Good morning, I’m Thom Hartmann, and this is Raw America.
We’re living through a moment when the truth has never been more under siege. Corporate media has been captured by billionaires and MAGA loyalists who care more about access to power than accountability to the American people. The mainstream press that once held the powerful accountable has become a megaphone for oligarchs and their authoritarian allies.
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Now let’s get to today’s news.
JEANINE PIRRO’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HITS ROCK BOTTOM
The Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department reached a stunning new low last week when federal prosecutors tried and failed to indict six Democratic lawmakers who made a video urging military personnel to refuse illegal orders.
Let me repeat that: they tried and failed. A grand total of zero grand jurors agreed to return the proposed indictment. As former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote in Politico Magazine, he has never heard of this actually happening before.
Think about that for a moment. Grand juries are notoriously easy for prosecutors to manipulate. There’s an old saying in legal circles that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. The rules are skewed so heavily in favor of prosecutors that getting an indictment is almost automatic. But U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro couldn’t even get one grand juror to go along with her political prosecution of Democratic members of Congress.
A former prosecutor in the D.C. office told Politico that “the average person doesn’t appreciate how stunning” this rejection is. “The rules are skewed so heavily in favor of the prosecutor that it’s almost comical. But the public is essentially saying, ‘We do not trust you. We are skeptical of you.’”
Pirro personally appointed the two prosecutors who worked on the case. One had never worked in the Justice Department before last year and is a lawyer and dance photographer. The other is a former staffer for House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, who is not exactly famous for conducting competent and nonpartisan investigations.
Grand juries have rejected dozens of recent indictments by federal prosecutors in Pirro’s office. Judges have repeatedly torn into her prosecutors. In September, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui accused the administration of “playing cops and robbers, like children” after a series of major errors during what he described as a “rush” to charge individuals.
Another judge noted that prosecutors were dropping cases at a surprisingly high rate, even after keeping defendants detained for days. “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work, and it has real-world consequences,” the judge said.
Pirro has also opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over renovations at the Fed’s D.C. headquarters. The investigation was roundly criticized as a pretextual effort to force Powell to lower interest rates, as Trump has been demanding. It’s blowing up in Trump’s face, with GOP Senator Thom Tillis vowing to block Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Fed chair until the Powell investigation is resolved.
The former prosecutor described what remains of the once-prestigious D.C. U.S. Attorney’s office as “a hollowed-out core of increasingly inexperienced and overworked D.C. AUSAs spending their time reviewing the Epstein files and wondering what their ‘red line’ for resignation is.”
“D.C. had one of the most prestigious U.S. Attorney’s offices in the country, and to see it become a shadow of itself in a year is sad,” they said.
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN DUBS THIS ‘THE EPSTEIN ADMINISTRATION’
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky called Trump’s presidency “the Epstein administration” on Sunday, and he’s not backing down.
Massie was speaking on ABC’s This Week about the ongoing fight to get the full Epstein files released. Remember, Massie and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna led a discharge petition last year that forced the Justice Department to publish evidence relating to Jeffrey Epstein. That measure passed with widespread bipartisan support.
Here’s what Massie said: “Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these people in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent, but he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. There are billionaires that are friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in D.C.”
Think about that. A Republican congressman is saying out loud that Trump’s administration is protecting the powerful men named in the Epstein files. The Department of Justice says it has released all its files, but Massie and other members of Congress say access to unredacted versions is still being restricted.
Members of Congress who have seen the unredacted files say they contain references to victims as young as nine years old. Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin said the released documents “are filled with redactions of names and information about people who clearly are not victims” but may be “co-conspirators, accomplices, enablers, abusers, rapists.”
And here’s the kicker: a 2011 email from Epstein recently uncovered appears to undercut Trump’s version of events. The email says “Before I call Trump, with regard Virginia are there any other alternatives.” That “Virginia” is believed to be Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent victims.
Trump has claimed he cut off all ties with Epstein around 2004 and hadn’t spoken to him since. But if this email indicates a planned phone call in 2011, that claim is provably false. Trump’s name appears “more than a million times” in the unredacted files according to Congressman Raskin.
Trump keeps calling on Republican voters to drop their interest in this investigation. They’re not listening, and they shouldn’t.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ICE
Finally, let’s talk about something that should terrify anyone who cares about the First Amendment. The Department of Homeland Security is issuing hundreds of subpoenas to major social media companies seeking personal information behind accounts that have criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement or alerted the public to ICE agent locations.
The New York Times broke this story based on reporting from four government officials and tech employees. Google, Meta, Discord, and Reddit have received these subpoenas. Google, Meta, and Reddit have complied with at least some requests.
Think about what this means. If you post criticism of ICE on social media, the government wants to know who you are. If you alert your community that ICE agents are operating in your neighborhood, the government wants your personal information.
In Minneapolis and Chicago, ICE agents have warned protesters they would be recorded and identified with facial recognition technology. Border czar Tom Homan has publicly called for a database of people “arrested for interference, impeding, and assault.”
Steve Loney, senior supervising attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, issued this warning: “The government is taking more liberties than they used to. It’s a whole other level of frequency and lack of accountability.”
This is what authoritarianism looks like. This is how democracies die. Not with tanks in the streets, but with subpoenas for social media accounts, with facial recognition databases, with the slow erosion of the right to criticize your government without fear.
The ACLU is offering legal representation for people whose social media accounts have been subpoenaed. That’s good. But it shouldn’t be necessary in a free country.
I’m Thom Hartmann for Raw America. If you can, become a member today to help us keep reporting on the stories corporate media want you to ignore. Stay informed, stay engaged, and don’t let them silence you.
