Month: April 2019

They all should have quit and gone public with what they knew

by digby

Josh Marshall helpfully condenses the 10 obstruction events that Mueller detailed in the report:

1) Trump’s conduct concerning Michael Flynn and James Comey

In this section, Mueller delves into Trump’s famous “loyalty” conversation with former FBI Director James Comey, followed shortly by his comment about hoping Comey would “see your way clear” to letting former National Security Adviser Flynn go. It also hits Trump’s request of Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to draft a memo stating that Trump did not tell Flynn to discuss sanctions with the Russians.

2) Trump’s reaction to the Russia investigation

Mueller scrutinizes Trump’s anger over then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal, Trump’s reaching out to intelligence agencies to push them to dispel the notion that the Russia meddling and his campaign were linked and his multiple attempts to contact Comey about the investigation.

3) Trump’s firing of Comey and the events leading up to it

This episode centers on Trump’s decision to fire Comey even before the Department of Justice made its recommendation that he should be removed on the basis of his handling of the Clinton email probe. It also contains details of Trump’s subsequent public statements confirming that he got rid of Comey due to the pressure from the Russia investigation.

4) Trump’s reaction to the appointment of the special counsel and subsequent efforts to have him removed

Mueller investigates Trump’s response to the initial news of the special counsel’s appointment, specifically his immediate reaction that it was “the end of his presidency,” as well as his attempt to direct former White House council Don McGahn to terminate Mueller.5) Trump’s efforts to curtail the special counsel’s investigation

This section contains details about Trump’s souring on Sessions and his push to first, get Sessions to publicly characterize the investigation as unfair, and later, to try to curtail the special counsel’s sc

6) Trump’s efforts to prevent the public disclosure of emails about the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Russians and senior campaign officials

This episode involves Trump trying to suppress emails about the infamous Trump Tower meeting and editing a press statement for Donald Trump Jr. to remove a potentially damaging line about the 2016 campaign.

7) Trump’s efforts to get Sessions to reverse his recusal and take over the special counsel’s investigation

This point focuses on Trump’s multiple attempts to get Sessions to reverse his recusal and take charge of the special counsel’s investigation, including the detail that Trump told him he’d be a “hero” if he did. Sessions, of course, refused.

8) Trump unsuccessfully pressures McGahn to deny that he tried to fire Mueller

Mueller delves into Trump’s many attempts to push McGahn to lie in response to media reports that he had directed McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn also refused.

9) Trump’s behavior toward Flynn, Paul Manafort and a redacted person

The section centers on Trump’s personal attorneys making clear to Flynn’s team after he started working with the government that Trump felt very fondly towards Flynn and would appreciate a “heads up” on any information that would prove damaging to the President. It also contains details about Trump’s public fawning over his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort when it became clear he did not flip on him. The third person in this section is redacted.

10) Trump’s abruptly changing behavior toward Michael Cohen

Here, Mueller investigates Trump’s shift in opinion of his former fixer Michael Cohen from praise, while he was lying on Trump’s behalf about the Trump Tower Moscow project, to fury when Cohen started cooperating with the government.

As a bonus, Mueller also mentions a few episodes that involve Trump’s campaign aides as well as the President himself, like when they sought information on any potential future WikiLeaks dumps. He also touches on Trump’s muddying of the timeline for Trump Tower Moscow and the President’s voiced concerns that the Russia meddling would make his election appear illegitimate.

You have to wonder what would have happened if instead of ignoring the President’s batshit orders, they had quit and told the public why.

They are not heroes. They enabled an unfit president to maintain power and put the country and the welfare of the people at risk.

To me, Michael Cohen comes out looking better than any of the professional Republicans who stayed silent and kept helping this miscreant do what he did. But hey, they got their judges …

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No collusion? Uhm, yes there was.

by digby

Before the election:

I would draw your attention to the fact that Manafort shared detailed data about Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota — the battleground states that delivered the 77,000 voted that put Trump over the top in the electoral college.

Coincidence? Oh sure. Nothing to be suspicious about in any of that.

After the election: the deliverables:

Honestly, this is just so bad. They all knew by this point that the Russians had interfered on Trump’s behalf. And Manafort had helped them.

Again, maybe not beyond a reasonable doubt but certainly high crimes and misdemeanors. Whether Trump knew or not makes no difference. If he didn’t he should have. And the cover-up shows he probably did.

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This report is an impeachment roadmap

by digby

Trump leads no collusion no obstruction chant. pic.twitter.com/EtXpwzHZxF

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 18, 2019

I’m busy reading the report so I don’t have any kind of full analysis yet. But so far, it’s obvious to me that Mueller meant this report as a roadmap to impeachment. It’s a narrative of an incompetent, unethical president willingly colluding with anyone they could find to sabotage the Clinton campaign who only escaped a finding of conspiracy because they didn’t make personal contact with Russian agents in the act of hacking and the law doesn’t provide for a president being totally corrupt and ignorant about selling out the country to a foreign adversary.

First, here’s the rest of that sentence Barr hung the “no collusion” conclusion on in his four page letter:

The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through the Russian efforts,the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinate with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

The obstruction is outrageous and overwhelming. What we knew he did publicly was nothing to what he was doing privately. It’s obvious that Mueller declined to exonerate because he knew the congress needed to see it all and make a judgment.

This behavior is clearly impeachable. Remember, they voted to impeach Clinton and even Nixon on much less.

We need to hear from all of these people in public hearings. They already waived executive privilege by speaking to the Special Counsel so they cannot claim it. And it has to happen right away.

Impeachment has to be on the table now. If it isn’t, our democracy is gone. It means that there are no impediments to a lawless president. We might as well remove the impeachment clause from the constitution.

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The M****** Report 

by tristero

Golly, we’re gonna get an M today! Whoop de doo.

Even if it’s interesting, even if it’s damning (likely to be neither, see below), all it does is highlight how essential it is to see the U and the E and the L and the other L and another E and R.

Rachel had a great segment on Tuesday about how Barr’s pulled this stunt before, during Bush 1. He even used the same language — summarizing “principal conclusions”— and he got away with it for two years before the document he summarized was finally pried loose.

Of course, his summary then was a blatant pack of lies and misrepresentations.

This situation is a little different. He felt, for some reason, compelled to release a censored report. But you can rest assured the basic modus operandi is in effect: lie, obfuscate, cover up, stonewall, and delay, all in the service of a dictatorial level of executive power for American presidents.

All presidents, you ask? Yes, all legitimate American presidents. And, of course, the only legitimate ones are Republican, by definition.

Forgive my cynicism and pessimism, please. But it looks like the press is about to enthusiastically help this despicable scoundrel discredit and then bury one of the most important investigations into the most compromised, most corrupt, and most dangerously powerful man in the country.

We should refuse, even for a second, to accept the whitewash. We must see the entire uncensored Mueller report. Now.

Barr’s big reveal

by digby

Quick first take:

Don’t tell me that Barr didn’t write his statement in coordination with the president. The press conference was simply a flack spinning for his employer, trying to make the best of a bad situation. Barr clearly missed his calling. He said the Trump campaign didn’t assist the Russians and didn’t participate in the hack. We knew that. He didn’t address whether they knew about it, benefited from it, welcomed it, reported it or were just dumb as a box of rocks. And he used the non-legal term “no collusion” repeatedly.

The fact that we didn’t have the Special Counsel present much less delivering the report and explaining it says it all. He
is the only one left with any credibility.

This was the most unbelievable thing I heard. Poor li’l Trumpie was upset. He couldn’t help it:

Barr justifies his call (w/Rosenstein) to clear Trump of obstruction: "Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered office & sought to perform his responsibilities, prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct… yet, as he said from the beginning, there was no collusion." pic.twitter.com/o4rYEWBkvg— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2019

REPORTER: Is it an impropriety for you to come out and sort of spin the report before people are able to read it?

BARR: No.

*walks away* pic.twitter.com/nXH4Tk3Fyd— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2019

Trainwreck.

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It’s Barr-thirty somewhere
by Tom Sullivan

Word of caution up front: It would be just like this administration to use the redacted Mueller report roll out today as cover for something else nefarious. Staged hours ahead of the public release, Attorney General William Barr’s announced 9:30 a.m. EDT press conference on the Mueller report (sans Mueller or anyone else from the special prosecutor’s team) would make excellent camouflage.

With that in mind, it is also reasonable to expect that the very same ship of fools will dupe the national press into amplifying its morning falsehoods and, for a time, get ahead of the narrative on what the report says and does not. Barr did this already with his March 24 summary letter, and has a history of obfuscation. “People familiar with the matter” already induced the Washington Post to report that the redactions no one has seen in the report no one has seen are light.

There is yet no public mention of whether the report’s exhibits (of unknown quantity and length) will be included in Thursday’s public release. “Light” may by in the eye of the beholder.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was not pleased with the attorney general’s acting as Trump’s sherpa for the report. The committee may yet issue a subpoena for the complete report by Friday.

Immediately after the Barr press conference, we can expect reaction from Donald Trump, the U.S. president named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the campaign finance case against his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. But he’s not waiting for 9:30 EST:

The Greatest Political Hoax of all time! Crimes were committed by Crooked, Dirty Cops and DNC/The Democrats.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2019

The Greatest Political Hoax of all time! Crimes were committed by Crooked, Dirty Cops and DNC/The Democrats.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2019

Marcy Wheeler reminds readers anything the sitting president says about the report “is something he refused to say under oath.” Given Trump’s business history and M.O., there may be no end to what he believes most important to conceal, although the narrow scope of the special investigation delimits some of it.

Wheeler suggests an unflattering, family not-so-secret the report might highlight:

I want to prepare for the possibility that tomorrow we’ll be debating whether a President can obstruct justice to prevent voters from learning how badly he and his dumb son compromised themselves in an foreign intelligence operation in the course of running a presidential election to get rich.

Given that Barr appears to be actively running interference for the White House, Josh Marshall wonders “at what point can the exercise of the statutory powers of the Attorney General become obstruction of justice if exercised with corrupt intent?”

The greater question is, is there enough left of the American justice system to do anything about it if it is obstruction of justice?

What Barr conceals will reveal what Trump fears


By Spocko

The Barr event today is not a news conference, it’s a product launch. The event is designed to conceal, not reveal. It isn’t about releasing the news, it’s about controlling the message. The product is a narrow, specific message.

“Trump didn’t PERSONALLY talk to Putin DIRECTLY about what the Russian GOVERNMENT did BEFORE the 2016 election. Therefore, no collusion.”

Other people who did bad things don’t count. They are bad people that Trump barely knows, and even if he did know them, he didn’t personally do the specific thing that Mueller was supposed to look at.

People like Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, Stone, Poppawhatchadopulous and the rest all acted on that Russian election stuff, but Trump didn’t.

Message Repeats:
Trump didn’t personally talk to Putin. Directly. About The ELECTION. BACK before the election. 

Message repeats: “Look at the one law that WASN’T broken!” they will cry.

Remember how the Bush White House wanted people to believe in WMDs so
Colin Powell brought out photos and fake anthrax to push the WMD lie?

They wanted people to have something to look at and fear instead of the real reason for the war. And it worked. Because lots of people wanted to believe.

 Barr is using redaction to hide Trump crimes. However, if you look at what is redacted and ask WHY it was redacted we can learn what Trump fears the most.

The Good News
It’s quite possible what was redacted will already exist in court or public records. The trick will be to not be BORED by what it reveals.

“Oh, well, we knew That! That’s just the usual Trump lying, violating campaign finance laws and conspiring with the Pecker at the National Enquire, about affairs and hush money. Stormy Daniels and pay offs are such old news.”

That was a conspiracy, not collusion with Putin, so Barr will refocus on what didn’t happen to Trump.

I listened to Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow Wednesday night analyse what Barr is doing.

It’s good to hear that they and their experts aren’t fooled by the shenanigans of Barr and the White House, but frankly I’m sick of congress and journalists waiting around for Trump to break norms, stall, delay and set the narrative.

Could someone please get ahead of their heavy handed mob tactics and schemes and back them into some legal corners? If you know what the will do, lay a trap for them!

I asked my friend Lisa Graves from Documented a few questions about executive privilege to answer the next time she is on the Lawrence O’Donnell show. Sadly these will probably be forgotten after the crush of news, but I’ll put them here just as a reminders.

Who has authority to review and CANCEL Redaction Actions?
Which House and/or Senate committee? Which courts?

What laws do the reactions come under, and who interprets what they involve?

Can we get experts lined up to talk now? AND give us a strategy to bust them?
Are the reasons for redaction set in stone or open to interpretation?

Who opposes Barr in HIS REDACTION? Who asked for what when?

We know National Security is one redaction category, but who opposes his National Security redaction?  Can they UNDO reactions? How quickly?

Has Barr broken any laws with his redactions?

We know the White House overextends executive privlidge all the time. WHO rules it isn’t executive privilege?

How quickly can bogus executive privilege sections be UNREDACTED? By whom?

What laws are broken if the unredacted version is released?

Who could release the unredacted version and not break laws?
Could those people release it to someone in Congress and not break laws?

Who will prosecute the person who leaked it? Under what laws? Who will defend them and pay for their defense?

Legal Leaks
Is there a “mechanical” method to release something that can be used? I’m thinking about procedural tricks and legal jujitsu methods that get the report out to CONGRESS and then the public.

Are there procedures that force people to release the report?

(Are there other tricks like someone reading it out loud in the congressional record? .)

Can we find public versions of the redacted info that the public already has seen? Especially in the court documents.

It’s not breaking the law to show an unredacted source document that is already public based on earlier findings.
That would be a legal, SMART and a fast way to show how the redaction was bogus.

Right now I’m flashing the Vulcan hand sign but three of my fingers are bent by Earth Gravity.

My message to Barr and The White House is, Redact This!

They just can’t quit her

by digby

It's April 17, 2019 and Fox News is still asking Republican senators about Her Emails pic.twitter.com/0vo9L1xhwc— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 17, 2019

If Donald Trump is unimpeachable then we might as well just remove it from the constitution

by digby

This op-ed by an expert on impeachment says impeaching Trump is a “no-brainer.”

The Constitution’s authors wouldn’t have needed any summary of the special counsel’s report to know it was time to impeach the president. Neither would they have waited to see whether its full text provided evidence of criminal wrongdoing. The group that created our nation’s founding document would already have judged Donald Trump unfit for office — and removed him — because he’s repeatedly shown a dearth of the quality they considered paramount in a president: a willingness to put national interest above his own.

They called it virtue. George Washington had it. It’s why they designed the office with him in mind. He wasn’t his era’s brightest politician. Neither did he wield its best military mind, having lost more battles over his career than he won. He had a violent temper, a formal stiffness and an ego as large as the new nation’s. (Abundance of ego has never been a disqualifying factor for the presidency.)

Washington wasn’t perfect, and we find his willingness to own and sell other human beings difficult to reconcile with our 21st-century sensibilities. Yet his virtue continues to shine today, reminding us of how thoroughly Trump misunderstands the office Washington forged. Regardless of further congressional or criminal investigation, Trump has been no George Washington.

Our first president risked everything for American independence, including business opportunities, cherished time with his family and a certain date with a hangman’s noose if ever captured once duty called him to command in 1775. He would not see home again for six years, nor return for another two years after that. When he did arrive home, he hoped this time it would be for good.

Duty called yet again only a few short years later, however, when the initial postwar government crumbled. “The pressure of the public voice was so loud, I could not resist the call to a convention of the states which is to determine whether we are to have a government of respectability,” Washington said in 1787.

That convention of states produced the Constitution we still abide today. Washington wished it could have been composed without him and feared the responsibility would fall upon his shoulders if he ever returned to public service. More frightening was what he feared might befall the country if he did not, and if, in his absence, “some aspiring demagogue who will not consult the interest of the country so much as his own ambitious views” took charge instead.

This willingness to put country before self is why Washington’s presence lent legitimacy to the controversial convention, why delegates immediately voted him the presiding chair and why they ultimately designed the presidency with him in mind. Put simply, they trusted him and knew he would put America first.

Not every president would. “The first man put at the helm will be a good one,” Pennsylvania’s Benjamin Franklin assured the convention, probably nodding in Washington’s direction as he spoke. “Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards.”

So delegates designed a mechanism for removing a dangerous president, one who did what Washington never would: impeachment for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

That pesky phrase, “high crimes and misdemeanors” has befuddled Americans ever since. It shouldn’t. The Constitution’s authors understood that impeachable treachery need not, in fact, be a literal crime at all, but rather a demonstration that a president’s presence harmed the body politic, the people, either through maliciousness or selfishness.

For example, any president “who has practiced corruption” to win election, a Pennsylvania delegate argued, should be impeached. So, too, in the eyes of Virginia’s James Madison, should any president who “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression,” or any who “betray[ed] his trust to foreign powers.”

And what of a president who used his immense pardon power to conceal his guilt, perhaps by promising a pardon to subordinates he ordered to break the law? They thought of that, too. “If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person,” who schemed against the republic, Madison argued during ratification debates, “and there be grounds to believe he [the president] will shelter him,” impeachment should follow. No one debated the point.

Trump has been accused of each of the aforementioned misdeeds. After nearly three years of investigation, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime,” but “it also does not exonerate him,” according to the summary by Attorney General William P. Barr. Trump’s allies claimed victory. He claimed “complete and total exoneration” and later declared, “I won.”

Pronouns reveal much, and this is where the founders would recoil. Collusion or no, Mueller’s team reinforced the presence of foreign interference in the 2016 election, a conclusion previously endorsed by the nation’s security chiefs — though not Trump. “I won,” in other words, would have revealed to Washington’s generation a man who valued his own fate over the union’s. But for Trump, Barr’s summary was a “beautiful conclusion” because it did not single him out for indictment.

He had already displayed an unwillingness to sacrifice for his country. “Why should I lose lots of opportunities” for business deals just because I ran for president, he asked when he could no longer (falsely) deny pursuit of Russian real estate in the run-up to the 2016 election. There was “nothing wrong” with seeking both personal gain and public office, he explained, and everything he did was “very cool and legal.”

And with that, he misses the presidency’s entire point, at least as the founders conceived of it. Sacrifice lay at the heart of virtue, and a leader incapable of understanding the difference could in no way be trusted with high office. One who would not sacrifice even for the chance to serve was one who could never be truly virtuous. Virtue was the “necessary spring of popular government,” Washington wrote, which is critical, in particular, for a president who must, no matter the temptations, remain “a firm guardian and protector of the public interest.”

Perhaps the ideas that drove a band of revolutionaries and nation-builders writing with quills two-plus centuries ago appear quaint in our tweet-filled age, but we study history in hopes of gleaning insight for solving modern-day problems. Such study rarely offers as clear cut an answer as this. Even before further revelations from the Mueller report, Trump has demonstrated no sense of virtue.

He lied about his business dealings when running for office. His personal trips (to Trump properties), more numerous than those of his predecessors, Democrat and Republican, cost taxpayers exorbitant sums and have placed him in insecure environments. Those properties, meanwhile, have profited from business his visits generate, or by business clearly steered to curry Trump’s favor.

He has refused to accept the conclusions of intelligence and security professionals, many of whom serve and sacrifice at great personal cost, declining even to forsake his personal cellphone or heed their red flags over his son-in-law’s evaluation for a security clearance. Trump’s presidency is a string of decisions that place him, his family and his brand above the well-being of the nation.

Because the Republican party has turned into a Trump cult, they know they won’t be able to convict him so they aren’t going to try. I don’t think that makes sense. Impeachment hearings focus the investigations on “high crimes and misdemeanors” which is a different bill of indictment than a criminal case. People pay attention and follow it in a more coherent fashion. I really hope they haven’t actually ruled it out but I fear they have.

They are fighting the last war, thinking that somewho it will redound to Trumps benefit as it did to Clinton’s in the 90s. I really doubt that’s the case. Clinton was alreay in the high 50s when they launched their impeachment and the “crime” was petty and personal and far too common in the real lives of average Americans. Trump’s deeds are smething only a very powerful official could get away with. We are in a differet world.

There is also some thought that they are saving it in case the horror of a second Trump term becomes a reality. But I have a feeling if that is the case, we’ll have much bigger problems.

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Trump’s lapdog AG

by digby

I don’t know why a man of his age and experience would feel the need to be such a supplicant to a fool like Trump, but his history of lying and secrecy along with the fact that his brain has clearly been rotted by Fox News indicates that’s he’s just another older, white Trump voter.

Here’s his latest Trumpy decision:

President Trump said he wants to get “tougher” on immigration as he purged the senior ranks of the Department of Homeland Security. Bill Barr is following through.

The attorney general announced late last night that migrants who come to this country seeking asylum may wind up jailed indefinitely while they wait months or even years for their claims to be considered. Barr’s 11-page decision applies to migrants who have already established “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in their home country.

This is the first time that Barr has used his position as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to overrule precedent-setting decisions made in immigration court. His ruling reverses a decision made in 2005 after an Indian man entered the United States from Mexico and sought asylum. The clear intent is to deter people from trying to seek asylum, no matter how credible their claims.

— The latest hard-line move comes on the eve of the release of Barr’s redacted version of special counsel Bob Mueller’s 400-page report, which details Russian interference in the 2016 election and purportedly lays out evidence on both sides of the question about whether Trump sought to obstruct justice during the federal investigation that followed. Members of Mueller’s team have privately expressed frustration about the way Barr characterized their findings in his initial four-page summary letter.

They don’t have the facilities to hold these people. So they are going to build internment camps. For real.

I never thought I’d say that Jeff Sessions was more acceptable than anyone in this country but he seems to have had a tiny bit more integrity than Bill Barr who is making Marr Whitaker look like an ok guy.

He’s delivering.

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