;)
The Commentariat -- June 1, 2019
The Trump Scandals, Ctd.
"Some Episodes." CBS News: "Asked about the fundamental difference between his and [Robert] Mueller's views on what the evidence gathered during the Russia probe means, [AG William] Barr said, 'I think Bob said he was not going to engage in the analysis. He was not going to make a determination one way or the other. We analyzed the law and the facts and a group of us spent a lot of time doing that and determined that both as a matter of law, many of the instances would not amount to obstruction.... As a matter of law. In other words we didn't agree with the legal analysis, a lot of the legal analysis in the report. It did not reflect the views of the department,' Barr said. 'It was the views of a particular lawyer or lawyers and so we applied what we thought was the right law.... And the bottom line was that Bob Mueller identified some episodes. He did not reach a conclusion. He provided both sides of the issue, and he -- his conclusion was he wasn't exonerating the president, but he wasn't finding a crime either.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Didn't find a crime," Bill? First, Mueller explained what the crime was, then he cited the applicable laws, then he related all the stuff Trump did that fit the criminal definitions he'd laid out. You'd have to be (1) stupid, (2) naive or (3) lying to say Mueller didn't find a crime. I'll guess (3). Frankly, I thought the Mueller report so evidently condemned Trump that Mueller was rather disingenuous in declaring that it would be "unfair" to indict Trump for crimes he could not defend in court until he was no longer president*. The report is an indictment in all but name. ...
... Here's the transcript of the CBS interview. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Are You Lying Now or Were You Lying Then? Nicole Lafond of TPM: "According to one legal analyst, the comments [Barr made to CBS News] appear to differ from what Barr said during his press conference before releasing the Mueller report on April 18, as well as during congressional testimony in May. Ryan Goodman, a law professor at NYU and former Defense Department special counsel, pointed out that Barr previously said he accepted Mueller's 'legal framework.'... 'May 1 to Congress: "We accepted the Special Counsel's legal framework for purposes of our analysis...in reaching our conclusion" May 31 to CBS: "We didn't agree with ... a lot of the legal analysis in the Report.... So we applied what we thought was the right law."' [-- Ryan Goodman, in a tweet]" ...
Yeah, I mean, I guess ['spying' has] become a dirty word somehow.... It's part of the craziness of the modern day that if a president uses a word, then all of a sudden it becomes off bounds. It.s a perfectly good English word, I will continue to use it. -- Bill Barr, interview with CBS
Poor Bill Barr. He just doesn't understand why spying has suddenly gotten a negative connotation that it never had before Trump mentioned it. Prior to 2017, it was just an ordinary, nonjudgmental English word that everyone used for any kind of police investigation. But these are hyperpartisan times, so what can you do? -- Kevin Drum ...
... ** Jonathan Chait: "... Barr's long, detailed interview with Jan Crawford [of CBS News] suggests the rot goes much deeper than a simple mania for untrammeled Executive power. Barr has drunk deep from the Fox News worldview of Trumpian paranoia.... Barr, as he has done repeatedly, provides a deeply misleading account of what Robert Mueller found.... Later in the interview, Barr grossly contradicts Mueller's findings with regard to Trump's ties to Russia. 'Mueller has spent two and half years, and the fact is, there is no evidence of a conspiracy,' he says. 'So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.' This is just a wild lie.... Nowhere does the Mueller report say there's no evidence of a conspiracy.... Barr, amazingly, goes even farther to say the report proved 'this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.'... The report in fact finds extensive evidence that Trump was in cahoots with Russia.... Barr goes on to repeat Trump's obsession with texts capturing the political chatter of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two romantically-involved FBI agents.... Even more astonishingly, Barr proceeds ... to liken the FBI's counterintelligence investigation of Trump to right-wing birther conspiracies[.]... Barr portrays the Russia investigation as an effort to overturn Trump's election[.]" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Bill Barr is your Uncle Fred. Sure, Uncle Bill is smarter & has a better vocabulary, but when it comes to owning right-wing conspiracy theories & Fox-"News"-marinated views, Uncle Fred has nothing on Bill. It is kind of nice that in the CBS interview, Barr is wearing an Uncle-Fred outfit -- flannel shirt & vest -- (on account of his being on vacation in Alaska).
Elizabeth Warren Read the Mueller Report, AND She's Got a Plan: "First, a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help candidate Donald Trump get elected. Second, candidate Donald Trump welcomed that help. Third, when the federal government tried to investigate, now-President Donald Trump did everything he could to delay, distract, and otherwise obstruct that investigation. That's a crime. If Donald Trump were anyone other than the President of the United States right now, he would be in handcuffs and indicted. Robert Mueller said as much in his report, and he said it again on Wednesday.... Mueller's statement made clear what those of us who have read his report already knew: He's referring President Trump for impeachment, and it's up to Congress to act.... This is not about politics -- it's our constitutional duty as members of Congress. It's a matter of principle.... Congress should make it clear that Presidents can be indicted for criminal activity, including obstruction of justice. And when I'm President, I'll appoint Justice Department officials who will reverse flawed policies so no President is shielded from criminal accountability." Emphasis original. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Lock Him Up! Paul Blest of Splinter: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign has garnered a reputation for being policy heavy and generally wonky, but perhaps no idea she's had is more simple or obvious than the one she rolled out today: reversing Department of Justice policy saying a sitting president can't be indicted.... There's not a whole lot to say about this other than: good! Not only is it plainly obvious ... that the president shouldn't be the only person in the country immune to federal indictment, but this is also a very easy way for the eventual Democratic nominee to flip the script on Trump, whose rallies in 2016 regularly featured claims that if anyone else in America had done what Hillary Clinton did with her emails, they'd be in prison."
... Andrew Prokop of Vox: "Robert Mueller's report makes the stirring claim that 'a fundamental principle of our government' is that no person, not even the president, 'is above the law. But the special counsel's ultimate legacy may well be the exact opposite -- because of his controversial decision not to say whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice.... It was the punt heard around the world.... It effectively 'removes the president from the scope of generally applicable criminal laws,' Cornell law professor Jens David Ohlin recently told my colleague Sean Illing.... Even though Mueller made clear this was his own decision, it will inevitably set a precedent for future investigations into presidents -- a problematic one.... Mueller's considered decision not to decide was immediately thrown out the window by his superior [William Barr].... Perhaps hanging over all this is the fact that, if Mueller had submitted a report to Barr concluding that Trump committed a crime, it would have initiated a crisis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
DOJ Is Above the Law, Too. Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors rebuffed a judge's order to release by Friday highly classified transcripts of discussions that Michael T. Flynn, the president's former national security adviser, had with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition. The transcripts between Mr. Flynn and Sergey I. Kislyak, formerly Russia's top diplomat in the United States, were expected to show that they talked in December 2016 about sanctions that the Obama administration had just imposed on Russia.... The order this month from the judge, Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, was unusual. The transcripts came from a secret F.B.I. wiretap of Mr. Kislyak, and their release would have provided an extraordinarily rare look at the fruits of the government's eavesdropping.... The Justice Department's refusal to comply with the judge's order made clear that prosecutors had no interest in confirming the wiretap, which was approved by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.... Prosecutors asserted that they did not need to provide the transcripts because they were, in the end, not vital to the prosecution of Mr. Flynn." ...
... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "The Justice Department on Friday released a more complete transcript of a voice mail from Donald Trump's attorney John Dowd to Rob Kelner, the lawyer for ... Michael Flynn, where he sought information about Flynn's discussions with the special counsel on the eve of his cooperation deal.... The voice mail highlights a call that special counsel Robert Mueller investigated as potential obstruction of justice by the President. Dowd had made the call on November 22, 2017, after Flynn's team said it could no longer communicate with the White House, just before Flynn pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in Mueller's investigation. In the voice mail transcript, most of which was previously documented in the Mueller report, Dowd said it 'wouldn't surprise me' if Flynn was about to make a deal, but if it 'implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue, or ... some issue ... not only for the President, but for the country.' He then asked for a 'heads up,' according to the transcript. Dowd also wanted to remind Flynn about 'the President and his feelings towards Flynn.' The call 'could have had the potential to affect Flynn's decision to cooperate, as well as the extent of that cooperation,' Mueller wrote in his report on potential obstruction of justice by the President during the investigation. 'We do not have evidence establishing whether the President knew about or was involved in his counsel's communications with Flynn's counsel.'" ...
... James Meek & Soo Rin Kim of ABC News have the full transcript of Dowd's voicemail here. Mrs. McC: Sounds like what you might hear from your better class of mob lawyers.
More Tariffs. Ana Swanson & Vindu Goel of the New York Times: "The Trump administration announced on Friday that it was stripping India of a special status that exempts billions of dollars of its products from American tariffs, part of a deepening clash over India's protections for its market. The White House said that it would terminate India's preferential market access to the United States as of June 5. The notice claimed that India had not given the United States 'equitable and reasonable access to its markets.' The administration said that it would also apply to India tariffs on solar panels and washers that President Trump announced last year, suspending an exemption it had granted to certain developing countries.... Mr. Trump's move could set off yet another trade war with an allied country."
Rebecca Shabad, et al., of NBC News: "Several Republicans in Congress and major business groups on Friday slammed ... Donald Trump's threat to impose a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods starting next month, warning that the move would hurt both the U.S. economy and the chances of Congress approving a major trade deal with Mexico and Canada.... A senior administration official and two sources familiar said business groups and federal agencies were not informed of the president's tariff threat ahead of time. A fourth source familiar said the relevant congressional committees were not notified. Trump's threat was 'hurried out the door' by White House aides to appease the president, an administration official said Friday. Behind the scenes, the official said there has been some 'squabbling at the staff level' about the threat and potential blowback to the USMCA and overall economy. A second administration source described the situation as 'flying blind' and there was no internal guidance on how to explain the tariff threat to the business community. The tariff strategy was spearheaded by White House adviser Stephen Miller, two sources said, who had Trump's ear on his trip last weekend to Japan." ...
... Jacob Pramuk, et al., of CNBC: "U.S. business groups are considering suing the White House over the Trump administration's new tariffs on Mexican imports. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce is mulling its legal options in response to the duties, the group's senior vice president of international affairs, John Murphy, told reporters Friday. Murphy said the group has no choice but to look into every option to push back against the tariff policy.Business groups more broadly are discussing the possibility of suing the White House, a source told CNBC. A decision on how to proceed is expected by Monday. While top business organizations have repeatedly slammed tariffs Trump levied on trading partners such as Mexico, Canada and China, a lawsuit would mark a major escalation in their opposition to White House trade policy." ...
... Kayla Tausche & Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump's Treasury secretary [Steve Mnuchin] and top trade advisor [Robert Lighthizer] opposed his surprise plan to impose new tariffs on Mexican imports, according to a source close to the White House who said the idea was pushed by immigration hawk Stephen Miller. The announcement came as Trump was' riled up' by conservative radio commentary about the recent surge in border crossings, according to the source.... Peter Navarro, a White House economic advisor [Mrs. McC: and complete dickhead], told CNBC earlier Friday that Trump's threat of new tariffs came in response to Mexico's 'export' of 'illegal aliens.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The analyses I heard on the radio & teevee Friday on Trump's new tariff plan for Mexico ranged from "incoherent" to "incredibly stupid." In yesterday's Comments, RAS is checking his mail for his tariff kickback. The odds are that RAS is not a Trump-country farmer. So good luck on that.
Trump Administration Horror Story. Priscilla Alvarez of CNN: "The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General has found 'dangerous overcrowding' and unsanitary conditions at an El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol processing facility following an unannounced inspection, according to a new report. The IG found 'standing room only conditions' at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center, which has a maximum capacity of 125 migrants. On May 7 and 8, logs indicated that there were 'approximately 750 and 900 detainees, respectively.' 'We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets,' the report states.... A cell with a maximum capacity of 12 held 76 detainees, another with a maximum capacity of eight held 41, and another with a maximum capacity of 35 held 155, according to the report. '... With limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks,l the report states." Mrs. McC: Needless to say, this is a human rights disaster. Hard to complain about the abuses of coyotes when you're treating people as badly as -- or worse than -- they do.
Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, to the economist Arthur Laffer, whose tax-cutting enthusiasm has shaped decades of Republican policymaking, including Mr. Trump's. Mr. Laffer, 78, was an adviser to Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, helping to craft the candidate's tax plan, and a co-author of the recent book 'Trumponomics,' which is a celebration of the president and nearly all of his economic programs.... Democrats have largely moved away from Mr. Laffer, viewing him as an architect of tax handouts to the rich." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. ...
... Here's a Krugman post on Laffer. ...
... Thornton McEnery of Dealbreaker: "Donald Trump [Is] Using Presidential Medal Of Freedom To Make Paul Krugman's Head Explode. Sometimes the news does its own heavy lifting as a piece of dark satire.... One doesn't think of the Medal of Freedom as a particularly troll-centric piece of hardware, but this choice is a next-level brilliant addition to the medium." Mrs. McC: Yes, let's make that the Presidential* Medal of Freedom. It's nothing but a cheap metal disk on a ribbon.
Emma Anderson of Politico: German Chancellor ";Angela Merkel urged Harvard graduates Thursday to 'tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness' in a speech laced with apparent jibes at Donald Trump and his policies. Though she did not name the U.S. president, the German chancellor devoted much of her Harvard University commencement speech to attacking major pillars of Trump's presidency: protectionism, trade wars and building walls.... The audience of students, parents, and alumni gave Merkel a standing ovation when she said it is important not to 'describe lies as truth, and truth as lies.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race 2020
Andrew Kaczynski & Em Steck of CNN: "... Donald Trump this week criticized Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for his role in passing 'tough on crime' measures in the 1990s, but Trump once expressed support for some of the same policies Biden championed in the US Senate.... Trump's criticisms of Biden are undercut by positions he took in his 2000 book 'The America We Deserve.' Trump wrote in the book that he supported tougher sentencing and street policing and warned of 'wolf packs" of young criminals roaming the streets, citing since-discredited statistical analysis that was linked to the 'super predator' crime theory. In a pair of tweets sent on Monday during his trip to Japan, the President wrote, 'Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected.' He added, '....Super Predator was the term associated with the 1994 Crime Bill that Sleepy Joe Biden was so heavily involved in passing. That was a dark period in American History, but has Sleepy Joe apologized? No!'" Mrs. McC: And neither have you, Don.
Ursula Perano of Axios: "Donald Trump announced in a tweet on Friday that he will be holding his official 2020 campaign launch at the 20,000 seat Amway Center in Orlando, Fla., on June 18...."
David Corn of Mother Jones: "Joe Biden had barely joined the 2020 presidential race when the right-wing disinformation machine began cranking out th newest iteration of its Deep State conspiracy theory, with this version claiming the former vice president was part of a government cabal that cooked up a supposedly phony Trump-Russia scandal to keep the reality television celebrity from gaining the White House. This certainly is an easy charge to debunk -- that is, if you care about facts -- but it's still likely that this unfounded notion will take hold in the fever swamp of Trump-encouraged and Fox-fueled conservative paranoia." --s
Luiz Romero of Quartz: "The Italian government has delivered a potentially fatal blow to Steve Bannon's plans to transform a medieval monastery near Rome into a training academy for the far-right. Italy's cultural heritage ministry announced on Friday (May 31) that it would revoke a lease granted to Bannon after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process. The former Breitbart chief and aide to US president Donald Trump was reportedly paying €100,000 ($110,000) per year to rent the 13th Century Carthusian monastery.... The Italian state allowed the conservative Catholic organization Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) to use the building early last year. Bannon happens to be a trustee of the institute, and planned to convert the space into a 'gladiator school for cultural warriors,' where students would learn philosophy, theology, history, and economics, and receive political training from the former Trump aide himself. But earlier this month, Italian newspaper Repubblica reported that a letter used to guarantee the lease was forged. The letter had the signature of an employee of Danish bank Jyske, but the bank said that employee hadn't worked there for years, and called the letter fraudulent.... The institute plans to fight the decision in court."
And All the Children Are Above Average. Daniel Victor of the New York Times: "A superhuman group of adolescents broke the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, with eight contestants crowned co-champions after the competition said it was running out of challenging words. It was a stunning result, coming just after midnight Thursday, for the 92nd annual event, which has had six two-way ties but had never before experienced such a logjam at the top. After the 17th round, Jacques Bailly, the event's pronouncer, announced that any of the eight remaining contestants who made it through three more words would share in the prize."
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Oliver Darcy of CNN: "Fox News on Friday afternoon stood by Laura Ingraham after she defended a white supremacist and several other fringe people who have been banned or disciplined by large social media companies.... Ingraham displayed a graphic showing images of people she characterized as 'prominent voices censored on social media.' 'It's people who believe in border enforcement, people who believe in national sovereignty,' Ingraham added. The graphic included Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018. Nehlen, who refers to himself as "pro-white," has had his racism and anti-Semitism well documented. In April, for instance, he appeared on a podcast and admitted to wearing a shirt featuring Robert Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.... Following [a] backlash, Fox News released a statement saying it was 'obscene to suggest' Ingraham had defended Nehlen."
Beyond the Beltway
Missouri. Jessica Ravitz of CNN: "Abortion services can continue for now in Missouri after a judge ruled that its license would not expire at the end of the day Friday. The state had refused to renew Planned Parenthood's license to continue providing the procedure. Circuit Court Judge Michael Stelzer's ruling does not renew the license. Instead, the ruling allows the current license to remain in effect until the matter can be heard in court again on June 4. Planned Parenthood 'has demonstrated that immediate and irreparable injury will result if Petitioner's license is allowed to expire,' Stelzer wrote in his decision. 'The court finds that a temporary restraining order is necessary to preserve the status quo and prevent irreparable injury to Petitioner pending disposition of the case on the merits.' If the clinic had to stop providing abortion services, Missouri would have been the first state in the nation to block the procedure in more than 45 years."
West Virginia. Karma. Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "A former West Virginia official who gained notoriety after making a racist remark about former first lady Michelle Obama [calling her an 'ape'] was sentenced to prison this week after pleading guilty to embezzling [more than $18,000] federal disaster funds. Pamela Taylor, who served as the Clay County development director, was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison and two months of house arrest, the local U.S. attorney's office announced Thursday. She was also fined $10,000." --s
Way Beyond
Canada. Leyland Cecco of the Guardian: "Three decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women amounts to a 'Canadian genocide', a leaked landmark government report has concluded. The document, titled Reclaiming Power and Place, was compiled over more than two and a half years. Canada's CBC News was given a copy of the report, which is due to be released on Monday.... The report, by the National Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, determined that 'state actions and inactions rooted in colonialism and colonial ideologies' were a key driving force in the disappearance of thousands of Indigenous women." --s
North Korea. Gordon Chang of The Daily Beast: "So far, the most important conclusion we can draw from reports North Korea's senior nuclear negotiator and four foreign ministry officials were executed in March is this: Kim Jong Un is not the reliable, trustworthy negotiator President Trump has made him out to be.... Whatever the accuracy of the Chosun Ilbo reporting -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday said he was looking into the matter -- there is evidence of severe turmoil in Pyongyang political circles, and it appears Kim Jong Un's grip on power has been weakening in recent months.... Trump's four-minute video about the North's bright future, showed to Kim in Singapore, may have had more effect than observers once suggested. By now it's clear that rich and poor North Koreans were sorely disappointed by the breakdown in talks with Trump." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wouldn't it be something if Trump had blundered accidentally into a means to overthrow Little Kim, free the people from near-slavery, institute some form of democracy, develop North Korea's "beautiful beaches," etc.? Trump of course, rather than admitting he had "fallen in love with" the wrong guy, would claim this was his plan all along &, P.S., what about that Nobel Peace Prize?
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No gut buster, but I find this one worth, if not a guffaw, at least a chortle.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/business/trump-arthur-laffer-medal-of-freedom.html
Another day, another shooting in the USA. We hear this and unlike years ago when this would shock, we now just hang our heads in sorrow, realizing how a dozen deaths change the lives of a dozen love ones. When people lose their lives in floods, fires, or tornados it's sorrow has a different feel. Here, as with all the other shootings, is a feeling of fury –-truly a tragedy ––done by one person with a gun––one sick fuck with a gun!!
And then we have our widdle butterball coming forth proclaiming a possible trade war with Mexico which is causing all sorts of wet pants. The person behind these trade tirades I suspect is that slimy Stevie Miller who'd kill his own grandmother if she crossed him coming over from "the old country." We'll see what happens, as Trump consistently says, because there are rumbles in the markets and in Republican circles.
"In a world where trolling is politics, Pelosi is winning. Politico praises her for being “so good at infuriating Trump.” CNN delights in Trump “taking Nancy Pelosi’s bait.” The Trumpification of American politics is being perpetrated by bipartisan consensus. Pelosi, and an apparent majority of Democratic Washington, seem to think this is preferable to an attempt at impeachment that is likely to be thwarted by Senate Republicans. Failure, in other words, is unacceptable, but this—the flagrant dysfunction, the trivialization of all that used to be politics, the spectacle of daily national shame—is acceptable. Trump will be gone someday, but the possibilities that Trumpism has created will remain."––––Masha Gessen
Anyone can listen to the Mueller Report on audible.com.
It appears to be free but I didn't go that far as I don't have
19 hours to spare today. It's an audio book.
@forrest, who's the narrator? Robert De Niro?
Maybe the cast of SNL could do a re-enactment as a mini-series on Netflix, without the laughs.
I have changed daily as to which of the advisers & cabinet members is the most threatening to our country's future. So many to choose from, but I've now settled on the the champ: Nazi Stephen Miller. How proud his parents must be.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-poll/brazilians-view-of-bolsonaro-govt-dims-further-survey-shows-idUSKCN1SU1E9
Almost wrote, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Then thought: Yes, it could.