ZenMode
Well-known member
I haven't been able to follow politics as much as usual, recently, so I'm just hearing about this....
The article is long, so I'm only posting a brief description of this insanity.
A special grand jury started sitting in Fort Pierce, Florida, this month, seemingly prepared to investigate what has come to be known as the “Grand Conspiracy”—a fantastical plot that many MAGA loyalists insist was orchestrated by left-wing leaders and officials against President Trump.
The president’s calls for the prosecution of his political enemies are both confused and confusing—linking together the myriad individuals he feels have mistreated him in a multitude of ways, even where no actual connection among them exists.
“They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING,” he fumed in his notorious post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” To him, the Russia inquiry, the Ukraine impeachment, the Jan. 6 impeachment, and the investigations and prosecutions that followed him throughout and following his first term are part of the same story: one where “the enemy from within” has tried time and time again to destroy the country by taking him down.
… The Grand Conspiracy theory attempts to impose not only narrative coherence on these rantings and ravings, but legal coherence, too—as well as legal consequences, judging from the fact that it is now before an actual grand jury.
The Grand Conspiracy, to be clear—or as clear as one can possibly be when explaining a theory that is essentially incoherent—fails on both the narrative and legal coherence fronts. Its proponents allege a plot against Trump that somehow manages to connect Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and James Comey to Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith. The supposed scheme with which these people are all allegedly involved manages to span three separate presidential elections and tie together matters as obviously distinct as Russian interference in the 2016 election and the classified documents search at Mar-a-Lago.
… What Is the Grand Conspiracy?
The Grand Conspiracy is difficult to describe—mostly because it is a conspiracy theory not only in the literal sense, but in the colloquial one, too. Lawfare’s Renee DiResta has written that “one of the clearest refutations” of the central “claim that President Obama engaged in a ‘years-long’ coup against Trump is simple: linear time.”
But that isn’t the only way in which established reality runs counter to the spidery web of accusations.
Distilling Russia-related documents recently declassified by high-level Trump officials—with a dash of the many wild tales circulating on the podcasts, YouTube channels, and Twitter feeds of right-wing influencers thrown in—the short version of the grand conspiracy goes something like this: Hillary Clinton (who, in this telling, was on a daily regimen of “heavy tranquilizers” to tamp “uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness”) wanted to frame Trump to distract from the revelations about her private email server. Members of the intelligence community were eager to aid in her dastardly designs—so they arranged for an investigation into the Vladimir Putin regime’s efforts to help her opponent win the election, including by relying heavily on the infamous Steele dossier. Oh, and by the way, Russia actually wanted Hillary to win. Almost everything bad that happened to Trump from there on out, from impeachments to investigations, was a by-product of or an attempt to cover up this founding malfeasance.
More:
www.lawfaremedia.org
The article is long, so I'm only posting a brief description of this insanity.
Trump’s Grand Conspiracy Delusion
A special grand jury started sitting in Fort Pierce, Florida, this month, seemingly prepared to investigate what has come to be known as the “Grand Conspiracy”—a fantastical plot that many MAGA loyalists insist was orchestrated by left-wing leaders and officials against President Trump.
The president’s calls for the prosecution of his political enemies are both confused and confusing—linking together the myriad individuals he feels have mistreated him in a multitude of ways, even where no actual connection among them exists.
“They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING,” he fumed in his notorious post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” To him, the Russia inquiry, the Ukraine impeachment, the Jan. 6 impeachment, and the investigations and prosecutions that followed him throughout and following his first term are part of the same story: one where “the enemy from within” has tried time and time again to destroy the country by taking him down.
… The Grand Conspiracy theory attempts to impose not only narrative coherence on these rantings and ravings, but legal coherence, too—as well as legal consequences, judging from the fact that it is now before an actual grand jury.
The Grand Conspiracy, to be clear—or as clear as one can possibly be when explaining a theory that is essentially incoherent—fails on both the narrative and legal coherence fronts. Its proponents allege a plot against Trump that somehow manages to connect Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and James Comey to Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith. The supposed scheme with which these people are all allegedly involved manages to span three separate presidential elections and tie together matters as obviously distinct as Russian interference in the 2016 election and the classified documents search at Mar-a-Lago.
… What Is the Grand Conspiracy?
The Grand Conspiracy is difficult to describe—mostly because it is a conspiracy theory not only in the literal sense, but in the colloquial one, too. Lawfare’s Renee DiResta has written that “one of the clearest refutations” of the central “claim that President Obama engaged in a ‘years-long’ coup against Trump is simple: linear time.”
But that isn’t the only way in which established reality runs counter to the spidery web of accusations.
Distilling Russia-related documents recently declassified by high-level Trump officials—with a dash of the many wild tales circulating on the podcasts, YouTube channels, and Twitter feeds of right-wing influencers thrown in—the short version of the grand conspiracy goes something like this: Hillary Clinton (who, in this telling, was on a daily regimen of “heavy tranquilizers” to tamp “uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness”) wanted to frame Trump to distract from the revelations about her private email server. Members of the intelligence community were eager to aid in her dastardly designs—so they arranged for an investigation into the Vladimir Putin regime’s efforts to help her opponent win the election, including by relying heavily on the infamous Steele dossier. Oh, and by the way, Russia actually wanted Hillary to win. Almost everything bad that happened to Trump from there on out, from impeachments to investigations, was a by-product of or an attempt to cover up this founding malfeasance.
More:
Trump’s Grand Conspiracy Delusion
The Grand Conspiracy is a conspiracy theory, not a real legal theory.
www.lawfaremedia.org
