;)
The Commentariat -- April 25, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Elizabeth Drew in a New York Times op-ed: "... the Democrats would ... run enormous risks if they didn't hold to account a president who has clearly abused power and the Constitution, who has not honored the oath of office and who has had a wave of campaign and White House aides plead guilty to or be convicted of crimes.... Even if the Republican-controlled Senate doesn't vote to remove Mr. Trump, a statement by the House that the president has abused his office is preferable to total silence from the Congress. The Republicans will have to face the charge that they protected someone they knew to be a dangerous man in the White House.... The report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, left clear openings, perhaps even obligations, for Congress to act.... If [House Democrats] choose to ignore clear abuses of the Constitution, they'll also turn a blind eye to the precedent they're setting and how feckless they'll look in history."
Wesley Morgan of Politico: "Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan did not violate ethics agreements or promote his longtime employer, Boeing, the Defense Department inspector general has concluded in a probe that was viewed as the major obstacle preventing his nomination to be Pentagon chief." Mrs. McC: What? Ethical? The guy is totally doomed in Trumpworld.
Akhilleus has a fine report in today's thread on Trump's excellent speech yesterday about opioids. Er, partly about opioids.
Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "Former President Barack Obama offered some warm words for Joe Biden on Thursday after his vice president officially jumped into the 2020 race, but notably did not endorse him. 'President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made,' Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said. 'He relied on the vice president's knowledge, insight and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.' The cryptic message signals that Obama is likely to follow the precedent he set in 2016, when he did not endorse any candidate during the primary despite his former secretary of State’s presence in the race."
Nice Timing. Michael Burke of the Hill: "Hundreds of families opposed to vaccinations piled into the California Capitol on Wednesday to protest a bill that would give the state control over which children are exempt from mandatory vaccinations, the Sacramento Bee reported. According to the paper, the families called the legislation "draconian," with one protester claiming that lawmakers supporting the bill are 'brainwashed.'... The protests came during a hearing on the bill in the Senate Committee on Health.... The protests came the same day federal health officials declared that measles cases in the U.S. have reached an all-time high since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000." Related story re: measles outbreaks linked below.
Ian Duncan & Luke Broadwater of the Baltimore Sun: "Federal law enforcement agents fanned out Thursday across Baltimore, raiding City Hall, the home of embattled Mayor Catherine Pugh and several other locations as the investigation into the mayor's business dealings widened.... Shortly after the raids began, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called on Pugh, who has taken a leave of absence as mayor, to resign.... Two sources told The Baltimore Sun that the investigation that led to Thursday's raids began more than a year ago."
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Satire Post Mortem. Every day, RealTrumpNews reads more like the Onion. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie
Say What? John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump suggested Wednesday that he would ask the Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats move to impeach him -- a notion that legal experts said showed a misunderstanding of the Constitution.... The Constitution delegates impeachment proceedings to Congress, not the courts. Trump mentioned the idea briefly in morning tweets in which he lashed out at Democrats who are continuing to investigate him after the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report. 'I DID NOTHING WRONG,' Trump wrote. 'If the partisan Dems ever tried to Impeach, I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only are there no "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," there are no Crimes by me at all.'... The notion was ridiculed by several legal experts, including Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, who accused Trump of 'idiocy.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The ignorance of the man continues to astound. Or it could work. I'm going to write to the Supremes & ask them to crown me queen of England, tho not till after June, please, when Trump has come & gone from that sceptred isle. Anything is possible (tho I suppose my chances would be better if I told the Supremes I was a Tory). If not the throne, maybe they'll buy me a Bentley. ...
... Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "[I]t's probably not a coincidence that President Trump claimed less than a day after arguments in Department of Commerce v. New York that the highest court in the land is his personal team of fixers.... The most recent example is the oral argument in New York -- but consider as well the Roberts Court's decision in Trump v. Hawaii, the Muslim Ban case.... Trump didn't just brag about his intention to violate the Constitution. He communicated the specific pretext he would use to make this violation appear legal.... Donald Trump knows little about policy.... But many of the lawyers who surround him ... are among the savviest attorneys in the country.... They are smart enough to understand, therefore, that the Supreme Court is signaling very loudly that the law does not apply to this president.... Chief Justice Roberts can put a stop to this by ruling against the Trump administration in the census case. If the Chief doesn't, Trump's lawyers are smart enough to tell the president what such a decision means." --s
Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President Trump suggested Wednesday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team examined documents related to Trump's personal finances as part of their Russia probe, despite the fact that Mueller's report made no mention of doing so. 'Now Mueller, I assume, for $35 million, checked my taxes, checked my financials -- which are great, by the way,' Trump told reporters as he left the White House on Wednesday morning. 'They checked my financials, and they checked my taxes, I assume. It was the most thorough investigation probably in the history of our country.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Can't find a published piece on this, but Rachel Maddow said the White House has since walked back Trump's claim, saying that it had no evidence Mueller had reviewed Trump's financial records.
Cover-ups Work. Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "Since Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, conventional wisdom on political scandals has been reduced to an axiom: 'It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.' In other words, scandal-plagued politicians tend to get caught concealing bad deeds. This idea is a fallacy. After all, we only hear about the covers-ups that fail. Cover-ups often work -- and that appears to be one takeaway from Robert Mueller's report on Russian inference in the 2016 election.... By refusing to cooperate with the investigators and using his pardon power and other means to encourage witnesses to mislead investigators or decline to cooperate, the president prevented Mueller from conclusively answering questions about the Trump campaign's interactions with Russia." --s ...
... Jonathan Chait: "Trump's attempts to quash the Russia investigation outright may have failed, but his efforts to impede it succeeded. Mueller failed to establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign an Russia in part because he could not nail down the activities of two Trump advisers: Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. A redacted sentence in the report states, 'The investigation was unable to resolve ... WikiLeaks's release of the stolen Podesta emails on October 7, 2016,' it concedes. It likewise failed to establish why Manafort delivered 75 pages of detailed polling analysis to a Russian agent. Stone and Manafort both declined to cooperate with the investigation. In both cases, Trump sent a combination of public and private messages encouraging both men to stay loyal, and floating the promise of pardons if they did.... The most important question hovering over Trump is ... whether Russia gained secret influence over him. That is not a question Mueller's report sets itself to answer.... The Mueller report is ... a story of sweeping misconduct and a cover-up that may have worked."
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "While Mr. Trump once welcomed [the Mueller report] as 'total exoneration,' he has spent the last few days assailing it as a 'total "hit job"' produced by 'true Trump Haters, including highly conflicted Bob Mueller himself.... Now we're finished with it, and I thought after two years we'd be finished with it,' he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Wednesday after a morning of tweeting about Mr. Mueller's report. Declaring that 'it's enough,' he vowed again to resist all subpoenas by House Democrats seeking to investigate further. His bitterness rarely seems far from the surface.... Even when he is on top, he lapses into anger and resentment, convinced that he has been unfairly treated and determined to strike back."
Darren Samuelsohn, et al., of Politico: "Team Trump's bellicose tweets and public statements in the last few days are potentially exposing Trump to fresh charges of witness intimidation, obstruction of justice and impeding a congressional investigation -- not to mention giving lawmakers more fodder for their presidential probes -- according to Democrats and legal experts. Already, a fusillade of verbal assaults aimed at former White House counsel Don McGahn, a star witness in the Mueller report, have sparked questions about obstruction and witness intimidation as Democrats fight the Trump White House to get McGahn's documents and testimony. 'This is risky,' said William Jeffress, a prominent Washington defense attorney who represented President Richard Nixon after he left the White House. 'I find it surprising because he's taking these shots at witnesses who gave information to Mueller, and I think he's got to be careful because there's an explicit federal statute punishing retaliation against witnesses.'... The White House signaled Thursday they'd invoke executive privilege to block the Democrats' subpoena for McGahn, and Chairman Jerry Nadler swung back that the move 'represent[s] one more act of obstruction by an Administration desperate to prevent the public from talking about the President's behavior.'"
Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "Nancy Pelosi has rebuffed pressure to initiate an impeachment inquiry by arguing that there are other means of holding President Trump accountable for his corruption and wrongdoing.... 'It is also important to know that the facts regarding holding the President accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.' That's true. But what happens if the White House will not allow Congress to get access to the 'facts' that are necessary to carry out the task of 'holding the President accountable'?... If the White House continues down this path [of obstruction], it will make it still harder for House Democrats to resist an impeachment inquiry. Because if they launch one, their legal case ... will get even stronger than it already is.... If Trump blocks them from doing that, it would seem to force their hand and require an impeachment inquiry." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I wonder: has Pelosi purposely set a trap for Trump? "Ooh, Donald, we really didn't want to impeach you, but your continuing obstruction leaves us no choice." ...
... Josh Marshall of TPM: "Many people are treating it as a given that beginning an impeachment inquiry will significantly or even dramatically increase the House's ability to compel the White House's cooperation. I see little or no evidence to believe that is true."
** Hillary Clinton in a Washington Post op-ed: "Our election was corrupted, our democracy assaulted, our sovereignty and security violated. This is the definitive conclusion of special counse Robert S. Mueller III's report. It documents a serious crime against the American people. The debate about how to respond to Russia's 'sweeping and systemic' attack -- and how to hold President Trump accountable for obstructing the investigation and possibly breaking the law -- has been reduced to a false choice: immediate impeachment or nothing.... Whether they like it or not, Republicans in Congress share the constitutional responsibility to protect the country. Mueller's report leaves many unanswered questions -- in part because of Attorney General William P. Barr's redactions and obfuscations. But it is a road map. It's up to members of both parties to see where that road map leads...." Clinton cites her own experiences with impeachment as instructive on how Congress should move forward now.
David Graham of the Atlantic: "... Donald Trump has often seemed to conflate himself with the government, and his own interests with the nation's. At times, the results are merely ridiculous. At others, they are actively dangerous. At the moment, Trump is declining to protect the United States from foreign interference in its elections, because it's politically inconvenient and personally irritating to him. Despite repeated evidence of Russian attempts to interfere in American elections -- most recently detailed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report, released last week -- the White House continues to refuse to take action, because the president can't separate the nation's security from questions about the legitimacy of his victory in the 2016 election.... He has repeatedly questioned whether Russia was really behind intrusions into the 2016 election, most prominently at the disastrous Helsinki conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He still hasn't condemned Russia. The U.S. shows little sign of taking action to prevent future foreign interference." Mrs. McC: Might be another article of impeachment.
** Eric Levitz of New York: "... there is no way to reconcile Mueller’s findings with the idea that Congress should allow Donald Trump to continue being president.... There is no credible argument for allowing a man who cares more about avoiding narcissistic injury than honoring the independence of federal law enforcement -- or protecting the integrity of U.S. elections -- to retain the powers of the presidency. And yet, almost no one in Congress is willing to say so. Republicans have made it clear that there is nothing Trump can do (save, perhaps, for raising taxes on people who live off Fifth Avenue) that would result in Mitch McConnell's caucus backing the president's removal. Democrats ... decided to pretend that their committees will somehow excavate evidence more dispositive than that which a years-long special investigation has already produced. Meanwhile, the president has carried on abusing his powers with reckless abandon.... The most pressing threat to our democracy is coming from inside the White House[, not from Russia]." Read the full post. Levitz highlights the MSM's complicity in deflecting the source of the crisis.
Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: In mid-2017, Donald Trump called Jeff Sessions at home to tell him "he wanted Mr. Sessions to reverse his recusal and order the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.... His request of Mr. Sessions -- and two similar ones detailed in the report — stands apart because it shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken.... Like many of Mr. Trump's aides, as laid out in the report and other accounts, Mr. Sessions instead declined to act, preventing Mr. Trump from crossing a line that might have imperiled his presidency.... A month later, Mr. Sessions found a way to satisfy Mr. Trump's demands without opening a new investigation into Mrs. Clinton. He told Congress that he had asked the United States attorney in Utah, John W. Huber, to examine the allegations Mr. Trump and his allies made about Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I. No charges have arisen from that examination, which is continuing." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Bear in mind that Bill Barr appears to be more willing to accede to Trump's crazy commands, as in his promise to "review" the actions of officials who "spied" on the Trump campaign. "I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal," he told the Senate panel. "Spying did occur."
Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "John Gore, a top official in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, will not appear for a deposition scheduled for tomorrow with the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, according to a letter the Justice Department sent the committee chairman on April 24. Stephen Boyd, the department's top Hill liaison, wrote in the letter ... that Gore will not appear as long as Chairman Elijah Cummings blocks him from bringing along lawyers from the Justice Department. 'We are disappointed that the Committee remains unwilling to permit Department counsel to represent the interests of the Executive Branch in the deposition of a senior Department official,' Boyd wrote. '... Attorney General Barr's determination that Mr. Gore will not appear at the Committee's deposition unless a Department attorney may accompany him remains in effect.'" ...
... BUT. Morgan Chalfont & Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to testify next Wednesday [beginning at 10 am ET] before the Senate Judiciary Committee on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation." Mrs. McC: Should be illuminating ...
... Andrew Kaczynksi & David Shortell of CNN: "William Barr said in a 1998 interview that he was 'disturbed' that Attorney General Janet Reno had not defended independent counsel Ken Starr from 'spin control,' 'hatchet jobs' and 'ad hominem attacks.'... Barr is now ... defending another president who has repeatedly blasted a special counsel's investigation of his activities. Barr stayed silent as President Donald Trump railed against special counsel Robert Mueller's 'witch hunt.'... Barr's 1998 comments about 'spin control' came several months after he co-authored a public statement with three fellow former attorneys general expressing concern that attacks on Starr from officials in the Clinton administration appeared 'to have the improper purpose of influencing and impeding an ongoing criminal investigation and intimidating possible jurors, witnesses and even investigators.'" --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Barr did more than "stay silent." He excused Trump's hundreds of attacks on investigators, Mueller & the Justice Department, saying that poor Trump was "frustrated & angry" at them. Another IOKIYAR moment. I hope someone in Congress (or the press) asks Barr why it wasn't okay for Clinton to be "frustrated & angry," but it's a good reason for Trump to make unsubstantiated claims against federal officials.
Eli Watkins of CNN: "... Donald Trump's former personal attorney told an actor he did not actually do some of the crimes included in his guilty plea, a recording obtained by The Wall Street Journal showed. The paper published audio of Michael Cohen speaking with actor Tom Arnold, who provided the Journal a 36-minute recording.... Last year, Cohen pleaded guilty to a slew of charges, including campaign finance violations related to Trump as well as financial crimes and later for misleading Congress. In the recording, Cohen specifically denies tax evasion and a crime related to a home equity line of credit application, both of which are included in his plea agreement.... Cohen said on the recording that 'they had me on campaign finance,' which is a portion of his plea agreement. But the Journal said later on in the conversation, Cohen claimed he went forward with some of his guilty plea in part to protect his wife.... Arnold told the Journal that Cohen did not know he was being recorded."
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WE take a break from our regularly-scheduled programming to return to a development in the Tale of the Pee Tapes:
Stephanie Baker & Helena Bedwell of Bloomberg News: “A Georgian-American businessman is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller of 'glaring inaccuracies' and sensationalizing texts about alleged salacious tapes involving Donald Trump's 2013 trip to Moscow. In a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday, lawyers for Giorgi Rtskhiladze ... [say] [a] footnote [in the Mueller report] includes only part of Rtskhiladze's text exchange with then-Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, failing to provide the full context.... In his texts, Rtskhiladze tells Cohen: 'Stopped flow of some tapes from Russia.' Rtskhiladze, who had business dealings with Trump, said in an interview Wednesday that his texts had been misinterpreted to mean he'd seen and destroyed compromising tapes of Trump, when he was only conveying a rumor.... The texts between Rtskhiladze and Cohen came ... before a dossier of unverified allegations about Trump and his campaign, compiled by ... Christopher Steele, was published." ...
... As Rachel Maddow pointed out Wednesday, the text exchange also occurred well before Jim Comey, during the transition, privately informed Trump about the Steele dossier. Whether or not the tapes exist or existed & could be used to compromise Trump, this is further confirmation of Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony in February 2019 that "I've heard about these tapes for a long time.... I've had many people contact me over the years. I have no reason to believe that that tape exists." As Tina Nguyen of Vanity Fair reports in the linked story, "Russian President Vladimir Putin has not denied that his government might have compromising information about Trump."
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David Voreacos of Bloomberg: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election interference ... doesn't conclude why Manafort, as chairman of Donald Trump's campaign, directed the handover of polling data about the key battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.... Prosecutors were unable to determine what became of the data or if [Putin stooge Oleg] Deripaska received it.... Manafort and [Konstantin] Kilimnik ... had discussed the peace plan at least four times and that their correspondence continued into 2018.... Much about Manafort's and Kilimnik's relationship remains unknown, as Mueller blacked out sections about it.... At Manafort's behest, [Rick] Gates 'periodically sent Kilimnik data' via an encrypted-messaging app and then deleted the communications daily.... Manafort denied he told Gates to send internal data to Kilimnik, according to the report." --s ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Since Manafort gave Kilimnik polling data for four battleground states, my guess is that Manafort instructed Kilimnik to have Russian trolls target those states, something the Russian operation would not necessarily think to do. If so, I'd call that a conspiracy, Bob.
Uh-Oh. Cristina Alesci of CNN: "Deutsche Bank has begun the process of providing financial records to New York state's attorney general in response to a subpoena for documents related to loans made to ... Donald Trump and his business, according to a person familiar with the production. Last month, the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James issued subpoenas for records tied to funding for several Trump Organization projects. The state's top legal officer opened a civil probe after Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress in a public hearing that Trump had inflated his assets. Cohen at that time presented copies of financial statements he said had been provided to Deutsche Bank.... The bank is in the process of turning over documents ... related to Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC; the Trump National Doral Miami; the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago; and the unsuccessful effort to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills.... The bank is already the subject of a joint investigation between the House Financial Services and Intelligence committees into Trump's businesses and money laundering."
David Corn of Mother Jones: "Though this matter was left unaddressed by the Mueller report, the Justice Department filing [last week] in the Butina case details how [Maria] Butina, the thirtysomething Russian native who described herself as a gun rights advocate, had used the NRA and the Republican Party in an effort to obtain clandestine influence for Moscow within US politics. And that submission included a statement from a former top FBI counterintelligence expert who noted that Butina's activities had 'tremendous intelligence value' for the Russian government ... The Justice Department memo is essentially a primer on how an influence operation is conducted." --s
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Trump TV. Aaron Rupar of Vox: "[A] new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that 83 percent of respondents who got their information about the [Mueller] report from Fox News think it clears Trump.... Not only are Fox News viewers likely to agree with Trump's misleading talking points about the Mueller report, but when compared to CNN or MSNBC viewers, they're much more likely to report that they think they know what they're talking about.... In fact, 76 percent of respondents who got Mueller report information from Fox News say the report 'does not reveal anything damaging' about Trump -- a figure drastically different than the 50 percent of CNN viewers and 83 percent of MSNBC viewers who say the report demonstrates that Trump 'is unfit to be president.'... Fox News is amazingly effective at disseminating and getting people to buy in to Trumpian talking points. And in return, the president promotes Fox News's programming[.]" --s
Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has repeated unproven and unverified accusations that British intelligence agencies spied on his election campaign, just a day after the UK confirmed he had been invited to London on a state visit to meet the Queen. The tweet also prompted GCHQ to reiterate that the US president's claims were 'utterly ridiculous', although the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, maintained that the 'special relationship' remained intact." --s
Trump's Foreign "Policy." Matt Stieb of New York: Earlier this month, the Trump administration gave mixed signals about its position on an attempted coup in Libya led by warlord Khalifa Haftar, with Trump & John Bolton supporting Haftar & other administration officials, like Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan objecting to a "military solution." "Trump giving his own administration the foreign policy runaround is yet another example of his approach in the Middle East and North Africa: favoring the word of authoritarian governments...."
Manu Raju & Kate Sullivan of CNN: "The White House has informed the House Oversight Committee that aide Stephen Miller will not testify before the panel about his role in ... Donald Trump's controversial immigration policies, according to a letter obtained by CNN. In the Wednesday letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone says there's 'long-standing precedent' for the White House to decline offers for staff to testify on Capitol Hill. Instead, the White House counsel said Cabinet secretaries and other executive branch officials would make a 'reasonable accommodation' for House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings' questions on immigration policy."
Special Shoutout to Trump Backers
Chinese Communist, Fake Lawyer-Grifter, Man-eating Media Critic
**Sarah Blaskey, et al., of the Miami Herald: "[Xinyue 'Daniel'] Lou is a United States-based promoter for the Chinese Communist Party and former writer for Chinese media.... He is also an avid Trump supporter. Last year.... Lou signed a contract with the Republican National Committee to become an official fundraiser for President Donald Trump's reelection campaign.... Lou's life overlapped with that of Li 'Cindy' Yang -- founder of a chain of South Florida Asian day spas, whose latest startup involved selling presidential access over Chinese-language social media.... Through their positions as high-level fundraisers, together Yang and Lou have brought dozens of guests to events where Trump, his family and top Republican advisers were present, according to a Herald analysis of social media accounts. Their efforts have been celebrated both by the RNC and event planners at Mar-a-Lago.... Lou told the Miami Herald that the RNC had advised him not to comment on his fundraising activities for the committee, his association with Yang, or his previous activities in conjunction with the Communist Party.... Lou [-- a U.S. citizen --] is not, nor has he ever been, registered as a lobbyist for a foreign government, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which keeps a registry of all foreign agents." --s
Dartagnan of Daily Kos cites a story by Jack Newsham of the firewalled New York Law Journal: "A Tennessee man charged by New York prosecutors with pretending to be a Manhattan lawyer and taking thousands from would-be clients was the co-founder of Students for Trump, a national group that mobilized college campuses in the run-up to the 2016 election and plans to do so again in 2020. John Lambert, 23, was arrested last week and charged by Southern District of New York prosecutors with wire fraud for having invented a lawyer persona named 'Eric Pope' that he used to solicit legal work online. ALM reported last week that the fake firm website he created appeared to have attorney biographies cribbed from senior partners at Cravath, Swaine & Moore." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. Mrs. McC: Too bad Lambert might be on his way to jail. He sounds like the perfect candidate for a job in the Trump White House.
Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: "A Donald Trump supporter from Rhode Island allegedly threatened to kill and eat a college professor and 'eradicate' Democrats, according to federal officials. Matthew Haviland, a 30-year-old resident of North Kingstown, threatened to murder and eat the professor in a series of March 10 emails, according to prosecutors. Haviland was arrested on Wednesday after an FBI investigation, and faces federal cyberstalking and threat charges.... A friend of Haviland's told law enforcement that his political views had recently become 'more extreme,' according to the FBI affidavit, because he was angry over media coverage of Trump."
Presidential Race 2020
Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced Thursday that he would seek the Democratic nomination to challenge President Trump in 2020, marshaling his experience and global stature in a bid to lead a party increasingly defined by a younger generation that might be skeptical of his age and ideological moderation.... In a three-and-a-half minute video laying out his reasons for running, Mr. Biden chose not to talk about policy issues or his biography but instead began by recalling the white supremacist march through Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and a counterprotest, and Mr. Trump's comment that there were 'very fine people on both sides.' In that moment, Mr. Biden said, 'I knew the threat to our nation was unlike any I'd ever seen in my lifetime.'" ...
... Joseph Simonson & Naomi Lim of the Washington Examiner: "The late Sen. John McCain's family plans to support former Vice President Joe Biden's White House bid, backing the Democrat not only in his party's crowded primary race but also in a general election matchup with President Trump.... In an extraordinary snub to Trump, who derided McCain's Vietnam War service and mocked him even after his death last August at age 81, the McCain family is preparing to break with the Republican Party."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that workers at a California business could not band together to seek compensation for what they said was their employer's failure to protect their data. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's conservative members in the majority. The decision was the latest in a line of rulings allowing companies to use arbitration provisions to bar both class actions in court and class-wide arbitration proceedings. In earlier 5-to-4 decisions concerning fine-print contracts with consumers and employment agreements, the court ruled that arbitration provisions can require disputes to be resolved one by one. Those rulings can make it difficult for consumers and workers to pursue minor claims even where their collective harm was substantial." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Of course I don't know for certain how Merrick Garland would have ruled in this matter, but I still want to give a shoutout to Mitch McConnell, whose legacy will be that he made sure life would be harder for ordinary Americans. And he cheated to do it.
David Gans of The Atlantic: "On Tuesday, the Constitution was missing in action [at Tuesday's oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York].... As the Constitution's text, history, and values mandate, the 'whole immigrant population should be numbered with the people, and counted with them.' This is not a mere policy preference but a hard and fast constitutional requirement necessary to ensure equal representation for all.... If the court ultimately upholds the addition of the citizenship question, it will be yet another decision from the Roberts court that undermines the Constitution's democratic promise. Under the chief justice's watch, the court has made it easier for corporations and the wealthy to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, while making it harder for citizens to exercise their fundamental right to vote. The Roberts court struck down the most important and successful part of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to waves of racial voter suppression." --s ...
... Mark Stern of Slate: "By all indications, the Supreme Court is poised to let the Trump administration add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.... Hispanics and immigrants will be undercounted, leading to overrepresentation in the House of Representatives and state legislatures of disproportionately white and rural regions. The result will entrench Republican power into the 2030s, depriving Democrats of representation in Congress and state legislatures, as well as electoral votes. States with large immigrant communities will lose billions in federal funding. Ultimately, the citizenship question is not some wonky dispute about proper census protocol. It is a dispute over who counts in America.... In his opinion blocking the citizenship question, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman listed six separate ways that the administration violated the law in its effort to rig the census.... To reverse Furman..., these justices deployed credulity and hypocrisy in equal measure, abandoning their principles to reach the outcome desired by the Trump administration and the Republican Party. It was a very bad day for truth at the Supreme Court." ...
... MEANWHILE, Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "... Donald Trump wrote online Wednesday that 'the American people deserve to know who is in this country,' breaking with the Justice Department in its defense of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross' efforts to place a citizenship question on next year's census questionnaire. The Commerce Department, in defending its efforts to ask everyone in the country next year if they are U.S. citizens, has said the question would be inserted at the request of the Justice Department as part of an effort to better protect voting rights. But Trump on Wednesday offered his own rationale for why the question is needed." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In other words, Trump's rationale is, "Let's tell the 'real' American people about all the scary, terrorist non-citizens living in their neighborhoods."
Mike Isaac & Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: "Facebook said on Wednesday that it expected to be fined up to $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations. The penalty would be a record by the agency against a technology company and a sign that the United States was willing to punish big tech companies. The social network disclosed the amount in its quarterly financial results, saying it estimated a one-time charge of $3 billion to $5 billion in connection with an 'ongoing inquiry' by the F.T.C. Facebook added that 'the matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.' Facebook has been in negotiations with the regulator for months over a financial penalty for claims that the company violated a 2011 privacy consent decree."
Triumph of the Anti-Vaxxers. Donald McNeil of the New York Times: "The number of measles cases in the United States has risen to 695, the highest annual number recorded since the disease was declared eliminated in this country in 2000, federal health officials said on Wednesday. The total has now surpassed the previous high of 667 set in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The virus has been detected in 22 states. Most cases are linked to two large and apparently unrelated outbreaks. One is centered in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City and its suburbs; that outbreak began in October and recently spread to Orthodox communities in Michigan. The other outbreak began in Washington State.... The virus mostly has stricken families that do not vaccinate their children, and the C.D.C. blamed 'organizations that are deliberately targeting these communities with inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines.'"
Beyond the Beltway
New Jersey. Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: “... Bridget Anne Kelly, a top aide to former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, [who in August 2013] fired off an email to a colleague at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: 'Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,' ... on Wednesday ... was sentenced to 13 months in prison.... She said that she still felt betrayed by the governor.... 'He knew what was going on,' Ms. Kelly [said]. 'And any claim that he didn't is absurd.'... A federal investigation targeted several top associates of Mr. Christie, who insisted repeatedly that he knew nothing about the plot until months after it ended, even though testimony at Ms. Kelly's trial revealed that he was told about the lane closings as they were happening and was involved in trying to cover up the scheme."
Texas. Campbell Robertson of the New York Times: At about 6 pm this evening, Texas will execute "John William King, 44, sentenced to die for his role in the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in the East Texas town of Jasper.... Mr. King and two other white men attacked Mr. Byrd, a 49-year-old black man who had been offered a late-night ride home in a perverted gesture of neighborliness. The men beat him, spray-painted his face, chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him to his death on an isolated back road. The motive seemed shockingly clear-cut: Mr. King had come out of a stint in prison a committed white supremacist, his body a billboard of racist tattoos, including one depicting a black man hanged in a noose. Less than a year after the killing, Mr. King became the first white man in modern Texas history to be sentenced to death for killing a black person." ...
... Update. Elliot Hannon of Slate: "White supremacist John William King, whose gruesome murder of James Byrd Jr. changed how the U.S. prosecutes hate crimes, was put to death Wednesday in Texas."
Way Beyond
Saudi Arabia. Kareen Fahim of the Washington Post: "Saudi Arabia said Tuesday it had executed 37 people convicted of terrorism-related offenses, bringing the number of executions there in the first four months of the year to 105, according to the Saudi interior ministry and Reprieve, a human rights group that tracks the use of the death penalty in the kingdom. It was the largest mass execution in Saudi Arabia since early 2016, when 47 people were put to death, also on terror-related charges. The vast majority of those executed on Tuesday were members of Saudi Arabia's Shiite Muslim minority, according to Shiite activists. Those put to death included at least three people who were minors at the time of their alleged crimes and confessed to prosecutors' charges under torture, according to Reprieve, which said it provided assistance to five of the people executed."
Sudan. Tim Lister, et al. of CNN: "When anti-government protests erupted in Sudan at the end of last year, the response of [now deposed] President Omar al-Bashir came straight from the dictators' playbook -- a crackdown that led to scores of civilian deaths.... The ... strategy ... was drawn up by a Russian company tied to an oligarch favored by the Kremlin: Yevgeny Prigozhin.... President Bashir cultivated a close relationship with the Kremlin, visiting Moscow in 2017. Russia supplied modern Su-35 fighter jets in the same year. Put simply, Russia had placed a big bet on Bashir. As protests against the regime gathered steam, that bet was at risk.... Prigozhin -- k[n]ow as 'Putin's chef' for the catering contracts he held with the Kremlin -- was one of 13 Russians charged as part of the investigation into Russian election interference by US special counsel Robert Mueller." --s
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