted and every t was crossed’, he said.” Wow. Super familiar phrasing there. So yeah, a little history lesson about Marrick Garland and his corrupt backer, Jamie Gorelick.
[whoosh SFX]
[excerpt from Merrick Garland Both-sides the Coup, 11 January 2022] (00:47:28)
Andrea Chalupa:
Even comparisons of the pace of Garland's investigation to Watergate are wrong. The bad guys are exponentially faster than the good guys. Democrats need to wake up because their lives are going to be a complete hell, including Biden’s, if the American people do not see high level indictments in the January 6th attack and months-long attempts to steal the 2020 election. This is what awaits Biden if his attorney general fails to do his job as the American People's lawyer. If Democrats lose the House, Biden will be impeached. How likely is this to happen? Actually, Democrats stand a decent chance currently for holding onto the House, given that redistricting isn't turning out to be all that bad for them—so far—but it all depends on Biden's approval rating. As midterm elections are, as we keep pointing out, a judgment on the president. We had all feared that Republican gerrymandering would bring them into power, but redistricting so far has been a wash, meaning Republicans were forced to shore up their own districts, keeping them bright red, instead of venturing out to gobble up more districts for themselves.
Andrea Chalupa:
Democrats actually didn't do so badly in the process. There are still some pending lawsuits to challenge some really obscene gerrymandered maps by Republicans in Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina, but with most of their districting done, Democrats—if Biden can get his approval rating up—could actually keep control of the House. But it's President Biden's approval rating that stands in the way of that, and Merrick Garland’s approval rating stands in the way of President Biden's approval rating. So, yeah… That's that. We saw all of the Trump crimes out in the open for years. We were terrorized by them. Biden and Garland think they can sweep them under the rug with PR speeches. Without accountability, Biden's approval rating will remain historically low, Democrats will lose the House, and a Republican-led House will move immediately to impeach Biden, and they will do it again and again for two years so that Biden becomes, like Trump, a president who has been impeached twice. They will do this. Congress will be a Kremlin Klown Show of show trials, embarrassing America before the eyes of the world and getting nothing done as we're hit with the crises of the pandemic, climate change and historic levels of income and equality and economic instability. So, there you go. President Biden and Merrick Garland, our democracy depends on you.
[ticking clock SFX]
[excerpt from ‘Tis the Season to Prosecute Treason, 15 December 2021] (00:50:06)
Andrea Chalupa:
We will remind you yet again that Robert Mueller, under oath to Congress, said that Donald Trump could be indicted once he's left office for the crimes outlined in the Mueller Report, crimes committed by Trump and his core campaign team as they subverted American democracy in 2016 with the illegal help of America's longtime foreign adversary, the Kremlin. Trump should be in prison already for his crimes in the Mueller Report, and he should be in prison for being the central force driving the attempted violent overthrow of our democracy on January 6th.
Andrea Chalupa:
We will keep reminding everyone of that until Attorney General Merick Garland finally does something to enforce rule of law in America and literally protect our democracy from any more coups. This should not be complicated, and it's not. Don't listen to anyone who brushes off prosecuting these horrific crimes as “complicated”. Our Patreon bonus episode is, once again, a big community Q&A where Sarah and I answer questions submitted by our listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher. Anyone at the Truth Teller level and higher can listen to our bonus episodes and join the conversation in the comments. Thank you to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. We always look forward to hearing and learning from you in our Q&A's.
Sarah Kendzior:
Alright. Well, should we talk about this little clip?
Andrea Chalupa:
Yes. Well, I’m inspired. I think we've been doing it all wrong, Sarah. And instead of a podcast, we should put out a weekly PowerPoint presentation: Here are all the ways to prosecute Donald Trump right now, according to the Mueller Report, according to Mueller's testimony. Final slide: What the hell are you waiting for, Merrick Garland?
Sarah Kendzior:
Mmmhmm <affirmative>. Maybe then they will listen. All year long, we've been telling people, Trust your eyes and ears. Trust what you've literally seen on television. Trust the evidence in the public domain of a planned attack on the Capitol, which as we’ve mentioned 3,000 times, we warned you about for months in advance, giving the date, the place, the players, and we even did a Capitol attack preview special. And here we are again with all of these folks who, you know, sort of vacillate between being horrified at what they see, then suffering from selective amnesia and forgetting it all, then saying, Oh, we have all the time in the world to prosecute, and then suddenly doing a 180 again, when of all things, a PowerPoint emerges, a PowerPoint from Mark Meadows, the Chief of Staff, Trump's fourth chief of staff, because he went through chiefs of staff like Spinal Tap went through drummers.
Sarah Kendzior:
He's the one who helped spread the plague. He's the one who helped plan the coup, as we now have more evidence of. This was incredibly obvious. It's just, it is the weirdest thing. It’s like, all year long, you and I and others have been on this steady course, walking a straight line of the truth as waves of propaganda washed up against us, trying to knock us down, waves of propaganda from shark-infested waters. But the evidence has been clear the entire time. You did not need a PowerPoint to see it. You did not need texts—which we're gonna get into—to figure it out. You needed your eyes and ears because they live streamed the coup and they aired it on television and they confessed to it after and they confessed to it and plotted it before.
Sarah Kendzior:
And it's been there the whole time. And the reason you're confused is because a functional DOJ, a functional Congress, a functional government, a government that cares whether or not the country that it represents exists, would've done everything in its power to act with urgency and care to stop them from a sequel and to punish them from this unprecedented attack. And instead, they have done little to nothing. And as a result, people's memories have been scrambled. Right after this attack, over half of Americans wanted Donald Trump convicted. That includes independents. That includes Republicans. That includes people who didn't vote. It was so obvious. And what they needed to do was run out the clock to scramble your memory, to make you doubt yourself, to make you doubt your own perception of what is obvious and right and front of you. And they are doing it again. They are putting out revisionist history, and I've been going on and on. And I know you have things to say, so why don't you talk? <laughs>
Andrea Chalupa:
We should do a live reading of the Mueller Report outside the DOJ, mail copies of the Mueller Report to Merrick Garland at the DOJ, email Merrick Garland links to the Mueller Report. This needs to be a bigger news story.
Sarah Kendzior:
You mean his lack of prosecution for it? Garland's lack of prosecution?
Andrea Chalupa:
Absolutely. There needs to be more pressure. There needs to be a march. There needs to be a whole grassroots movement demanding that we finally, the United States finally prosecute Donald Trump, according to the crimes outlined in the Mueller Report. This is essentially a charging memo. And the fact that they're just sitting on this… And nobody should be brushing this off. Everyone should be extraordinarily alarmed. Mueller, famously reticent, broke his silence after Barr and Rod Rosenstein tried to do that coverup, which was extremely successful in the short term. And the whole press fell forward. And all those newspapers were saying, “Mueller exonerates Trump!”, right? Then Mueller comes out and says, Actually, no, that's not at all what happened and this is an extremely big emergency and Americans should be concerned about this and treat it like the emergency it is. And he full-on said, “Yes, you can indict Trump once he leaves office.”
Andrea Chalupa:
And, of course, constitutional scholars/lawyers were saying, Actually, you could prostitute him right now, but because Barr, the Coverup King, is AG, you can't, because that’s what authoritarianism looks like. So, I understand that we're all relieved that Trump and his Twitter account are no longer President of the United States, but at the same time, we need to put pressure on these guys. Merrick Garland not doing this is a huge red flag. And what really worries me is that just like when we saw the chaos exploding out of Trump's White House from day one, even before they came to power, right? Because Michael Flynn was indicted for his lies and his crimes, you know, before they even had a chance to start. That was revving up. So, what I worry about is that we're going to get the Biden Tell-alls coming out eventually.
Andrea Chalupa:
There have to be some really strong minded men and women in Merrick Garland's DOJ who are like, inter-officing copies of the report or finding a way to bring it up, you know, around the coffee machine. But there must be some tell-all coming out of Merrick Garland's office because this is atrocious to anybody who cares about American democracy. And I hate the whole Twitterverse of the whole, what do we call them? The fancy set?
Sarah Kendzior:
The savvy set.
Andrea Chalupa:
The savvy set. The cable news fantasy football league of lawyers who are promising all this justice, saying that Mueller is a Marvel superhero who’s coming to save the day. And now they're giving the same benefit of the doubt to Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland's not gonna do anything unless the American people demand it. And it's far past time. We need to start organizing around this.
Andrea Chalupa:
And the reason why it's difficult to organize around this is because a lot of those big resistance accounts on Twitter and a lot of those big resistance organizations, they're dependent on the Democratic Party establishment for funding, for amplification, for all types of coordination and resources. And so they're not going to step out of line. There's a horrible sickness in the Democratic Party that rewards loyalty above all else. Why else do you get Terry McAuliffe as a candidate in a Virginia race instead of somebody more exciting, somebody who hasn't done it yet, somebody that could really energize the grassroots, instead of Terry McAuliffe, who looked tired compared to a fired up Youngkin. They had to run McAuliffe because of the loyalty, because of all the fundraising he's done, because he's in the family. So, for those who are not in the family of the Democratic establishment, a lot of influential resistance accounts, they're the ones who are failing us.
Andrea Chalupa:
They're the ones who are refusing to point out what is right in front of our faces and energize the grassroots. Instead, they say, “Wait for the midterms. Show up for the midterms. Elect all these people back in positions of power,” who aren't calling Merrick Garland out for this, and we're going to be stuck with more of the same. And then one day, we're all going to wake up and be like, Why is the Republican Party in power for 30 years going? Why are we stuck in a dictatorship? Because people who could have done something when they had the chance failed to, right? Because loyalty apparently trumps democracy.
Sarah Kendzior:
Exactly. That was the point that I was gonna make, is that it is so ironic that the big Mueller stans, you know, the people out buying those Mueller candles and lighting them, making their little shrines, they're completely chill with Garland ignoring the Mueller Report, with Garland failing to act on it, whereas we were very critical of the probe. We felt it was moving too slow. We felt that Mueller was making plea arrangements and deals with people like Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and others that led to nowhere, that led to no consequences for people higher up or ultimately for those individuals. Michael Flynn went on to abet a coup and plan a violent attack on our country. We felt the probe was fairly disastrous even before Bill Barr stepped in and made it worse.
Sarah Kendzior:
We had our suspicions, yet, despite all of the flaws of the Mueller probe, he still produced a report that showed very clearly that Trump committed obstruction of justice and that there are multiple charges that can be brought. And that is because Trump and his crime cult’s spree of criminality, both during the campaign and in office, was so blatant that it is literally impossible to ignore. This is someone who confessed to obstruction of justice multiple times. I mean, he did it last week, but before that he did it on TV to Lester Holt, afterwards partied with Lavrov and Kislyak—two Kremlin officials—in the Oval Office, celebrating the firing of James Comey. Again, this is ironic, because we are big critics of James Comey but nonetheless, we know why he was fired. It was so that the possibility of any kind of legal consequences for Trump could be eradicated. And that is what Trump himself said.
Sarah Kendzior:
So it's really hard to ignore the Mueller Report. That's my point, is that even if you dislike Mueller, even if you are suspicious of this entire apparatus, it is impossible to ignore those findings. Yet the very people who claim that they are supporters of the DOJ, supporters of Mueller, believers in our flawless system of checks and balances and legal consequences, are the ones who are like, “Oh, just give them time, we have all the time in the world.” We clearly do not.
[ticking clock SFX]
[excerpt from How the West Can Help Protect Civilians in Ukraine. 23 March, 2022) (01:01:42)
Sarah Kendzior:
It has been 14 months since the Capitol attack and none of the criminal elites who orchestrated it have been brought to justice. With the exception of the arrests of Oathkeepers and Proud Boys—who are the middle men of the attack, not the criminal elites orchestrating it—the DOJ has focused excessively on the random people recruited by criminal elite networks to show up on January 6th. Meanwhile, Bannon, Flynn, Stone and other high level, actively dangerous operatives run free. Let's get real: If you are part of the coverup, you are part of the crime. That is the story of Merrick Garland's DOJ. They are an accomplice in the attack on American democracy. It's important to remember that this is the story of Merrick Garland's DOJ because right now the January 6th Committee is about to rewrite that story.
Sarah Kendzior:
You might be saying to yourself, “wait, the January 6th Committee and the DOJ are separate entities. How could one rewrite the story of the other?” The answer is that last week, the January 6th Committee announced that it is consulting Jamie Gorelick, the deeply corrupt mentor of Merrick Garland who we've covered on the show many times, to (and this is a quote from the Washington Post), “write its report about the attack on the Capitol, hoping to build a narrative thriller that compels audiences.” I do not disagree with the goal of making the report compelling, but I do disagree with the January 6th Committee hiring a corrupt lawyer deeply tied to both Garland and the Trump crime cult to oversee it, especially when this lawyer has a history of propaganda. We've discussed Jamie Gorelick on Gaslit Nation many times, but here is the short version: She is a lifelong friend and mentor to Merrick Garland and she is a protege of Alan Dershowitz..
Sarah Kendzior:
She was Garland's boss at the Clinton DOJ in the 1990s. Since quitting that job, she has moved through American life like the Forrest Gump of corruption. Among the things Gorelick has done (and this is the short version. Please consult gaslitnationpod.com for the full version); she wrote the memo that created a wall between intelligence agencies in the 1990s and helped make 9/11 possible and then refused to testify to the 9/11 about that, she profited from a massive student loan corruption scheme while representing Fannie Mae, lobbied for fossil fuel companies after they did oil spills, lobbied for the worst of Big Tech, lobbied for police officers who killed innocent Black men, volunteered in 2017 to be Jared and Ivanka's lawyer, thus enabling them to skirt legal requirements and infiltrate the White House. Gorelick did the same for Rex Tillerson, Rex Tillerson who received an Order of Friendship Medal from Putin in 2013 before becoming Trump's secretary of state. Gorelick was Tillerson’s lawyer for that, to make sure he got in there despite his dangerous ties to the Kremlin.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is who Jamie Gorelick is. Merrick Garland's lifelong friend and advisor is entrenched in Trump's criminal network. When the January 6th Committee turns to Jared and Ivanka's lawyer to tell the story of January 6th, in which Ivanka was so involved—she was called to testify by the January 6th Committee—we have a massive problem. I was researching Gorelick to figure out why the Committee would select her and in the process I learned even more disturbing information about Merrick Garland and his recurring role, almost always with Gorelick, in shady political alliances involving US national security. In a previous episode called ‘Merrick Garland Both-Sides the Coup’, I documented how there’s been an elaborate propaganda operation surrounding Garland for over half a decade. The tactics of this include planting misleading articles in mainstream media outlets and spamming social media to make it look like Garland did things like catch Timothy McVeigh or play a similar role in his prosecution. To be clear, Garland did neither.
Sarah Kendzior:
His role was minimal. He also did not catch the Unabomber. The Unabomber was turned in by his brother. These are all myths that if you're on Twitter at all, if you say the words “Merrick Garland”, someone will show up in your mentions spouting this. But it is nonsense. And it's debunked by such things as being alive in 1995. These are very basic pieces of information so it's very disturbing that people keep lying about them in unison en masse. So anyway, check that episode for more about that propaganda. What I didn't know when we aired that episode in January is that the original version of this narrative first appeared in 2010 when Merrick Garland was considered as replacement for John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. And again, it reemerged in 2016 when, of course, he was nominated for the Supreme Court and Mitch McConnell and his goon squad vetoed that.
Sarah Kendzior:
But anyway, like I've said, this is the same narrative over and over again, often almost the same article over and over again in different outlets, and I have now found the template. The 2010 article from the New York Times is called, “How Bombing Case Helped Shape Career of a Potential Justice” and it has the prerequisite quotes from Gorelick—she's in every single one of these articles—and insinuations that Garland was more involved in [the] Oklahoma City [boming] than he actually was, although interestingly, this article ultimately admits he really didn't do very much different in this respect than the articles that came later. But it also has something new. It has a new character witness for Garland, a new quote from someone he's been close to. And that person is Joseph diGenova. Who is Joseph diGenova? He is a Trump crime cult and oligarch lawyer with a long dark history in public politics.
Sarah Kendzior:
You may remember him from the 2020 attempted coup because he was part of the legal team that tried to turn over the election for Donald Trump. DiGenova is a close friend and associate of Rudy Giuliani and played a role in the Ukraine shakedown that led to Trump's first impeachment. In 2019, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, began representing Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash to help him avoid extradition to the US under a federal indictment while their partner, Giuliani, took over the operation to target Joe Biden in Ukraine. Firtash is a Kremlin lackey and a longtime partner of Paul Manafort and Toensing and diGenova were the people who hired the now indicted Lev Parnas for the Ukraine operation as Giuliani picked up where the then imprisoned Manafort left off. DiGenova was also part of the legal team that worked against Mueller when Mueller was investigating Trump in 2018.
Sarah Kendzior:
So I could go on and on about this guy because diGenova’s illicit activity and criminal ties date back to the Reagan era. In fact, he was up to some things in the 1980s…I don't even want to say what they were but it's bad. I'll just say this is a very dangerous man and his wife is dangerous as well, so dangerous that the FBI raided her home in April, 2021 over her involvement in the Ukraine dealings. This home is also ostensibly diGenova's home because they're married, but the search warrant was in her name. In a May, 2021 court filing, investigators disclosed that in late 2019 they acquired a search warrant for Toensing’s iCloud account and for that of Giuliani and for an email account belonging to her. And since then, what's happened to these folks, these anti-American actors, these potentially treasonous criminals? Nothing.
Sarah Kendzior:
Now remember, this is a man close enough to Merrick Garland that the New York Times sought him out as a reference for Garland. And what did diGenova have to say about Merrick Garland? He's a big fan. This is the quote: “‘Judge Garland’”—This is diGenova talking—’”is a profoundly serious guy who really should be the kind of person you want to have on the Supreme Court.’, said Joseph E. diGenova, a Republican and US attorney in the Reagan administration. ‘If Obama wants to get a fantastic judge on the court, he's got one ready to go in Merrick Garland.’” Merrick Garland, of course, did not get the job. It went to Elena Kegan. But notably, the attempt to install Merrick Garland in high office did not end there. Garland was initially considered as a replacement for Robert Mueller as FBI director in 2011, though Garland, at the time, expressed a lack of interest in the position. Gorelick was also considered for FBI head by the Obama administration.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is a terrifying prospect that was thankfully shot down at the time due to her extensive history of corruption, although that really wasn't much of an imposition for other, or maybe almost all heads of the FBI. Anyway, to sum all this up, it is alarming that the official story of January 6th will be guided by a woman who has worked for people like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who are implicated in the January 6th attack. It is deeply troubling thatGorelick is serving as a bridge between the January 6th Committee and the DOJ under Merrick Garland and that both of them are tied to the Trump Crime Cult and its affiliates, including and especially Alan Dershowitz, Jared Kushner and Joseph diGenova. This is a massive conflict of interest at best and extraordinarily dangerous at worst. When you ask why Garland is not prosecuting elites who committed obvious crimes, or why the January 6th Committee let's crime cult members dodge subpoenas and has yet to hold hearings (as they once promised they would), these alliances are part of the answer.
[theme music - roll outro credits]
Andrea Chalupa (01:12:33):
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth-teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
The St. Louis metro region has been decimated by record floods. My area, University City, was especially hard hit. To help flood victims in University City, donate at ucityschools.org/flood relief. Another place to give aid is the St. Louis food bank at stlfoodbank.org. Climate and economic crises are everywhere so continue supporting your local food bank as well.
Andrea Chalupa:
We encourage you to help support Ukraine by donating to Razom for Ukraine at razomforukraine.org. We also encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. Donate at rescue.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan Project at theorangutanproject.org.
Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Wilbury and Andrea Wilbury. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon, it keeps us going.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production manager is Nicholas Torres and our associate producer is Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
Original music on Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nik Farr, Demian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level on Patreon and higher…