Month: April 2019

Opening night
by Tom Sullivan

Interior of the Palais Garnier, showing the stage and auditorium, via Wikimedia Commons/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Consider resignation.

The Mueller Impeachment Referral made clear the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) viewed the behavior of the sitting president as prosecutable. Just not now. The Justice Department’s standing Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) policy is that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Under Attorney General William Barr, that policy has an ice cube’s chance in hell of changing.

Senator Elizabeth Warren announced Friday, she believes, “Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: ‘Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.’ The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment.” But as a senator, she is in no position to launch an impeachment inquiry.

On MSNBC’s All In on Friday night, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) argued, as other Democrats have, that the redacted Mueller report is not enough to initiate an impeachment inquiry. The House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena for an unredacted version of the referral. In what feels like a bluff, Democrats argue they need the complete record first. Democrats who might consider impeachment want to prepare a slam-dunk case and build public support before initiating an official inquiry. That will take time if it ever happens.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) is not one of those Democrats. He argued with MSNBC’s Joy Reid that impeachment might “feel pretty good” but is “counterproductive.” While peppering his appearance with calls for nonspecific “accountability,” Maloney suggested the “most efficient,” the “chess not checkers” remedy is for the public to strap in for 21 more months of Trumpish atrocities and hope Democrats replace him in 2020 [timestamp 15:40].

The press is aroused about sending correspondents to the opening night of Impeachment Theater. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the Barr Justice Department are working to stall until 2020, hoping to run out the clock both on impeachment and the statute of limitations on obstruction of justice.

No one is discussing resignation.

For the good of the country, Trump needs to leave the White House. Expeditiously. I am not sectarian about how that happens.

Is there any way to leverage him out? Pressure him to resign? A way to make staying worse than leaving? Make him a deal? (He understands deals.)

Right now, Democrats anxious to get impeachment rolling are like the dog chasing a car who won’t know what to do with it once he catches it. If unsuccessful, they have made a stand on principle they’ll tell their grandchildren about. And still have Trump until 2020 and maybe longer. If successful, they will have President Mike Pence who will simply pardon Trump with Richard Nixon as precedent. With Gerald Ford as precedent, Pence will be gone in 2021.

If Trump can be induced to resign sooner than all that, he will pardon himself, or Pence will, angering those truly committed to justice even more. But he will be out of the White House. It is a long shot maybe, but not one to write off out of hand. Right now, talking heads do not consider that an option.

Democrats think themselves pretty clever. Prove it.

As I wrote Friday:

What is at stake is whether this country is still a nation of laws or of men. Or of one man, to be precise. The burden of defending that principle and their oaths to the Constitution falls not only on the Democrats and a House impeachment inquiry, but on Trump’s Republican colleagues. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have a duty to schedule an Oval Office conversation to recommend Mr. Trump resign, whatever the personal consequences, for the good of the country.

The Mueller Impeachment Referral demonstrates the only thing stopping the sitting president from committing even more prosecutable crimes between now and his leaving office is people around with enough vestigial integrity to say no to him, to ignore him, or to talk him out of it. However little integrity Republican members of Congress may display, that is no reason they get a pass. If you live in a state with a GOP senator, or in a district with a GOP congressman, put their feet to the fire. Demand they pressure Trump to resign.

Don’t tell me demanding GOP members of Congress uphold their oaths is pointless or else get on board with Democrats arguing impeachment is pointless because they won’t have the votes in the Senate.

There have been three impeachment inquiries in the history of this republic, including for Nixon (even though he never faced trial in the Senate). Two of them have been in my lifetime. I’m not sure I want to see a third in my lifetime, regardless of Trump’s perfidy.

There is much social media chatter about Nancy Pelosi’s comments on impeachment. Democrats have no guts. What are they waiting for? Democrats have a duty to the Constitution and to the rule of law, etc. The news coverage is all about relative political advantage in impeaching or not to. I get that. But they also have a deeper duty.

Trump has abrogated every political norm his grubby hands have touched. I worry that a third impeachment inquiry within a half-century will establish a new norm — that Americans are now in the habit of impeaching their presidents. That might do more long-term damage to the republic than anything Trump has done in his 2+ years. Trump and his band of thieves are a cancer that eats at the republic every day he remains. It needs removing as expeditiously as practicable. But I fear we could kill the patient if we are not careful about how we remove it. I am more interested in saving our nation of laws from autocracy than in making a moral statement or in beating Donald Trump at the polls in 2020. We should not foreclose any option.

Maybe my worry is exaggerated, but it’s my worry.

Justice beyond the reach of a pardon will follow Trump home to New York.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

It’s been a week. I think we need some otters.

A pair of rescued Southern Sea Otters has made their way to the Georgia Aquarium after being found stranded near the California coastline. Mara, a female, is approximately eleven-weeks-old, and Gibson, a male, is approximately five-weeks-old. They will stay in a behind-the-scenes area of the Aquarium for the foreseeable future while they acclimate to their new home.

Mara was stranded at approximately one-week-old near Port San Luis in San Luis Obispo County, California on January 17, 2019. She was rescued, and efforts made to locate her mother were unsuccessful. After being cared for at another facility in the Golden State, she was deemed non-releasable by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the search for a permanent home began.

Georgia Aquarium was selected as Mara’s new home due to its ability to care for a young pup that requires round-the-clock care. The Aquarium staff was in California preparing Mara for her trip to Atlanta, when unfortunately, another pup stranded.

Gibson was found at approximately three-weeks-old on March 12 near the Carmel River in California where he was separated from his mother during a large storm. The response team tried to return him to his mother, who was visible and vocalizing, but the storm surge made it near impossible. After those attempts were unsuccessful, the only option for him was euthanasia. Given the Aquarium’s expertise and already planned transport back to Atlanta with Mara, an emergency placement request was made so that Gibson would call Georgia Aquarium home, too.

If a permanent home had not been available for either of these pups, they would have been euthanized.

To get the pups back to Atlanta as quickly and with as little stress as possible, the animal care and veterinary staff flew them directly from Monterey, California to Atlanta on a private jet. With the otters’ health and wellbeing in mind, the jet was cooled to approximately 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit and supplied with plenty of ice to keep these cold-weather mammals cool.

Once they arrived in Atlanta, they were put into a behind-the-scenes area where they will remain while they are under 24-hour watch and care. Mara is currently eating solid fish and swimming on her own, but Gibson, the younger of the two, is still being bottle-fed.

It’s important for both of them to learn how to be a Sea Otter, grow, and adjust to their new environment before going on exhibit in the Cold Water Quest gallery with the other resident Sea Otters: Brighton, Bixby, and Cruz.

Both Mara and Gibson will be ambassadors for their endangered species and will provide millions of guests the chance to make a connection and learn more about them. Through this connection, it’s the hope that millions will produce a deeper understanding and respect for these animals and want to preserve their natural environment for years to come. By caring for very young Sea Otters, we also have the opportunity to learn more about them during these formative years of their development.

Southern Sea Otters are listed as “Endangered” and are found from the Northern Pacific Ocean to the Southern Bering Sea. They prefer rocky or muddy sea bottoms and kelp forests that are rich in their food of choice: sea urchins. For more information on Southern Sea Otters, visit the Georgia Aquarium Animal Guide.

Keep up-to-date with Mara and Gibson, their care, and watch them grow by following Georgia Aquarium on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also see their journey on Animal Planet’s new series, The Aquarium, which will air in late May.

And now it’s Mueller time…

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Warren FTW! Again.

by digby

Damn. She is the most principled, courageous presidential candidate I’ve seen in a long, long time:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Friday called on the House to begin impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

“The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack,” the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate said on Twitter.

“Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: ‘Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.’ The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment,” she added.

Warren is the first 2020 candidate to call for Trump’s impeachment, and she’s among only a handful of Democratic members of Congress who have done the same. Most of those calls are coming from freshman House Democrats, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

Rashida Tlaib said, “we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.” Let’s hope so.

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Walking and chewing gum simultaneously really isn’t hard

by digby

Alex Pareene is now writing at The New Republic (how times have changed!) and this piece on the merits of impeachment is 100% correct:

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election shows multiple attempts by President Donald Trump to obstruct the investigation, clearly driven by panic that Mueller’s team would uncover something disastrous for his presidency. Trump was fairly explicit on this point from the very beginning. When he was informed of Mueller’s appointment, he raged at his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. “Oh my God,” he said, according to notes taken by Sessions’s chief of staff. “This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

Trump was, as he often is, incorrect. He perhaps overestimated the scope of Mueller’s inquiry, which was limited strictly to Russian electoral interference. He almost certainly underestimated the political cowardice of his political opponents.

If Trump is fixated on testing the limits of his power, constantly suggesting (and sometimes outright demanding) his subordinates violate the law on his behalf, his congressional opposition is led by people, like Hoyer, terrified to exercise their own power. They’re worried that an acquittal in Mitch McConnell’s Senate would be seen, by the public and the mainstream press, as a vindication of Trump rather than another lesson in the lengths the Republican Party will go to to cover for a clearly unfit and crooked president. But it doesn’t even have to go that far.

Democrats who preemptively declare impeachment off the table are mistakenly (or intentionally) conflating one possible end result of the impeachment process for the process itself. The Republican members of Congress who voted to open an impeachment inquiry into Nixon’s conduct didn’t necessarily want it to end in his removal from office; even up until his resignation it was an open question whether there were enough votes in the Senate to remove him. They were trying to get at the truth about the administration’s actions, and using impeachment to gather evidence. (They didn’t even limit themselves to Watergate. The committee eventually also voted on whether to impeach Nixon for the illegal bombing of Cambodia and for failure to pay taxes.)

As Patrick Blanchfield says, impeachment, even if it “fails” in the Senate, is a chance to take a moral stand against corruption and unaccountable elites. As Jeff Hauser writes, it is a chance to weave the disparate (and quickly forgotten) scandals of the entire Trump presidency into a single narrative that the easily distracted (and even more easily spun) mainstream press can follow.

The problem is, Hoyer apparently doesn’t want to do those things. What Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who ruled out impeachment well before anyone read the Mueller Report) want is to write op-eds about how many bills they are passing, despite the fact that those bills (like, uh, impeachment) will never get through the Senate.

Democratic leadership seemingly believes that the party can’t let its candidates campaign on promises to materially improve the lives of voters while also letting its elected officials carry out the responsibilities of their offices. They also believe, deep in their bones, that the country is not on their side. They believe going after Trump too directly will stir his mighty base, rather than imagining that full and transparent investigations into his various fraudulent and corrupt activities may demoralize his staunchest supporters—just as Trump himself was demoralized at the prospect of Mueller’s investigation—while also persuading those people who aren’t already in the cult of MAGA that this administration, and the party that abets it, need to be soundly defeated.

I think allowing Trump to claim that Mueller exonerated him by failing to follow the clear roadmap Mueller laid out makes him look like a giant slayer, a man so powerful that even in the face of 400 pages of proof of his criminality and unfitness the other side is too frightened to take him on. For a whole lot of people that makes him the ultimate winner, the guy they want fighting for them.

Needless to say, it makes the Democrats who were voted into power to stop him look like feckless losers.

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Trump’s top surrogates get their talking points

by digby

Trump lawyer Emmet Flood had call with surrogates this afternoon where he criticized the obstruction part of the report as a "political document." He took a question from Silk of Diamond and Silk about whether Hillary Clinton deserved charges. He dodged. https://t.co/5LDwZCvRRs— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 18, 2019

Think about that. Diamond and Silk were on the line talking to the White House lawyer about the Special Counsel’s report.

If you aren’t familiar with them, here’s a sample:

These are serious Trump surrogates.

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Remember right before the election when Republicans had already announced impeachment hearings?

by digby

I wrote this for Salon in November 2016:

When last we heard from Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the House of Representatives’ own Samuel Sewell (Salem’s famous witch hunter), he was declaring that just because Hillary Clinton had lost the election, her troubles were not over as far as he was concerned. He was undoubtedly disappointed that he was unable to pursue the impeachment hearings he’d been planning for several months. But Chaffetz gamely carried on and announced that he had every intention of continuing his investigation into her allegedly nefarious emails and conflicts of interest when she was secretary of state. On the day after the election, the Utah congressman told the press.

It would be totally remiss of us to dismiss [the email investigation] because she’s not going to be president. I still have a duty and obligation to get to the truth about one of the largest breaches of security at the State Department. Tens of thousands of documents still have not been turned over to Congress.

He complained about the current State Department being unwilling to cooperate and said that he believed the “Trump administration would be cooperative in getting these floodgates to open as they should.”

Here’s the story from before the election:

GOP congressmen, asked about impeachment, warn of ‘constitutional crisis’ if Clinton wins 

By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN

 Wed November 2, 2016

“You really could have a constitutional crisis here,” said Peter King.

“You put your finger on it: we would really have a constitutional crisis,” said Louie Gohmert. 

The outcome of the 2016 election won’t be decided for another six days, but the topic of impeaching Hillary Clinton if she wins is already a topic of discussion on conservative talk radio.

Several Republican congressmen have been asked this week about a potential Clinton impeachment if she were indicted as a result of an FBI investigation into her emails; all of them warned of a “constitutional crisis” if Clinton were to be elected.

Their answers mirror what Donald Trump has being saying on the campaign trail. At a rally Monday, Trump warned of the “very possibility of constitutional crisis” and said if Clinton were elected, she would face criminal investigations and possibly a trial.

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul ‏on Fox News Wednesday explicitly mentioned the possibility of impeachment.

“Assuming she wins, and the investigation goes forward, and it looks like an indictment is pending, at that point in time, under the Constitution, the House of Representatives would engage in an impeachment trial,” McCaul said. “They would go to the Senate and impeachment proceedings and removal would take place.”

“I would hate to see this country being thrown into a constitutional crisis because of Hillary Clinton’s behavior,” he added.

‏Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner told conservative radio host Charlie Sykes Tuesday that there would be a “constitutional crisis” if Clinton was indicted, and when asked about impeachment, answered, “I think that is something that is speculative in nature. I’m speculating, what I can say is that I think Richard Nixon would have been indicted and he would have been impeached. He stopped the impeachment by resigning as a result of Watergate and he stopped the indictment by President Ford pardoning him.”

New York Rep. Peter King offered a similar response when speaking on Long Island local radio Tuesday morning.

“There’s been nothing like this where you can have potential criminal charges,” King said on “L.I. in the AM.” Asked about impeachment, King responded investigations could drag on into Clinton’s term as president.

“You really could have a constitutional crisis here,” King said.

Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show Monday, where he agreed that a potential Clinton administration is heading towards impeachment and investigations.

“You put your finger on it: we would really have a constitutional crisis,” Gohmert said after Hannity said a Clinton presidency would likely be headed towards impeachment. “We’ve never had anyone under this type of investigation at the top of the election. There’s nobody to blame but Hillary.”

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson from Wisconsin also said Clinton could be impeached in an interview Tuesday with a local newspaper, and Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson said in a radio interview over the weekend that she may be headed for impeachment.

They pretended it was an act of nature, something that couldn’t be avoided because of her heinous crimes and corruption. They acted as if they had no agency, would it be necessary to preserve the rule o’ law and protect the constitution. Because they were patriots.


It may have contributed to Trump’s microscopic electoral college win too. There were undoubtedly people who knew they meant it.


And they did.


Update: I saw some reporters on twitter scoffing at this, but of course he’s right:

Former President Bill Clinton said that impeachment hearings would have begun if a Democratic president, instead of Donald Trump, were in power and the Russia investigation was as far along as it is now.

“I think if the roles were reversed — now, this is me just talking, but it’s based on my experience — if it were a Democratic president, and these facts were present, most people I know in Washington believe impeachment hearings would have begun already,” Clinton told “CBS Sunday Morning.”

As Democrats dither over whether to even talk about impeachment and the media starts to pound the idea that voters just don’t care about whether or not the president is a criminal (so much for the populist notion that elite impunity is the source of voter anger) it’s important to think about what the Republicans were planning to do even before the election.


And by the way, they all knew about the Russian interference when they were saying this.

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It is obviously an impeachment referral

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

As I made my first pass through the Mueller report on Thursday I couldn’t help but think about how it would have looked if William Barr had not submitted his PR statement back on March 24 and instead did what any other attorney general would have done. He could simply have released the report and had the special counsel appear before the press in person to answer questions about it. It’s clear enough why Barr didn’t do that: Robert Mueller is the one person in the country who has the credibility to be believed by people on both sides of the aisle, and that would not be good for Donald Trump.

Barr was obviously tasked with presenting the president’s defense and providing necessary damage control, not laying out the real substance of the report. If we hadn’t seen Barr’s “conclusions” and his testimony before Congress and subsequent “letters,” we would have looked at Mueller’s report and seen it exactly for what it was: an impeachment referral.

No matter how many times Trump and his minion Barr say the words “no collusion, no obstruction” over and over again like a couple of malfunctioning robots, the report shows something very different.

The Trump campaign clearly “colluded.” Its officials clearly knew a hostile power was helping them by sabotaging their rival and they never reported it to the authorities. Indeed, they welcomed it and eagerly encouraged more of it.

There is apparently no law against doing that, largely because, I suspect, no one ever anticipated that a presidential nominee for a major political party could possibly do such a thing. But it was an ethical lapse of epic proportions, and the belated recognition of that fact partially explains the president’s frenzied denials that the interference and sabotage ever happened. He has shown in dozens of different ways that he believes that he can manipulate reality by repeatedly denying that it exists.

Recall that Barr’s “exoneration” on conspiracy included a truncated quote from the report. The part he cut out is in bold below:

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.

It sounds a little less like “exoneration” when you see the whole thing, doesn’t it?

There is evidence in the report that Trump was eager to deliver a “reset” with Russia after the election. His motives are unclear. It’s possible he believed that would be the best way to tamp down all the suspicion that he was Vladimir Putin’s puppet (as Hillary Clinton memorably put it) but was too dim to understand that his secretive behavior with the Russian president and his comments to Russian officials only made him look more guilty. He demanded that the heads of the intelligence agencies go forth and testify that he was not being investigated, explaining that the probe was “messing with” his ability to work constructively with Russia. As this was at a time when he was trying to lift sanctions against the advice of virtually everyone in the world, it only raised more questions. Mueller’s investigators found this so alarming they put a memo in the file to memorialize it.

If there’s one thing that is crystal clear from this report, it’s that the authorities were entirely justified in opening their investigation into collusion. There was so much smoke that everyone in the intelligence community and the Department of Justice were choking on it. Barr’s willingness to cater to the president and the Fox News fever swamp by suggesting there was no good reason for it is entirely unjustified.

Mueller concluded that his investigation didn’t establish that Trump and company conspired and coordinated with the Russians. But the detail he provided shows that Trump’s dishonesty and unfitness for the office he holds is indisputable. And the second section shows that despite Barr’s contention that Trump was just frustrated (as if that were a valid excuse) and couldn’t have committed obstruction of justice because he had committed no underlying crime, he had ample, serious motivation to try to cover it up. In the report, Mueller says this:

But the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.

He mentions a few of the possibilities, including the secret Trump Tower Moscow project managed by Michael Cohen. And the report says there are 14 criminal cases that have been referred to other DOJ offices.

The obstruction section of the report is so contrary to what Barr has said in his letters, testimony and press conference that you have to wonder if he even read it. Contrary to his insistence that Mueller threw up his hands and couldn’t make a decision about whether to prosecute, the report says clearly that Mueller saw this as a question for the Congress under its constitutional authority because of the DOJ’s (reasonable, in his view) policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

In other words, this report is Mueller’s version of the impeachment roadmap that special prosecutor Leon Jaworski provided to Congress in the Watergate investigation. It lays out a devastating case of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, the worst of it only thwarted because Trump’s minions refused to carry out his orders. And it shows a president so petrified of any independent investigation into his dealings that when Jeff Sessions told him that Rod Rosenstein had appointed a special counsel, he said: “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked.”

Do those sound like the words of an innocent man?

The House Democratic leaders are so far showing themselves to be cowardly and feckless in light of this damning indictment of the president of the United States. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said weeks ago that she doesn’t believe in impeachment unless it’s bipartisan, suggesting that it requires a guaranteed conviction before it even starts. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reiterated that belief yesterday saying impeachment is off the table and that the voters will decide what to do in 18 months. (He later walked that back a little bit.)

I hate to tell the Democrats, but millions of people worked themselves to the bone last year to give them a majority and it wasn’t just so they could pass bills the Senate will never take up and the president will never sign. They sent them to be a check on this administration and force some accountability for Donald Trump’s reckless, lawless behavior. If these leaders think that they can wash their hands of this and keep their anxious base engaged, they are mistaken.

Mueller and his team didn’t write all that material out just so that Trump could claim full exoneration and carry on as if nothing happened. He wrote it with the understanding that while he could not indict Trump, Congress could and would fulfill its constitutional duties. To fail to call every one of the players in this drama up to the Hill to testify in public about these events is an abdication of that constitutional duty.

This dry recitation of the facts in Mueller’s report, as dramatic as they are, was never meant to be the last word. It is an impeachment referral, and Democrats must take it up and do what the Constitution requires. If it fails, so be it. But at least the people will know that some leaders are willing to stand up in public and do the right thing. After reading page after page showing Trump and his lackeys refusing to ever do that, even once, it’s pretty clear that’s not an issue the Republican Party can ever run on again.

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So, what now?
by Tom Sullivan

The image of the sitting president revealed in what is, essentially, Robert Mueller’s over 400 pages of impeachment referral to Congress is a familiar one. Donald J. Trump is a man with no regard for the law or loyalty to the Constitution he swore an oath to defend. His first impulse is to view every issue as how it makes him look personally. The referral portrays a White House “infused by a culture of dishonesty.”

It is a portrait of a man who does not understand the basic concept of public service, a man frustrated by the strictures of the law, who cannot understand why, when he says jump, his hirelings (at least some of them) do not say “How high?” but rather ask themselves is this legal?

Donald Trump is a man accustomed to treating the law as an inconvenience and telling the truth as optional. Yet, he was elected to uphold the law on behalf of the United States of America.

Mueller’s two-year investigation found (Pg. 1, Pt. I):

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 Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

Campaign chair Paul Manafort had given internal Trump campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian/Ukrainian political consultant linked to pro-Kremlin figures in Ukraine. He discussed campaign messaging with Kilimnik and identified Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota specifically. But because of Manafort’s lack of credibility, Mueller’s office could not determine what happened to the data or whether it had made its way to Russian intelligence for use in its election-interference efforts.

But Trump and his coterie’s efforts to conceal Russian connections and thwart an FBI investigation into Trump’s affairs looms large in the referral. Because of the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion that precludes indicting a sitting president, Mueller did not recommend that for obstruction of justice, although the evidence provided for it is voluminous. Mueller leaves that to the Legislative Branch, summarizing a bill of particulars (Pg. 158, Pt. II):

The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private, the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation. For instance, the President attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government. Judgments about the nature of the President’s motives during each phase would be informed by the totality of the evidence.

The Mueller referral mentions impeachment as one remedy. The word impeach or impeachment appears 11 times. He also notes, “The OLC opinion also recognizes that a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.”

Faced with evidence that Russia interfered with the American elections and his campaign’s effort to conceal that Trump may have benefited from it, Trump expresses no concern for defending the country he swore an oath to defend. He is more interested in it not undermining his glorious victory over his hated rival. He has done nothing to secure future elections from foreign interference.

The Mueller Impeachment Referral shows the only thing stopping the sitting president from committing even more future-prosecutable crimes is people around him with enough vestigial integrity to say no to him, to ignore him, or to talk him out of it. With publication of this redacted referral, soon there will be fewer left to hold his leash.

Ending his tenure as president as swiftly as possible is a matter of national security, if not everyday crime prevention.

The focus now is on what Democrats will do. The New York Times reports:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her lieutenants are keenly aware of the risks of initiating an impeachment inquiry. They are intent on not repeating what they view as the mistakes made by Republicans who undertook a partisan impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and failed to get him removed from office by the Senate. Both parties at the time believed the effort bolstered Mr. Clinton’s national standing and hurt Republicans at the polls.

Citing the proximity of the 2020 election and the unlikelihood of Trump’s conviction in the Senate, Pelosi’s No. 2, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, told CNN, “Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point.” Mr. Hoyer misses the point.

What is at stake is whether this country is still a nation of laws or of men. Or of one man, to be precise. The burden of defending that principle and their oaths to the Constitution falls not only on the Democrats and a House impeachment inquiry, but on Trump’s Republican colleagues. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have a duty to schedule an Oval Office conversation to recommend Mr. Trump resign, whatever the personal consequences, for the good of the country. About which Trump cares nothing if it does not reflect back his own image.

Junior got off easy

by digby

If you were wondering how it’s possible that Donald Trump Jr was let off the hook by Robert Mueller I think the most logical conclusion is that Mueller knew Trump would lose his mind, the right wing would go crazy and Trump would probably fire him and pardon Junior anyway.

If you would like to know why Junior actually did commit a crime and how that’s going to affect campaign finance law going forward, election law expert Rick Hasen explains:

Federal law makes it a potential crime for any person to “solicit” (that is, expressly or impliedly ask for) the contribution of “anything of value” from a foreign citizen. The offer of such opposition research qualifies as something of value for these purposes, a point the special counsel acknowledged based on prior cases and Federal Election Commission rulings.

We now know the special counsel considered whether Trump Jr. and Manafort committed such a crime before ultimately declining to prosecute. We also now know that Mueller made some key errors during that decision-making process.

To begin with, the special counsel’s report says that Trump Jr. “declined to be voluntarily interviewed” about the meeting. The special counsel should have called Trump Jr. before the grand jury, as he did with other witnesses. It seems likely that he declined to do so as not to incur the wrath of the president.

Trump Jr.’s grand jury testimony would have been especially important given one of the key reasons Mueller declined to prosecute the president’s son for this crime: lack of willfulness. In order for a campaign finance violation to constitute a criminal offense (rather than a civil problem handled with fines by the Federal Election Commission), one must act willfully. Willfulness is a question of mental state. Getting Trump Jr. before a grand jury would have been a great way to get at his mental state, because he would have been testifying under the risk of perjury. This was a huge missed opportunity for Mueller.

Mueller made some other questionable choices. While Trump Jr. could have been charged with illegally coordinating with the Russians to make an illegal foreign expenditure, Mueller describes the law defining coordination as too uncertain. In fact, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan explains in this thread, there is both a federal statute and case law defining the term, and Trump Jr.’s conduct seems to fall within it.

Mueller also made the ridiculous argument that it is possible Russian “dirt” on Clinton could have been worth less than $25,000, the threshold to punish Trump Jr.’s cooperation as a felony. Really?

Further, Mueller said that a Trump Jr. prosecution would have raised “First Amendment questions” and “could have implications beyond the foreign-source ban.” To begin with, a First Amendment defense of Trump Jr. is bogus. As I explained in Slate, the main First Amendment argument is that a ban on soliciting foreign political contributions is overly broad and could apply any time a foreign individual gives any information to a political campaign.

But Trump Jr. was a major campaign official meeting with representatives from a foreign government that were offering “dirt” on the campaign’s opponent. As I wrote, “To let someone off the hook who solicited ‘very high level and sensitive information’ from a hostile government because there may be cases in which information from a foreign source does not raise the same danger to our national security and right of self-government is to turn the First Amendment into a tool to kill American democracy.”

Further, even if Mueller believed there were First Amendment questions in play, he should have left that for the courts to decide given the strong national security interests at stake here. Mueller offered no First Amendment argument in his report. He merely flagged the issue and never provided any analysis to back up the First Amendment claim.

I’m afraid that this flagging of the issue does more harm than good. Mueller has now given campaigns credible reason to believe they can accept help from foreign governments because they may have a constitutional right to do so. That’s even more troubling for what it says about 2020 than what it says about 2016.

I get why a prosecutor would not want to hit the hornets nest by going after the Trump spawn unless the crime was clearly something so fraudulent and obvious that to not do it would be totally corrupt. They clearly saw campaign finance issues as less serious than other potential crimes and that’s the framework in which they felt they had to analyze that Trump Tower meeting.

I’m not defending it. I think they should have thrown the book at Junior and let Trump have his meltdown. But I can understand why they were reluctant. Junior is very, very dumb and it would be very easy for a defense attorney to illustrate that in a trial. He could have gotten off on that basis alone. And Trump would pardon him anyway.

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QOTD: An innocent man

by digby

President Trump on hearing that a Special Prosecutor had been named to investigate his campaign and Russia:

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’m fucked.”

The witness who told Mueller that? Jeff Sessions.

Revenge is best served cold, Trumpie.

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