Month: March 2019

Saturday Night at the Movies



Desperate housewife: Criterion reissues Barbara Loden’s Wanda (****)

By Dennis Hartley

Wanda Goronski: I don’t have anything. I never did have anything. Never will have anything.

Norman Dennis: You’re stupid.

That remarkable exchange is from the 1970 character study/road movie/crime drama Wanda, an underseen indie gem written and directed by its star Barbara Loden. Previously hard-to-find, a restored edition of the film is newly available from Criterion.

Wanda (Loden) is an unemployed working-class housewife. It’s clear that her life is the pits…and not just figuratively. She’s recently left her husband and two infants and has been crashing at her sister’s house, which is within spitting distance of a yawning mining pit, nestled in the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal country. We don’t have an opportunity to get a sense of her home life, because as the film opens, she’s on her way to family court.

A protracted long shot of Wanda daintily traipsing through the bleak obsidian moonscape of the coal pit as she heads for court with hair in curlers, white tennis shoes, white stretch pants, white floral blouse and carrying a white purse is…not something you see every day. It’s also an indication you’re in for a narrative with some deeply existential subtexts.

When the judge scolds her for being late, the oddly detached Wanda shrugs it off, matter-of-factly telling His Honor that if her husband wants a divorce, that’s OK by her; adding their kids are “better off” with him. Shortly afterward, Wanda splits her sister’s house and hits the road (hair still in curlers), carrying no more than that white purse. This suggests that either a.) she’s a dim bulb, or b.) freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

The first third of the film is episodic; Wanda wanders aimlessly, stopping at a tavern for a drink. A traveling salesman with a Vista Cruiser buys her a beer, she sleeps with him at a cheap motel. She busts him trying to sneak out the next morning, and just makes it into his station wagon. When they stop for an ice cream cone, he peels out and abandons her.

Non-plussed, Wanda kicks around some dull burg and drifts into a movie theater for a matinee and a nap. When she awakens, the auditorium is empty, and she discovers someone has rifled through her purse and stolen what little money she had been carrying.

Now officially broke, Wanda heads for the nearest tavern. The suspiciously furtive man behind the bar is less than friendly; he tells her to beat it, they’re closed. Nonetheless, Wanda asks him for food and drink. Giving her an incredulous look, he serves her (sort of). Through all of this, Wanda either doesn’t notice or doesn’t give second thought to the sight of the unconscious, bound and gagged man lying on the floor by the cash register.

Her “bartender” is a petty criminal (Michael Dennis) who has just knocked over the joint. His name (as we come to learn) is Norman Dennis, and the ever-malleable Wanda is soon on the lam with “Mr. Dennis”. The couple become a sort of low-rent Bonnie and Clyde.

Wanda is Terrance Malick’s Badlands meets Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA; like Malick’s film it was inspired by a true crime story and features a strangely passive female protagonist with no discernible identity of her own, and like Koppel’s documentary it offers a gritty portrait of rural working-class America through an unadorned 16mm lens.

The verité feel of the film (mostly shot using available light) was no accident; in a 1980 documentary by Katja Raganelli included on the Criterion Blu-ray/DVD, Loden explains why she ultimately decided on cinematographer/editor Nicholas T. Proferes (who had worked with documentary film maker D.A. Pennebaker). Of the many cinematographers’ work she looked at, Loden thought “…this person really has some feelings for people, and he knows how to show ugly things without it appearing ugly…the ugly side of life.”

In that same interview, Loden also discusses how the project had been percolating for some time strictly as a script, and why she ended up deciding to direct it herself. “I sent it to some directors who liked it,” she recalls, “…they were all men, which wouldn’t necessarily make a difference, but they didn’t seem to understand what this woman was about. I would not take it to studios […] I wanted to make it my own way.” So…she did.

Although she could not have known it then, that decision has been since acknowledged as a groundbreaking move. The number of female auteurs in American film at that time could have been counted on one hand (Ida Lupino is the only one I can think of offhand).

Wanda also bridges an interesting cusp of second wave feminism’s effect on early-to-mid 70s American cinema. While its protagonist shares characteristics with Shirley Knight’s runaway housewife in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969), Ellen Burstyn’s widowed single mother in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), and (in a more tangential sense) the steadily unraveling suburban housewives played by Carrie Snodgrass in Frank Perry’s Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) and Gena Rowlands in John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), I could see how modern audiences might scratch their heads over how such a passive character who allows men to objectify her and generally treat her like shit could possibly qualify as a feminist heroine.

In a 2003 issue of Cahiers du Cinéma, Marguerite Duras interviewed director Elia Kazan about Loden’s legacy (Kazan was married to Loden from 1967 until her death from cancer at age 48 in 1980). Kazan offered some unique insight on her character in Wanda:

“In this movie she plays a character we have in America, and who I suppose exists in France and everywhere, that we call floating, a wanderer. A woman who floats on the surface of society, drifting here or there, with the currents. But in the story of this movie, for a few days the man she meets needs her; during these few days she has a direction […] Barbara Loden understood this character very, very well because when she was young she was a bit like that, she would go here and there. She once told me a very sad thing; she told me: ‘I have always needed a man to protect me.’ I will say that most women in our society are familiar with this, understand this, need this, but are not honest enough to say it. And she was saying it sadly”.

So perhaps the sense of empowerment emanates not from the protagonist, who simply “is who she is” (i.e. a character, portrayed by Loden the actor), but the act of creation itself by Loden the writer and director of the piece (and the very personal place it comes from).

In her insightful essay (included as a booklet with the disc), Amy Taubin offers this take:

I thought it remarkable [when Taubin saw it in 1972], in part for the very reason many in the audience dismissed it: Loden’s Wanda was anything but a feminist role model. Rather, she was a version of the characters Loden had been playing on and off Broadway, on television […] She had been typecast as the kind of all-American beauty who believes that male desire is the only measure of her value, and necessary to her survival. […] Responses to the film when it was first released were mixed, with two prominent critics (Pauline Kael and Rex Reed) referring to Wanda as a slut and expressing their annoyance at having to spend time on a movie with such a negligible protagonist. […] Thanks to the feminist energy that has continued to evolve as it has seeped into the culture in the decades since the film’s release, Wanda can now be appreciated as a portrait of a kind of woman who, being no man’s fantasy, had almost never been seen on the screen before.

Hopefully, this release will help give this fine film the wider appreciation that it deserves.

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—Dennis Hartley

Remember Grandma Millie?

by digby

For those of you too young to recall the detail of Enron, the first big scandal of the Bush administration, “Grandma Millie” refers to some energy traders from the company caught on tape revealing their corruption and venality.

Well, now we’ve got some energy executives on tape, laughing about all the access and influence they have in the Trump administration:

Gathered for a private meeting at a beachside Ritz-Carlton in Southern California, the oil executives were celebrating a colleague’s sudden rise. David Bernhardt, their former lawyer, had been appointed by President Donald Trump to the powerful No. 2 spot at the Department of the Interior.

Just five months into the Trump era, the energy developers who make up the Independent Petroleum Association of America had already watched the new president order a sweeping overhaul of environmental regulations that were cutting into their bottom lines — rules concerning smog, fracking and endangered species protection.

Dan Naatz, the association’s political director, told the conference room audience of about 100 executives that Bernhardt’s new role meant their priorities would be heard at the highest levels of Interior.

“We know him very well, and we have direct access to him, have conversations with him about issues ranging from federal land access to endangered species, to a lot of issues,” Naatz said, according to an hourlong recording of the June 2017 event in Laguna Niguel provided to Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The recording gives a rare look behind the curtain of an influential oil industry lobbying group that spends more than $1 million per year to push its agenda in Congress and federal regulatory agencies. The previous eight years had been dispiriting for the industry: As IPAA vice president Jeff Eshelman told the group, it had seemed as though the Obama administration and environmental groups had put together “their target list of everything that they wanted done to shut down the oil and gas industry.” But now, the oil executives were almost giddy at the prospect of high-level executive branch access of the sort they hadn’t enjoyed since Dick Cheney, a fellow oilman, was vice president.

“It’s really a new thing for us,” said Barry Russell, the association’s CEO, boasting of his meetings with Environmental Protection Agency chief at the time, Scott Pruitt, and the then-Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke. “For example, next week I’m invited to the White House to talk about tax code. Last week we were talking to Secretary Pruitt, and in about two weeks we have a meeting with Secretary Zinke. So we have unprecedented access to people that are in these positions who are trying to help us, which is great.”

In that Ritz-Carlton conference room, Russell also spoke of his ties to Bernhardt, recalling the lawyer’s role as point man on an association legal team set up to challenge federal endangered species rules. “Well, the guy that actually headed up that group is now the No. 2 at Interior,” he said, referring to Bernhardt. “So that’s worked out well.”
[…]
It was the kind of access the group had begun to marvel at the year before in the plush confines of their Southern California resort. On the recording, Russell, the IPAA’s CEO, described an extended meeting he had already had with Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general and climate-change doubter whose tenure at EPA would be cut short by ethics scandals. What started as a simple meet-and-greet became an invitation to critique the EPA’s air pollution regulations, the oil executive said.

“Scott Pruitt, he came from Oklahoma, and we have a lot of friends in common and I thought that’s what we were going to talk about, we did that for about three minutes,” Russell said. “And then he started asking very technical questions about methane, about ozone … and if Scott Pruitt thought he was going to go deep nerd …”

The audience began laughing.

“And what was really great is there was about four or five EPA staffers there, who were all like, ‘Write that down, write that down,’ all the way through this,’’ Russell continued. “And when we left, I said that was just our overview.”

The audience laughed again.

“So it’s really a new world for us and very, very helpful.”

They were giddy with delight and for good reason. Sure, they’ve already gone through several corrupt cabinet members but that’s fine. The Republicans have a very deep bench with that talent.

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What’s next? Trench warfare

by digby

The Senate will be conducting Bizarroworld oversight:

If there’s no collusion that was found then it strongly vindicates President Trump but it raises those serious questions about whos going to be held accountable at the FBI, the bad actors that had a political agenda which goes against everything that law enforcement is supposed to be about.— GOP Minority whip, Steve Scalise

Last night:

A “lock her up” chant broke out at Mar-a-Lago tonight during Sen. Graham’s speech as he called for an investigation into Clinton and the origins of the dossier. Trump watched on from a table in the ballroom.— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) March 23, 2019

POlitico has more:

Sen. Lindsey Graham delivered a rousing speech behind closed doors at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, joking about the prospect of President Donald Trump opening a hotel in Jerusalem and asking the crowd whether they’d like to see former Rep. Trey Gowdy on the Supreme Court.

With Trump looking on, Graham lavished the president with praise, ticking off a list of his accomplishments, including the booming economy, the elimination of Islamic State strongholds in Syria and Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

“There will be a Trump hotel there in 10 years,” Graham said, according to three people present for his remarks.
[…]
Graham spoke for about 30 minutes, according to another person who attended the event. Trump remained in the room for the senator’s remarks, and left soon after.

The senator repeatedly tossed out what one of the attendees called “red meat” for the conservative crowd, calling for an investigation into Hillary Clinton and the circumstances surrounding the creation of a largely unverified dossier about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. He also complained about alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse, an issue that he is investigating as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

That’s when they shouted “Lock her up!”

They’ll do this as a way to counteract the hearings in the House. It’s a smart plan. The press and the Democrats will be distracted and the country will be even more polarized, which suits the Republicans just fine.

It will also serve to enable the Trumpies in the FBI, particularly those in New York whom we know are sympathetic, to do whatever it akes to thwart any SDNY investigations.

The war has just begun.

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He never leaves a penny on the sidewalk

by digby

Our corrupt President’s hotel, in which he retains a conflicting financial interest, is selling products with the image of the White House on it. I’d say he’s monetizing the presidency again, but it’s a continuous effort so “again” wouldn’t make sense. https://t.co/BgBfaQKNy2

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 21, 2019

He’s just using the presidency to promote his commercial brand for a family business from which he refuses to divest himself and continues to profit. What could be wrong with that?

President Donald Trump has emblazoned the “Trump” brand name on images of the White House to sell in his Trump Store and at the Trump International Hotel in the capital. The products give the bizarre impression that the White House is a Trump hotel.

Walter Shaub, who was director of the Office of Government Ethics in both the Obama and Trump administrations, sharply criticized the products as the latest move to “monetize the presidency” for private gain.

The hotel, located in a landmark building owned by taxpayers and leased by the Trump Organization, is at the center of a lawsuit arguing that the business violates the Constitutional prohibition against a federal official accepting payments or gifts from states or foreign governments — like those that book rooms and events there.

Shaub and other ethics experts say the hotel is an easy conduit for cash from anyone hoping to curry favor with the president. Now Trump appears to be underscoring the direct link between the hotel and “his” White House.

The Trump Organization last year used golf tee markers emblazoned with the presidential seal, but the seal is legally allowed only for official government business so they were removed.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the latest selling of the White House breached regulations, but Jessica Tillipman, a government ethics expert at George Washington University Law School, told the UK Independent that Trump profiting from his position was “bizarre and wrong.”

Trump, unlike other presidents, has neither divested from his businesses nor put his assets in a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest.

I’m pretty sure that now that the Mueller report has landed, the entire right wing will insist that it vindicates the president and all oversight must immediately cease. It won’t happen, of course. The House Democrats will continue. But Trump and the White House will call any other inquiries just another witch hunt — a conviction in search of a charge.

Putting so much weight on the Mueller probe was risky. Unless this report is an extremely compelling narrative of Trump’s unfitness, a lot of people may just agree that it’s time to “move on.”

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Regardless of Mueller, public hearings are vital

by digby

QOTD by Emptywheel who unpacks the main details about what we already know about the Russia probe:

Consider all this from the perspective of Russia: over and over, they exploited Trump’s epic narcissism and venality. Particularly with regards to the Trump Tower deal, they did so in a way that would be especially damaging, particularly given that even while a former GRU officer was brokering the deal, the GRU was hacking Trump’s opponent. They often did so in ways that would be readily discovered, once the FBI decided to check Kilimnik’s Gmail account. Russia did this in ways that would make it especially difficult for Trump to come clean about it, even if he were an upstanding honest person.

Partly as a result, partly because he’s a narcissist who wanted to deny that he had illicit help to win, and partly because he’s a compulsive liar, Trump and his aides all lied about what they’ve now sworn to be true. Over and over again.

And that raised the stakes of the Russian investigation, which in turn further polarized the country.

As I noted here, that only added to the value of Russia’s intervention. Not only did Trump’s defensiveness make him prefer what Putin told him to what American Russian experts and his intelligence community would tell him, but he set about destroying the FBI in an effort to deny the facts that his aides ultimately swore were true. Sure, Russia hasn’t gotten its sanctions relief, yet. But it has gotten the President himself to attack the American justice system, something Putin loves to do.

We don’t know what the Mueller report will say about Trump’s role in all this, and how that will affect the rest of his presidency. We do know he remains under investigation for his cheating (as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing hush money investigation) and his venality (in the inauguration investigation, at a minimum).

We do know, however, that whatever is in that report is what Mueller wants in it; none of the (Acting) Attorneys General supervising him thwarted his work, though Trump’s refusal to be interviewed may have.

But we also know that Russia succeeded wildly with its attack in 2016 and since.

She suggests that everyone take the Mueller report as the last word and go about protecting America from similar acts going forward. I’m going to guess that Trump and his henchmen will do everything they can to stand in the way of that happening. To stop it would mean admitting that it happened in the first place. Unless they are forced to do that, this will continue. They are still in charge.

Public hearings are vital. The American people have to hear the whole story, whatever it is, from the people who participated.

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They were happy to have the help

by digby

Not that Republicans care about this, but still:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has concluded his investigation without charging any Americans with conspiring with Russia to interfere in the 2016 campaign and help elect Donald Trump.

But hundreds of pages of legal filings and independent reporting since Mueller was appointed nearly two years ago have painted a striking portrayal of a presidential campaign that appeared untroubled by a foreign adversary’s attack on the U.S. political system — and eager to accept the help.

When Trump’s eldest son was offered dirt about Hillary Clinton that he was told was part of a Russian government effort to help his father, he responded, “I love it.”

When longtime Trump friend Roger Stone was told a Russian national wanted to sell damaging information about Clinton, he took the meeting.

When the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks published documents that the Democratic National Committee said had been stolen by Russian operatives, Trump’s campaign quickly used the information to its advantage. Rather than condemn the Kremlin, Trump famously asked Russia to steal more.

Even after taking office, Trump has been hesitant to condemn Russia’s actions, instead calling the investigation a “witch hunt” and denouncing the work of federal investigators seeking to understand a Russian attack on the country he leads.

We have known this for a while. Also, Trump was compromised with his repeated lies that Putin knew about and the rest of us didn’t. and the glaring fact that Trump refuses to admit that the Russians interfered in the first place.

Whatever the Mueller report shows, the bottom line is this: Trump knew he was compromised and gladly took the help — and he will do it again.

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And so we wait
by Tom Sullivan

It is finished. Special counsel Robert Mueller issued his Trump-Russia final “confidential report” to Attorney General William Barr. After 22 months of investigation, dozens of indictments, a string of convictions, and weeks of breathless buildup, the major new development on Friday evening is the report comes with no new indictments.

Barr’s letter to leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees announcing the report informed them he might be able to advise them on Mueller’s principal conclusions by the weekend. Barr also advised, per regulations, there were no instances in which the Department of Justice refused any requests by Mueller to pursue additional actions.

With further information “em-Barr-goed,” as one Twitter user quipped, Friday evening reporting was a flurry of “hurry up and wait” panels and a kind of “This Is Your Life” recap of the Mueller investigation, along with speculation on what the report might conclude and, whatever it contains, what that might and might not mean and what Democrats might and might not do.

Politico summarized the situation:

But for now, there’s nothing of substance to digest. No answer to whether Trump and his presidential campaign conspired with the Kremlin to win the White House. No answer to whether the president obstructed justice to stop a probe into that conspiracy … And so we wait.

Just because Mueller’s part is done is not an end to investigations spun off by Mueller and the House investigations barely underway. There may yet be more indictments already under seal. There are still federal investigations ongoing in the Southern District of New York.

One Washington Post report on Mueller’s efforts cautioned there is more coming:

“He’s almost like a venture capital incubator who has spun out multiple lines of business,” said David Kris, a former Justice Department national security division chief and founder of the consulting firm Culper Partners. “He’s shown us an awful lot, and yet I think there’s an awful lot more to come.”

So much has come out in packets, Kris continued, “I think if you took it all in in one day, it would kill you. It’s simply too much.”

Yahoo News summarized just some of the unfinished business, not least being the fate of Roger Stone and the case against the foreign mystery company whose fight to keep its records hidden remains on appeal. “[T]he office’s legal loose ends include two sentencings and two grand jury subpoena appeals,” Yahoo reports, adding if Mueller wins, he would “have the right to seek documents and testimony from Andrew Miller, an associate of Stone’s, and a mysterious company about which little is known, other than it is owned by a foreign government and has an office in the United States.”

Marcy Wheeler issued a string of tweets with first impressions:

Gonna talk about things we don't know about the Mueller report, but will start by saying Barr's willingness to issue quick public summary probably means it is not that damning towards Trump.— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 22, 2019

That said, the report could be any of four general things:

1) Much ado about nothing accompanied w/Trump's paranoid response
2) A very damning report that doesn't amount to criminal behavior— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 22, 2019

3) Clear evidence of conspiracy but that couldn't be charged bc of lack of (admissible) evidence, presidential prerogatives over FP and pardons and firing, etc
4) A recommendation for impeachment bc Trump did conspire— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 22, 2019

Oops, forgot 5.

5) Strong evidence of conspiracy, but Corsi, Manafort, and Stone's lies prevented charging the conspiracy— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 22, 2019

Also: It's possible Mueller will say, Stone and Manafort clearly conspired, but given their existing legal exposure, it wasn't worth the intelligence exposure to charge them.— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 23, 2019

A huge outstanding threat to the sitting president is what New York state prosecutors and SDNY will do vis-à-vis their investigations into the Trump family’s business practices, the Trump Organization, and the speed with which they do it. Donald Trump’s financial empire is at risk under RICO statutes. He cares more about that than the flag he hugs, immigrants on the southern border, or his tenure in the Oval Office. What sort of “deal” might the dealmaker make to preserve any of that? That is, depending on what happens in New York, impeachment may not be the only lever for removing Trump from office.

But for now, a little music to pass the time until Barr delivers … whatever.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

WATCH: Two critically endangered Amur leopard cubs tussle at Connecticut zoo pic.twitter.com/Dcgj1QqO5N

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) March 17, 2019

Fewer than 100 Amur leopards roam the wild. The critically endangered subspecies, which lives in the snowy regions of Russia’s far east near the Chinese border, faces constant threats in the form of poaching and habitat loss in the wild. Which is what makes the birth of two Amur leopard cubs at Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo so important.

The cubs were born in January, with the celebratory news reaching the public just last week. The mom, Freya, mated naturally with Sochi, a male leopard at the zoo. She gave birth to three cubs—her first litter!—but one of the males was lost after suffering injuries as a result of his mother’s hyper-grooming behavior.

“Because behavior is genetic, you want to create the best possible methodology for them to survive.”
The other male cub and his sister are faring well so far, but they’ve been separated from their mother to ensure she wouldn’t continue over-licking them, which can cause their skin to tear. Freya wound up injuring the female cub a bit, so zoo officials had to remove her tail after birth. She’s doing fine now.

“You have to be a little extra careful with first-time moms,” Don Goff, the zoo’s deputy director, told Earther. “You never know how they’re going to react. It’s not like someone told them they are pregnant or why they’re going through all these changes.”

A female leopard may lose her first litter—both in the wild and captivity—said Goff, so the behavior wasn’t considered abnormal. Either way, the cubs are doing well now. And they’re both super adorable. The female cub’s rare black coloration is a result of the overproduction of the pigment melanin, an unusual quality in Amur leopards.

The cubs don’t have names yet, but they’ll have some soon enough if they continue to grow into healthy mature leopards. While these cats are unlikely to ever see the wild, breeding efforts like this, which have resulted in a captive population of roughly 200 Amur leopards, are key to ensuring the subspecies’ continued existence. Unfortunately, the female’s melanism might disqualify her from breeding in the future, but her extraordinary beauty will help her be a one-of-a-kind advocate for her species.

The zoo bred the leopards through the Species Survival Plan Program, which manages the breeding of animals in captivity to protect their relatives in the wild. Through the program, specific individual animals are selected to maximize the species’ genetic diversity.

“Every birth that’s recommended is an important birth because it may boost the overall gene diversity of the entire population,” said Goff. “That gene diversity is what’s going to make that species adaptable to the environment. Because behavior is genetic, you want to create the best possible methodology for them to survive.”

Think of it this way: In a worst-case, apocalyptic scenario where the leopard’s wild population is totally decimated, the animals in captivity have enough genetic diversity to keep the species afloat.

With only 84 Amur leopards in the wild, conservationists must do everything they can to ensure the animals survive.

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A bang or a whimper?

by digby

The report is in and there will be no more indictments. Whether that means Mueller found reasons to indict Trump is still unknown. If they manage to bottle up the report and the counterintelligence info is all classified we might never know.

We know now that Russian government agents interfered in the election and went to great lengths to infiltrate the Trump campaign. And we know that Trump was compromised with his big Trump Tower deal which he kept secret and about which he lied repeatedly to the public.

And we know that Trump has behaved in a bizarrely secretive and obsequious manner with Vladimir Putin. Whether or not Putin pulled his compromised strings or whether Trump just knows what he needs to do remainsto be seen.

CNN helpfully outlines some of what we don’t know:

Here are the looming questions:

Was there a conspiracy to collude?

In the court of public opinion, this is the ball game. Prosecutors crafted a mosaic of how collusion could have played out. But if Mueller stops short of producing a smoking gun, President Donald Trump is sure to declare all-out victory and claim total vindication.

Of course, the reality is more nuanced. Court filings and news reports have already established that senior Trump associates were eager to accept assistance from, or share sensitive election data with, the Russians. It’s the second half of the equation that is still shrouded in mystery.

Mueller’s team has left a trail of breadcrumbs suggesting that if there was collusion with the Russians, then Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort may have played a key role. Trump and Manafort deny any collusion, and in dozens of public filings, Mueller never produced any evidence implicating them in collusion. But prosecutors repeatedly alleged that Manafort worked for free, was desperate for cash, and tried to monetize his position with influential oligarchs.

In addition, Mueller laid out how Trump acolyte Roger Stone sought information from WikiLeaks with prodding from Trump’s campaign, as to when the website would release politically damaging documents. Those documents were stolen by Russian government hackers. But Mueller never accused Stone of directly working in cahoots with WikiLeaks or the Russians.

Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen recently testified on Capitol Hill that he witnessed Stone and Trump discussing WikiLeaks in summer 2016. During a gripping daylong hearing, Cohen also described how he and Trump pursued a massive business deal with a Russian company during the campaign. Mueller’s team has suggested that this could be a motive for collusion, outlining in court filings how the deal would have enriched Trump with Russian help.

If there was collusion, and it rose to the level of criminality, it’s safe to assume that Mueller would have brought indictments. The Russia investigation is now over, and nobody in Trump’s orbit was charged with conspiring with the Russian government. A Justice Department official told CNN on Friday that no additional indictments are coming from the Mueller investigation.

But Mueller could have also found things resembling collusion that aren’t prosecutable. Federal rules require Mueller to provide the attorney general with a report explaining why he did not bring charges against people who were under investigation. It’s up to Barr to decide how much should become public, but hopefully the report gives a definitive answer to the question of collusion. 

Why didn’t Mueller interview Trump in person?

Another element of the unfolding Russia drama was the on-again, off-again dance between Mueller’s team and Trump’s lawyers regarding the President’s testimony. Trump provided Mueller with written responses about his 2016 campaign, but nothing that happened after Election Day, viewing the transition and his time in office as subject to executive privilege.

With the investigation over, it appears that Trump’s lawyers succeeded in staving off an in-person interview.

Trump’s lawyers knew their client regularly strays from the truth and sometimes flat-out lies. So, preventing an interview was tantamount to preventing perjury.

Mueller could have subpoenaed Trump, though this would have carried risks of its own, like a lengthy court battle ending with a ruling in Trump’s favor. Mueller might have found ways to get what he needed from other witnesses. Or perhaps he was ultimately swayed by Trump’s lawyers that they cooperated so extensively that a sit-down interview wouldn’t add much value.

If Mueller was deterred by the Justice Department from seeking a subpoena, a notification must go to Congress. Special counsel regulations require the attorney general to inform Congress if any prosecutorial steps were prevented from going forward. That is something to look for. 

What will the public see of Mueller’s report?

During his confirmation hearing in January, Barr pledged to “provide as much transparency as I can” when it comes to the Russia investigation. His comments satisfied Republicans, who control the Senate and confirmed him with ease to lead the Justice Department.

But Barr left plenty of wiggle room in his testimony, and there isn’t anything in the special counsel regulations that requires Barr to release the full report to the public. Democrats have drawn a line in the sand, demanding more promises from Barr and total transparency.

There is no indication that Barr is in the mood to cave to Democratic complaints. But his hands could be tied if Democrats subpoena the report or invite Mueller for a public hearing. A potential lawsuit by House Democrats could trigger lengthy court battles around the report. California Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, recently said all these options are on the table. In this respect, the “end” is only the beginning. 

Were there even more contacts with Russians?

After the election, Trump’s team maintained that there were zero contacts between the campaign and Russians. It didn’t take long for this story to completely fall apart. Since then, at least 16 Trump associates have been identified as having contacts with Russians during the campaign or transition. There were dozens and dozens of Trump-Russia contacts.

That list of 16 includes senior people from Trump’s campaign, senior Trump administration officials, members of Trump’s family, and people who were part of Trump’s trusted inner circle.

Stunningly, we’re still learning about some of these contacts. It was only a few weeks ago when we learned that Manafort shared internal campaign polls with one of his Russian associates, Konstantin Kilimnik, who is suspected by the FBI of having active ties to Russian intelligence.

The lie of “no contacts” was debunked a long time ago. Perhaps there are even more contacts between Trump-world and Russia that will be revealed for the first time in Mueller’s report. 

Did Trump or anyone else obstruct justice?

The saying goes, “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” That could be true once more.

Obstruction can be a lot of things. Already, members of Trump’s inner circle pleaded guilty to witness tampering, lying to the FBI and misleading congressional investigators. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and testified to lawmakers that he did so at Trump’s direction, though Trump didn’t explicitly use those words. Prosecutors say these actions by Cohen and former Trump campaign aides impeded the Russia investigation time and time again.

Many of Trump’s detractors already think he is guilty of obstruction. They point to his firing of FBI Director James Comey, his role in misleading the public about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, attempts to remove Mueller from his post, relentless public attacks against witnesses, and more.

Whether this meets the legal threshold of obstruction is up to Mueller. But even then, Justice Department rules say a sitting president cannot be indicted. And unlike independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, it isn’t Mueller’s job to tee up impeachment in Congress.

House Democrats, however, are ready to pick up where Mueller leaves off. The Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee said recently he believes it’s already “very clear” that Trump obstructed justice.

Are there more big lies that will be exposed?

Lies are a major theme of this two-year saga. Time after time, Trump and his allies have changed their stories, spread false information or been forced to disavow past comments. Six Trump associates have been accused by Mueller’s team of lying about their Russian ties.

Regardless of the legal implications, Mueller might have uncovered more lies as he interviewed dozens of witnesses. And it’s possible some of those revelations could be in his final report.

For instance, even some of the most stalwart Trump supporters have cast doubt on Donald Trump Jr.’s testimony that he never told his father about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. And Cohen publicly testified that he witnessed a June 2016 conversation between Trump and Trump Jr. that he believes was about the Trump Tower meeting.

Others found it hard to believe that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos didn’t tell anyone on the campaign that he was tipped off about the Russians having damaging Hillary Clinton emails. (Papadopoulos has told CNN he “can’t guarantee” that it never came up.)

Then there was the controversial move by Trump campaign staff to block language in the Republican party platform at their 2016 convention about arming Ukraine to counter Russia. At the time, Manafort and Trump denied any involvement, despite Manafort’s extensive ties to Ukrainian interests. Since then, Mueller asked witness about this situation, and reportedly wanted to ask Trump about it too.

Was Trump deemed a counterintelligence threat?

Beyond the criminal probe, investigators at the FBI looked into the possibility that Trump was working for the Russians. Details of this investigation were publicly confirmed this week by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who opened the investigation in May 2017.

McCabe said in interviews that the counterintelligence investigation was spurred by Trump’s bizarre public statements and comments — not some damning classified information. But once the probe was opened, the FBI could use a wide array of tools to investigate the President.

The FBI general counsel at the time, James Baker, told Congress it was not a clear-cut suspicion. He said FBI officials considered the whole range of possibilities, from Trump “acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will” to the possibility of Trump being totally innocent. Either way, Baker said, it needed to be investigated.

Still, analysts have noted that it would be strange for investigators to deem Trump a national security threat, but then sit on that information for months while Mueller continued his work.

Republicans have been extremely critical of McCabe and regularly accuse the FBI and Justice Department of anti-Trump bias. The report could thoroughly explain why McCabe and others took this drastic step and describe the safeguards that were in place to ensure a fair investigation.

How much of the dossier could Mueller confirm?

It’s impossible to discuss the Russia probe without bringing up “the dossier,” the infamous memos written in 2016 by retired British spy Christopher Steele. The reports, which he said contained raw intelligence from trusted sources, alleged a widespread conspiracy of collusion.

The most salacious elements of the dossier are unproven, yet many of the allegations contained in the memos have held up over time, or at least proven partially true. The memos accurately described Russia meddling and said Trump’s campaign was hiding contacts with Russians and that the Kremlin was involved in potential real estate deals for the Trump Organization.

Mueller’s team met with Steele in summer 2017, and CNN previously reported on efforts by the FBI to assess the intelligence memos. But it’s unclear whether Mueller felt compelled to include a full accounting of the dossier in his final report. A lot of that work likely came from highly classified sources and clandestine surveillance that US intelligence agencies want to keep secret.

What did Mueller find when he crossed Trump’s “red line?”

Trump famously declared in a July 2017 interview with The New York Times that Mueller would be crossing a “red line” if he investigated Trump’s personal finances and his family’s business.

Mueller blew past Trump’s rhetorical line. He scrutinized potential efforts by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to mix his business interests with his government role. And he handed off the wide-ranging Cohen investigation to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. That case put the Trump Organization squarely in the crosshairs of federal investigators.

That is some of what we know. We also know that Mueller never indicted any members of Trump’s family — the closest he got to Trump’s innermost circle was Cohen. But there might be things we don’t know.

It would not have been difficult for Mueller to obtain Trump’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service. Trump has worked hard to keep his taxes out of public view — perhaps Mueller’s report will change that. If not, the onus will fall on eager House Democrats.
[…]
How many related investigations are still active?

Mueller’s work gave birth to an entire ecosystem of related investigations. Some of those investigations are over, others are underway, and others might still be unknown to the public.

Prosecutors in Manhattan picked up the mantle on the Cohen case, and he’s heading to prison this spring for a three-year stint. Prosecutors there are also weighing charges in a foreign lobbying probe against Manafort associate Greg Craig, who once served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, cut a deal with Mueller and provided evidence against one of his former lobbying partners. Bijan Kian was charged with illegally lobbying for Turkey and is set to go on trial this summer. He pleaded not guilty.

Other key players — like Manafort’s longtime deputy Rick Gates and influential DC lobbyist Sam Patten — have been cooperating with Mueller for a while. Gates was a senior official on Trump’s inaugural committee, which is now under scrutiny by federal investigators in Manhattan.

The same US attorney’s office in Manhattan is separately seeking to talk to executives from the Trump Organization, though the reason for those interviews has yet to be disclosed.

Prosecutors say Gates, Patten, Cohen and Flynn have been helpful beyond the special counsel investigations. But redactions have kept the details secret. Mueller’s team worked closely with prosecutors who will remain at the Justice Department and can continue pursuing these cases.

Additionally, Mueller has aggressively pursued evidence from an unnamed company that is owned by a foreign country. The battle over that subpoena has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Now that the investigation is over, will they continue fighting? And what does it mean that Mueller was able to wrap up without getting any evidence from this mystery company?

Mueller’s investigation was never just about Russia. There was an entire component that looked at how Middle East countries potentially tried to improperly influence Trump’s team, perhaps through emissaries like Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Mueller didn’t bring any charges from that swath of the probe, though parts could have been handed off to other investigators.

This is obviously not the end of the road. The next phase will be mostly political and I just hope the Democrats are up to the task.

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It’s not (just) the economy. Trump’s approval rating matters too.

by digby

CNNs Harry Enten challenges the emerging CW that Trump can count on the strong economy vaulting him over the finish line:

More Americans say the economy is in good shape than at any point since 2001. Yet President Donald Trump’s approval rating has remained steady over the last two years. An average of all polls shows his approval rating among voters is currently 43%. A year ago, it was 42%. Two years ago, it was was 45%.

The disconnect is rather stunning and leaves analysts like myself left wondering whether the strong economy will eventually help lift Trump. Others and I have written that economic forecast models suggest an economy in the shape America’s is in predict Trump’s re-election.
But these models have wide margins of error. They are guides, not soothsayers.
Other data points from throughout Trump’s and past administrations suggest the President cannot count on the economy to help his sagging ratings.

Perhaps the biggest reason to be suspect of the idea that the economy will help Trump is that it hasn’t so far. We’ve had low unemployment and strong economic growth throughout the Trump administration and yet his approval rating has averaged just 42% since he took office.

Now it would be one thing if voters weren’t taking into account the economy when they rate Trump, but they clearly are. Trump’s economic approval rating has consistently run ahead of his overall approval rating. In our latest CNN poll, for example, his economic approval rating was 52% among voters. That’s 9 points higher than his overall approval rating of 43% in the same survey.

Tellingly, swings in the President’s overall approval rating have not been well correlated with shifts in his economic approval rating. When you examine Quinnipiac University polls taken since the beginning of the Trump presidency, a swing upwards in his economic approval rating was no guarantee that his overall approval rating would also move in the same direction.

A clear problem for Trump is that there are other issues than just the economy. His ratings on stuff ranging from caring about the average American to foreign affairs to immigration to simple leadership skills are also important. They are all far lower than his ratings on the economy.

The President could potentially help himself if he could focus Americans on the economy. I’m not sure Trump can accomplish this feat. He seems more interested in spending his time on other matters — such as attacking former Sen. John McCain.

Obviously, there have been past presidents who have seen their approval ratings climb thanks to a strengthening economy. Presidents such as Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman rode economic growth to higher approval ratings and ultimate victory. (Jimmy Carter had the opposite happen to him.)

Further, the economy may weaken going forward. The Federal Reserve is cutting its forecast for economic expansion in the coming year. That means Trump may have to count on the same economy or perhaps even a weaker one going forward to bring up his approval ratings up. The same economy that has left Trump with a 43% approval rating.

Most worrisome for Trump is that history suggests that overall approval ratings are far more telling of electoral success that economic approval ratings. Look at the seven elections in which the incumbent ran for re-election since 1976 (the first election for which we have economic approval ratings). The average difference between the net approval rating (approval – disapproval) rating of the president and the general election margin has been 7 points. When you examine the economic net approval ratings (in CBS News polls) compared to the general election margin, the difference has been a much higher 19 points.

The last two incumbents are particularly enlightening when it comes to whether you should bet on approval ratings or economic approval ratings. Both George W. Bush and Obama had overall approval ratings that were higher than their overall disapproval ratings. Both had economic approval ratings below their economic disapproval ratings. Bush and Obama were re-elected. In other words, their overall approval ratings predicted the winner. Their economic approval ratings failed to.

At the very end, he mentions that a lot also depends upon who runs against him.

Uhm, yeah. Presidential elections are always, when it comes right down to it, between two people. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could think one of the Democrats would be worse than Trump, but they might. Let’s hope the people choose wisely.

But at least this economy, which Trump has ZERO to do with, may not be the magic bullet a lot of people think it is. Fingers crossed.

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