Attorney Jim Lafferty On Trump’s Impeachment Case; and Chris Hedges Interviews Michael Smith On Michael Ratner’s Autobiography

Attorney Jim Lafferty On Trump’s Impeachment Case

According to a study by The Chicago Project published last week in the Atlantic magazine the Capitol rioters weren’t like other extremist. Most of them were middle-aged and middle class. Forty percent of them were business owners or had white-collar jobs as CEOs, shop owners, doctors, even lawyers. Only 9% of them belong to paramilitary groups like the 3 Percenters, The Boogaloo Boys or The Proud Boys. Most of them did not come from deep red states.

The article stated that the overwhelming reason the rioters cited again and again in court documents was that they were following Trumps orders to keep Congress from certifying Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election. They believed Trumps big lie that the election was stolen.

When Trump spoke at the rally before they marched on the capital he advised them to show strength., that we fight. We fight like hell. And if we don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore… So lets walk now to the capital. For this he has been charged with inciting insurrection and is being tried by the United States Senate. If found guilty he would not be able to run again in 2024.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said that the crowd was provoked by the president and that the mob was fed lies.

Liz Cheney, The house Republican conference chair, broke with her party and summed up the case against Trump: The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the president. The president could have forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a betrayal of a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution..

In his defense, Republican say that his speech was protected by the First Amendment. Secondly, they argue that since he has left office he cant be tried.

Trumps lawyers argued before the Senate on the first day of the trial that a guilty verdict against Trump will tear our country apart. Others have argued that the country is already torn apart and that there is an American fascist movement That has contempt for democracy and the rule of law. They see it as congealing, getting stronger, and it looking to Trump as its leader.

Guest – Jim Lafferty, the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Lawyers Guiid in Los Angeles. He is a member of the governing board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and an elected fellow of the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California. Mr. Lafferty is a founding member, and steering committee member, of the national Julian Assange Defense Committee and the recent chair of the Office of the Americas. Jim Lafferty is the host of The Lawyers Guild radio show on our sister station in Los Angeles, KPFK. For the past 60 years Mr. Lafferty has been a recognized national leader in various movements against the US wars of intervention such as in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East.

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Chris Hedges Interviews Michael Smith On Michael Ratner’s Autobiography

We hear the interview Chris Hedges conducted with Michael Smith on his RT show On Contact.

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Michael Smith about civil rights attorney Michael Ratner’s recently published memoir, “Moving the Bar ” My Life as A Radical Lawyer”. Smith was a close friend and collaborator of Ratner’s for over three decades. Michael Ratner was one of the most important civil rights attorneys in our era. He spent his life fighting on behalf of those who state and empire sought to crush, from the leaders of the prison uprising at Attica to Muslim prisoners held in Guantanamo, to Julian Assange.

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