Month: May 2019

Mitch McConnell, the gravedigger of democracy

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

On Monday I wrote about the GOP’s long-term plan to turn the presidency into a (Republican) unitary executive office. You might think that it makes no sense that members of Congress would go along with such a thing, seeing as it directly interferes with their own constitutional prerogatives. That was certainly what the founders assumed would be the case. They assumed that human egos would demand that people jealously guard their own branches of government, thus preserving the checks and balances that would keep any one branch from gathering too much power unto itself. But it turns out that the modern Republicans are loyal to their party above all else, and no one personifies that dedication more than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

When the history of this bizarre era is written, it may very well be said that McConnell was the man behind the curtain who made it all happen. Depending on who does the writing, he could also go down as one of America’s most notorious senators. No, he’s not like those traitors who abandoned the Senate to join the Confederacy, nor is he a crude segregationist like the 20th century’s Theodore Bilbo or James Eastland of Mississippi. He’s no demagogue like Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy or Louisiana’s Huey Long either. But there are elements of all of those men in McConnell, who holds a very special place in that pantheon as what historian Christopher R. Downing called “the gravedigger of democracy.”

In a recent article for the New York Review of Books, Downing writes:

[McConnell] stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar [Germany], congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. … McConnell and our dysfunctional and disrespected Congress have now ensured an increasingly dysfunctional and disrespected judiciary, and the constitutional balance of powers among the three branches of government is in peril.

There may never have been a more cynical politician than McConnell. From the moment he became the Senate leader he turned senatorial partisanship into a blood sport. Recall that McConnell blithely announced after Barack Obama’s election that his top priority was to see to it that Obama was a one-term president. He forced the Democrats to change the filibuster rules when he blocked 79 of Obama’s judges, beating the previous record. (That would be the 68 judicial nominees that had been blocked in the entire history of the United States.) McConnell clutched his pearls over this decision, condemning the Democrats for “breaking the rules” — and then refused to even hold hearings for Merrick Garland, Obama’s choice to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Since Trump’s election, McConnell has been dutifully jamming through hundreds of judicial appointments at breakneck speed. Don McGahn, the president’s former White House counsel said he expected the judges he helped choose to spend the next 30 or 40 years unwinding the “administrative state,” otherwise known as the progress of the last century. Republicans are laying landmines across the political and social landscape as far as the eye can see.

On Tuesday, McConnell surpassed himself. Taking to the Senate floor, he declared that the Mueller report was “case closed,” refusing to even entertain the notion that the Congress has a responsibility to look further into its evidence of collusion and obstruction of justice. This in itself is not surprising. Other Republican Senators have said the same thing.

It also shouldn’t be surprising at this point that he shows no interest in pursuing the evidence of Russian interference or addressing the threat for the future. It’s begun to dawn on Democrats that maybe Republicans are ignoring it for a reason. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pointedly said this about McConnell:

He ignores the Mueller report and our intelligence agencies or in the alternative feels the Russians were on the side of the Republicans in 2016 — and just might be again in 2020.

I don’t think there can be any other option at this point. McConnell has refused to take up any of the election security bills offered by various members of both parties. He clearly has little interest in preventing it from happening again. Considering McConnell’s history, one can only assume it’s for partisan reasons.

He responded to Durbin’s comment with an insolent broadside:

Maybe stronger leadership would have left the Kremlin less emboldened. Maybe tampering with our democracy wouldn’t have seemed so very tempting. Instead the previous administration sent the Kremlin the signal they could get away with almost anything … so is it surprising that we got the brazen interference detailed in special counsel Mueller’s report?

Keep in mind that this man serves a president who practically crawls on all fours in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The idea that the Democrats were too soft on Putin, so he sabotaged them in order to elect Donald Trump, is so inane I’m amazed McConnell didn’t burst out laughing when he said it.

But the chutzpah reaches unprecedented levels when you consider the Washington Post’s report that McConnell refused to acknowledge the evidence of Russian interference in briefings by then-CIA director John Brennan “and threatened to accuse the White House of political meddling if it brought the issue to the public’s attention,” saying, “You’re trying to screw the Republican candidate.” When Obama and the intelligence community tried to put together a bipartisan statement in the fall of 2016 to warn the public about Russian interference. McConnell, taking the partisan line as usual, said he was skeptical that the intelligence was correct and watered down the statement to meaningless mush that didn’t even mention Russia. (If the Obama administration was too soft on anyone, it was Mitch McConnell. They should have called his bluff.)

McConnell didn’t mention the obstruction of justice evidence in his stemwinder on the floor on Tuesday. If he were anyone else, one might be tempted to think it’s because he’s embarrassed after making comments like this back in the Clinton era:

Let's not forget about this little gem:

"I am completely and utterly perplexed by those who argue that perjury and obstruction of justice are not high crimes and misdemeanors."— McConnell (R-KY/Moscow)

#DitchMitchpic.twitter.com/rCbTBizjkT— Indivisible Network (@IndivisibleNet) May 7, 2019

Needless to say, Mitch McConnell is not afraid of being called a hypocrite. He is a shamelessly unprincipled gutter fighter whose only goal is to consolidate the power of the Republican Party by any means necessary. If that requires digging the grave of democracy, he’s more than willing to do the dirty deed.

He didn’t mention obstruction of justice because he knows it’s still remotely possible he might have to throw Donald Trump under the bus at some point. As usual, Mitch is keeping his options open. His only loyalty is to winning full power for his party.

.

Your morning whataboutism
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Bin im Garten, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Donald Trump lost $1.17 billion dollars between 1985 and 1994, the New York Times reported on Tuesday after reviewing I.R.S. transcripts of his taxes for those years. Those would have been the high-flying-est for the self-promoting real estate tycoon known as “The Donald.”

What about more recently? Tuesday’s revelation is sure to whet House investigators’ appetite for knowing what is in the six years of the sitting president’s taxes they lawfully requested. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has refused to deliver them. Robert Mueller’s impeachment referral concluded Russia intervened in the 2018 election on Trump’s behalf and Trump tried to shut down the investigation multiple times. House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) wants to know if there is a financial connection and what legislation might be required to prevent future imperial entanglements.

What about Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland? “They don’t actually make any money,” Glenn Simpson of consultants Fusion GPS told a House permanent select committee on intelligence in August 2017. Trump’s son Eric told a golf journalist the Trump Organization did not rely on funding from American banks, saying, “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” He later denied saying so.

Asked about possible Russian funding backing Trump’s golf courses, Simpson testified:

“So we were able to get the financial statements. And they don’t, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources and – or at least on paper it says it’s from the Trump Organisation, but it’s hundreds of millions of dollars.

“And these golf courses are just, you know, they’re sinks. They don’t actually make any money.

“So if you’re familiar with Donald Trump’s finances and the litigation over whether he’s really a billionaire, you know, there’s good reason to believe he doesn’t have enough money to do this and that he would have had to have outside financial support for these things.”

What about Trump Tower condominiums? Craig Unger, author of “House of Trump, House of Putin,” alleges there is a “35-year relationship between Trump and Russian organized crime” that involves selling condos to Russian mafia figures. The Russian underworld is “a de facto state actor,” Unger writes:

That criminals with ties to Russia bought Trump condos, partnered with Trump and were based at Trump Tower — his home, his place of work, the crown jewel of his empire — should be deeply concerning. It’s not hard to conclude that, as a result, the president, wittingly or not, has long been compromised by a hostile foreign power, even if Mueller did not conclude that Trump colluded or conspired with the Russians.

What about Trump’s other U.S. real estate deals? BuzzFeed found more than one-fifth of Trump’s U.S. condominiums were sold through cash-only exchanges with shell companies, trades federal investigators believe may indicate money laundering. McClatchy found buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties.

What about the Trump Ocean Club project launched in Panama in 2011? In its November 2017 investigation, Global Witness found:

A large number of those involved with the Trump Ocean Club in its early phase were Russian and Eastern European citizens or diaspora members. In an interview with NBC and Reuters, Ventura Nogueira said that 50 percent of his buyers were Russian, and that some had “questionable backgrounds.” He added that he found out later that some were part of the Russian Mafia.

What about Trump’s relentless attacks on Department of Justice officials? Natasha Bertrand’s reporting for The Atlantic found that Trump’s favorite targets at the D.O.J. — Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, Andrew Weissmann, Andrew McCabe — possess “extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.”

Tuesday’s New York Times report on Trump’s ten years’ worth of massive financial losses bolsters its 2018 report that revealed Fred Trump, Donald’s father, repeatedly bailed out his son’s failed projects. It was a period when Donald Trump “appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.”

What about now? Who is keeping Trump afloat now that Fred is gone? The sitting president’s taxes might reveal that among other things Trump is fighting to keep hidden.

The man is uniquely vulnerable to foreign leverage, Jonathan Chait observes:

This is a man who was handed hundreds of millions of dollars, flushed it down the toilet, and was desperate to maintain his image of wealth and success. You couldn’t invent a more inviting target for a foreign intelligence service to manipulate.

What about the foreign adversary whose agents committed crimes against the United States in 2018 and are poised to interfere again in the 2020 election?

What about Trump’s inexplicably fawning relationship with the Russian autocrat?

Russian President Vladimir Putin smiled over the phone about the Mueller investigation last week when Donald called Vlad to chat for an hour.

“We discussed, he sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse, but he knew that, because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever, so pretty much that’s what it was,” Trump told reporters.

What about meddling in next year’s election? Reporters asked, “Mr. President, did you tell him not to meddle in the next election?”

After evading the question once, Trump said, “We didn’t discuss that.”

The art of the con game: Trump has been a fraud from day one

by digby

The New York Times is out with a major investigation into Trump’s businesses from the period of 1985 to 1994, during the time he was supposedly a master of the universe, an avatar of the go-go 80’s big money success.

He was a fraud. Of course.

Here are the five big takeaways and they are doozies:

1. Mr. Trump was deep in the red even as he peddled deal-making advice

“Trump: The Art of the Deal” came out in 1987. It became a best seller — and a powerful vehicle for the self-spun myth of the self-made billionaire that would ultimately help propel him to the presidency.

Mr. Trump has long attributed his first run of business reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that hit three years later, in 1990. But the new tax information reveals that he was already in deep financial distress when his master-of-the-universe memoir hit the shelves.

For Mr. Trump, the 1980s were a frenzy of acquisition and construction, buoyed by hundreds of millions of dollars of borrowed money. In 1985, for the first time, Forbes’s “rich list” included Mr. Trump individually, independent of his father. But his estimated net worth according to the magazine, $600 million, included the real estate empire Fred Trump still owned.

With Mr. Trump’s vast debt and other expenses on his properties — among them Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt hotel in Manhattan, and two Atlantic City casinos — his fortunes were already on the way down. In 1985, his core businesses reported a loss of $46.1 million; they also carried over a $5.6 million loss for earlier years.

Because those businesses were generally created as partnerships, they did not pay federal income taxes themselves. Instead, their gains, and their losses, flowed onto Mr. Trump’s ledger. To put his results in perspective, The Times compared them with detailed information that the I.R.S. compiles on an annual one-third sampling of high earners. Most of them appeared, like Mr. Trump, to be businessmen who received what is known as pass-through income.

For 1985, the I.R.S. information indicates this: Only three individual taxpayers in the sampling reported bigger losses than Mr. Trump.

2. In multiple years, he appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer

The tax results for the years that followed trace an arc of continued empire building — and gathering loss.

He bought the Eastern Airlines shuttle for $365 million; it never made a profit, and he spent more than $7 million a month to keep it flying. His new Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, opened in 1990 with more than $800 million in debt, sucked revenue from his other casinos, pulling them along into the red.

And so, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer, according to the I.R.S. information on high earners — a publicly available database with taxpayers’ identifying details removed. Indeed, in 1990 and 1991, his core businesses lost more than $250 million each year — more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the sampling for those years.

The tax code allows owners of commercial property to write down the cost of their buildings — a valuable tax shelter known as depreciation. In “The Art of the Deal,” Mr. Trump cited one of his Atlantic City casinos to show how it works. Built for $400 million and depreciated at a rate of 4 percent a year, he said, it could allow him to shelter $16 million in taxable income annually. But Mr. Trump’s example, meant to demonstrate the magic of depreciation, shows something else: Depreciation alone cannot account for the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses he declared on his taxes.

3. He paid no federal income taxes for eight of the 10 years

Business owners like Mr. Trump may also use their losses to avoid paying taxes on future income. Over the years, those losses rolled into a $915.7 million free pass, known as a net operating loss, that appeared on his 1995 tax returns, pages of which were mailed anonymously to The Times during the 2016 campaign.

The new tax information shows how Mr. Trump’s net operating losses snowballed, reaching $418 million in 1991. That was fully 1 percent of all the losses that the I.R.S. reported had been declared by individual taxpayers that year.

And the red ink continued to accumulate apace. In all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying any federal income taxes for eight of the 10 years.

4. He made millions posing as a corporate raider — until investors realized he never followed through

For a time, Mr. Trump was able to stave off his coming collapse with the help of a new public role: He traded on his business-titan brand to present himself as a corporate raider. He would acquire shares in a company with borrowed money, suggest publicly that he was contemplating a takeover, then quietly sell on the resulting bump in the stock price. An occasional quote from a high-profile associate helped burnish the myth.

“He has an appetite like a Rocky Mountain vulture,” his stockbroker, Alan C. Greenberg, told The Wall Street Journal in 1987. “He’d like to own the world.”

From 1986 through 1989, Mr. Trump declared $67.3 million in gains from stocks and other assets bought and sold within a year.

But ultimately, the figures show, he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.

5. His interest income spiked in 1989 at $52.9 million, but the source is a mystery

Amid the hundreds of figures on 10 years of tax transcripts, one number is particularly striking: $52.9 million in interest income that Mr. Trump reported in 1989.

In the three previous years, Mr. Trump had reported $460,566, then $5.5 million, then $11.8 million in interest.

The source of that outlier $52.9 million is something of a mystery.

Taxpayers can receive interest income from a variety of sources, including bonds, bank accounts and mortgages. Hard data on the workings of Mr. Trump’s businesses is hard to come by. But public findings from New Jersey casino regulators show no evidence that he owned anything capable of generating that much interest. Nor is there any such evidence in a 1990 report on his financial condition, prepared by accountants he hired at his bankers’ request.

Mr. Trump’s interest income fell almost as quickly as it rose. By 1992, he was reporting only $3.6 million.

I don’t think his base will care. They’ll just think that he’s the greatest businessman in the world because even though he was losing more money than anyone in the country and conned everyone he partnered with, he lived like a king and dated beautiful women and eventually became president of the United States. He’s an American success story. What a guy.

.

Trump is fuming that anyone could be making money off his presidency but him

by digby

Only the Trump family is allowed to use the president “brand” to line their own pockets:

On Monday morning, Donald Trump was incensed over a report that one of his highest-profile supporters, David Bossie, had been engaged in apparent financial self-dealing under the guise of re-electing the president. And as he stewed, Trump began telling those close to him that Bossie’s alleged scheme was brazen and egregious enough to warrant a swift, public response.

By Monday night, the president’s reelection campaign had gone through multiple drafts of what several sources described as a harsh statement condemning Bossie’s conduct and the group he led. That evening, there was a widespread belief throughout the upper echelons of Trumpworld that the release of such a rebuke was imminent. Shortly after this story posted, the campaign finally released a statement that didn’t mention Bossie by name but clearly was directed at him and his group.

“President Trump’s campaign condemns any organization that deceptively uses the President’s name, likeness, trademarks, or branding and confuses voters,” it read. “There is no excuse for any group, including ones run by people who claim to be part of our ‘coalition,’ to suggest they directly support President Trump’s re-election or any other candidates, when in fact their actions show they are interested in filling their own pockets with money from innocent Americans’ paychecks, and sadly, retirements. We encourage the appropriate authorities to investigate all alleged scam groups for potential illegal activities.”

Why it took nearly two days to release the statement is not entirely clear. But it reflects how often the political whims can and will shift within the president’s orbit as his advisers try to accommodate his moods without creating too much unnecessary, unforced drama.

The drafting of the statement began only after extended internal griping by the president, according to four people with knowledge of his complaints. Trump was angry at a report from Axios that revealed how Bossie’s political group, the Presidential Coalition, had raised about $18.5 million since 2017, but had spent just $425,000 on actual political activity, a miniscule percentage for such a large outfit. The group spent even more than that buying books, including pro-Trump tracts authored by Bossie himself.

The organization raised much of its money through appeals that directly invoked Bossie’s close relationship with the president. And some of the group’s donors told Axios that they thought their money would be going directly towards efforts to reelect the president, not into the pockets of Bossie and an array of nonprofits and consulting firms with which he’s affiliated.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. Bossie is one of the most malevolent political figures of our time. But you have to laugh again at the kinds of things that upset Trump. This is a copyright-trademark issue for him. Somebody made money off of his name instead of him. He certainly doesn’t care about the ripping off of old ladies.

.

It’s the corruption, stupid

by digby

This is hilarious in retrospect:

Lol. Just the idea that he was going to end foreign lobbyists raising money in elections is hilarious.

The following list of known Trump administration corruption is from last October. We can add the fact that numerous of Trump’s cabinet members are now comfortably ensconced in lucrative lobbying and corporate board gigs, parlaying their Trumpy connections to make big bucks. Former DHS Secretary and chief of staff John Kelly just signed with a company that runs private immigrant detention centers.

Trump and Family

Foreigners are paying the Trumps.

A few days after the 2016 election, the government of Kuwait canceled a planned event at the Four Seasons Hotel. It instead held the event — a celebration of Kuwait’s National Day — at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

That celebration fits a pattern. Officials from foreign governments have realized they can curry favor with Trump by spending money at his properties. The list of governments includes Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Turkey, China, India, Afghanistan and Qatar. Some may have done so even if he were not the president, but others are well aware of what they are doing.

The Constitution forbids federal officials from accepting gifts, known as emoluments, from foreign powers, unless they have received congressional approval. Congressional Democrats have sued Trump for violating this clause, and the case is now in federal court.

Americans are paying the Trumps.

American officials and business leaders have also spent money at Trump properties, sometimes in an apparent effort to please the president. Gov. Paul LePage of Maine last year stayed at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Other Republicans have held campaign fund-raisers and party events at the properties. So have corporate lobbyists.

Trump Inc. is expanding overseas.

During Trump’s presidency, his companies have pushed to expand overseas, with help from foreign governments. One example: In May, an Indonesian real-estate project that involves the Trump Organization reportedly received a $500 million loan from a company owned by the Chinese government. Two days later, Trump tweeted that he was working to lift sanctions on a Chinese telecommunications firm with close ties to the government — over the objections of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. He ultimately did lift the sanctions.

Kushner Inc. is wooing foreign investment.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top aide, has also reportedly been using his position to help his family business — Kushner Companies, also a real-estate company. Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, has bragged about the company’s high-level ties when trying to attract Chinese investment in a New Jersey apartment complex. The Kushners have wooed Chinese investors despite warnings from American counterintelligence officials that China is using the investments to sway Trump administration policy.

Jared Kushner has reportedly been using his position to help his family business.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
The Kushner company also successfully lobbied the Qatari government to invest in 666 Fifth Avenue, a financially troubled luxury building. The company’s dealings with Middle Eastern countries are especially problematic because Jared Kushner is one of the administration’s top policymakers for the region and has played a central role in policy toward Qatar.

The presidency has become a branding opportunity.

The president has played golf at his properties dozens of times since taking office. He refers to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, as the winter White House. Shortly after his election, he celebrated New Year’s along with 800 guests there, with tickets costing more than $500. And Kellyanne Conway, a top Trump adviser, once encouraged people to buy clothes from Ivanka Trump’s line — while Conway was giving a television interview from the White House.

These moves are intended, at least partly, to bring attention and ultimately customers to Trump’s businesses. Of course, some of Trump’s critics have responded in kind, refusing to stay at or live in a Trump-branded property since he won the election. But in other ways, the presidency has clearly helped his bottom line. One example: The Mar-a-Lago club has doubled its membership rates.

Taxpayers are subsidizing the Trumps.’

Trump has visited or stayed at one of his properties almost one out of every three days that he has been president, according to both The Wall Street Journal and NBC News. Like previous presidents, Trump travels with a large group of staff and security personnel, and American taxpayers typically foot at least part of the bill for the trips. Unlike previous presidents, Trump is directing money to his own business on his trips.

In one three-month period last year, the Secret Service spent about $63,000 at Mar-a-Lago and more than $137,000 on golf carts at Trump’s Florida and New Jersey clubs.

Trump Inc. gets special protection.

The president personally intervened in a plan to relocate the F.B.I.’s Washington headquarters, apparently to protect Trump International Hotel, which is about a block away. If the F.B.I. had moved, its current site would most likely have been turned into a commercial development, and the long construction process — as well as potential for a new hotel on the site — could have hurt the Trump hotel.

Trump stopped this plan, and the White House has instead decided to build a new F.B.I. headquarters on the current site. A report by the inspector general found that officials gave misleading answers to Congress about Trump’s role and the project’s cost.

Trump’s Cabinet, Aides and Allies

Friendly businesses also get special treatment.

The Education Department during the Obama administration aggressively regulated for-profit colleges — many of which have miserable records, often taking money from students without providing a useful education. Trump chose Betsy DeVos, a longtime advocate of these colleges and an investor in them, as his education secretary. She, not surprisingly, has gone easy on for-profit colleges. Among other moves, she has reassigned the members of an department team investigating potentially fraudulent activities at for-profit colleges.

DeVos is the most blatant example of administration officials protecting companies where they once worked, but there are many others. More than 164 former lobbyists work in the administration, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, including several who regulate the industries that once paid their salaries. Geoff Burr, who pushed for more lax workplace safety laws when he was the chief lobbyist for a construction group, now works at the Department of Labor. Andrew Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, was previously a lobbyist whose firm was paid millions of dollars by companies whose industries he now regulates.

Family, friends and donors get perks.

The president and his aides have repeatedly shown they are willing to use the government’s prestige and power to help their friends and relatives make money.

Trump suggested to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan during a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in February 2017 that Abe grant a coveted operating license to a casino company owned by Sheldon Adelson, who donated at least $20 million to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Ben Carson, the housing and urban development secretary, let his son help organize an official department event and invite people with whom the son had potential business dealings.

Scott Pruitt, the former E.P.A. head, asked his staff members to contact Republicans donors with the goal of helping his wife find a job. Pruitt also rented a condo on Capitol Hill for $50 a night, well below market value, from the wife of an energy lobbyist whose project the E.P.A. approved last March. Pruitt’s many scandals led to his resignation in July.

Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, used interviews with Chinese and Chinese-American media to raise her father’s profile. He is a shipping magnate whose business transports goods between the United States and Asia, and he sat next to her during the interviews.

And although it doesn’t quite rise to the same level of the other examples here: White House staffers receive a discount of up to 70 percent on Trump-branded merchandise at the president’s Bedminster, N.J., golf club, reportedly at the president’s recommendation.

Cabinet officials make unethical stock trades.

Several Trump officials — current and former — have traded stocks while serving in top government positions. In some cases, they appear to have made policy decisions benefiting the companies in which they owned a stake.

Tom Price, Trump’s first secretary of health and human services, epitomized this form of corruption. Trump chose him despite his history of using his seat in Congress to make money. Price had a long record of putting the interests of drug companies above those of taxpayers and patients — and then investing in those drug companies on the side.

Brenda Fitzgerald, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, committed a more mild version of this sin. She purchased shares in food, drug and tobacco companies after taking charge of an agency that regulates them — and that aims to reduce smoking. After her purchases became public, she resigned.

Finally, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s commerce secretary, has mixed government business and his own business in multiple ways. He held on to investments — and then appears to have lied to government ethics officials about those investments. He shorted the stock of a company about which he appeared to have advance notice of bad news. He also met with the chief executive of Chevron, even though his wife owned a substantial investment — which, according to Forbes, “put himself at risk of violating a criminal conflict-of-interest law.”

Michael Cohen — Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, who has since turned on him — received at least $1 million from AT&T, Novartis and Korea Aerospace Industries shortly after the 2016 election. They were supposedly paying for his insight into the Trump administration.

Corey Lewandowski, the former manager of Trump’s campaign, is paid for work that looks very much like lobbying — such as participating in a lobbying firm’s phone calls with clients and doing work on behalf of T-Mobile, the telecommunications company firm. But Lewandowski has not registered as a lobbyist and says he does not need to do so.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, reportedly used his position to offer private briefings to a Russian oligarch to whom he owed millions of dollars. Manafort saw the briefings as a way to “get whole.”

Cabinet officials take junkets.

Trump officials have made a habit of billing American taxpayers for their personal travel. Ryan Zinke, Trump’s secretary of the interior, chartered a $12,000 flight to fly out of Las Vegas, where he had given a 12-minute speech to a hockey team owned by a businessman who donated to his congressional campaign.

David Shulkin, the secretary of veterans affairs, charged taxpayers for a trip to Europe that included stopovers at Wimbledon and Westminster Abbey, plus a river cruise for him and his wife. The resulting outcry appears to have played a role in his departure.

Ryan Zinke at a speaking event earlier this year.CreditRyan Hermens/Rapid City Journal, via Associated Press
Pruitt, the former head of the E.P.A., chartered flights for questionable travel, among many other things. He also pushed to fly Delta rather than the government’s contract carrier, to accrue frequent flier miles. He flew first class and stayed in hotels that were more expensive than those allowed by government standards. And he let lobbyists help arrange foreign trips for him.

Brock Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, spent $151,000 on government vehicles without authorization, including to travel to his North Carolina home. He was ordered to repay the government.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, looked into whether he could use a military plane to fly him to Europe for his honeymoon. Later, he used military planes for several trips. The Treasury Department’s inspector general concluded that Mnuchin broke no laws by doing so, but criticized Mnuchin’s insufficient explanation for why he needed to spend $800,000 on the trips.

And Price, the former health secretary, spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private planes. His history of unethical stock trading didn’t keep Trump from naming Price to the cabinet. But the private-plane scandal received enough attention that the White House eventually forced Price to resign.

Trump’s team enjoys interior decorating.

The pettiest kind of Trumpian corruption takes the form of interior decorating.

Zinke, the interior secretary, spent $139,000 in taxpayer money on new doors for his office. Carson, the secretary of health and human services, picked out a dining set for his office that cost $31,000 — and then gave Congress contradictory explanations for the purchase and blamed it on his wife. Pruitt ordered a $43,000 soundproof phone booth installed in his office and appears to have violated federal law by failing to inform Congress about it.

The biggest scandal of all, however, is not even the corruption of the Trump administration. It’s the inaction of Congress.

The founders were well aware that the government they were creating could end up with corrupt or unethical leaders, all the way up to the president. That’s why the Constitution gives Congress tremendous power to investigate and even remove officials in the executive branch.

Yet the current congressional leaders — the Republican leaders — have refused to do so. They have shirked their duty to act as a check on the president and his appointees. They have instead defended Trump and made excuses on his behalf. They have enabled the most corrupt administration of our lifetimes.

Tip o’ the iceberg. The corruption is overwhelming.

I would really like to see the Democratic candidates make a much, much bigger deal out of this. I get that they want to talk about “kitchen table issues” as well as cast the blame for their troubles on the financial and political elites. This is one way to illustrate that dramatically. These people are scarfing at the government trough even as they make life demonstrably worse for average citizens. Corruption is the umbrella for all of this, from the GOP’s unwillingness to buck Trump to the structural inequality of our system as a whole.

.

There are many reasons to impeach Trump. And he’s adding more every single day.

by digby

This op-ed by James Reston in the New York Times outlines just one of them:

On July 30, 1974, nine days before President Richard Nixon resigned, the House Judiciary Committee added a third article to its impeachment charges against the president. The first two had dealt with obstruction of justice and abuse of power; Article III charged that Nixon had failed to comply with eight congressional subpoenas related to the Watergate investigation.

Now, with President Trump and William Barr, his attorney general, refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations, the Democrats in the House should take yet another lesson from Watergate. They are reportedly already preparing impeachment articles on obstruction of justice; they should add failure to comply with Congress to the list.

The subpoenas against Nixon demanded 147 unedited tape recordings of presidential conversations; a list of meetings and telephone conversations for five specific, suspicious periods between 1971 and 1973; and copies of any handwritten presidential notes pertaining to the Watergate charges.

In response, Nixon asserted that the Judiciary Committee already had the “full story of Watergate,” and did not need to have further materials. He produced none of the 147 unedited transcripts that had been requested. (That bundle of withheld tapes included the critical June 23 tape that, when it was finally released, ultimately drove the president from office, and that Nixon had listened to many weeks earlier.)

He did hand over 33 transcripts of edited conversations that had not been requested by the committee, along with edited notes from John Ehrlichman, one of his advisers, that had already been given to the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. No handwritten presidential notes were produced.

In response, the committee approved Article III. It charged that the president “has failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee.” Instead, it read, Nixon had substituted his own views as to what materials were necessary for the committee to render its judgment, and had interposed the powers of the presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives. His refusal to comply interfered with the committee’s ability to fulfill its constitutional duties and was, therefore, subversive of constitutional government.

President Trump has taken a similar approach to Nixon’s, declaring that the Mueller report should mean the end of any related congressional investigations, and that he would defy any subpoena that came from them. In response, congressional leaders have said they would take the matter to court.

That’s a good thing to do — to have the courts reaffirm what is already clear in the law — and Congress will probably win. But a court case could take months to conclude, playing into the president’s apparent strategy of running out the clock.

Yet Mr. Trump’s defiance can, in and of itself, form the basis for an additional impeachment article — a fact that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, recognized on Thursday. “Ignoring subpoenas of Congress, not honoring subpoenas of Congress — that was Article III of the Nixon impeachment,” she said.

President Trump’s assertion that there is nothing left to learn from congressional hearings — which, unlike the Mueller investigation, would be televised — may be correct. But that is beside the point; it is up to Congress, not him, to decide.

He also clearly fears the dramatic spectacle that such hearings would surely provide. Once again the Nixon model applies. Who can forget the scenes of John Dean, Nixon’s former White House counsel, testifying about the “cancer on the presidency” and hush money payments to the Watergate burglars?

Nor can students of Watergate forget the power of the televised hearings of the House Judiciary Committee during the summer of 1974. Far from being politically divisive, they proved a dignified and appropriate response to egregious presidential misconduct — enough to persuade seven out of the committee’s 17 Republicans to vote in favor of at least one of the articles of impeachment (Lawrence Hogan of Maryland, the father of the current governor of Maryland, was the only Republican to vote for all three impeachment articles).

If the present moment has yet to offer any similar profiles in courage, that does not mean we will never see dramatic conversions. This early in our current process, it is a mistake to presume that no Republican lawmaker, House or Senate, will ever have a crisis of conscience and vote against Mr. Trump. And it is even a bigger mistake to let that presumption influence whether an impeachment process should be initiated or not.

If nothing else, televised hearings would demonstrate that Mr. Trump not only lacks respect for the rule of law, but for Congress and the separation of powers — a fact that, in and of itself, is an impeachable offense.

At this point, it looks like Trump and his cronies are going to stonewall until after the election, making televised hearings impossible.

I’m starting to think that my joke about having George Clooney and  Meryl Streep do a dramatic reading of the events inthe Mueller report may end up being the best we can do to get the story out to the public.

I mean, people are NOT going to read that 400 page report, they just aren’t. It will take public testimony to get them to understand exactly what an assault on democracy Trump and these Republicans have perpetrated. And even then, at least 40% of the country will cheer them for their willingness to do whatever it takes to defeat their enemies — us.

If they had wanted to sabotage him, they certainly could have done it


by digby

Josh Marshall explodes the vacuous right-wing  counter-narrative  that says the “Deep State” has staged a coup against Trump. It’s obvious, of course, but nobody says it. An excerpt:

Everybody involved on the US side faced a completely unprecedented and almost unthinkable set of facts – an active effort from a hostile foreign power to interfere in a US presidential election and compelling evidence that pointed to the campaign receiving the help being involved. From that starting point, US officials had basically two jobs.

The first was to find out as soon as possible what was happening both for counter-intelligence and law enforcement purposes – to disrupt whatever was happening and, if necessary, hold perpetrators accountable. The second and intrinsically related requirement was to make certain they themselves did not prejudice or damage the integrity of the election – especially not before they were clear on what was happening of whether members of the Trump campaign were complicit in the effort.

This second part of the equation is overwhelmingly important and plays almost no part in the public debate today. It’s important both for understanding the difficult circumstances investigators were working under but also for exploding all the claims that the investigators were somehow trying to set Trump up or use their legitimate law enforcement powers for illegitimate or political ends.

To put the matter simply, investigators needed to find out what was happening and whether there was American complicity without letting the existence of the probe become public and thus unfairly, illegitimately damaging the Trump campaign and the election itself.

And they did!!! Nobody knew that the Russians had decided Trump was their man. The counter-intelligence investigation into what was going on was kept entirely under wraps, even the fact of Russian involvement, any revelation of which Mitch McConnell famously told Obama would result in his dishonestly calling it a partisan assault.

There’s always a risk that the existence of an investigation will damage someone who is never charged with a crime. Indeed, this is a relatively common occurrence. But an election campaign is a unique case first because it goes to the heart of the integrity fo the government itself but equally because many more people than those being investigated have something at stake. If an investigation damages a campaign, it’s not just the candidate or her associates who are harmed. It’s everyone in the country who was invested in their victory. Democrats are legitimately still furious that James Comey sent that letter at the end of October 2016 and that Clinton’s campaign was damaged over a comparatively trivial investigation while an investigation of this gravity was kept secret. But still neither is supposed to happen. It goes without saying that news in the fall of 2016 that the FBI was investigating a Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia would have had devastating impact on Trump’s campaign.

Mounting an investigation and maintaining total secrecy about it was a hugely difficult undertaking at which the investigators succeeded. That exasperates Democrats. But it was the investigators’ duty and they fulfilled it. The fact that the key players kept the existence of the probe and the substantial evidence it already had secret really totally explodes any idea that it was a “set up” or “sting” or “political hit” as most Republicans now claim. Clearly the time to use the investigation to political effect was in August or September or October of 2016. The fact that they didn’t speaks for itself. Waiting until after the election to damage Trump politically – if that was the goal – is not only laughable on its face but ignores the obvious point that post-election Trump’s appointees would rapidly take over the national security and law enforcement apparatus.

The biggest reason these conspiracy theories are bogus is just the lack of any evidence to sustain them. But if that’s not enough for some people, the pre-election secrecy really settles the matter. Obvious, yes. But the people with executive power, the ability to launch investigations, are now dedicated to claim the contrary is the truth.

In reality, the so-called “Deep State” put their thumbs on the scale for Trump, not against him with Comey’s inane decision to re-open the Clinton email case.  The Republicans have ginned up a counter-narrative in which the FBI and the rest of the Intelligence Community were helping Clinton and sabotaging Trump.

It’s enough to make you want to start drinking at 10 o’clock in the morning.

A friend of mine reminded me of this the other day and I think it’s more true than ever:

The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore … when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’

There is tremendous power in not being tethered to reality — as we are seeing in living color in the Trump era.

Warren makes it clear, always

by digby

Warren has no problem just doing … the right thing. It’s refreshing.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Warren calls for impeachment proceedings against President Trump:

“We took an oath to protect and serve the Constitution of the United States of America, and the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now against this president.” pic.twitter.com/3IjR0NSrdK

— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) May 7, 2019

Elizabeth Warren: “There is no political inconvenience exception to the United States constitution. If any other human being in this country had done what’s documented in the Mueller report, they’d be arrested and put in jail.”
Via CSPAN pic.twitter.com/FvDbSH9WnT

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 7, 2019

Elizabeth Warren: “The information that has been given to us in the Mueller report clearly constitutes adequate information to begin an impeachment proceeding in the House of Representatives.”
Via CSPANpic.twitter.com/Lu7llkM0IN

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 7, 2019

Warren, who is competing for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, read part of the report as she rebutted Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) declaration of “case closed” on the Russia investigation.

“Since the Majority Leader has pronounced his judgement here on the Senate floor, I’d like to spend some time reminding him of exactly what the report said,” Warren said from the Senate floor.

Warren proceeded to read passages from Mueller’s report detailing Russia’s election meddling, saying she was “shaken by the evidence.” The senator was the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for President Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the report’s release last month.

She homed in on several passages where Mueller detailed Trump’s calls for White House staff to get rid of the special counsel, including his demand that former White House counsel Don McGahn remove Mueller, his talks with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) about firing Mueller and the “episodes” Mueller outlined about potential obstruction.

“On the first call, McGahn recalled that the president said something like, ‘You got to do this. You’ve got to call Rod,’” Warren said, referring to outgoing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who long oversaw the special counsel probe.

“The special counsel’s report states ‘substantial evidence’ indicates that in repeatedly urging McGahn to dispute that he was ordered to have the special counsel terminated, the president acted for the purpose of influencing,” she added.

If you have a few minutes, check out these clips of Elizabeth Warren from 2004 on the economy. She was right then and she’s right now:

In this second clip, the interviewer displays the widespread attitude that led to the ’08 crash.”The houses around me are rising in price. It makes sense that I should be able to harness some of that rising real estate value”

Warren proceeds to give him a quick economics lesson. pic.twitter.com/jpTfUfMqPj

— Tuxedo Mask (@TheLoveBel0w) May 7, 2019

“We’re starting to watch the numbers grow of people who are 65 and don’t have their homes paid off. People who are 55 and still owe 20, 25 years on their mortgages. We’ve, literally, as a country, mortgaged our future” – Warren in ’04 on what the ’08 crash would do to retirements pic.twitter.com/wRwPjRlO6p

— Tuxedo Mask (@TheLoveBel0w) May 7, 2019

Speeches like these give me the impression that Senator Warren understands the intersection of race and economic inequality more than most candidates.

I’m glad she’s not shying away from the topic, and I look forward to seeing how she turns this into policy. pic.twitter.com/D6kTDCxXCo

— Tuxedo Mask (@TheLoveBel0w) March 3, 2019

.

Trump and Charlottesville

by digby

There have been many moments of sharp, frightening clarity during this horrifying administration. Charlottesville remains one of the most clarifying.
This Washington Post story by Ashley Parker about Trump’s attempts to re-write history is excellent. This is the sort of thing that will be very useful to historians — if we survive him:

Hours after Joe Biden launched his 2020 campaign by attacking President Trump for his response to a deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the president began to spin a yarn.

The August 2017 demonstration was actually just a group of “neighborhood” folks from the local University of Virginia community who simply “wanted to protest the fact that they want to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin in late April.

Trump himself had merely been supporting those same purportedly peaceful protesters when he said there were “very fine people on both sides,” he continued.

Gary Cohn, then the White House economic adviser, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin listen to President Trump deliver remarks days after violent clashes broke out at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In fact, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville — which left one woman dead and 19 injured — was explicitly organized by a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis as a celebration of white nationalism. The official event was presaged by a nighttime parade in which rallygoers held tiki torches aloft while chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil,” a reference to a nationalist slogan used in Nazi Germany.

“It is a misrepresentation of what was happening in Charlottesville to say it was a statue protest that went wrong,” said Nicole Hemmer, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who lives in Charlottesville and attended the rally as an observer. “Anyone who was there that day would have walked into a park of people waving Nazi flags and people who were Klansmen. It was not a secret who put that rally on that day.”

For Trump, his recasting of Charlottesville is just the latest version of a story he has been altering and embellishing over the past 21 months in defense of one of the lowest points of his presidency, when he attracted bipartisan opprobrium for his seeming reluctance to forcefully condemn white supremacy. Even in his revisionist retelling, the president’s decision to lavish praise on Lee — a slave owner who led Confederate troops in defense of human bondage — leaves in place a level of ambiguity for those in his political base sympathetic to alt-right causes.

His approach to Charlottesville highlights a number of recurring themes in Trump’s responses to controversy: his refusal to apologize or admit error; his defiance in the face of critics; his willingness to view facts as malleable in the service of self-preservation; and his ability to speak abstrusely in a way that provides fodder for defenders and detractors alike.
[…]
But Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said Trump’s continued reticence to confront white supremacists “is not a dog whistle picked up by the alt-right — it’s a bullhorn the whole country can hear.”

According to the ADL’s most recent annual report, white supremacists were responsible for 39 of the 50 extremist-related murders the group counted in 2018, an increase from the previous year, when 18 of 34 such crimes were committed by white supremacists.

A report in February by the Southern Poverty Law Center identified a record 1,020 hate groups operating across the country in 2018. It also found that the number of deaths linked to the radical right had increased: In the United States and Canada, at least 40 people have been killed by white supremacists.

“It has emboldened extremists,” Greenblatt said of Trump’s ambivalent posturing. “How do we know this? Because they say so. It’s spurred this new, nativistic nationalism that’s playing out on college campuses and social media and now cities across the country.”
‘Very fine people on both sides’

The president’s response to the Charlottesville rally — three whiplash statements over four days — seemed to encapsulate his uncertainty over how strongly to condemn the white-supremacist groups behind the event.

On Aug. 12, 2017, after an avowed neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Trump offered a brief initial statement from his private golf resort in Bedminster, N.J. He denounced “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” — repeating “on many sides” a second time for emphasis.

The statement was widely condemned as creating a false equivalency between the two groups and for not going far enough. Back at the White House two days later — urged on by worried aides — the president delivered a more forceful, scripted statement in a hastily arranged news conference.

“Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups,” he said.

Those remarks, however, left Trump frustrated. The president told aides in the stately Diplomatic Reception Room that his mea culpa was the “worst speech I’ve ever given” and “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made,” according to accounts the journalist Bob Woodward provided in his book “Fear,” about the Trump presidency.

The next day, during a news conference ostensibly about infrastructure at Trump Tower in New York, the president unleashed a freewheeling riff on the violence at the rally.

In one breath, he said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally” — a statement his allies have latched on to in defense of his handling of the issue to claim the president was always clear in his denunciations of bigotry and hate-fueled violence.

Yet, in the next breath, Trump asserted, “there’s blame on both sides . . . very fine people on both sides.”

The last of his three statements was classic Trump — raw, visceral, unfiltered — and, in the eyes of many, his most honest response. The tableau of Trump blaming both sides as John F. Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, stood by grim-faced, was a reflection of “a president who is very frustrated at being told what to say, and who reverts back to his genuine reaction, that there were very fine people on both sides,” Hemmer said.

In his initial remarks about Charlottesville, and his recent ones praising Lee, Trump was relying on the rhetorical tools he frequently deploys during controversy — making contradictory or murky statements that allow him and his defenders to claim whatever benefits them in the moment.

Despite his brief condemnation of neo-Nazis and white nationalists, for example, members of those same groups heard in Trump’s comments support for their ideology when he blamed both sides.

“What he’s signaling to his base — including those that are explicitly racist or with implicit racial bias — is: ‘I’m your guy,’ ” said C. Shawn McGuffey, a sociology professor and the director of African diaspora studies at Boston College. “He can say all he wants that, ‘I’m not a racist, I’m not a white nationalist,’ but when white nationalists call you a white nationalist, you’re clearly signaling something.”

David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, illustrates the president’s Rorschach messaging. The day of the rally, Duke praised Trump, enthusing that the march represented “a turning point for the people of this country.”

“We are determined to take our country back,” he said. “We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

But after Trump disavowed hatred and violence in a tweet, Duke responded angrily on social media, writing, “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

A memorial site in Charlottesville for Heather Heyer, who was killed when a self-professed neo-Nazi rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters. (Michael Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency)

An unsuccessful presidential candidate who endorsed Trump in 2016, Duke’s feelings toward the president now are mixed. “He’s still giving some decent rhetoric, but he’s not keeping his promises,” Duke said in an interview last week , citing Trump’s tough talk on immigration and his vow to enact middle-class tax relief.

At the same time, Duke expressed an appreciation for some of Trump’s language on Charlottesville.

“He was the only person in the entirety of the U.S. government who pointed out that all the fault was not with the people who came there to defend the Robert E. Lee statue, and those who came to defend the right and heritage of white people,” Duke said.
‘Concocting a phony story’
[…]
Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defense, CIA director and White House chief of staff, said delving back into Charlottesville is perilous territory for the president. “It brings attention to probably one of his worst failings, which is his inability to acknowledge when he says something stupid,” Panetta said. “It’s probably one of the worst things he has said during his presidency.”

But Trump couldn’t help but respond, and he did so by distorting his initial reaction. He repeatedly praised Lee — a line of defense largely absent from his rhetoric in the aftermath of the 2017 event. He said he was never condoning white supremacy but simply defending the rights of peaceful protesters who did not want the Lee statue taken down.

The defense left many unconvinced. Biden accused Trump of “concocting a phony story.”

“The very rally was advertised — advertised — as a white-supremacist rally,” Biden told a crowd April 30, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Anti-Semitic chants were clear. Hatred was on the march, and he knew it.”

McGuffey said in an era of news micro-cycles, Trump is “trying to rewrite history, he’s trying to clean it up.”

“He’s had almost two years now to do that, and this is his latest version,” he said.

Trump’s defenders, however, argue the president has been consistent in his outspokenness about hatred since the beginning. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on April 28, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump’s response to Charlottesville “was twisted for many years” and was “darn near perfection.”

“I think anytime a president is willing to condemn people who hate other people based on their race of their religion it’s a great day for America, and that’s what he did,” Conway said.

Another White House official also argued it is unfair to suggest Trump is sympathetic toward neo-Nazis or other extremists given his record on condemning anti-Semitism, including after the recent shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California.

In focusing on Lee, Trump also managed to plunge the nation into a semi-academic debate about the legacy of the Confederate general while obscuring his original response. On ABC’s “This Week,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a veteran civil rights activist, called Lee “a great tactician” before excoriating him as “a brutal slave master” and a “loser.”

Greenblatt said the discussion about Lee allows Trump to defend himself while signaling to the alt-right members of his base that he tacitly agrees with them.

“When you say you’re against white supremacy but then you praise Robert E. Lee, the general who led us in the war in favor of white supremacy, I think it’s safe to say these are contradictory messages,” he said.

Trump’s latest remarks, Greenblatt added, should be viewed as part of a troubling broader arc, from Charlottesville to the white-supremacist shootings at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at the Poway, Calif., synagogue.

“These aren’t outliers on a scatter plot,” Greenblatt said. “These are data points on a trend line.”

Trump is the leader of the growing global white nationalist movement even if he doesn’t quite realize it. He’s the most powerful man on the planet and his beliefs are as clear as day:

.

We can stop predicting arrival of a constitutional crisis
by Tom Sullivan

Marvel’s heroes dissolved into dust in seconds. The Republican party is dissolving democracy just as publicly, but less noticeably because they are doing it over time and across states. Frogs and boiling water, the slow, steady dissolution of American democracy and the system of checks-and balances and separation of powers that has sustained it for generations goes unchecked.

Approaching five hundred former federal prosecutors have signed a statement asserting that Donald Trump’s actions outlined in the Mueller report would precipitate multiple felony charges of obstruction if committed by any other American not the president. The list of former career prosecutors is extensive and bipartisan, the Washington Post reports.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday notified House Democrats he would not deliver Donald Trump’s business and personal tax returns House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) had requested under law. Mnuchin claimed it the request serves no legislative purpose and informed the committee the Department of Justice would issue a formal legal opinion justifying his action.

John Yoo once issued another legal opinion for the George W. Bush administration justifying torture.

House Democrats have drafted a resolution for holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over an unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report including supporting evidence. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said, “The Attorney General’s failure to comply with our subpoena, after extensive accommodation efforts, leaves us no choice but to initiate contempt proceedings in order to enforce the subpoena and access the full, unredacted report.” Nadler has scheduled a vote for Wednesday. The resolution reads in part:

The investigation into the alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Donald Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration and related concerns is being undertaken pursuant to the full authority of the Committee under Rule X(l) and applicable law. The purposes of this investigation include: 1) investigating and exposing any possible malfeasance, abuse of power, corruption, obstruction of justice, or other misconduct on the part of the President or other members of his Administration; 2) considering whether the conduct uncovered may warrant amending or creating new federal authorities, including among other things, relating to election security, campaign finance, misuse of electronic data, and the types of obstructive conduct that the Mueller Report describes; and 3) considering whether any of the conduct described in the Special Counsel’s Report warrants the Committee in taking any further steps under Congress’ Article I powers. That includes whether to approve articles of impeachment with respect to the President or any other Administration official, as well as the consideration of other steps such as censure or issuing criminal, civil or administrative referrals. No determination has been made as to such further actions, and the Committee needs to review the unredacted report, the underlying evidence, and associated documents so that it can ascertain the facts and consider our next steps.

Former White House counsel Don McGahn faces a Tuesday deadline for furnishing the House Judiciary Committee with 36 sets of documents it subpoenaed. The White House may claim executive privilege to delay their release, possibly triggering another contempt citation.

Nadler will meet with the Justice Department on Tuesday to “negotiate an accommodation” in the dispute over the unredacted report, Axios reports.

All these events represent an unprecedented, rolling constitutional crisis. Debate is over on that. The problem with Democrats cutting slack to an administration and a rival party steeped in bad faith is they take it. And then some.

“It’s heartening to think that in a year and a half we can vote our way out of our predicament,” writes Dahlia Lithwick, “but it’s a bit like suggesting that we have a good long national think about how things are currently going and tend to it all in 2020, when all the systems that were already broken in 2016 are more broken. Democrat’s reluctance to pull the fire alarm and leap to action in defense of democracy shows they have not learned and adapted. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to call for impeachment of the president and her hope to save the country with a decisive 2020 presidential victory, Lithwick suggests, is sheer naiveté.

What is happening in Washington, D.C. is happening in states across the country as well. Tennessee Republicans are “pushing broad new restrictions on large-scale voter-registration drives,” writes Jamelle Bouie. In contravention of voter’s wishes expressed by state constitutional amendment last fall, Florida Republicans are legislating new barriers to ex-felons voting. Mitch McConnell may have stolen a Supreme Court appointment from Barack Obama, Bouie wrote in April:

But Republican lawmakers in several states have gone even further, using legislative majorities to strip constitutional authority from newly elected Democratic executives. Republicans in Kansas introduced legislation earlier this week that would strip the recently elected Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, of her power to fill vacancies in top state offices.

In Wisconsin and in Michigan, Republicans passed laws aimed at preempting incoming Democrats on the council of state from undoing damage outgoing Republicans had wrought before them.

What is happening in Kansas and in Michigan and in Wisconsin under GOP-controlled legislatures continues in North Carolina under a Democratic governor. Republicans attempt to place laws they support beyond the reach of veto and judicial review. The principle of separation of powers, checks-and-balances, is not dissolving visibly into Marvel dust, but dissolving, nonetheless. Not only inside the Beltway but across the several states.

It’s clear, Bouie concludes, “conservative Republicans have decided that their agenda cannot survive fair competition on equal ground.” If they cannot win under existing rules, they will rewrite the rules. Even rewrite the rules they have already rewritten, as happens in the Tar Heel State.

We now return you to the constitutional crisis already underway. If Speaker Pelosi has a Captain Marvel pager handy, now is already past time to activate it.