Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including Vice, Motherboard, the Nation, the Atlantic, Al Jazeera, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.
Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse in Grand Rapids, MI.
As the Proud Boys trial gets underway, finally, prosecutors are beginning to show how the Proud Boys worked with people — Alex Jones, Ali Alexander, and Roger Stone — who in turn worked with Donald Trump in what ended up being a successful attempt to obstruct the certification of Donald Trump’s loss.
Charlie Pierce wants trials the likes of the Nuremberg Trials, which were so powerful because the architects of an authoritarian conspiracy were tied to the events that took place at the crime scene. And DOJ took a key step in doing that week — a key step in an effort that has been obviously in the works for 18 months, an effort that started on January 4, 2021, when Enrique Tarrio’s phone was seized.
And yet Charlie Pierce has seen no evidence of that.
Jack Smith is leading two investigations in which at least 26 key witnesses or subjects are lawyers. One way to break through the wall of privilege Trump his hiding behind is to investigate how false claims of vote fraud paid for suspect legal representation to obstruct this investigation.