The Commentariat -- May 3, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offer [to] Attorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in the special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was 'willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production.' But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply."

Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during a lengthy phone call on Friday, the White House said. The two talked on the phone for more than an hour, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The leaders also discussed trade and a potential nuclear agreement including China, Sanders said. Regarding the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which concluded in March, Sanders said 'both leaders knew there was no collusion.' The discussion on the matter was brief, she said."

We Saw This Coming. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "The White House on Friday seized on revelations that the FBI during the 2016 campaign sent an undercover investigator to meet with an aide to then-candidate Donald Trump, with the president calling the news 'bigger than Watergate.' Trump praised one of his most frequent media foes, The New York Times, for its reporting, while his reelection campaign lit into investigators and Vice President Mike Pence called the bureau's actions' very troubling.'"

Matt Dixon of Politico: "In an early show of force, more than a third of Florida's Democratic state legislators endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid for president. The endorsements, from 23 of the Legislature's 64 Democrats, were gathered over the past month by state Rep. Joseph Geller, a Broward County Democrat and longtime Biden supporter. Geller said Biden has the best shot at bridging a growing divide between progressive Democrats and those representing the party's more moderate, traditional wing."

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The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "... Robert Mueller's team is in direct talks with the House Judiciary Committee about whether he will testify before Congress, according to multiple reports. NBC News and ABC News reported that the committee is now speaking with Mueller's team when it was previously dealing with the Justice Department. NBC reports that a hearing has not been finalized and a date was not set."

Rebecca Morin of USA Today: "President Trump said Thursday that he won't allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress. 'I don't think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can because especially him because he was the counsel,' Trump said during a clip of a 20-minute interview aired on Fox News. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, last week issued a subpoena to McGahn to testify before the committee.... Trump maintained that there is no need to investigate further now after Mueller's report. 'I would say it's done,' the president said Thursday in the Fox News sit-down. 'Nobody has ever done what I've done, I've given total transparency. It's never happened before like this.'" Mrs. McC: Right.

Pamela Brown & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The White House has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month and released Thursday afternoon. In the five-page letter, a top White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller's report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted. Flood slammed Mueller's approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to 'either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.... The (special counsel) instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper,' Flood wrote.... The letter is dated April 19, one day after the Justice Department released the redacted report to the public." The same day, Trump published one of his "No Collusion - No Obstruction!" tweets. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ed Krassenstein of the Hill Reporter: "Senator and 2020 presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar, has just sent a letter to Robert Mueller requesting information related to Trump's personal tax returns and Trump Organization financial details. The letter ... outlines the fact that Attorney General William Barr suggested that she ask Mueller directly about Trump's tax returns, after Barr himself said on Wednesday that he did not know if Mueller had obtained or reviewed any of Trump's returns. Klobuchar makes it clear that since Senator Lindsey Graham has no plans on interviewing Mueller, that Mueller should provide her with any tax returns or Trump Organization financial records that he was able to obtain." Mrs. McC: Whoever drafted Klobuchar's letter must have been smiling as she worked. ...

     ... Krassenstein has a copy of the text Klobuchar's letter at the end of his report, but as of Thursday night, it contains writeovers. Klobuchar has a readable copy on her own Senate site.

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats, decrying what they called an erosion of American democracy, threatened on Thursday to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and ignored a subpoena deadline to hand over Robert S. Mueller III's full report and evidence.... 'What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to a House hearing in which he said he was unaware that the special counsel had protested his portrayal of his conclusions. 'That's a crime.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mikhaila Fogel & Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare explain why Barr's misleading answer to Rep. Charlie Crist in an April hearing do not constitute perjury. However, the authors do note a super-slip-up Barr made in his self-defensive testimony before the Senate this week: "Barr's response suggests his defense: He understood Crist to be asking if he knew anything about concerns raised by members of Mueller's team, not by Mueller himself. And Barr had only heard directly from Mueller. The attorney general's comment later in the May 1 hearing that he thought the Mueller letter 'was probably written by one of his staff people' complicates the explanation he provided...."

President* Free to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue. Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Stunning among other stunning statements Attorney General William Barr made Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was his blithe declaration that the president is above the law. Responding to questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Barr claimed repeatedly Donald Trump had been 'falsely accused' of coordinating with Russia. Deploying the 'no underlying crime' red herring, Barr asserted that the president as head of government and the Department of Justice was entitled to close down an investigation into himself if he felt it was off the rails: 'The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow [an investigation] to run its course,' Barr said. 'That's important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here ... do involve the exercise of the president's constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.'... Bill Barr declared Trump king." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Whether out of sycophantic loyalty or a deep-seated belief in executive impunity, Barr has used his position to insulate the president from legal scrutiny. He has done everything in his power to downplay the impact of the special counsel's investigation.... You don't have to dive deep into Barr's history to see that he is an apparatchik, less committed to the rule of law than he is to his political party and its leadership.... Helping Republican presidents act with impunity is William Barr's stock-in-trade.... His theory of presidential immunity did not extend to Bill Clinton, for example, whose impeachment Barr defended."

Right-wing columnist Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner: "Attorney General William Barr three times now has tread on the dangerous ground of asserting that the president can assess his own guilt or innocence and, by extension, of the culpability of underlings as well.... Barr's prepared [April 18] press conference remarks ascribed 'non-corrupt motives' to President Trump's consideration of impeding Mueller's probe, on the theory that Trump 'was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,' even though 'there was in fact no collusion.'... In his May 1 testimony, Barr was more specific on two separate occasions. 'If the president is being falsely accused..., and he felt this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for [exercising constitutional authority] for replacing an independent counsel.' In later testimony, Barr said: 'With the president, who has a constitutional authority to supervise proceedings ... was based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course. The president could terminate that proceeding and it would not be corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused, and he would be worried about the impact on his administration.'... There can be no innocent motive for, or innocent effect from, an attempt to halt a duly constituted investigation operating under proper constitutional safeguards. This is so even if a president's political opponents are misusing ... the investigation for their own illegitimate purposes."

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare in the Atlantic, Is So Disillusioned: "Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject.... Barr has consistently sought to spin his department's work in a highly political fashion, and he has done so to cast the president's conduct in the most favorable possible light.... Barr's public statements [about the Mueller report] are simply indefensible." Wittes goes on to catalogue all the ways Barr has misrepresented Mueller's findings. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker points out what a low opinion Bill Barr holds of federal "staff." He doesn't think much of low-life U.S. senators, either. Nor the press, who apparently were at fault in reading & reporting his summary that's not a summary as a near-vindication of Trump....

     ... Mrs. McC: Oddly enough, Barr didn't fault Trump for the victory lap he took after some lowly staffer read parts of Barr's not-summary to him. And he didn't fault himself for testifying that the Mueller report found that Trump was "falsely accused." But Barr is a shady lawyer & therefore not a person who is troubled by logical fallacies. I should add here that "staff" are not ditzy recent high-school grads who got jobs in the typing pool because they couldn't get real, private-sector jobs. For instance, the House "staff" whom Barr is too high-and-mighty to allow to question him would be experienced lawyers; the DOJ "staff" who memorialized the Barr-Mueller phone call also would likely be top department lawyers. Very often, "staff" are far more competent than the elected & appointed officials for whom they work. They have years of specialized experience. Effective officials know their staffs are indispensable & appreciate their expertise.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it's true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man? So after today, if we didn't before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It's 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction. This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we've never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he's the victim of a 'coup.' What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them." (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: A U.S. government investigator posing as a research assistant set up a meeting in a London bar in September 2016 with George Papadopoulos. "The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign's links to Russia.... Ms. Turk ... work[ed] alongside a longtime informant, the Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper.... The American government's affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances.... The decision to use Ms. Turk ... shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the second New York Times "original reporting" story in two days that is helpful to Donald Trump. The first -- about Joe's Biden's son Hunter's business ops in Ukraine & linked yesterday -- was clearly a Rudy Giuliani plant; the report more-or-less said so. And, surprise, surprise, Bill Barr makes more than a cameo appearance in both matters. P.S. As you may recall, the NYT was the prime mover of the Clinton e-mails! story, and we should expect the Times again to be the paper of record exaggeration on stories "exposing" purported wrongdoing by whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Barr Has Protected Trump. His Next Step Is to Smear His Opponents.... One direction the loyal AG is obviously heading is yet another investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. At Barr's hearing, Republican senators devoted most of their time to repeating wild allegations about the Russia investigation as deep state coup.... A second direction for Barr's investigatory powers is now coming into view. As Hillary Clinton's value as a foil has receded, Trump has taken aim at the candidate he sees as his most likely and formidable threat: Joe Biden. The ... Times story describes both the connections between Biden and Ukraine, and Trumpworld’s efforts to criminalize them.... Hunter Biden has legally but somewhat sleazily traded on his father's name through various investment and consulting arrangements.... The far greater evidence of misconduct lies in the ... Trump administration['s] ... pressuring Ukraine to advance the case specifically in order to smear Biden.... The context for this revelation is another story the Times broke last year that ... revealed that Ukraine had ceased all cooperation with the Mueller probe [in its investigation of Paul Manafort].... Having first helped Trump by shutting down its probe of Manafort, now Ukraine is helping him find some mud on a likely opponent."

Greg Farrell of Bloomberg News: "... at least one group has peered into the carefully guarded trove [of Donald Trump's tax returns] ... -- a team from Deutsche Bank AG. The bankers got a look before agreeing to lend to the Trump Organization in 2012 -- access that was described by two people familiar with the interaction. It was all part of a fresh start on a banking relationship that had soured after the financial crisis, descending into litigation over a Chicago project.... Deutsche Bank sent a team to the office of Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, the two people said. Weisselberg allowed the bankers to see relevant parts of Trump's tax returns and take notes, the people said. They weren't allowed to make copies of the documents, they said."

Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.... Such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say.... Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been 'stonewalled' in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump's businesses. 'This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses' potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,' Cummings said in a statement to Reuters." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mark Stern of Slate: "On Wednesday afternoon, after Attorney General William Barr finished his truculent and mendacious testimony before the Senate, the Department of Justice filed perhaps the most embarrassing, illogical, and nakedly political brief in the history of the agency. With Barr's assent, the DOJ argued that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because Congress zeroed out the individual mandate's penalty in 2017. The timing couldn't be worse. After obliterating his own credibility at the Senate hearing, Barr scorched the Justice Department's legitimacy, deploying fatuous pseudo-legal arguments to further the Trump administration's partisan goals." Stern explains some of the DOJ's "zany" arguments. The DOJ's brief is here.

They Really Don't Care, Do They? Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. '[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.'... The gaps in the system for tracking separations would result in a months-long effort to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that continues." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A Very Sudden Decision to Withdraw. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans. 'Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,' Trump tweeted.... The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still 'all in' on his potential nomination." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump Administration Is Whitewashing White Supremacy. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "A group of Democratic senators ... on Thursday called for the FBI to rescind a recent change to the way it classifies domestic terrorist incidents, arguing that the move plays down the threat of white supremacy. The letter to Attorney General William P. Barr and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was signed by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), all 2020 [presidential] candidates, as well as Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). All are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, the senators said the FBI has created a new category -- 'racially-motivated violent extremism' -- that 'inappropriately' combines white-supremacist incidents with those involving 'Black identity extremists.' By doing so, the FBI has 'shifted its approach to tracking domestic terrorism incidents to obfuscate the white supremacist threat,' the senators said.... The senators said the Justice Department and FBI revealed the change in a briefing last week with Judiciary Committee staffers that took place 'nearly six months after the briefing was requested.'"

Presidential Race 2020

Adam Beam of the AP: "The state Senate voted 27-10 on Thursday to require anyone appearing on the state's presidential primary ballot to publicly release five years' worth of income tax returns. The proposal is in response to Trump, who bucked 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns prior to his election in 2016.... The Legislature passed a nearly identical bill in 2017, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, telling lawmakers he was concerned the law was unconstitutional. Brown, a Democrat, refused to release his tax returns while in office.... [Now-Gov.] Gavin Newsom, who has released his tax returns and embraced his role as a national 'resistance' leader to Trump and his policies. Newsom's office didn't say whether he'd sign it.... All 10 Republicans in the state Senate voted against the bill, arguing it is unconstitutional."

Paul Krugman: "The trouble with both Biden and Sanders is that each, in his own way, seems to believe that he has unique powers of persuasion that will let him defy the harsh reality of today's tribal politics. And this lack of realism could set either of them up for failure.... The big concern about a Biden presidency is that he would repeat all of Obama's early mistakes, squandering any momentum from electoral victory in pursuit of a bipartisan dream that should have died long ago. Sanders, by contrast, doesn't do bipartisanship.... Biden appears stuck in the past, when real bipartisanship sometimes happened. Sanders appears to live in an imaginary future, where a popular tidal wave washes away all political obstacles."

Mike Isaac & Kevin Roose of the New York Times: "After years of wavering about how to handle the extreme voices populating its platform, Facebook on Thursday evicted seven of its most controversial users -- many of whom are conservatives -- immediately inflaming the debate about the power and accountability of large technology companies. The social network said it had barred Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, from its platform, along with a handful of other extremists. Louis Farrakhan, the outspoken black nationalist minister who has frequently been criticized for his anti-Semitic remarks, was also banned. The Silicon Valley company said these users were disallowed from using Facebook and Instagram under its policies against 'dangerous individuals and organizations.'"

Gabrielle Emanuel & Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic. The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company's founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients' need for the drug."

Beyond the Beltway

Maryland. Paul Schwarzman & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: Baltimore "Mayor Catherine E. Pugh, who is under state and federal investigation over lucrative sales of her self-published children's books, resigned Thursday, plunging thia already rattled city into another political crisis. Pugh (D), a former state lawmaker, has been under public scrutiny since at least March, following news reports about the book deals with companies that do business with the city and state. Her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, announced her resignation at his downtown law office..., reading a statement from Pugh, who was believed to be at her home elsewhere in the city." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

West Virginia. Roni Rabin of the New York Times: "The state of West Virginia on Wednesday settled a lawsuit against the nation's largest drug distributor, which had been accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of addictive opioids to residents over a six-year period. The state's suit accused McKesson Corporation of putting profits ahead of residents' welfare by failing to investigate, report or stop suspicious drug orders as required by law, and fueling a widespread drug epidemic. McKesson, the sixth-largest American company in terms of revenue, reported over $208 billion in the last fiscal year. The giant distributor funneled enough hydrocodone and oxycodone to supply every legitimate patient with nearly 3,000 doses, state officials said."

Way Beyond

Russian Spy Whale Defects to Norway. Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "An alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave a Norwegian port city, in what appears to be a high-profile defection after a week of global attention on the unnamed beluga. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig told The Washington Post that the beluga 'was the first thing I saw outside of the window' of his patrolling ship in the morning. Speaking from the city of Hammerfest, he said the whale had moved only about 25 nautical miles within the last week and appeared to enjoy the proximity to humans, which he noted was 'strange' for a beluga. Contrary to the species' normal behavior, the beluga had allowed residents to pet its nose over the last few days."

News Lede

CNBC: "The U.S. jobs machine kept humming along in April, adding a robust 263,000 new hires while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest in a generation, according to a Labor Department report Friday. Nonfarm payroll growth easily beat Wall Street expectations of 190,000 and a 3.8% jobless rate."

The Commentariat -- May 2, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Paul Schwarzman & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: Baltimore “Mayor Catherine E. Pugh, who is under state and federal investigation over lucrative sales of her self-published children's books, resigned Thursday, plunging this already rattled city into another political crisis. Pugh (D), a former state lawmaker, has been under public scrutiny since at least March, following news reports about the book deals with companies that do business with the city and state. Her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, announced her resignation at his downtown law office..., reading a statement from Pugh, who was believed to be at her home elsewhere in the city."

They Really Don't Care, Do They? Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. '[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.'... The gaps in the system for tracking separations would result in a months-long effort to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that continues."

A Very Sudden Decision to Withdraw. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans. 'Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,' Trump tweeted.... The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still 'all in' on his potential nomination."

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats, decrying what they called an erosion of American democracy, threatened on Thursday to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and ignored a subpoena deadline to hand over Robert S. Mueller III's full report and evidence.... 'What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to a House hearing in which he said he was unaware that the special counsel had protested his portrayal of his conclusions. 'That's a crime.'" See Jerry Nadler's speech, video embedded below.

Pamela Brown & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The White House has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month and released Thursday afternoon. In the five-page letter, a top White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller's report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted. Flood slammed Mueller's approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to 'either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.... The (special counsel) instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper,' Flood wrote.... The letter is dated April 19, one day after the Justice Department released the redacted report to the public." The same day, Trump published one of his "No Collusion - No Obstruction!" tweets.

President* Free to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue. Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Stunning among other stunning statements Attorney General William Barr made Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was his blithe declaration that the president is above the law. Responding to questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Barr claimed repeatedly Donald Trump had been 'falsely accused' of coordinating with Russia. Deploying the 'no underlying crime' red herring, Barr asserted that the president as head of government and the Department of Justice was entitled to close down an investigation into himself if he felt it was off the rails: 'The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow [an investigation] to run its course,' Barr said. 'That's important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here ... do involve the exercise of the president's constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.'... Bill Barr declared Trump king."

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare in the Atlantic, Is So Disillusioned: "Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject.... Barr has consistently sought to spin his department's work in a highly political fashion, and he has done so to cast the president's conduct in the most favorable possible light.... Barr's public statements [about the Mueller report] are simply indefensible." Wittes catalogues all the ways Barr has misrepresented Mueller's findings.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it's true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man? So after today, if we didn't before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It's 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction. This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we've never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he's the victim of a 'coup.' What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eage help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them."

Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.... Such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say.... Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been 'stonewalled' in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump's businesses. 'This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses' potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,' Cummings said in a statement...."

Russian Spy Whale Defects to Norway. Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "An alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave a Norwegian port city, in what appears to be a high-profile defection after a week of global attention on the unnamed beluga. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig told The Washington Post that the beluga 'was the first thing I saw outside of the window' of his patrolling ship in the morning. Speaking from the city of Hammerfest, he said the whale had moved only about 25 nautical miles within the last week and appeared to enjoy the proximity to humans, which he noted was 'strange' for a beluga. Contrary to the species'; normal behavior, the beluga had allowed residents to pet its nose over the last few days."

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Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I know you have a real life & you're busy, but it's worth carving out some time to try to get a handle on what's happening in Washington, D.C. these days. Of course every moment is "a moment in history," but this one seems to be more significant than many. To learn nothing of it except the evening news gloss is like driving to a national park & refusing to leave the parking lot.

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- Low Barr Edition

Alicia Cohn of the Hill: "An empty chair for Attorney General William Barr sits in a committee room on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Barr had informed the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he would not testify.... Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) also brought Kentucky Fried Chicken, as well as a fake chicken, into the hearing room...." ...

Rachel Bade, et al., of the Washington Post: "Attorney General William P. Barr told a House panel on Wednesday that he will not testify about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report, raising the prospect that Democrats will hold the nation's top law enforcement official in contempt of Congress. Barr, who also missed a deadline for subpoenaed information on Wednesday, had been scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday about his handling of Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But Barr balked at the committee's plan to have a committee counsel question him alongside lawmakers, a snub that angered Democrats.... [Chairman Jerry] Nadler [D-NY] said that he would give Barr a 'day or two' to turn over the full, unredacted Mueller report in accordance with the committee's subpoena, information that was due Wednesday morning. But the chairman warned that 'if good faith negotiations don't result in a pledge of compliance ... the next step is seeking a contempt citation against the attorney general.'"

** Katie Benner & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Attorney General William P. Barr on Wednesday answered questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Robert S. Mueller III's report, appearing on Capitol Hill for the first time since he made the report public.... Here are the highlights of his testimony." ...

     ... The New York Times liveblog of the hearing is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

** Marcy Wheeler: “Among the opinions the Attorney General espoused [at Wednesday's hearing] are that: You only need to call the FBI when being offered campaign assistance by a foreign intelligence service, not a foreigner[.] It's okay to lie about the many dangles hostile foreign countries make to a political campaign, including if you accepted those dangles[.] Because Trump was being falsely accused (it's not clear of what...), it's okay that he sought to undermine it through illegal means[.] It's okay for the President to order the White House Counsel to lie, even about an ongoing investigation[.] It's okay to fire the FBI Director for refusing to confirm or deny an ongoing investigation, which is DOJ policy not to do[.] It's okay for the Attorney General to call lawfully predicated DOJ investigative techniques 'spying' because Fox News does[.] Public statements -- including threatening someone's family -- cannot be subornation of perjury[.]... The most amazing thing is that, when Cory Booker asked Barr if he thought it was right to share polling data with Russians ... Barr appeared to have no clue that Paul Manafort had done so.... That's remarkable, because he basically agreed with Ben Sasse [R-Neb.] that [Oleg] Deripaska -- with whom Manafort was sharing this campaign data -- was a 'bottom-feeding scum-sucker.' So the Attorney General absolved the President of obstruction without having the faintest clue what actions the investigation of which Trump successfully obstructed by floating a pardon to Manafort.... He also admitted that he and Rod Rosenstein started making the decision on obstruction before they read the report. Indeed, several times during the hearing, it seemed he still has not read the report, as he was unfamiliar with allegations in it."

... Kyle Cheney & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday offered pointed critiques of Robert Mueller's investigation..., suggesting he wasn't sure why the special counsel investigated numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice if he decided he couldn't charge ... Donald Trump with a crime under Justice Department restrictions. At times, Barr contradicted the language and legal framework outlined in Mueller's report, and engaged in hair-splitting arguments with Democrats who accused him of 'purposefully misleading' Congress in previous testimony. 'The other thing that was confusing to me was that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes [of obstruction] were looked into,' Barr said. 'The question is, or was, why were those investigated at the end of the day if you weren't going to reach a decision?'... Barr's answers directly contradict the rationale Mueller laid out in his report. Mueller indicated in a legal analysis of obstruction of justice that 'fairness' dictated he not reach a formal judgment on whether the president obstructed justice -- regardless of the evidence." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Rachel Maddow had a good rundown, but I can't get a video of it. For now, you can view her opening segment (and others) on the show's main page here.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: I found the most remarkable opinion Barr shared to be this: that it's legal for a president to end an investigation of his own conduct if he feels the matter under investigation is not true. Update: Hillary Clinton agrees: on Rachel Maddow's show, Clinton called Barr's position on this "the road to tyranny."

Washington Post Editors: "... Mr. Barr has lit his reputation on fire, and he just added more fuel during his Wednesday testimony before a Senate panel. Much of the hearing centered on the attorney general's decision to release a highly misleading representation of the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation.... It is long past time the public stopped hearing Mr. Barr's views on how Mr. Mueller feels, and heard from the special counsel himself. The Justice Department should enable Mr. Mueller to speak publicly and under oath at the earliest opportunity. The special counsel should address not only his substantive findings on the president's misbehavior but also the attorney general's manipulation of his work. Not just Mr. Trump should be held accountable for his actions. So should his attorney general."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Barr has stepped forward as the seemingly objective face of the case Trump has been making since May 2017: that Trump did nothing wrong. But Barr's ability to play that role effectively has eroded over time, both with the revelation that Mueller took issue with his March 24 letter and, Wednesday, under questioning about the report by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Over the course of that questioning, Barr admitted he hadn't reviewed the evidence underlying Mueller's findings on obstruction, he hadn't looked at the evidence undergirding the origination of the probe into possible coordination and, at one point even made a comment raising questions about his familiarity with one of the key issues at the heart of the probe. It was Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) who drew the most significant blood.... A short while later, that lack of familiarity with the underlying evidence became important during questioning by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)." When Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) questioned Barr, Barr seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever about Paul Manafort's turning over proprietary polling data to Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, what a prosecutor had characterized in court as "very much to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating."

John Cassidy of the New Yorker hits more lowlights. "Before the hearing wrapped up, the Attorney General again portrayed Trump as a wronged man. 'How did we get to the point here, where the evidence is now that the President was falsely accused of colluding with the Russians, accused of being treasonous, accused of being a Russian agent?' he said to the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn. 'Two years of his Administration have been dominated by allegations that have now been proven false. To listen to some of the rhetoric, you would think that the Mueller report had found the opposite.'" Mrs. McC: The "rhetoric" is of course correct. Barr can be forgiven, I suppose, for not grasping that, inasmuch as he has not read Mueller's report.

Stephen Colbert enjoyed Barr's performance, too:

** Here's Mueller's full letter to Barr of March 27, & it's even more shocking than the WashPo story linked below lets on. At the top, Mueller writes that he has previously (March 25) sent Barr the introductions & executive summaries for both section of his report, which were marked for redactions of material to be withheld from public view. Mueller's purpose was to provide these sections to the public. Also, twice before Barr released his summary that wasn't a summary, Mueller touted his own summaries to Barr. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... As Michael Schmidt & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times lay out, "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, twice pushed Attorney General William P. Barr to release more of his team's investigative findings in late March, citing a gap between Mr. Barr's interpretation of them and their full report.... Mr. Mueller and his investigators also pressed the Justice Department to include summaries of their work in the hours before Mr. Barr released a four-page letter of his own on March 24, the new document showed." Barr should be tarred & feathered. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The story has been substantially revised & extended. ...

     ... New Lede: "When Attorney General William P. Barr summarized the special counsel's conclusions in a March letter, prompting President Trump to crow that he had been exonerated, the special counsel's prosecutors knew immediately what the public would learn weeks later: The letter was a sparse and occasionally misleading representation of their exhaustive findings. What followed was a dayslong, behind-the-scenes tussle over the first public presentation of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: “... it should come as no surprise that [Barr] misled about and spun Mueller's letter, too. The difference this time was that he accidentally gave away his game. From the start of the hearing, Barr emphasized two talking points about the letter: 1. That Mueller later told him nothing was inaccurate in Barr's summary of the Mueller report's principal conclusions[.] 2. That Mueller was concerned about news coverage[.]... But Mueller's letter paints a very different picture. It places the onus for misperceptions of his report squarely on Barr.... It took awhile, but Barr eventually seemed to acknowledge that Mueller had, in fact, rebuked him.... He said he told Mueller: 'Bob, what's with the letter? Why don't you just pick up the phone and call me if there's an issue?' Barr then added: 'The letter's a bit snitty, and I think it was written by one of his staff people.'" ...

... New York Times Editors: "For an institutionalist like Mr. Mueller, who never once spoke up to defend himself or his work from relentless attacks from the president and his Republican allies, the letter [to William Barr] is an unusual (and welcome) breach of protocol. It is rare for a senior Department of Justice official to so sharply criticize the attorney general in a written communication that would soon be made public. Clearly, Mr. Mueller deemed it necessary."

** Comey Says Barr & Rosenstein, et al., Are Soulless Wimps. James Comey in a New York Times op-ed: "Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them.... Accomplished people lacking inner strength [like William Barr & Rod Rosenstein] can't resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like [former Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis's to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Jack Crosbie of Splinter Is Not Convinced: "The whole thing reads like the manifesto of a 58-year-old high school history teacher who has a shrine to Alan Alda's noble Republican West Wing character in his basement, but Comey does eventually come to a point: It was TRUMP who turned these otherwise respectable white lawyer dudes into unethical liars.... The whole op-ed is reminiscent of Comey buddy Ben Wittes' weird denouncement of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, where one Good Ol' Boy Who Respects the Law expressed shock and horror that one of his peers turned out to be a piece of shit. This is far from new information to anyone who's been following along, and the last thing we needed was another self-righteous op-ed from a guy who didn't even have the guts to leave the administration on his own terms." ...

... Eliana Johnson of Politico claims that what eventually brought Barr, against his own better judgment, into the Trump administration was that he & his GOP lawyer chums "are united by a firm belief in a theory of robust presidential power dusted off by Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese. Known among legal scholars as the theory of the 'unitary executive,' they argue that the Constitution grants presidents broad control of the executive branch, including -- to take a salient Trump-era example -- the power to fire an FBI director for any reason at all." ...

... BUT Martin Longman, in the Washington Monthly, has a more prosaic explanation: "... he's just another example of an American whose brain has been rotted by consuming too much right-wing media. He's defending Trump for the same reason that Fox News says he should be defended. Trump is a victim of a witch hunt -- a plot to destroy him hatched by liberals and Obama holdovers in the FBI and Justice Department. I think he actually believes this, which would explain his behavior better than the theory that Trump corrupted his morals or that he's just putting up with Trump in order to defend the power of the presidency.... He sat in his living room watching Sean Hannity and it destroyed his brain, his moral compass, and his potential worth as a public servant." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: There's something to this. I recall hearing Antonin Scalia, who was supposed to have had a brilliant legal mind, parroting some dumb arguments popularized on Fox "News." Scalia himself admitted that he didn't read MSM & usually followed only right-wing media outlets. Fox & Friends made hash of the brilliant legal mind. Barr's responses to Democrats' questions in yesterday's hearing looked exactly like what you would expect from a guy who, after months or years of reading & watching winger media, was suddenly & brutally plopped down in the middle of reality.

Schlemiel's Remorse. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Three Senate Democrats voted for William Barr to be attorney general. And now at least two of them say they might have made a mistake.... Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who is the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection next year, said he is 'greatly, greatly disappointed in what I am seeing in the attorney general.'... 'I also thought he would bring this institutional stability to the Department of Justice. And not be the president's personal lawyer...,' Jones said in an interview.... Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) ... said if Mueller's issues with Barr 'proves out, absolutely I have buyer's remorse. I would have made a big mistake.'... The third Senate Democrat who supported Barr, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has requested a meeting with Barr about the discrepancies between his view of the special counsel's report and Mueller's, an aide said."

Andrew Cohen in Rolling Stone: "Lapdog Lindsey ... made it clear through the course of the day, as did virtually every other Republican member, that the Judiciary Committee doesn't want to look further into the evidence Mueller compiled of Trump's misconduct.... Instead, the same folks who gave us Kenneth Starr and endless Benghazi hearings now say they will spend their time trying to dig up more dirt about Hillary Clinton and trying to bash the FBI. Great news for the Russians."

Tom Hamburger & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "The White House said Wednesday that it will not authorize any executive branch officials to disclose to Congress information about individual security clearances, a move that House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) called 'the latest example of the president's widespread and growing obstruction of Congress.' The Oversight panel has been examining the administration's handling of security clearances and allegations that officials, including presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, were granted access to sensitive information over the objections of career staff.... The back-and-forth came as former White House personnel security director Carl Kline was set to testify in a closed-door deposition Wednesday morning." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ariane de Vogue of CNN: "The Trump administration offered its first full argument Wednesday for its reversal on the Affordable Care Act, arguing in new court filings that the entire law 'should not be allowed to remain in effect.' The government argues in the filings that the so-called 'individual mandate' requiring Americans to have coverage is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law should therefore also be struck down, even if the government 'might support some individual provisions as a policy matter.'" Mrs. McC: Normally, the government argues in support of U.S. laws. A notable exception was when "President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift..., determined that the Defense of Marriage Act -- the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages -- is unconstitutional, and ... directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court.... Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during Mr. Obama's first two years in the White House."

Sarah Ferris & Caitlin Emma of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency aid to address the surge of Central American immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The funding request is the first major move by the White House to respond to what it calls a' humanitarian crisis' at the Southern border and intensifies an ongoing funding battle over border security, just four months after the issue led to a paralyzing 35-day government shutdown." (Also linked yesterday.)

Presidential Race 2020

Emily Tillett of CBS News: "Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is the latest Democratic contender to enter the packed field of 2020 [presidential] hopefuls, announcing on 'CBS This Morning' on Thursday that he's running for president."

Ken Vogel & Iuliia Mendel of the New York Times write a complicated story about how Rudy Giuliani & Donald Trump are trying to get Ukrainian prosecutors & that nice Bill Barr to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden, Joe's son, in an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. "Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel's inquiry." Mrs. McC: Right. If Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee, we'll be hearing chants of "Lock Him Up." IMO, all of these "investments" & "interests" in developing countries that the politically-connected undertake are shady sinecures to which an honorable person would say no thanks. As for Barr, who couldn't figure out what the word "suggested" means when Kamala Harris asked him if Trump or any White House staff had suggested lines of criminal inquiries he might initiate, we know the true answer.

Senate Race 2020. Bill Lambrecht of the Houston Chronicle: "U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro has decided not to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. John Cornyn, choosing instead to continue pursuing a fast-rising career in Congress focusing on security and border issues. Castro's decision could pave the way for a contest in 2020 between Cornyn and Mary Jennings 'MJ' Hegar, an Afghanistan war veteran who ran a strong but losing race for Congress last year and who declared her candidacy last week."

The Commentariat -- May 1, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Kyle Cheney & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday offered pointed critiques of Robert Mueller's investigation..., suggesting he wasn't sure why the special counsel investigated numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice if he decided he couldn't charge ... Donald Trump with a crime under Justice Department restrictions. At times, Barr contradicted the language and legal framework outlined in Mueller's report, and engaged in hair-splitting arguments with Democrats who accused him of 'purposefully misleading' Congress in previous testimony. 'The other thing that was confusing to me was that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes [of obstruction] were looked into,' Barr said. 'The question is, or was, why were those investigated at the end of the day if you weren't going to reach a decision?'... Barr's answers directly contradict the rationale Mueller laid out in his report. Mueller indicated in a legal analysis of obstruction of justice that 'fairness' dictated he not reach a formal judgment on whether the president obstructed justice -- regardless of the evidence." Mrs. McC: Barr ended by calling Mueller's March 27 letter "snitty."

** Here's Mueller's full letter to Barr of March 27, & it's even more shocking than the WashPo story linked below lets on. At the top, Mueller writes that he has previously (March 25) sent Barr the introductions & executive summaries for both section of his report, which were marked with redactions. Mueller's purpose was to provide these sections to the public. Also, twice before Barr released his summary that wasn't a summary, Mueller touted his own summaries to Barr. ...

... As Michael Schmidt & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times lay out, "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, twice pushed Attorney General William P. Barr to release more of his team's investigative findings in late March, citing a gap between Mr. Barr's interpretation of them and their full report.... Mr. Mueller and his investigators also pressed the Justice Department to include summaries of their work in the hours before Mr. Barr released a four-page letter of his own on March 24, the new document showed." Barr should be tarred & feathered.

** Comey Says Barr & Rosenstein, et al., Are Soulless Wimps. James Comey in a New York Times op-ed: "Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them.... Accomplished people lacking inner strength [like William Barr & Rod Rosenstein] can't resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like [former Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis's to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites."

Tom Hamburger & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "The White House said Wednesday that it will not authorize any executive branch officials to disclose to Congress information about individual security clearances, a move that House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) called 'the latest example of the president's widespread and growing obstruction of Congress.' The Oversight panel has been examining the administration's handling of security clearances and allegations that officials, including ... Jared Kushner, were granted access to sensitive information over the objections of career staff.... The back-and-forth came as former White House personnel security director Carl Kline was set to testify in a closed-door deposition Wednesday morning."

Sarah Ferris & Caitlin Emma of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency aid to address the surge of Central American immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The funding request is the first major move by the White House to respond to what it calls a' humanitarian crisis' at the Southern border and intensifies an ongoing funding battle over border security, just four months after the issue led to a paralyzing 35-day government shutdown."

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Time for Another Episode of the Mini-series "Bill Barr Lies." Hill: "Attorney General William Barr will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday [beginning at 10 am ET], the first of two back-to-back hearings he will take part in on Capitol Hill this week." The report includes a transcript of Barr's prepared opening statement. ...

     ... Update: New York Times reporters are liveblogging the hearing. Mrs. McC: In questioning, as Charlie Savage notes, Barr's suggested "that if Mueller felt he couldn't render a judgment (immediately), he shouldn't have investigated in the first place." IOW, according to Barr, the entire Mueller investigation was unwarranted. Anyhow, Barr is doing a great job as counsel to the President*. Here's something else: Barr keeps expressing surprise & bewilderment when Democratic senators point out some of the more damning facts related in Mueller's report. You might think Bill Barr never read the report. Update: Later, Barr admitted to Kamala Harris that he hadn't reviewed any of the underlying evidence in Mueller's report. That is, he just "made up" his own conclusions, based on his peculiar reading of Mueller's summaries.

Vive la Différence

As the report states: '[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' -- Bill Barr, citing the Mueller Report in his infamous four-page summary that was not a summary

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. -- Full sentence, Mueller Report

** Mueller Called out Barr Con Job. Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump 'did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance' of Mueller's work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.... 'The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions,' Mueller wrote. 'There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.' The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report's introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials. Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller's letter.... A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials." Read on. ...

Safari Translation of Mueller's Objection: Your summary has COMPLETELY fucked up [notice: 'context/nature/substance'] our report, misrepresenting EVERYTHING [notice: 'work/conclusion'] we've done since we began. (See today's Comments thread.)

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Okay, Bill Barr, you lying sack of shit, now explain that "no collusion" presser you gave weeks after your old friend Bob Mueller complained about your mischaracterization of his report. Explain it to the Senate & House Judiciary Committees, this week, in public, you gutless shill. ...

I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion [regarding Trump's obstruction of justice]. -- Bill Barr, lying to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in sworn testimony, April 10, weeks after Barr received Mueller's letter objecting to Barr's published mischaracterization of the investigation's findings

Update: Van Hollen is now calling for Barr to resign based on this "misleading" testimony & on a "pattern of untrustworthy behavior" ...

SCHIFF called for Barr to resign this AM, per his office, highest ranking lawmaker to do that so far.... 'There's no sugarcoating this. He should step down,' Schiff said on CBS. -- Kyle Cheney of Politico, in tweets this morning ...

... Mark Mazzetti & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation's conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication.... The letter adds to the growing evidence of a rift between them and is another sign of the anger among the special counsel's investigators about Mr. Barr's characterization of their findings, which allowed Mr. Trump to wrongly claim he had been vindicated.... The four-page letter that Mr. Barr sent to Congress ... gave little detail about the special counsel's findings and created the impression that Mr. Mueller's team found no wrongdoing, allowing Mr. Trump to declare he had been exonerated. But when Mr. Mueller's report was released on April 18, it painted a far more damning picture ... and showed that Mr. Mueller believed that significant evidence existed that Mr. Trump obstructed justice." ...

... digby: "I guess we know now why Mueller wasn't there the day Barr held his notorious press conference. This is big. Mueller was the one person in the whole country who could have truly validated Trump and Barr's interpretation of the report's conclusions. He didn't." Mrs. McC: Yes, but Barr did have a poked-faced Rosenstein, standing behind him, and for balance, some guy with a beard.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the House Banking Committee, speaking on MSNBC, has called for Barr to resign, and if he refuses to do so, the House should begin impeachment proceedings against him. As former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) said later, Barr should bear in mind that the last time we had an attorney general who participated in a cover-up of presidential wrongdoing, he went to jail. (That would be John Mitchell.) Holtzman was on the House Judiciary Committee at the time it recommended articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.

Juliegrace Brufke of the Hill: "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said Attorney General William Barr 'must answer' for reports that special counsel Robert Mueller objected to Barr's summarization of the conclusions in the investigation into Russia's election interference.... 'I have demanded the letter & Barr must answer for this. Mueller must be allowed to testify," Nadler tweeted shortly after the Post published its report, which comes two days before Barr is slated to testify before Congress." ...

     ... Here's Nadler's full statement, via Medium.

Erin Banco & Sam Stein of the Daily Beast: "House Democrats tell The Daily Beast they've been told ... Robert Mueller is willing to testify before them about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election but that the Department of Justice has been unwilling to set a date for it to happen."

"Lock Him Up." Robert Reich of Newsweek: "On Sunday, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr if he refuses to testify this week about the Mueller report. But a subpoena is unlikely to elicit Barr's cooperation. 'We're fighting all the subpoenas,' says the President of the United States. In other words, there is to be no congressional oversight of this administration.... Such a blanket edict fits a dictator of a banana republic.... Under [its] inherent power, the House can order its own sergeant-at-arms to arrest the offender, subject him to a trial before the full House, and, if judged to be in contempt, jail that person until he appears before the House and brings whatever documentation the House has subpoenaed. When President Richard Nixon tried to stop key aides from testifying in the Senate Watergate hearings, in 1973, Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Watergate select committee, threatened to jail anyone who refused to appear. Congress hasn't actually carried through on the threat since 1935 -- but it could."

David Enrich of the New York Times: "Lawyers for [Deutsche Bank] have spent months cooperating with investigators from two Democratic-controlled congressional committees [regarding financial documents related to Donald Trump], which issued what one lawmaker called a 'friendly subpoena' to the bank in mid-April. The bank could end up sharing decades of his personal and corporate financial records. That prospect prompted Mr. Trump to file a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Monday in an attempt to block Deutsche Bank and another financial company, Capital One, from sharing documents.... The rich trove of records held by Deutsche Bank includes internal corporate documents, descriptions of the value of Mr. Trump's assets, and portions of his personal and business tax returns. The subpoena, issued April 15, casts a wide net for documents related to Mr. Trump's businesses and other entities.... If the bank handed over even parts of Mr. Trump's returns, it would be a dramatic end run around the president, who broke with decades of precedent by refusing to release them during the 2016 campaign.... Bank officials have ... compiled reams of materials to hand over.... Bank officials have told The Times that they were eager to provide the materials to Congress...., [but] the bank appeared ready to leave the legal battle to House Democrats and let the courts decide what it must do." ...

... Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Here's a pro tip for lawyers:... It's a bad idea to tell the court that a case that absolutely eviscerates your legal argument is the best thing you have going for you.... The case is Trump v. Deutsche Bank.... But, of course, any analysis of a lawsuit involving Donald Trump must come with a caveat. The Constitution is also pretty damn clear that the government may not single out people of a particular faith for inferior treatment, but that did not stop this Supreme Court from upholding Trump's Muslim ban.... Trump's only hope of prevailing in the Deutsche Bank case is to pray for judicial lawlessness. Even the very case Trump relies upon in his legal complaint makes it quite clear that he should lose. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "The legal basis for the lawsuit, in layman's terms, is as follows: Congress is mean and only wants the information because it hates Trump.... This same argument runs nearly all of Trump's refusals to abide congressional subpoenas. 'These aren't, like, impartial people,' the president declared of Congress. 'The Democrats are trying to win 2020.' The first thing to understand about this legal theory is that it is not a legal theory.... Trump's notion that he can ignore legal obligations from anybody who isn't 'like, impartial' is especially comic. Trump has spent his presidency trampling on the the entire concept of neutral authority.... Overtly fair-minded figures like Robert Mueller, or even friendly ones like Jeff Sessions, have been the target of Trump's wrath simply for having the temerity to operate outside his personal control.... Trump's extreme litigiousness is a natural extension of his general lack of shame. Once you have forfeited any claim to seriousness, there's not much reputational cost in associating yourself with ridiculous legal assertions." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The final question may come down to whether or not John Roberts decides to be "like, impartial" and rule in Trump's favor, despite Team Trump's failure to locate a valid legal theory for blanket obstruction. ...

... Mark Stern of Slate argues that House Democrats could make their very strong case even stronger if they framed them as preludes to impeachment. "Because 'no grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one,' [Trump's] suit claims, the federal courts must prohibit the banks from complying with the subpoenas." However, only the House has the capacity to impeach, so no court would accept the argument that subpoenaes issued in furtherance of that unique Constitutional responsibility were frivolous or harassing or excessive. ...

... Glenn Thrush & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "... Democrats see Mr. Trump's latest string of provocations -- starting with his blanket declaration last week that he would defy all subpoenas requested by Democratic committees and culminating in this week's legal action -- as a dangerous abuse of executive authority that they must address forcefully. Allies of Ms. Pelosi are publicly floating possible countermeasures, including even pursuing a narrow path to impeachment based on Mr. Trump's refusal to respect the oversight authority of Congress, a move modeled on the third article of impeachment drafted against President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.... Sentiment [favoring impeachment] appears to have shifted significantly over the past week."

Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has hired Patrick Fallon, former chief of the FBI's Financial Crimes Section, according to two sources familiar with the move. It's a significant hire that will bring expertise to the committee's efforts to scrutinize ... Donald Trump's financial dealings.... Schiff announced earlier this year that the committee will look at Trump's finances to see if his personal interests are influencing his decisions as president. 'That pertains to any credible allegations of leverage by the Russians or the Saudis or anyone else,' he said, according to CNN."

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. 'The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this,' Schiff said during a Washington Post Live event.... Schiff pointed to a meeting that took place nine days before Trump took office between Prince and a Russian financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands. Prince later told congressional officials examining Russia's interference in the presidential election that the meeting happened by chance and was not taken at the behest of the incoming administration.... Prince told special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigators a version of the Seychelles meeting that is at odds in several key respects with his sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017."

Ali Dukakis, et al., of ABC News: "Roger Stone, the longtime adviser to ... Donald Trump, appeared in a federal courthouse on Tuesday for the first time since a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report ... was made public.... Stone's legal team sought access to the Mueller report in its entirety, which Attorney General William Barr made public with redactions earlier this month. In court on Tuesday, U.S. Judge Amy Berman Jackson considered Stone's argument to see the report but did not rule from the bench.... Jonathan Kravis, an assistant U.S. attorney who has taken over the special counsel's case against Stone, said the government has no intention to willingly grant Stone and his legal team access to a less-redacted version of the Mueller report."

Jonathan O'Connell, et al., of the Washington Post: "Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their lawsuit against President Trump alleging that his private business violates the Constitution's ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. The decision in Washington from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan adopted a broad definition of the anti-corruption law and could set the stage for Democratic lawmakers to begin seeking information from the Trump Organization. The Justice Department can try to delay or block the process by asking an appeals court to intervene. In a 48-page opinion, the judge refused the request of the president's legal team to dismiss the case and rejected Trump's narrow definition of emoluments, finding it 'unpersuasive and inconsistent.'"

Mar-a-Lago, Trump Cash Cow, Rips off Taxpayers. Derek Kravatz of ProPublica details how taxpayers pay Donald Trump top dollar for his staff's expenses at Mar-a-Lago, including a thousand-dollar bill for a one-night drinking party & $546/night for hotel rooms (when much cheaper rooms are available nearby AND Mar-a-Lago management rejected a less costly flat-fee arrangement). "Six government contracting experts said Mar-a-Lago may be violating rules requiring competitive bids. They argue that Mar-a-Lago's practice of invoicing meeting spaces, hotel stays and meals separately is a way to get around federal spending rules.... Several experts contend the State Department is exploiting loopholes in government spending rules to facilitate official gatherings at Mar-a-Lago.... 'It's a worst-case scenario when it comes to conflicts of interest, with the president and his children putting themselves and profits ahead of the public...,' said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project On Government Oversight."

Donald Trump, Indentured Servant Master. Joshua Partlow & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... at Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y...., undocumented employees said they were sometimes told to work extra hours without pay.... Allegations that workers were routinely shortchanged on their pay at President Trump's suburban country club are now the subject of an inquiry by the New York attorney general, whose investigators have interviewed more than two dozen former employees.... In interviews, six former Trump workers told The Washington Post that they felt systematically cheated because they were undocumented. Some told The Post about being denied promotions, vacation days and health insurance, which were offered to legal employees. The same pattern of unpaid labor was also described by a former manager. Others recounted practices that could violate labor laws. Two told The Post that they had been required to perform unpaid side work. Two others said managers made them work 60-hour weeks without paying them overtime."

Iliana Magra of the New York Times: "A British court sentenced Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, to 50 weeks in prison on Wednesday for jumping bail when he took refuge in Ecuador's Embassy in London seven years ago.... The United States is seeking Mr. Assange's extradition for prosecution there, and an initial hearing on that request is expected on Thursday. Officials in Sweden have left open the possibility that he could face criminal charges in that country, as well. Mr. Assange faces a charge of conspiracy to hack into a Pentagon computer network; a federal indictment accuses him of helping an Army private to illegally download classified information in 2010, much of it about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which WikiLeaks then made public. He has denied the charge."

Annie Karni, et al., of the New York Times: "Democratic congressional leaders emerged from a meeting at the White House on Tuesday and announced that President Trump had agreed to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan to upgrade the nation's highways, railroads, bridges and broadband. Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said that there had been 'good will' in the meeting and that it was 'different than some of the other meetings that we've had.' Standing alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said the group planned to meet again in three weeks, when Mr. Trump was expected to tell them how he planned to actually pay for the ambitious project." Mrs. McC: I'll believe it at the signing ceremony. ...

... Jim Newell of Slate looks at the political calculations behind the latest Infrastructure Week.

Emily Shugerman of the Daily Beast: "President Trump's latest rant about babies being executed after birth is riling up neonatal nurses, who say he's twisted the palliative care they provide for the sickest of infants into an anti-abortion rallying cry that could endanger health providers. Anna Schmidt, who has worked in a neonatal intensive care unit for five years, told the Daily Beast she was livid when she heard about Trump's comments at a political rally in Wisconsin on Saturday. 'The families that I've worked with, where I've handed them their babies for the first and last time, they don't deserve this kind of thing,' she told The Daily Beast.... Trump's remark was a continuation of his attacks on later abortions, which he describes as 'ripp[ing] babies from their mothers' wombs right up until the moment of birth.'... The nurses claim what they do is sensitive, personal, and has absolutely nothing to do with abortion." Mrs. McC: Trump is not attacking abortion rights; he is attacking grieving families & the neonates who never had a chance. See also Michelle Goldberg's column on Trump's remarks, linked below.

Emily Cochrane & Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "The conservative commentator Stephen Moore's chance at confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board teetered on Tuesday after one Republican senator said it was unlikely she would support him and multiple Republican senators began to publicly question whether the problematic favorite of President Trump would have enough votes if nominated. Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said on Tuesday that she had told the White House she was unlikely to support Mr. Moore, becoming the first senator in her party to be nearing an explicit disavowal of his nomination even before Mr. Trump makes it official.... Asked if she believed Mr. Moore could garner the necessary votes, Ms. Ernst said, 'at this point, no I don't.'... Several White House officials privately acknowledged on Tuesday that Mr. Moore would most likely not be nominated -- just over a week after Herman Cain, Mr. Trump's other top pick for the board's second open seat, withdrew from consideration after accusations of sexual harassment that had stopped his 2012 presidential campaign resurfaced." ...

... Stephen Moore Has Been a Women-Hater for at Least a Quarter Century. Paul LeBlanc & Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Stephen Moore ... once dismissed the Violence Against Women Act as the 'most objectionable pork' in the 1994 crime bill, saying the money would better spent if Americans were forced to write checks to 'radical feminist' groups. More recently, he's wondered aloud whether women would concern themselves about gender parity once they start out-earning men and suggested that women shouldn't curse in public. It's part of a 25-year track record of dismissing women and criticizing gender equality in print and in interviews with conservative outlets. Moore's commentary covers everything from single mothers to the limited earning power of black men relative to black women -- a problem, he's argued, because it made black families weaker. On Tuesday, Moore said the 'biggest problem' in the US economy is a relative decline in male earnings for both black and white men." ...

... Yes, BUT, Moore Also Thinks Racist Jokes Are Hilarious: "By the way, did you see, there's that great cartoon going along? A New York Times headline: 'First Thing Donald Trump Does As President Is Kick a Black Family Out of Public Housing,' and it has Obama leaving the White House. I mean, I just love that one. Just a great one." -- Stephen Moore, 2016

Lauren Aratani of the Guardian: "The US Navy has trained dolphins and sea lions since the Vietnam war, as part of its marine mammal program.... America's naval animals -- specifically about 70 bottlenose dolphins and 30 California sea lions at a naval base in San Diego, California -- search for objects and patrol restricted waters.... In addition to an ability to dive incredibly deep, dolphins have 'echolocation' capabilities, which allow them to detect mines that are buried underwater. Sea lions, the dolphins' comrades, have excellent eyesight, and have helped the military find lost equipment." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So it's the Dolphins & Sea Lions versus the Whales. John Ismay of the New York Times has more on naval employment (deployment?) of marine mammals to carry out military ops.

Presidential Race 2020

Jennifer Agiesta of CNN: "Former Vice President Joe Biden's announcement of a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earned him an 11-point polling bounce, leaving him head and shoulders above the rest of the Democratic candidates. A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after Biden's announcement on Thursday shows 39% of voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents saying he is their top choice for the nomination, up from 28% who said the same in March. That puts Biden more than 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- who holds 15% support in the poll -- and roughly 30 points ahead of the next strongest candidate, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%). Warren ranks about evenly with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (7%), former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke (6%) and Sen. Kamala Harris of California (5%), who round out the list of those earning 5% or more in the poll. The remaining 17 candidates tested all held the support of 2% or less."

Let's Go to ... Romania! Michael Birnbaum & Ioana Burtea of the Washington Post: "The day before special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his report to the Justice Department last month..., Brad Parscale, was ... delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites.... 'It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel's entanglement with foreign money,' said Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.... I didn't know much' about Romania before, Parscale told the country's Antena 3 broadcaster during the visit. 'Romania seems to be a very pro-Trump country and a pro-America country, and that's why it's a great honor to come visit,' Parscale said.... Romania ... has been criticized for attempts to weaken judicial independence and labeled by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.... Parscale [told the Washington Post its story was] '... yet another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump's orbit.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Parscale also said, "We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally," so he was making up for that by travelling now. Yeah, well, growing up, I didn't have much of an opportunity to travel internationally, either, and I can tell you that I did not choose Romania as one of the first foreign places to visit when at long last I decided to see more of the world.

Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) said in a new report that about 13 million American children are living in homes with incomes below the poverty line, depriving many of a decent education and proper nutrition, and putting them at risk of homelessness and violence. Two-thirds of those living in poverty are children of colour." --s

NRA Cements Its Whitey-White Identity. Timothy Johnson of Media Matters: “Carolyn Meadows, who is succeeding Oliver North as president of the National Rifle Association, is also the chairperson of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, an organization that maintains the largest memorial to the Confederacy in the United States.... Stone Mountain, GA, features an enormous relief carving that depicts Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on horseback. A 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine notes that 'the monument in question is carved 42 feet deep and 400 feet above ground into a granite mountain' and 'is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy.'" Mrs. McC: AND of course all three are traitors to the United States. National Rifle Association? What nation is that, Carolyn dear?

Way Beyond the Beltway

Venezuela. Scott Smith & Christopher Torchia of the AP: "Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets with activist Leopoldo Lopez and a small contingent of heavily armed troops early Tuesday in a bold and risky call for the military to rise up and oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.... Lopez said he has been freed from house arrest by members of the security forces responding to an order by Guaidó, whom the U.S. and dozens of other governments recognize as Venezuela’s rightful leader. As he spoke on a highway overpass, troops loyal to Maduro sporadically fired tear gas from inside the adjacent Carlota air base as the crowd of a few hundred civilians, some of them brandishing Venezuelan flags, scurried for cover. The crowd swelled to a few thousand as people sensed what could be their strongest opportunity yet to overthrow the government after months of turmoil that has seen Maduro withstand an onslaught of protests and international pressure with the support of his top military command and allies such as Russia and Cuba." ...

     ... Update. Nicholas Casey of the New York Times: "... at the end of the day, Mr. Guaidó fell short of the prize he sought: the toppling of President Nicolás Maduro, who has relied on force, intimidation and widely discredited elections to remain in power. The events [of the day] also cast a harsh new light into the division within the armed forces, which puts Venezuela in a precarious position as the country's political crisis deepens. While the highest ranks of the military dig into their support for Mr. Maduro's government, many rank-and-file soldiers appear willing to defy their commanders and come to the aid of the opposition.... The Trump administration immediately came out in support of the opposition, with the president, vice president and others publicly stating their approval on Twitter." ...

     ... Update 2. Mariana Zuñiga, et al., of the Washington Post: "Violent clashes erupted across Venezuela on Tuesday after opposition leader Juan Guaidó launched what he described as a military-backed challenge to President Nicolás Maduro, summoning thousands of people to the streets to demonstrate against the socialist leader. A 25-year-old man died and dozens of people were injured by rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition in melees across Venezuela, according to local observers and hospital officials.... An armored vehicle ran into a cluster of Guaidó supporters. A group of hooded men in a pro-government militia -- the feared colectivos -- fired live ammunition into a crowd of protesters, witnesses said. And a colonel loyal to Maduro was shot in the neck, the defense minister said..... President Trump accused Cuban 'Troops and Militia' of conducting military operations in Venezuela to cause 'death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela.' If the alleged activities didn't immediately stop, Trump tweeted, his administration would impose a 'full and complete embargo, together with the highest-level sanctions,' on Cuba." ...

... Julian Borger & Joe Parkin Daniels of the Guardian: "The Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, 'had an airplane on the tarmac' and was ready to leave for exile in Cuba when he was persuaded not to step down by Moscow, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has claimed.... While Pompeo put the blame on Moscow for stalling the transfer of power, Donald Trump made no mention of Russia when he tweeted on Tuesday evening, threatening Cuba." --s ...

... The Guardian has a liveblog of developments in Venezuela. ...

... AP, 8:10 pm Tuesday: "The head of Venezuela's secret police is admonishing President Nicolas Maduro, in the biggest break so far by a senior member of the security forces. SEBIN leader Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera wrote a letter to the Venezuelan people Tuesday saying it is time to 'rebuild the country.' A senior U.S. official confirmed the authenticity of the note circulating on social media."

News Lede

WBTV Charlotte, NC: "Two people were killed and four others injured in a shooting on the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC) campus Tuesday evening. The suspected shooter was taken into custody, according to police sources. CMPD identified the suspected shooter as 22-year-old Trystan Terrell. The shooting happened around 5:40 p.m. An alert sent by UNCC Emergency Management said shots were reported near the Kennedy Hall building. The alert told students to 'Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately. Monitor email and emergency.uncc.edu.'"