Susan Wright on the Right
Have I referred to Michigan Representative Justin Amash as the honey badger of the GOP, yet?
Justin Amash is the honey badger of the GOP.
I’ve been covering the Libertarian-leaning congressman’s break from the party he calls home for the last couple of weeks.
While the gutless wonders that currently litter the Republican Party prostrate themselves before the gilded throne of Lord Trump, Amash took the time to read the finished Mueller report.
Rather than turn a blind eye, he applied the law and determined that, unlike the word given from Trump’s new fixer, William Barr, that the president had committed impeachable offenses.
For his troubles, Amash has been excoriated by party leadership, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sneering that Amash was seeking attention.
Of course, President Tweety McRager applied the usual schoolyard nicknames.
And then, as we’ve come to see in Trumpland, a Trump-loyal challenger was immediately offered up against Amash’s seat.
So is Rep. Amash worried?
He doesn’t appear to be. He answered his first bold tweetstorm with another, doubling down on his original assessment.
On Tuesday, he went at it again, this time, with a more specified and lengthy bullseye drawn directly over the charlatan heading up the Justice Department.
Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
After receiving Mueller’s report, Barr wrote and released a letter on March 24 describing Barr’s own decision not to indict the president for obstruction of justice. That letter selectively quotes and summarizes points in Mueller’s report in misleading ways.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Mueller’s report says he chose not to decide whether Trump broke the law because there’s an official DoJ opinion that indicting a sitting president is unconstitutional, and because of concerns about impacting the president’s ability to govern and pre-empting possible impeachment.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr’s letter doesn’t mention those issues when explaining why Mueller chose not to make a prosecutorial decision. He instead selectively quotes Mueller in a way that makes it sound—falsely—as if Mueller’s decision stemmed from legal/factual issues specific to Trump’s actions.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
But, in fact, Mueller finds considerable evidence that several of Trump’s actions detailed in the report meet the elements of obstruction, and Mueller’s constitutional and prudential issues with indicting a sitting president would preclude indictment regardless of what he found.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
In noting why Barr thought the president’s intent in impeding the investigation was insufficient to establish obstruction, Barr selectively quotes Mueller to make it sound as if his analysis was much closer to Barr’s analysis than it actually was:
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr quotes Mueller saying the evidence didn’t establish that Trump was personally involved in crimes related to Russian election interference, and Barr then claims that Mueller found that fact relevant to whether the president had the intent to obstruct justice.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
But Mueller’s quote is taken from a section in which he describes other improper motives Trump could have had and notes: “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” None of that is in Barr’s letter.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
As a result of Barr’s March 24 letter, the public and Congress were misled. Mueller himself notes this in a March 27 letter to Barr, saying that Barr’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Mueller: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
To “alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen,” Mueller urged the release of the report’s introductions and executive summaries, which he had told Barr “accurately summarize [Mueller’s] Office’s work and conclusions.”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr declined; he allowed the confusion to fester and only released the materials three weeks later with the full redacted report. In the interim, Barr testified before a House committee and was misleading about his knowledge of Mueller’s concerns:
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr was asked about reports “that members of [Mueller’s] team are frustrated…with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they’re referencing with that?”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr absurdly replied: “No, I don’t…I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” Yet Mueller had directly raised those concerns to Barr, and Barr says he “suspect[s]” they “probably” wanted more materials put out, as if Mueller hadn’t directly told him that.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
In subsequent statements and testimony, Barr used further misrepresentations to help build the president’s false narrative that the investigation was unjustified.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr notes that Mueller did not “find any conspiracy to violate U.S. law involving Russia-linked persons and any persons associated with the Trump campaign.” He then declares that Mueller found “no collusion” and implies falsely that the investigation was baseless.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
But whether there’s enough evidence for a conviction of a specific crime which Mueller thought was appropriate to charge is a different and much higher standard than whether the people whom Mueller investigated had done anything worthy of investigation.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
In truth, Mueller’s report describes concerning contacts between members of Trump’s campaign and people in or connected to the Russian government.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
For instance, Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner took a meeting with a Russian lawyer whom Trump Jr. had been told worked for the Russian government and would provide documents to “incriminate Hillary,” as part of the Russian government’s “support for Mr. Trump.”
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
It’s wrong to suggest that the fact that Mueller did not choose to indict anyone for this means there wasn’t a basis to investigate whether it amounted to a crime or “collusion,” or whether it was in fact part of Russia’s efforts to help Trump’s candidacy.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr says the White House “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that Mueller “never sought” or “pushed” to get more from the president, but the report says Mueller unsuccessfully sought an interview with the president for over a year.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
The report says the president’s counsel was told that interviewing him was “vital” to Mueller’s investigation and that it would be in the interest of the public and the presidency. Still Trump refused.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
The president instead gave written answers to questions submitted by the special counsel. Those answers are often incomplete or unresponsive. Mueller found them “inadequate” and again sought to interview the president.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Ultimately, the special counsel “recogniz[ed] that the President would not be interviewed voluntarily” and chose not to subpoena him because of concerns that the resulting “potentially lengthy constitutional litigation” would delay completion of the investigation.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Barr has so far successfully used his position to sell the president’s false narrative to the American people. This will continue if those who have read the report do not start pushing back on his misrepresentations and share the truth.
— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 28, 2019
Quick… Somebody get William Barr some aloe for that burn!
Every word is true, and I will continue to applaud Justin Amash for having the backbone to keep nailing these frauds to the wall.
Given what we’ve seen in the past, it would seem the MAGA warriors feel empowered to make threats against any who show an unacceptable lack of fealty to their central figure of authority, Trump.
With that in mind, who would want to be the center of attention at a town hall event, as a Trump-critical member of the GOP?
Honey badger.
Rep. Amash held a town hall event in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Tuesday evening, and he didn’t act like a man regretting his choice of words.
In fact, he continued his stand and clapped back at his detractors, such as “so-called leader” Kevin McCarthy.
“I read the Mueller report. I’m sure he didn’t read it,” Amash said of McCarthy. “He resorted to ad hominem attacks; that’s the kind of ‘leadership’ we now have in Congress.”
Anything else?
“I’m confident that if you read volume two, you will be appalled at much of the conduct. And I was appalled by it. And that’s why I stated what I stated. That’s why I came to that conclusion,” he said. “We can’t let conduct like that go unchecked.”
That’s reasonable, but then, this is the age of Trump.
Amash has previously stated that he wasn’t worried about a primary challenger, trusting his position with his constituents in the Grand Rapids area.
He is, in fact, quite popular, and if there was any doubt about that before, his words during the town hall event resulted in multiple bursts of enthusiastic applause, complete with at least one standing ovation.
Of course, a MAGAdook did manage to slink into the event, like the proverbial fly in the soup.
Amash also faced criticism from the event’s audience, with one attendee in a “Make America Great Again” hat telling Amash, “I can’t tell you how disappointed I am,” but the majority of questioners expressed support for Amash.
You’ve got to expect there to be at least one or two conscience-free Trump supporters, I suppose.
I’ve got so much respect for Justin Amash. What he’s doing is the kind of pushback in Congress that we’ve needed for years, from either party.
So will this lead to a Libertarian run against Trump in 2020?
I’m not prepared to say it will, and Amash has been quite coy about the prospects.
Still, I have to say, if there’s anyone who could actually crack through and present a legitimate challenge to the two-party stranglehold, he may just be the one with a chance.
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