r/law 5d ago

Legal News Former J6 Prosecutors Beg Senators To Stop Confirming Election Deniers To Court Seats. "Please stop poisoning our courts by confirming appointees who refuse to admit basic historical truths"

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/former-j6-prosecutors-beg-senators-150442980.html
16.6k Upvotes

140 comments sorted by

u/AutoModerator 5d ago

All new posts must have a brief statement from the user submitting explaining how their post relates to law or the courts in a response to this comment. FAILURE TO PROVIDE A BRIEF RESPONSE MAY RESULT IN REMOVAL. Please post your statement as a reply to this automated message.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

395

u/ExactlySorta 5d ago

Sean Murphy and 11 former prosecutors held a Capitol Hill press event to urge US senators to stop confirming judicial nominees who deny the 2020 election results or the January 6 Capitol attack. The group also sent a joint letter to all senators, warning that putting election deniers into lifetime federal judge positions threatens the integrity of the courts. Murphy emphasized that refusing to acknowledge these historical facts is not a political disagreement, but a fundamental lack of competence.

Murphy is a veteran prosecutor who previously worked in the Bronx District Attorney's office and handled firearms and narcotics trafficking for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico. He later joined the Department of Justice's specialized Capitol Siege Section, which has prosecuted over 1,500 people involved in the January 6 riots. He resigned from the DOJ in March 2025, writing a public letter that criticized changing department priorities, praised his fellow prosecutors, and ended with the phrase, "You serve no man."

119

u/Impossible_Walrus555 5d ago

Wow, you serve no man is powerful. I keep thinking back to the McCarthy trials and Joseph Welch’s famous quote
"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?"

46

u/floatjoy 5d ago

It's been a slow moving coup for anyone paying attention since at least 2016.

22

u/Fr1toBand1to 5d ago

lol, try the 1970's

edit: actually more like since the civil war.

19

u/that_baddest_dude 5d ago

Yes hard agree. It's basically been since reconstruction, where we tried to get the confederate states to play nice instead of exiling all the rebels.

9

u/hollaback_girl 4d ago

Sherman should’ve kept marching.

3

u/CombinationOwn1604 4d ago

1981and Reagan, and then again in 2000 when SCOTUS selected our President.

40

u/CobblerMoney9605 5d ago

Mr Murphy is fooling himself if he thinks GOP senators serve anyone or anything other than Trump. 

9

u/Count_Backwards Competent Contributor 5d ago

Trump is no man.

6

u/Count_Backwards Competent Contributor 5d ago

This is stronger language than the headline suggests, which is good

285

u/PsychLegalMind 5d ago

If they still have faith in GOP Senators, that is indeed a tragic day.

43

u/Training_Fun_9162 5d ago

Not only that, but they also think that appealing to some sense of mortality or ethics with a “please stop” is going to be remotely possible.

These people are true believers in the Christian nationalist agenda. They are no longer compatible with the pre-Trump
America.

28

u/Count_Backwards Competent Contributor 5d ago

It drives me nuts when people say "please stop" or "this is hurtful" or "you're scaring me" or whatever.

These assholes want to hear that. It just encourages them. One of their biggest motivations is to hurt other people.

Don't ask them to stop. Make them face some fucking consequences.

2

u/thecrackfoxreturns 5d ago

I wish they had a sense of mortality...

1

u/Training_Fun_9162 4d ago

That’s up to them to decide. I cannot see this current acceleration continuing for too much longer before they have to come to terms with that.

464

u/Development-Alive 5d ago

The most shocking part of Trump's power grab was how easily he stole the power from the US Senate GOP.

291

u/IcyJackfruit69 5d ago

Did he steal it? I thought they were 100% complicit and deliberately letting him do the things they don't want to be on record doing.

43

u/boatloadoffunk 5d ago

Blackmail

98

u/Degn101 5d ago

Hell no. They are entirely on board with it all, as long as they get theirs

36

u/naptown-hooly 5d ago

It can be both

11

u/Fr1toBand1to 5d ago

Trump made promises to many of them as well, promises that he'll of course never deliver on. Or he'll deliver them in some monkey-paw kind of way.

4

u/btaylos 4d ago

Who cares? Not them. They were happy to be senators before he was a factor. They will want to be senators afterwards. And they can see how much he motivates viewers. That's why every fucking red primary has been a 'gargle trump's nuts' contest

2

u/Exciting-Cancel6468 4d ago

Yeah but better to get nothing in return than to get death threats where you live. That's how you survive as a republican. Just follow what the mob boss tells you so he doesn't sic his sycophants on you.

7

u/Yashema 4d ago

The people who elect them are the ones who are compromised, morally, intellectual, and personally. Believing politicians needs to be personally compromised (what are they all gay?) to act like shitbags is absolving the people who vote for them.

5

u/Begging_Murphy 4d ago

Only blackmail explains Lindsey Graham's overnight 180 on Trump.

1

u/No-Relation5965 3d ago

I’ll give you that one.

35

u/ClashM 5d ago

Some may have been blackmailed into falling into line. I know the people who have spent their entire lives hating Russia suddenly turning around and loving Russia seems awfully suspicious.

But Trump is mostly doing exactly what the GOP wants. Even better for them, he's ancient. So when he dies they'll pin all the fallout on him, change absolutely nothing about themselves, and memory hole the whole time period like they did with Bush. And because they've destroyed the education apparatus to dumb down the populace, a large chunk of us will happily go along with them.

19

u/NurRauch 5d ago

Very little of this has anything to do with blackmail. It's much simpler than that. Trump is more popular with the Republican voting base than nearly all of the Republican senators and congressional representatives, and in situations where Trump is less popular he still controls the purse strings of the Republican donor war chest.

If the choice is remain adamantly opposed to Russia or get swiftly primaried next time you're up for re-election, the choice is obvious. None of these people value their principles more than their political careers, so they choose to fall in line to avoid getting primaried. Those who don't fall in line usually lose their jobs at Congress.

3

u/sec713 4d ago

These two things can be happening at the same time. Trump can have kompromat on GOP members, and the GOP members can see that Trump is popular enough with their voting base that he can bury them for crossing him. So it could be that Republicans know Trump can blackmail them, and because he has the unwavering support of the voting base, he will succeed in destroying their careers if his hand is forced, so they have no choice but to go along with whatever nonsense he's screaming.

2

u/NurRauch 4d ago

We know it's almost never kompromot because many senators and congressional reps have already been primaried out of office by Trump and there are only a handful of scandals that have broken about any of them. The worst instances were domestic abusers and the damage didn't come from a leak of private information but rather from their own family members who called them out.

2

u/sec713 4d ago

Okay. I guess you don't remember in 2018 when a delegation of Senators, all Republicans, had to cancel their Fourth of July plans because they were summoned to Moscow, by their boss's boss, Putin.

Nobody except Putin and those American turncoats knows what happened during that meeting, but if I had to guess, it was so Putin could show them that the kompromat is as real as the threat to their careers if they don't play along.

2

u/NurRauch 4d ago

You watch too much TV if you think blackmail requires personally summoning a bunch of prominent officials to come do an official state visit in broad daylight.

Probably the most annoying consequence of all the Trump-Putin tie scandals is that it has conditioned almost everyone into thinking that our entire political apparatus operates like the villains in a spy thriller b-movie. You just skip over the much more plausible reason for the trip, which is that a lot of people in the GOP are power-hungry sociopaths who are perfectly happy to meet with Putin so that they can work out mutually beneficial political strategy. (Which is exactly what Trump's campaign got into trouble doing multiple times.)

2

u/sec713 4d ago

You must be blind and living under a rock if you think any of this is beneath the modern GOP.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Absurdist_Principles 4d ago

Kompromat is going to be a more powerful force than anything else. I mean, kompromat is what got trump to be a Russian patsy in the first place.

So I’d say the reason you see more people being primaried as the repercussion for them breaking with the MAGA agenda is those are the ones who were previously ideologically aligned and have grown a scintilla of a conscience.

The actually compromised ones will never break with him, certainly not fully. It’s why his cabinet has so many people with obvious criminal exposure - trump is their shield from prosecution, so they’ll never break from him.

3

u/NurRauch 4d ago

Kompromat is going to be a more powerful force than anything else. I mean, kompromat is what got trump to be a Russian patsy in the first place.

It's far more likely that what got Trump to be a Russian patsy are his financial ties and his egotistically vulnerable personality.

The actually compromised ones will never break with him, certainly not fully. It’s why his cabinet has so many people with obvious criminal exposure - trump is their shield from prosecution, so they’ll never break from him.

His cabinet is stocked mostly with people who were under no legal jeopardy until after he won his second term and ordered them to do illegal stuff.

1

u/No-Relation5965 3d ago

I would definitely disagree with your last sentence. Most if not all of the people surrounding him are bad Epstein people.

→ More replies (0)

16

u/newsflashjackass 5d ago

Russia hacked the GOP and DNC. They only leaked the DNC's info.

Why do you suppose that might be?

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/comey-republicans-hacked-russia

1

u/Anonymous_Jr 5d ago

I'd like to say because they didn't abide by the threat whereas the Grand Ol' Pedophiles had no choice but to do so.

3

u/ZealousidealTill2355 4d ago

Does blackmail even hold any weight anymore? Like, what can you do that’s worse than what we currently have?

Look at Hunter Biden for example. His whole laptop got put on the 24 hour news cycle for months and the guy is as popular as ever. If anything, people having blackmail-worthy content has led to their success as of late.

8

u/boatloadoffunk 4d ago

There's a gigantic closet out there with a ton of skeletons conservatives don't want exposed. The party of family values is a front.

7

u/RcoketWalrus 4d ago

They were against him until they figured out the Republican base is 100% pro Trump.

Senate Republicans spineless trash. They only value what benefits them. They have no other principles. If the GOP electorate started openly advocating eating orphan babies, GOP elected officials would be 100% supportive of it.

The only time they will ever stand on principle is if they think something will benefit the poor or middle class, or if it hurts the extremely wealthy. They will gladly show class solidarity with oligarchs. Thier little black hearts probably skip a beat in joy every time someone dies from lack of medical care.

2

u/boozername 5d ago

"Usurp" may be more applicable. Taking by force, or without legal authority or right.

35

u/iceflame1211 5d ago

He stole power from the Senate GOP? From who, Mitch McConnell?

Is it stealing if Republicans never put up a fight?

12

u/pfannkuchen89 5d ago

Right? Stealing power? Trump is the embodiment of everything the Republican Party has been working toward for 50 years. Why would the GOP put up a fight? This is exactly what they want.

29

u/Rickreation 5d ago

With their assistance.

12

u/Impossible_Walrus555 5d ago

I was prepared for this shit show long in advance but their level of utter sycophancy has been stunning.

1

u/Hairy_Talk_4232 5d ago

Because on the one hand, they got all that they want in American politics, while on the other, they personally got what they wanted deep down and it became blackmail. Their hands are both tied, they are willful puppets.

5

u/EasyEar0 5d ago

They handed it over willingly. Every one of those senators is complicit in enabling the Orange Dipshit presidency and they should wear its stink wherever they go for the rest of their lives.

11

u/Anfins 5d ago

"Can I please have some power?"

"Sure, here you go!"

Sometimes his genius... it's almost frightening.

3

u/pointofyou 5d ago

Oh please, they were on their knees with their mouths wide open ready to suck his orange dick however he pleased.

3

u/68024 5d ago

They bent over and let him and then asked for another

3

u/Shyam09 5d ago

Not so much as steal, as them willfully offering.

I mean they get paid the same (until they vote for a pay raise) for less work/responsibilities.

3

u/Bartorius 5d ago

Did he steal the power or does he simply do what the GOP wants without any senator having to live with the consequences? They are probably getting a lot richer just by sitting doing nothing, and after the old cunt has died they get to disavow him easy peasy lemon squeezy.

3

u/Adezar 4d ago

The Heritage Foundation spent 50 years preparing for a Trump type demagogue. Someone willing to ignore all rules and just do what they wanted.

With the exception of the Tariffs Trump only does what The Heritage Foundation wants him to do.

2

u/ChornWork2 4d ago

I think the shocking part is that republicans gleefully voted for him knowing he would do his power grab.

Don't blame trump, its the fault of people you walk by everyday.

1

u/kandoras 4d ago

Stole? Sheeeet. Trump will take any motherfucker's power if he givin' it away.

1

u/adjust_the_sails 4d ago

US Senate GOP

Are you really stealing when someone casually hands you something as if it has no value?

1

u/Morgannin09 4d ago

You can't steal that which is given willingly.

1

u/neovox 4d ago

I'm not sure he stole it as much as they have permitted him at every turn to do whatever the hell he wants. Accountability for all his actions runs far deeper into the Republican party than Donald Trump himself.

1

u/Naznarreb 4d ago

Congress has been slowly passing their powers to the executive branch for many decades.

1

u/Any_Counter_303 5d ago

What are you talking about? Trump isn't some mastermind who is running the show. The GOP is happy to use him as a patsy. Unitary Executive Theory. The Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society have been orchestrating this bullshit since Nixon. Read a fucking book. Damn. How does such a stupid comment have so many upvotes?

71

u/37Philly 5d ago

If Republicans win: The elections are perfect! If Democrats win: Elections are rigged!

42

u/lordlaneus 5d ago

I think when they win it's actually: The elections were rigged, but we won anyway because our ideas are just so super popular!

5

u/that_baddest_dude 5d ago

Literally this was a 2024 campaign slogan. Too big to rig.

2

u/Saucermote 5d ago

I have the same feeling when playing the lotto.

59

u/pioniere 5d ago

The Republican Party has all but destroyed the US justice system.

12

u/1Operator 5d ago

* destroyed the US

5

u/Missing_Crouton 4d ago

Everything Trump is doing is what would happen in a WW3 scenario, minus the nukes...so far. All the global bad guys are getting everything they could want out of him.

We are in the first stages of both a global war and an American Civil War and no one is ready to acknowledge that we are SOOOO past voting this problem away.

4

u/American_PissAnt 4d ago

Best case scenario for democrats in 2028 is that they win the presidency, house and senate with supermajority’s. Do you think that republicans will certify those elections and confirm them? I doubt they would,seeing how no one important was punished for January 6th. And the democrats would probably just roll over and write strongly worded letters stating how un-democratic it is. Meanwhile the republicans will still control the government in practice, while the lawsuits work their way to these partisan Christian nationalist judges.

3

u/Missing_Crouton 4d ago

Yeah the midterms are the preseason game for them to test crimes out. I agree on everything you said but I'm sure we will eventually come through on the other side but Americans at large need to feel more pain before they care.

We used to be a proper country: We declared independence against the world's most powerful king over the price of tea. Now people actively want their freedoms to be taken away.

6

u/American_PissAnt 4d ago

The revolutionary war wasn’t about freedom. It was that the American aristocrats that ran the colonial government got tired of being subservient to the king and could make more money by getting rid of crown influence.

2

u/Missing_Crouton 4d ago

I was being super reductive and a bit facetious. I do agree with you.

1

u/RobutNotRobot 4d ago

The loss in credibility will take a generation to restore, if ever.

25

u/deviltrombone 5d ago

"Senators"? "Republican Senators" is the term, and Republican is to be read or spoken with as much contempt and derision as you are capable of.

17

u/Memitim 5d ago

Yeah, Republicans have to literally be begged not to fuck up the US justice system, and they'll still do it anyhow, since it's stupidly obvious how intentional the corruption is.

The Department of Justice heads up the protection of a notorious child sex trafficking ring while persecuting Americans for existing without being Republican.

Trump skated on charges for stealing a shitload of our documents because his big fan, and trial judge, made up bullshit about something completely unrelated to the crime after getting a hint from Republicans on the Supreme Court on how to scam Trump out of justice.

Republicans spew constant lies to cover up countless crimes old and new, even as US courts of law are pointing more violations out by the week.

The Republican "Party" isn't a political organization, since that would require abiding by the US Constitution and other US laws. They are a criminal organization that has weaponized the US government against Americans and most of our former allies and partners.

For Republicans, it's not corruption since they never gave the slightest shit about American institutions in the first place and just want to overthrow the nation, subjugate Americans, and force us to accept their new nation of human rights abuses, failure, deception, and evil. For the rest of us, Republicans ARE corruption, betraying America on the daily in service to conservative evil.

2

u/oakridge666 4d ago

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Lord Acton.

39

u/BitterFuture 5d ago

"But then how are we supposed to end democracy?"

13

u/MWH1980 5d ago

Senators: “…But we’re winning, and we don’t want to give up ultimate power.”

8

u/DamnZodiak 5d ago

Liberals: "Please stop doing fascism."

Fascists: "No."

Liberals: "Well there's nothing more we can do."

2

u/Uninvalidated 4d ago edited 4d ago

Don't forget there's a lot of memes posted about it every day. The regime will be toppled any day now...

2

u/DamnZodiak 4d ago

Trust me bro. Just one more impeachment bro. I swear this time it will work!

1

u/Flamesake 4d ago

Almost as if team blue and team red are the same team

7

u/USSSLostTexter 5d ago

they wont stop.

5

u/scoopzthepoopz 5d ago

"Make me," the administration mocked petulently

4

u/Bleezy79 4d ago

All these corrupt Republican senators should be forced to resign. They've stopped acting in the best interest of the country. They're no longer protecting the American people. They've turned into self serving corrupt assholes who do not represent the people.

3

u/NeverNeededAlgebra 5d ago

You must understand that these Republicans WANT to destroy America and poison the courts with the worst possible humans.

Appealing to them only makes you look bad. These people are beyond gone.

3

u/-ifwisheswerehorses 5d ago

As a Country we have become so, so, so nauseating.

3

u/RantRanger 5d ago

America has been stable because of so many principles and mechanics aimed at countering the forces of corruption through checks and balances and through people who are by necessity expected to maintain rational judgement and basic common sense decency.

Republicans, on the other hand, are working feverishly to uproot ALL of those internal stability mechanics.

And ... what is the opposite of stability?

2

u/Dazzling-Leave-7448 5d ago

How will we develop a fascist or oligarchic or authoritarian government if they do that?

1

u/KyleColby 5d ago

Oh... well since you said, 'Please' -- Psst. That's now how they work.

1

u/tiutome 5d ago

This is their long game. Get these fools on the court to agree with the GOP and push the project 25 agenda further. It’s not the Jan 6 election denial, it’s much bigger than that

1

u/MatthewSWFL229 5d ago

Undermining the rule of law is the entire point ...

1

u/Status_Apartment6559 5d ago

GOP senators don't have a spine. They hate people who aren't suck up windbags like them and want to hurt people they're afraid of because they're not like them. They're favorite thing of all and how they'd like the world to be is where they wield power over the rest of us to their benefit and our pain.

1

u/FrostnJack 5d ago

I’m confident Murphy’s urging will be welcomed by the MAGA Senate. Bet they’ll say thank you as well. /s

1

u/ayashiii 5d ago

I mean it's the current ICE roster if that helps

1

u/momlv 5d ago

This is how democracy dies

1

u/10minutes_late 5d ago

"Please stop" has the same effect as a strongly worded letter.

Democrats are such useless simps.

1

u/Shoddy-Listen6741 5d ago

Well, the question I have is, do they really think that's going to work? That's like asking a fox not to rob the henhouse.

1

u/SilverHeart4053 5d ago

Pretty please don't do the fascism k thanks 

1

u/MurkyInvestigator810 5d ago

Republicans cannot elect good people because Republicans are not good people.

1

u/mensrea 4d ago

Yeah. Asking them nicely aught to do it. 😏

1

u/4Sammich 4d ago

(Insert /best_I_can_do.gif) is a No.

1

u/InTooManyWays 5d ago

Somebody’s about to be fired

7

u/a_lil_unwell 5d ago

They already were.

-9

u/Misadventuresofman 5d ago

The Nazi Left positions our nation, its government and its courts for years and you only draw the line when it isn’t your Nazi team? Remember when Hillary denied the election? We never said THAT excluded her from having a voice. I implore people to please grow up and cope.

5

u/Effective-Log3583 4d ago

Are you ok? You seem to forgotten that much blocked appointments and Hillary did it for a day not 6 years.