;)
The Commentariat -- April 10, 2019
Afternoon Update:
On [Trump's] first [choice for attorney general], the president was very clear: He's not protecting me from the investigation, so he's fired, day after the election. Second guy was hired for the same purpose, but was very temporary and was clearly unqualified. The third guy was hired for the same purpose: Protect the president from the investigation, and he's done his job. -- Jerry Nadler, to Andy Kroll of Rolling Stone ...
... Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "Attorney General William P. Barr, appearing before Congress for a second straight day on Wednesday, said the government spied on the Trump campaign and said he would look into whether any rules were violated. Mr. Barr signaled he was open sharing more information with lawmakers about the redacted Mueller report than is released to the public and that he 'hoped' to make it public 'next week.'... He said Justice Department lawyers and members of Mr. Mueller's team, who are reviewing the report for sensitive information to black ou before release, would not remove information that would harm the 'reputational interests' of Mr. Trump.... Mr. Barr also said that he ... had not discussed with the White House what he was blacking out.... Mr. Barr again declined to say whether he had briefed the White House on the fuller Mueller report, even though Justice Department officials had previously said it had not been shown to the White House.... Speaking to reporters as he left the White House on Wednesday, the president slammed the investigation as an illegal 'attempted coup.'... 'I have not seen the Mueller report,' Mr. Trump told reporters. 'I have not read the Mueller report. I won. No collusion, no obstruction. I won. Everybody knows I won.'" ...
... Zachary Basu of Axios: Barr clarified his "spying" remarks "at the end of the hearing: 'I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred. I am saying that I am concerned about it and I'm looking into it.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The first several minutes of this MSNBC segment are worth listening to in order to get an idea of how far out on a conspiracy limb Bill Barr is willing to shinny. During the confirmation period, news organizations repeatedly referred to Barr as an "institutional" guy. But Barr proved in the 1980s & has proved again since his recent confirmation that he is not interested in preserving the "institution" of the Justice Department, but rather in preserving the political hides of Republican officials. You might say he's a political hack. ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday morning, Barr confirmed that he is looking into what he called 'spying' on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.... When pressed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on whether he indeed viewed it as 'spying' on Trump's campaign, Barr said, 'I think spying did occur.'... That is a highly disputed term when it comes to what the FBI did relative to the Trump campaign in 2016.... The idea that [FISA-warranted surveillance] constituted 'spying on a political campaign,' as Barr put it, is highly contentious. One reason is the nefarious connotations of 'spying,' and another is the idea that it was specifically 'directed at the Trump campaign,' as Barr said, rather than at potential Russian interference in the 2016 election.... [Barr's testimony Wednesday] lends legitimacy to what, at this point, is essentially a Trump conspiracy theory."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, said senior bureau officials -- including at least one deemed to be free of anti-Trump bias -- discussed the possibility in May 2017 that ... Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey 'at the behest of' the Russian government. In testimony to two Republican-led committees last October, Baker described mounting concerns that crystallized in the frantic days after the FBI director's ouster, days that were punctuated by Trump's on-air declaration that he fired Comey because of the Russia probe and his chummy Oval Office meeting with senior Russian officials, at which he reportedly trashed Comey as a 'nut job.'"
Brad Reed of the Raw Story: “Prosecutors working for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York are investigating whether longtime Trump confidant Hope Hicks helped coordinate hush-money payments made to silence women who alleged to have affairs with ... Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reports that SDNY prosecutors 'asked Ms. Hicks about her contacts with [David] Pecker, the CEO of American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer' and also 'asked at least one other witness whether Ms. Hicks had coordinated with anyone at American Media concerning a Journal article on Nov. 4, 2016 -- days before the election -- that revealed American Media had paid $150,000 for the rights to former Playboy model Karen McDougal's story of an alleged affair with Mr. Trump.'... The Journal's report also reveals that SDNY 'has gathered more evidence than previously known in its criminal investigation' of the hush money payments and has also interviewed former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller about what he knew about the payments. Additionally, the Journal reveals that prosecutors are looking at 'discrepancies' between the testimonies of [Michael] Cohen and longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, as Cohen has told prosecutors that 'Weisselberg had a deeper involvement in the hush payment to Ms. Daniels than Mr. Weisselberg had indicated.'"
Rosalind Helderman & Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Attorneys for former White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig said Wednesday that he expects to face federal charges in the coming days in relationship to legal work he did for the Ukrainian government in 2012. The expected indictment -- which his attorneys called 'a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion' -- stems from work Craig did with GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort on behalf of the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice in 2012. At the time, Craig was a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, the law firm he joined after ending his tenure as White House counsel for President Barack Obama."
Jesse Drucker of the New York Times: "The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Manhattan, near the southwest corner of Central Park, is a 44-story building with a mix of luxury condominiums and hotel suites that go for more than $2,500 a night. Unit 32G, a two-bedroom, 1,767-square-foot apartment with sweeping views of the park, is owned by an entity called Ecree, which bought the condo in 2014 for $7 million in cash. Documents unearthed by the nonprofit group Global Witness show that the purchase was funded by the daughter of the Republic of Congo's president, a longtime target of anti-corruption investigators. The funds for the all-cash purchase appear to have been siphoned from that country's government, according to a report by Global Witness.... Owners of units in the building -- 1 Central Park West -- pay tens of thousands of dollars a year in condo fees to Mr. Trump's company, the Trump Organization.... Mr. Trump's properties, which he and his family continue to operate, have a long history of serving as home to people with checkered pasts."
Adam Vary of BuzzFeed News: "... Donald Trump on Tuesday posted a video on Twitter that appeared to be part of his 2020 reelection campaign. In less than three hours, it had already amassed over 1 million views, but by late Tuesday night, the video was no longer available. BuzzFeed News has learned that Warner Bros. Pictures filed a copyright infringement complaint to have the video taken down because it uses part of the score from the studio's 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: The Trump campaign has millions & millions of dollars in its kitty. It won't pay for copyrighted material?
~~~~~~~~~~
New York Times: "Attorney General William P. Barr will go before Congress for a second straight day on Wednesday, giving lawmakers another shot to grill him about his handling of the special counsel's report."
"Let's Go to Disneyland." Michael D. Shear & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "The Trump administration plans to aggressively push for tougher screening of asylum seekers that will make it vastly more difficult for migrants fleeing persecution in their home countries from winning protection in the United States, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. The official said that President Trump ordered a shake-up of his top immigration officials in recent days because they were moving too slowly, or even actively obstructing, the president's desire to confront the surge of migrants at the southwestern border.... In his remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Trump falsely said that President Barack Obama had embraced the same policy of routinely separating migrant children from their parents at the border. 'President Obama had child separation,' Mr. Trump said during brief remarks in the Oval Office, where he was meeting with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.... 'I'm the one that stopped it.... Now I'll tell you something, once you don't have it [i.e., family separations], that's why you see many more people coming,' Mr. Trump said. 'They are coming like it's a picnic, because, Let's go to Disneyland."'... Under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, immigration officials sometimes separated families when they had reason to question parentage or when there was evidence of child abuse. The Trump administration instituted a policy in which all families who crossed the border illegally were separated in order to allow the parents to be prosecuted under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Let's go to Disneyland" might be the most heartless remark out of Trump's piehole since he derided "shithole countries." I know Trump can't read, but this October 2018 article by Arizona Republic reporters about the arduous 2,300-mile trek from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexican border would shut up anybody but Trump & a few of his despicable sidekicks. ...
... Brian Naylor of NPR: "President Trump repeated a false claim to reporters Tuesday, wrongly blaming the Obama administration for instituting a policy in which children were separated from their parents at the Southern border.... Trump's false claim ... has been frequently refuted.... It was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions who instituted the 'zero tolerance' policy at the Southern border in April 2018, which resulted in children being separated from their parents who were taken into custody for criminal prosecution.... Still, as NPR's Domenico Montanaro wrote last year, the Trump administration has been unwilling to take the blame for the policy of family separations because of the political optics." ...
... Julia Ainsley, et al., of NBC News: "The White House is working on plans to make it harder for immigrants at the border to receive asylum by forcing them to do more to prove they have a credible fear of returning home and putting border agents in charge of the interview process, according to multiple senior administration officials.... Currently, asylum-seekers are interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers and only need to express a fear of persecution in their home country in order to pass the first step in the process.... The administration has already tried to make it harder for asylum-seekers through a variety of measures, most of which have been stopped by courts, including the 'Remain in Mexico' policy that makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexico until their scheduled court date in the U.S.... The right to seek asylum is protected by U.S. law and international treaties. The new policies are likely to be challenged in court by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union...." ...
... David Nakamura, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump's increasingly erratic behavior over the past 12 days -- since he first threatened to seal the border in a series of tweets on March 29 -- has alarmed top Republicans, business officials and foreign leaders who fear that his emotional response might exacerbate problems at the border, harm the U.S. economy and degrade national security. The stretch also has revealed that a president who has routinely blamed spiking immigration numbers on others -- past presidents, congressional Democrats, Mexican authorities, federal judges, human smugglers -- is now coming to the realization that the problems are closer to home. Though his aides have taken the fall, and it is unlikely that Trump will blame himself, the president is facing an existential political crisis ahead of his 2020 reelection bid over the prospect of failure on his top domestic priority.... 'He has no plan except to talk about immigration as a political piñata to score points with the far right. But illegal immigration has increased in the two years he has been president,'... said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens...." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: WTF happened to "I alone can fix it"? ...
... Eric Levitz of New York: "Stephen Miller is personally responsible for the most xenophobic policies of the most xenophobic presidency in modern American history.... In response to [Miller's past policy proposals] and other reports of Miller's growing influence in the White House, Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted Monday, 'Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.'... It seems both fair to describe Miller as a white nationalist and nearly impossible to ascribe a non-racist motivation to his political behavior.... [Republicans accused Omar of anti-Semitism for attacking Miller.] It is true that Stephen Miller is Jewish, and that white nationalists have historically targeted Jews for persecution. But this does not mean that Miller cannot be a white nationalist.... 'White people' is not a coherent biological or ethnic category. It is a social caste with semi-porous borders. And by all appearances, Miller identifies with that caste. More to the point, there is no evidence whatsoever that Omar directed her criticism toward Miller because of his Jewish heritage...." Levitz provides plenty of examples of Miller's white nationalist policies & remarks.
The Usual Trump Scandals, Ctd.
Hypocrite-in-Chief. Mirian Jordan, et al., of the New York Times: "Alongside the [legal] foreign guest workers and the sizable American staff [at Donald Trump's South Florida resorts] is another category of employees, mostly those who work on the pair of lush golf courses near Mar-a-Lago.... They have been picked up by Trump contractors from groups of undocumented laborers at the side of the road; hired through staffing companies that assume responsibility for checking their immigration status; or brought onto the payroll with little apparent scrutiny of their Social Security cards and green cards, some of which are fake.... Facing growing questions about its employment of undocumented workers, the [Trump Organization] has quietly begun to take steps to eliminate any remaining undocumented workers from its labor pool in South Florida." In about 2016, the Trump properties began using staffing companies to supply some of its undocumented workers, rather than directly hiring them. (Also linked yesterday.)
Chris Strohm & Billy House of Bloomberg News: "Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter. This indicates that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year -- that the investigation into ... Donald Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department."
Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Attorney General William P. Barr vowed on Tuesday to release a redacted version of the Mueller report 'within a week,' defending his handling of the special counsel investigation's findings as a bid for transparency as Democrats accused him of politically motivated behavior. Mr. Barr said he would explain his redactions and was open to negotiating with lawmakers about revealing some of the delicate information that he and law enforcement officials are blacking out from the highly anticipated report before he sends it to Congress and the public.... But he was less forthcoming about aspects of his review, declining to say whether President Trump had been briefed on the report after Justice Department and White House officials had said for weeks that the president has not been updated on its contents. And he did not explain why he cleared Mr. Trump of committing an obstruction-of-justice offense when Mr. Mueller's team declined to make a decision.... Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that once he received the redacted report, he would issue a subpoena for the complete document and petition a court for the grand jury testimony. 'If it doesn't have everything we require to do our work, which is to say the entire report and underlying evidence in it, we will issue subpoenas forthwith,' Mr. Nadler told reporters on Tuesday."
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers on Tuesday that White House lawyers had been in touch with his department about a congressional request for President Trump's tax returns but said he had not personally spoken to Mr. Trump about how the matter was being handled. Mr. Mnuchin, who is testifying before two congressional committees on Tuesday, said it would be 'premature' to comment on how Treasury would respond to a formal request by House Democrats for six years of Mr. Trump's personal and business tax returns. 'It is our intent to follow the law,' Mr. Mnuchin said. 'It is being reviewed by the legal departments and we look forward to responding to the letter.'... Mr. Mnuchin suggested he believed that Congress was overreaching its authority and defended Mr. Trump's right not to release his tax returns. 'The general public when they elected President Trump made the decision to elect him without his tax returns being released,' Mr. Mnuchin said, adding that the president complied with requirements to release financial disclosure form." (Also linked yesterday. The story has been updated.) ...
... Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "Mnuchin had not previously revealed that the White House was playing any official role in the Treasury Department's decision on releasing Trump's tax returns. Democrats are asking for six years of Trump's returns, using a federal law that says the treasury secretary 'shall furnish' the records upon the request of House or Senate chairmen. The process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.... At a separate congressional hearing in the afternoon, Mnuchin said Treasury officials did not seek the White House's 'permission' as to whether to release the tax returns, and he also said he didn't view the meeting as 'interference.' But congressional Democrats signaled concern with any White House involvement in the process at all, with Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) saying the White House should be not be playing any role in the release of tax records." ...
... Steve lips off to black female committee chair, because the black and female parts supercede the chair of House committee chair part. Tells her to "take the gravel (not a typo) and bang it." Not surprisingly, Rep. Maxine Waters holds her own:
... Oops! Arthur Delaney of the Huffington Post: "Accusing Democrats of having 'political' ― as opposed to legitimate oversight ― reasons for wanting to see Trump's tax returns is the GOP's main talking point these days. And as talking points go, it's an awkward one. Republicans themselves used private tax returns for political purposes just a few years ago, and they used the very same law that Democrats are now relying on to request the last six years of Trump's tax returns. Back in 2013, Republicans thought the Internal Revenue Service under President Barack Obama was mistreating conservative groups that wanted to be recognized as tax-exempt nonprofits. So they asked the IRS to hand over tax information for conservative groups such as Crossroads GPS as well as a few liberal groups such as Priorities USA.... In 2014, after getting the documents on the groups they requested, plus tax info relating to several dozen other organizations..., Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee made it all public.... It ultimately turned out that the IRS had improperly picked on both conservative and liberal organizations."
DOJ Lawyers Thought Trump Obstructed Justice. Kyle Cheney of Politico: "James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, told lawmakers last fall that there were widespread concerns inside the FBI that ... Donald Trump had attempted to obstruct the bureau's investigation into his campaign's links to Russians, according to a newly released transcript of Baker's testimony. Under questioning in 2018 from a Democratic committee lawyer, Baker described numerous officials who were distressed that the president may have obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Baker said he had personal concerns and that they were shared by not just top FBI brass but within other divisions and at the Justice Department as well.... In the transcript of his testimony, Baker added that he was briefed on conversations between former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe -- who assumed leadership of the FBI after Comey's firing -- and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about whether Rosenstein could wear a wire to gather evidence in an obstruction probe. Though officials close to Rosenstein have called his suggestion a joke, Baker told lawmakers ..., 'This was not a joking sort of time. This was pretty dark.'..." ...
... Two Trump Cabinet Members Thought Trump Was Unfit. Zachary Basu of Axios: "Former FBI general counsel James Baker told the House Judiciary Committee last October that it's his understanding that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said there were 2 members of President Trump's Cabinet who were willing to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office." Mrs. McC: Guess what? Trump is worse now that he was then. ...
... Update: John Gartner in a USA Today op-ed: "If Donald Trump were your father, you would run, not walk, to a neurologist for an evaluation of his cognitive health. You don't have to be a doctor to see something is very wrong.... To mental health professionals like me, the red flags are waving wildly.... Trump, 72, seemed to hit a new inflection point last week when he said, 'My father is German. Right? Was German. And born in a very wonderful place in Germany.' In fact, his father was born in the Bronx and it was his grandfather who was from Germany. Dementia Care International says a 'person may start to mix up relationships and generations' in the second stage of dementia.... In Alzheimer's, as language skills deteriorate, we see two types of tell-tale speech disorders, or paraphasias [both of which Trump has demonstrated numerous times].... Trump's speech patterns appear even more disordered when you ... look at a whole speech. He careens from one thought to the next in a parade of non sequiturs, frequently interrupting himself in the middle of a sentence to veer into another free association. When commentators described his two-hour speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month as 'unhinged,' they were referring in large part to this quality."
Vicki Divoll, in a New York Times op-ed: "The House and Senate Intelligence Committees should already have certain investigative materials relating to Russian election meddling, in unredacted form, collected by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. This legal structure was created by a provision in the Patriot Act combined with the notification provisions of the National Security Act. The intelligence committees have a lawful right, virtually unbounded. to foreign intelligence information in the possession of the intelligence agencies of the executive branch. Federal law requires that the attorney general provide to the director of national intelligence any foreign intelligence information collected during a criminal investigation. Then the director must by law provide it to the intelligence committees of Congress -- either by sending a notification or acting in response to a request from the committees.... By design or by ignorance, the executive branch agencies may not have followed the laws they have sworn to uphold. And the congressional committees may have failed to fulfill their oversight responsibilities. The House Intelligence Committee should demand immediate attention to the mandates of the Patriot and National Security Acts." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Something else that should be in Mueller's tens of thousands of pages of appendices: Trump's tax returns.
It's Fun to Go to the Movies at the White House. Ruth Graham of Slate: “The White House is hosting a screening of the gory 2018 anti-abortion film Gosnell on Friday, according to an invitation sent to pro-life activists and others last week. The film depicts second- and third-trimester abortions in gruesome detail.... Gosnell ... tells the story of the 2013 prosecution of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder in botched abortions that prosecutors said resulted in live births. Gosnell's clinic catered to poor women, and prosecutors described it as a 'house of horrors' rife with health code violations. The indie drama, which made its debut in October, became a cause célèbre among conservatives after producers accused the mainstream media and Hollywood of bias against it."
Nein, Nein, Nein. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Senate Republicans are warning the White House that [Herman Cain] ... will face one of the most difficult confirmation fights of Donald Trump's presidency and are making a behind-the-scenes play to get the president to back off [nominating Cain to the Federal Reserve Board], two GOP senators said.... Some GOP senators said that Cain's difficult path might have eased Stephen Moore's confirmation to the Fed, despite Moore's own problems with unpaid taxes and his partisan reputation..., in part because Republicans will be reluctant to reject two of Trump's Fed nominees, given their desire to protect their already shaky relationship with the president.... Neither Moore nor Cain has been officially nominated. A senator familiar with the nominations said Trump is 'full speed' ahead on Cain even though FBI background checks and documentations of sexual harassment allegations have not yet been submitted to the Senate. A person familiar with the process expects the background check to raise more questions about Cain." ...
... Profile in Courage, Ha Ha Ha. Bryan Lowry of the Kansas City Star: "One of the GOP senators from Kris Kobach's home state said Tuesday that the Senate would not be able to confirm the Kansas Republican if ... Donald Trump taps him for a cabinet post. Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, has been mentioned as a potential candidate for an array of immigration-related positions since ... Donald Trump pulled his nominee for the director of Immigration Customs Enforcement and announced the departure of Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said he doesn't believe the Republican-controlled Senate could confirm his fellow Kansan, who has gained national notoriety for championing stronger restrictions on immigration. 'Don't go there. We can't confirm him,' Roberts whispered to The Kansas City Star when asked about Kobach Tuesday on his way into a Senate vote. 'I never said that to you,' Roberts added, despite the fact that another reporter was present and The Star had not agreed to an off record conversation.... Roberts blamed Kobach's difficult path to confirmation on Senate Democrats in a longer statement released by his office Tuesday afternoon.... Republicans control 53 seats in the 100-member Senate, which makes it difficult to block any of Trump's nominees unless multiple Republicans buck the president." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Note that Roberts is retiring, so there's no reason for him to keep secret his opinion that Kobach would be a bad nominee who could not be confirmed. He's in a perfect position to diss & vote down every stupid Trump move. But no. What a gutless wonder.
Justin Elliott of ProPublica: "Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system. Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee ... passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa. In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system.... Under an existing memorandum of understanding with the industry group, the IRS pledge not create its own online filing system and, in exchange, the companies offer their free filing services to those below the income threshold [of $66,000].... The [bill in progress] would codify the status quo.... Intuit and H&R Block last year poured a combined $6.6 million into lobbying related to the IRS filing deal and other issues. Neal, who became Ways and Means chair this year after Democrats took control of the House, received $16,000 in contributions from Intuit and H&R Block in the last two election cycles." (Also linked yesterday.)
Republicans Sabotage House White Supremacy Hearing. Dana Milbank: "The new Democratic House majority held a hearing Tuesday on the rise of white nationalism, following the mosques massacre in New Zealand, the Pittsburgh synagogue killings and the deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville. Republicans invited Candace Owens to testify.... Owens said the Republicans' Southern strategy 'never happened.' She said the rise in hate crimes was fake, from 'manipulating statistics.' She called the Ku Klux Klan a 'Democrat terrorist organization.' She mocked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); proclaimed that 'the Russian collusion hoax has fallen apart'; declared that Trump is 'bringing everybody together'; and said the real 'separation' crisis is 'black babies separated from the wombs of black mothers.'... Owens's presence turned a serious inquiry -- there were representatives from civil rights groups, social media and a Muslim man whose daughters were killed in a hate crime -- into farce.... They also invited to testify Morton Klein of the far-right Zionist Organization of America, who ... recently wrote of 'evil murders by your filthy Arab Islamist despicable brethren.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: You'll have to read Milbank's column to get the full effect. But it's hard not to conclude that Owens & Klein's Congressional hosts are white supremacists themselves.
The Woes of Devin, Ctd. #YachtCocaineProstitutes. Alexandra Hutzler of Newsweek: "California Representative Devin Nunes is being mocked on Twitter after filing a $150 million lawsuit over a May 2018 story featuring the headline: 'A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event.' The article detailed a lawsuit by a former female employee of Alpha Omega, a Napa Valley winery, in which Nunes is an investor. The employee alleged that while working for the winery during a charity cruise she saw some of the guests using cocaine and procuring sex workers, some of whom were underage. Nunes was not apparently on the cruise or knew it was happening. As a result of Monday's lawsuit against The Fresno Bee, the McClatchy Company and others, the hashtag #YachtCocaineProstitutes began trending on the social media platform on Tuesday."
Alexander Nazaryan of Yahoo! News: "On Nov. 17, 2017, President Trump added five names to the list of potential Supreme Court nominations his administration might make. One of those names ... [was] Patrick R. Wyrick.... Nominated for the United States District Court..., Wyrick could soon join the dozens of activist judges remaking the federal government, and American society.... Yet as Wyrick's confirmation ... nears, critics say he should be disqualified because he has failed to disclose that while suing the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act as Oklahoma's solicitor general, he was also involved in [a] health care company [his wife runs].... [A] letter [from Earthjustice to the Senate Judiciary Committee] also reprises long-standing allegations that Wyrick -- a close associate of former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt -- improperly collaborated with the oil and gas industry in blocking the Obama administration's environmental regulations.... The revelation that Wyrick was a 'registered agent for [his wife's business] means that he not only had a potential conflict of interest in Oklahoma, but that he was not truthful in his written testimony to the U.S. Senate, a potentially disqualifying development." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sounds like a typical Trumpie to me: conflicts of interest, lying under oath. Definitely Supreme Court material.
Presidential Race 2020
Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "Senator Bernie Sanders, whose $18 million fund-raising haul has solidified his status as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said Tuesday that he would release 10 years of tax returns by Tax Day on Monday and acknowledged that he has joined the ranks of the millionaires he has denounced for years. 'April 15 is coming,' Mr. Sanders, whose refusal to release his full past returns has become an issue in the campaign, said in an interview in his office. 'We wanted to release 10 years of tax returns. April 15, 2019, will be the 10th year, so I think you will see them.'... 'I wrote a best-selling book,' he declared. 'If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's sort of silly to call someone Bernie's age -- especially a married someone -- a millionaire because he & his wife have built a retirement nest egg. Even without the book sales, Bernie & his wife Jane -- both of whom have had decently-paying careers -- apparently were prudent enough to save at least a million dollars for retirement. As I recall, Jane also recently received an inheritance that included a substantial piece of property. This is hardly comparable to the "millionaires & billionaires" Bernie decries, many of whom don't acquire less than a million a year.
Kate Taylor of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors brought new money laundering charges against the Hollywood actress Lori Loughlin and 15 other parents in the college admissions case on Tuesday, raising the legal stakes for parents who have not said they would plead guilty in the case. Prosecutors said on Monday that 13 of the 33 parents charged in the case, including the actress Felicity Huffman, would plead guilty. In all but one case, those parents will plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest service mail fraud. On Tuesday, the prosecutors indicted most of the other parents on the fraud charge but also on an added charge of money laundering conspiracy."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Isabel Kershner & David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's conservative prime minister for the past decade, appeared poised to win a fourth consecutive term in office, and a fifth overall, according to preliminary results early on Wednesday. Both Mr. Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief, declared victory after Tuesday's parliamentary election, appearing to win the same number of seats in the Israeli parliament. But a count of the broader blocs needed to form a coalition government appeared to give Mr. Netanyahu's Likud party a clear advantage over Mr. Gantz's Blue and White."
... The New York Times is updating Israeli election results: "Exit polls show a dead heat in the race between Benjamin Netanyahu, the polarizing, right-wing prime minister, and his main rival, Benny Gantz, a newcomer to electoral politics who is seen as a centrist. Both men claimed victory."
News Lede
New York Times: "Charles Van Doren, a Columbia University English instructor and a member of a distinguished literary family who confessed to Congress and a disillusioned nation in 1959 that his performances on a television quiz show had been rigged, died on Tuesday in Canaan, Conn. He was 93."
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