Month: May 2019

The Secretary of State is just a cheap hustler too

by digby

Look at this fatuous bullshit:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland to discuss the United States’ commitment to the Arctic region. While much of the secretary’s speech addressed the growing threats of Russia and China in the region, he also called the Arctic’s melting ice caps “new opportunities for trade”—despite warnings from scientists that the shrinkage is caused by climate change and could become irreversible.

“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” Pompeo told the room. “This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes could come before—could come [sic] the 21s century Suez and Panama Canals.”

“And its centerpiece, the Arctic Ocean, is rapidly taking on new strategic significance,” continued the secretary. “Offshore resources, which are helping the respective coastal states, are the subject of renewed competition.”

They’re al Trump now. Nothing matters in this world than making a quick buck and they don’t even pretend to care about anything else.
The planet is becoming uninhabitable by humans and animals? Whatevs. They’ll be dead and until then they’ll be rich. And that’s all that matters.

If I were their kid I’d certainly think that Daddy doesn’t love me very much…

Last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released its monthly sea ice update which found “daily ice extent remained at record low levels throughout the month.” Over the past three decades, the Arctic has lost 95 percent of its oldest ice to global warming—more ice loss could result in ice-free summers, causing the planet to warm even further.

“The steep decrease in Arctic sea ice is one of the more dramatic consequences of human-caused climate change,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist and the director of Pennsylvania State University’s Earth System Science Center, told Observer. “And it comes with huge national security challenges as we are forced to defend a new coastline. So there are really multiple levels of unintended irony to Pompeo’s statements.”

Last week, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration sought to remove references to climate change from the Arctic Council’s declaration signed by all eight Arctic nations. When asked by ABC on Sunday how he would rank climate change on a list of national security threats, Pompeo said the issue did not qualify.

“I can’t rank it … I can’t tell you exactly which number,” said Pompeo, before criticizing the Paris Climate Change agreement. “We’ve seen America reduce its carbon foot print, while the signatories, including China, haven’t done theirs… At the end of the day, the world is no safer.”

So, to hell with it. Let’s make some money!

By the way, here’s the big headline on this morning’s New York Times:

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They’re going to investigate the investigators

by digby

Did you think they wouldn’t?

Top Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter to the intelligence community’s inspector general, pushing for a probe of “apparent leaks” from its agencies during the Russia probe.

The letter focuses on “leaks” of information to the media that are referenced in text messages exchanged between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who have been vilified by Republicans for exchanging anti-Trump text messages while working on special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign and Russian election meddling.

“We are looking forward to the Justice Department Inspector General’s forthcoming reports reviewing potential FISA abuses and leaks from FBI personnel in order to gain a better understanding of what happened during the Russia investigation,” the two wrote. “However these texts and emails demonstrate the need to investigate leaks from agencies or entities other than FBI. Accordingly has the intelligence community office of the inspector general initiated an investigation into these apparent leaks? If not, please explain why not.”

The move signals top Republicans will continue their investigate-the-investigators response to Mueller’s probe, rhetoric that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been spinning since the redacted version of the report was released last month. During his appearance before Graham’s committee last week, Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers that the Justice Department was reviewing various steps taken at the onset of the Russia probe.

I’m sure you recall this right before Comey announced that he was re-opening the email case in October:

Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News host, asked Mr. Giuliani about the presidential campaign during its last two weeks.

“Does Donald Trump plan anything except a series of inspiring rallies?” Mr. Kilmeade asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Giuliani replied.

Another host, Ainsley Earhardt, jumped in.

“What?” she asked.

“Ha-ha-ha,” Mr. Giuliani laughed. “You’ll see.”

Appearing to enjoy his own coy reply, Mr. Giuliani resumed chuckling: “Ha-ha-ha.”

“When will this happen?” Ms. Earhardt asked.

“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said, smiling.

Daughter-in-law Lara Trump said the same thing:

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, married to middle son Eric, hinted on ‘Fox & Friends’ this morning that the Republican nominee may be holding onto an ‘October surprise’ to drop on Hillary Clinton.

‘Well there’s still a couple days left in October,’ said Lara Trump. ‘We’ve got some stuff up our sleeve.’

This piece by the late Wayne Barret remains the Rosetta Stone of the Rudy/FBI story:

Two days before FBI director James Comey rocked the world last week, Rudy Giuliani was on Fox, where he volunteered, un-prodded by any question: “I think he’s [Donald Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

Pressed for specifics, he said: “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”

The man who now leads “lock-her-up” chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.

Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.”

“The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity,” said Giuliani. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”

And it’s obvious that this was deep-sixed:

James Comey, based on public comments from top Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani and others in October 2016, launched an investigation into leaks about the Hillary Clinton email investigation that he suspected originated in the New York field office, he told congressional investigators Friday, but said he was fired from the FBI before it reached a conclusion.

Comey said Giuliani appeared to be making statements at the time “based on his knowledge of workings inside the FBI,” raising concerns to him “that we may have a leak problem,” according to a transcript of the former FBI director’s testimony released Saturday.

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The undisputed leader of global white nationalism

by digby

… is the president of the United States:

“Donald Trump: White Nationalist Terrorism Denier”

Pls watch and share my latest video essay for @theintercept unpacking all the ways in which Trump has denied, minimized and/or covered for white nationalist terror attacks since coming to office:pic.twitter.com/zaZzw3TtgY

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) May 6, 2019

He believes in it, he’s mainstreamed it, his followers are becoming so comfortable with that rhetoric that they are already moving toward taking action.

Who says Trump doesn’t know how to lead?

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Bleeding heart liberal prosecutors say Trump is a criminal

by digby

Leon Jaworski taking the oath of office to become the Watergate special prosecutor

These are not usually thought of as the type of people who are opposed to “law and order” politicians like Trump. But apparently, he’s gone too far with the obstruction of justice and abuse of power, even for them:

We are former federal prosecutors. We served under both Republican and Democratic administrations at different levels of the federal system: as line attorneys, supervisors, special prosecutors, United States Attorneys, and senior officials at the Department of Justice. The offices in which we served were small, medium, and large; urban, suburban, and rural; and located in all parts of our country.

Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.

The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge: conduct that obstructed or attempted to obstruct the truth-finding process, as to which the evidence of corrupt intent and connection to pending proceedings is overwhelming. These include:

· The President’s efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort;

· The President’s efforts to limit the scope of Mueller’s investigation to exclude his conduct; and

· The President’s efforts to prevent witnesses from cooperating with investigators probing him and his campaign.

Attempts to fire Mueller and then create false evidence

Despite being advised by then-White House Counsel Don McGahn that he could face legal jeopardy for doing so, Trump directed McGahn on multiple occasions to fire Mueller or to gin up false conflicts of interest as a pretext for getting rid of the Special Counsel. When these acts began to come into public view, Trump made “repeated efforts to have McGahn deny the story” — going so far as to tell McGahn to write a letter “for our files” falsely denying that Trump had directed Mueller’s termination.

Firing Mueller would have seriously impeded the investigation of the President and his associates — obstruction in its most literal sense. Directing the creation of false government records in order to prevent or discredit truthful testimony is similarly unlawful. 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 McGahn’s account in order to deflect or prevent scrutiny of the President’s conduct toward the investigation.”

Attempts to limit the Mueller investigation

The report describes multiple efforts by the president to curtail the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation.

First, the President repeatedly pressured then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his legally-mandated decision to recuse himself from the investigation. The President’s stated reason was that he wanted an attorney general who would “protect” him, including from the Special Counsel investigation. He also directed then-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to fire Sessions and Priebus refused.

Second, after McGahn told the President that he could not contact Sessions himself to discuss the investigation, Trump went outside the White House, instructing his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to carry a demand to Sessions to direct Mueller to confine his investigation to future elections. Lewandowski tried and failed to contact Sessions in private. After a second meeting with Trump, Lewandowski passed Trump’s message to senior White House official Rick Dearborn, who Lewandowski thought would be a better messenger because of his prior relationship with Sessions. Dearborn did not pass along Trump’s message.

As the report explains, “[s]ubstantial evidence indicates that the President’s effort to have Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct” — in other words, the President employed a private citizen to try to get the Attorney General to limit the scope of an ongoing investigation into the President and his associates.

All of this conduct — trying to control and impede the investigation against the President by leveraging his authority over others — is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions.

Witness tampering and intimidation

The Special Counsel’s report establishes that the President tried to influence the decisions of both Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort with regard to cooperating with investigators. Some of this tampering and intimidation, including the dangling of pardons, was done in plain sight via tweets and public statements; other such behavior was done via private messages through private attorneys, such as Trump counsel Rudy Giuliani’s message to Cohen’s lawyer that Cohen should “[s]leep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.”

Of course, these aren’t the only acts of potential obstruction detailed by the Special Counsel. It would be well within the purview of normal prosecutorial judgment also to charge other acts detailed in the report.

We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment. Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. In our system, every accused person is presumed innocent and it is always the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.

As former federal prosecutors, we recognize that prosecuting obstruction of justice cases is critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk. We believe strongly that, but for the OLC memo, the overwhelming weight of professional judgment would come down in favor of prosecution for the conduct outlined in the Mueller Report.

If you are a former federal prosecutor and would like to add your name below, click here. Protect Democracy will update this list daily with new signatories.

They’d better watch their steps:

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So hard to remember if you’re dealing with libertines or puritans

by digby

Mother couldn’t have been happy about this:

US Navy sailors were instructed by the ship’s senior enlisted sailor to “clap like we’re at a strip club” for Vice President Mike Pence’s arrival aboard the USS Harry S. Truman on Tuesday.

The ship’s public information officer confirmed to CNN the comments were made prior to Pence’s arrival aboard the Truman in Norfolk, Virginia, and called the statement “inappropriate.”

It’s so confusing having a president who grabs women by the pussy and a VP who is a right wing prig. It’s not surprising that some people would think this sort of thing is appropriate. After all, the VP’s boss went to the boy scout jamboree and talked about a rich pal of his living a libertine life on a yacht:

Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money, and he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did.

Should I tell you? Should I tell you?

You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life…He got bored with this life of yachts, and sailing, and all of the things he did in the south of France and other places. You won’t get bored, right? You know, truthfully, you’re workers. You’ll get bored too, believe me. Of course, having a few good years like that isn’t so bad.

It’s easy to see how someone might get confused about what’s “appropriate” and what isn’t.

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Mikey goes to jail

by digby

What a sad goombah. It’s got to bug this guy that he’s going to do all this time while his criminal boss gets away with murder. But that’s how it goes when you join the mob. And Trump has gotten away with his crimes all his life.

I hope he watches his back. Godfather Trump called him a rat and there are people in federal prisons who take that very seriously. (He’s going to be in a minimum security prison so it’s less likely, but you never know.)

Michael Cohen, the former lawyer, media attack dog and fixer for President Donald Trump, said Monday there “remains much to be told” as he heads to prison to begin a three-year prison sentence for crimes including campaign finance violations related to hush-money payments made on Trump’s behalf.

Cohen walked into the Federal Correctional Institution, Otisville around 11:45 a.m. A minimum-security prison camp at the prison, in the countryside 70 miles (113 kilometers) northwest of New York City, has become a haven for white-collar criminals.

“There still remains much to be told and I look forward to the day when I can share the truth,” Cohen told a crush of media outside his New York City apartment before getting into a waiting Cadillac Escalade for the ride to prison.

In a shot at Trump, he said he hoped when he is released, “the country will be in a place without xenophobia, injustice and lies at the helm.”

Cohen appeared to read from a prepared statement and didn’t answer shouted questions. He stumbled on the way to the SUV as reporters and photographers jostled around scaffolding and scuffled with his driver.

Cohen’s lawyer and spokesman, Lanny Davis, said Cohen would continue to be available to cooperate with law enforcement, though it’s unclear how much his cooperation is wanted.

You never know …

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My Salon column today:

Former FBI Director James Comey wrote a provocative op-ed for the New York Times last week in which he describes what it’s like to have Donald Trump try to “eat your soul in small bites.” He says that Trump has a way of overwhelming people’s better angels and robbing them of integrity over time, until they either find the energy to get away or become a full-fledged Trump sycophant.

It has the ring of truth. One suspects that there are more than a few people in Trump’s orbit who were originally appalled by his behavior but adapted over time and are now in a sort of cult-like state of obedience, without minds of their own. Once you make enough moral and ethical compromises, it becomes necessary to convince yourself that you are doing the right thing if you want to look yourself in the mirror every morning.

Comey says that Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are among those people, contrasting them with former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who has the distinction of being the only former senior administration official who resigned as a matter of principle. It is so rare that Trump didn’t even realize what was happening until the news media informed him that Mattis’ resignation letter was a rebuke.

In Comey’s reckoning, this is all about Trump’s preternatural ability to get people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Like all good con artists, Trump does have a talent for drawing people into his scam. But I’m skeptical that more than a handful of the Republicans in the current administration have been so co-opted. There’s more to it than that.

According to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, this is really about the entire party being radicalized by Fox News propaganda over the past 25 years, and that includes members of the elite establishment like Barr. I think that’s right. It’s quite clear that the flamboyant extremism of the modern right-wing media machine invented by the likes of talk radio’s Rush Limbaugh and Fox News’ Roger Ailes has become the mainstream of conservative thought. Barr is steeped in it, as he showed even before he became Trump’s attorney general, when he told the New York Times that the bogus fever-swamp scandal about Hillary Clinton’s supposed involvement with the Uranium One deal was more worthy of investigation than Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But that’s not the whole story either. Republicans aren’t having their souls gobbled up by this devious con man. They have plans of their own.

Back in 2012, Grover Norquist laid it all it plainly:

We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. … Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States.

Trump is a pain in the neck, to be sure. He causes lots of unnecessary drama and almost certainly embarrasses these Republicans on occasion. And I’m sure there are some who worry that this whole thing could get out of hand. But what they have in Trump is a man with (small) working digits who is handling a pen and accomplishing some of the most important items on their wish list.

Yes, Republicans were unable to repeal Obamacare. But think about it: That only happened because one senator, face to face with his mortality, stopped them. Otherwise, they had it in the bag. They got their tax cuts and their military buildup. They have taken a wrecking ball to the regulatory state. They’ve torn up the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. They’ve packed the courts with far-right judges, and as former White House counsel Don McGahn proudly told Senate GOP staffers, those judges “will spend 30–40 years unwinding the power of executive agencies.” McGahn may end up being an instrument of Trump’s eventual downfall, but he had a bigger job to do and he took care of that first.

Bill Barr has a job to do as well, and it’s not just following the fever dreams of Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro. As Charlie Sykes points out in this piece, Barr is a professional protector of presidential power, going back to his first stint as attorney general in George H.W. Bush’s Department of Justice. He refused to name an independent counsel to investigate “Iraqgate” instead taking it on himself and then stalling until the independent counsel statute ran out. He encouraged Bush to pardon everyone indicted in the Iran-Contra affair.

Barr was obviously chosen for that particular experience and expertise, but also because he is a true believer in the right-wing philosophy of the “unitary executive.” This Politico profile makes clear how the Republican establishment sees Barr:

“Barr is the closest thing we have to [Dick] Cheney,” said Chuck Cooper, a conservative litigator and Barr ally who, like the attorney general, has led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. “He’s a man. He has a very strong sense of purpose and confidence.”

Barr is part of an influential group of right-wing lawyers and politicians who all came up together in the 1980s and believe in unfettered presidential power. Cheney is another. Just as McGahn saw the opportunity to pack the judiciary with like-minded judges, Barr’s mission is to push the envelope on presidential power and create judicial precedents to cement it in place. If he has to put up with Trump’s antics, so be it. He provides Republican thought-leaders with an opportunity to achieve their long-term goals. In a way, having someone like Trump in power, completely ignorant on how the system is designed to work, serves them better than an ordinary politician. He literally has no idea what they’re up to, and wouldn’t care about it if he did.

You may ask why they would want to allow Democratic presidents to wield the same powers when they’re in office. I think they simply believe that Democrats don’t have the guts to take it to the limit because they’re too caught up in their own self-image as believers in “good government.” And since Republicans no longer respond to charges of hypocrisy, they would unleash hell on any Democrat who attempted to use the powers of the presidency the way Trump is currently doing. Republicans believe they alone will use the power of the presidency to maximum effect. They’re probably right.

So sure, craven politicians like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who needs to run for re-election in a state filled with Trump worshippers, are just playing old-fashioned politics. Others no doubt actually think that Trump is a great president and just want to be part of making America great again. Fox News brain rot is a real phenomenon. And there are more than a few who are simply in it to feather their own nests. The Trump era is a sewer of corruption.

But it’s pretty clear that many of the people in this administration are anything but co-opted by Trump’s magical soul-eating powers. It’s the other way around. Donald Trump may or may not be Putin’s puppet but he’s definitely the Republican establishment’s useful idiot.

Get ye to the water gate
by Tom Sullivan

Aerial view of Watergate Hotel complex via Wikimedia Commons [Public domain].

One of the oddities memory recalls from the Watergate scandal is some evangelical preacher claiming the Bible predicted it. Perhaps he cited this verse:

Nehemiah 8:1 And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded to Israel.

Upon hearing a reading of the law, there was much rejoicing, etc., etc.

A little reverence for the law would be bracing about now, what with the sitting president in open defiance of it. Mr. Trump is shredding the Constitution, warns Will Bunch, “and promoting a crisis that will leave Americans angry and, at least psychologically, poised for a civil war.” Trump’s plan for surviving a congressional probe into what Robert Mueller’s investigation found just might work, too. If not for the country, then for Trump, “which in Trumpland is the only outcome that matters.”

In ordering subordinates to ignore congressional subpoenas, denying Congress’ document requests, and filing lawsuits to block and delay the release of bank and accounting records as well as his taxes, Bunch suggests, Trump is giving the United States of America the full Roy Cohn treatment. It did not work for Richard Nixon. But all Trump’s efforts might have to accomplish is delaying impeachment for a year.

James Reston Jr., author of “The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews,” reminds New York Times readers that Article III of the Nixon impeachment charged the president with refusing to comply with eight Watergate subpoenas. The House of Representatives approved that article in addition to one charging obstruction of justice and another for abuse of power.

That was then, of course. This is Trump. Like Nixon before him, Trump argues Congress does not need to see any more. He has declared himself exonerated, absolved, and that should be the end of it.

“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,” Reston argues. “But that is beside the point; it is up to Congress, not him, to decide.”

Someone should send Trump a memo on that written in short words for aides to read aloud.

Televised hearings are what Trump fears more than subpoenas. The reality show veteran knows the power of television. He knows drama and suspense. Rather than allow the usual rolling colloquy by members (including “right-wing exuberants” Jim Jordan of Ohio, Louis Gohmert of Texas, and Florida’s Matt Gaetz), committee chair Jerry Nadler may bring in a skilled prosecutor to handle questioning. Such hearings will be ratings gold, Donald Trump knows and cannot allow. Whatever he might have said days ago.

….to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 5, 2019

The left wants to see impeachment hearings for the branding if for no other reason. Progressives want the emotional satisfaction of reading impeachment hearing on a C-Span chyron. But with Trump clearly trying to run out the clock, getting hearings started without delay is more important than taking the time to build consensus around the branding. Like diverting “all power to the shields,” all activism should focus on getting those hearings started promptly. It’s not its emotional satisfaction the left should worry about, but about denying Trump his. The sitting president will go to the mat if not to war to stop House Democrats from seeing what he is clearly desperate to conceal. Exposing Nixon’s tapes undid his presidency. Trump must not succeed in concealing his “tapes.”

State TV is getting the cult all excited

by digby

Check out this utterly depraved prattle:

Fox' Jeanine Pirro says "grab your popcorn folks, it's showtime" and watch as Obama and "the whole cardinal Comey crime family" gets prosecuted for the 'attempted coup' pic.twitter.com/TGjgwlf1TH— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) May 5, 2019

Pirro is a clown. But she is the tip of the spear clown on Fox News and she’s not that far off from what all the others are saying.

And with the help of the New York Times, they may just be getting traction on this ridiculous thing. I’m guessing they’ll be thrilled to get all those juicy DOJ leaks about the Clinton-Comey investigation. They won’t even ask themselves how ridiculous it is that Comey arguably cost Clinton the election and the Republicans have now managed to make them accomplices in a plot to take down Trump.

They are all trying to make us go mad.

Update: I was reminded of this from a couple of weeks ago. Trump hs been begging for it from the beginning:

I was reminded of this article about the Mueller report:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions had a tenuous hold on his job when President Trump called him at home in the middle of 2017. The president had already blamed him for recusing himself from investigations related to the 2016 election, sought his resignation and belittled him in private and on Twitter.

Now, Mr. Trump had another demand: He wanted Mr. Sessions to reverse his recusal and order the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.

“The ‘gist’ of the conversation,” according to the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, quoting Mr. Sessions, “was that the president wanted Sessions to unrecuse from ‘all of it.’”

Mr. Mueller’s report released last week brimmed with examples of Mr. Trump seeking to protect himself from the investigation. But his request of Mr. Sessions — and two similar ones detailed in the report — stands apart because it shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken.

And at the time Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Sessions, the president was already under investigation for potentially obstructing justice and knew that his top aides and cabinet members were being interviewed in that inquiry.

Mr. Trump wanted Mrs. Clinton investigated for her use of a private email server to conduct government business while secretary of state, the report said, even though investigators had examined her conduct and declined to bring charges in a case closed in 2016.

No evidence has emerged that Mr. Sessions ever ordered the case reopened. Like many of Mr. Trump’s aides, as laid out in the report and other accounts, Mr. Sessions instead declined to act, preventing Mr. Trump from crossing a line that might have imperiled his presidency.

Instead, Mr. Sessions asked a Justice Department official in November 2017 to review claims by the president and his allies about Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I.’s handling of the investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. The department’s inspector general had already been scrutinizing the issues and painted a harsh portrait of the bureau in a report last year but found no evidence that politics had influenced the decision not to prosecute Mrs. Clinton.

The findings from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are now available to the public. The redacted report details his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Prosecutors, defense lawyers and legal experts largely agree that in the justice system, it is worse for innocent people to be prosecuted and jailed — thus deprived of their freedom — than for a guilty person to go free.

“The loss of a case that should have been brought is never as bad as the harm of a case that shouldn’t have been brought,” said Samuel W. Buell, a professor of law at Duke University.

The report gave a detailed account of Mr. Trump’s bids to wield power. Nine months into office in October 2017, he reminded Mr. Sessions in a private meeting that he believed the Justice Department was failing to investigate people who truly deserved scrutiny and mentioned Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

Two days later, Mr. Trump repeated his desires publicly, accusing law enforcement officials in a pair of tweets of “a fix” in the Clinton inquiry and asking, “Where is Justice Dept?”

A month later, Mr. Sessions found a way to satisfy Mr. Trump’s demands without opening a new investigation into Mrs. Clinton. He told Congress that he had asked the United States attorney in Utah, John W. Huber, to examine the allegations Mr. Trump and his allies made about Mrs. Clinton and the F.B.I. No charges have arisen from that examination, which is continuing.

But Mr. Trump wanted more. He pulled Mr. Sessions aside after a cabinet meeting in December 2017 and “again suggested that Sessions could ‘unrecuse,’” according to the report. A White House aide who witnessed the encounter believed Mr. Trump was talking about the since-closed Clinton investigation and the open Russia inquiry.

“I don’t know if you could unrecuse yourself,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions, according to notes taken by the aide, Rob Porter. “You’d be a hero. Not telling you to do anything.”

Noting that Alan Dershowitz, a prominent lawyer and informal adviser to Mr. Trump, said Mr. Trump had the power to order an investigation, the president took pains to suggest he was not trying to influence the attorney general.

“I don’t want to get involved. I’m not going to get involved,” the president said, according to Mr. Porter’s notes. “I’m not going to do anything or direct you to do anything. I just want to be treated fairly.”

Mr. Sessions replied that he was “taking steps” and had a new leadership team in place at the F.B.I. “Professionals; will operate according to the law,” Mr. Porter wrote in his notes, according to the special counsel’s office.

Mr. Sessions never followed through on the demands to reopen the case against Mrs. Clinton.

By trying to have Mrs. Clinton prosecuted, Mr. Trump was following through on a campaign promise. At rallies, he often stood on stage denouncing her as crowds chanted, “Lock her up!”

“This reeks of a typical practice in authoritarian regimes where whoever attains power, they don’t just take over power peacefully, but they punish and jail their opponents,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian and professor at George Washington University.

The report chronicled how Mr. Sessions fell further out of favor with Mr. Trump after he declined to commit to prosecuting Mrs. Clinton or to resume control of the Russia inquiry. Mr. Trump mixed private arm twisting with the bully pulpit of his Twitter account until he forced out Mr. Sessions in November.

“I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions,” Mr. Trump said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” in August 2018, according to the report.

Beyond Mr. Mueller’s report, there is evidence that Mr. Trump has continued to try to push the Justice Department to bend to his wishes. He told the White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II in April 2018 that he wanted the Justice Department to prosecute Mrs. Clinton and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, two people familiar with the conversation have said.

Mr. Mueller’s report made no mention of the encounter with Mr. McGahn. He never conveyed the request to the Justice Department but had aides write Mr. Trump a memo that laid out the risks of impeachment or losing re-election if he took such a step.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, faulted the Obama administration for declining to prosecute Mrs. Clinton.

“It was crying out for prosecution,” said Mr. Giuliani, the former United States attorney in Manhattan. “I could have prosecuted that case with my eyes closed.”

It looks like Bill Bar may be the guy to get ‘er done.

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Impeachment is the nuclear option. It’s time to push the button.

by digby

It looks like Trump and Barr are going to stonewall absolutely everything and, so far, the Democratic congress is still trying to demand that he not do that. I would guess that Trump and his henchmen will continue to be unmoved by these demands. Which leaves us with where to go next.

Michael Conway, who served as counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in the impeachment inquiry of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, says that way is impeachment hearings:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and today’s congressional leaders can find guidance from the actions of Congress during Watergate.

On April 11, 1974 — following the February vote by the full House to authorize an impeachment inquiry — the Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena, seeking White House tapes, transcripts, notes and memoranda relating to 147 conversations in which investigators believed that the president and his aides discussed, among other things, the Watergate burglary and its cover-up. Nixon, of course, refused.

In a report that same day, committee lawyers identified three potential remedies if Nixon did not comply with the committee’s subpoena, while explaining that “each of these methods presents problems.”

Democrats know they can’t trust AG Barr. But they have a plan.

First, Congress “has the power to hold in contempt a person who has disobeyed its subpoena,” or, to a lesser degree, the House can reprimand or censure the recalcitrant witness. A contempt finding, however, requires an affirmative vote of the entire House.

If the subpoenaed party today — Barr — does not produce the requested documents or justify to Congress grounds for nondisclosure, the House could find him in contempt and order him arrested for the duration of the current term of Congress ending in January 2021 or until the party complies with the subpoena.

The last time Congress did that, however, was in 1935.

Recognizing in 1974 the impracticability of arresting Nixon, the staff report offered a second option: seeking a court order to enforce compliance. However, the co-equal nature of the executive, legislative and judicial branches raised a constitutional problem with seeking relief in court, suggesting, “it may be thought inappropriate to seek the aid of the judicial branch in exercising these powers.”

And, the staff added, seeking either criminal or civil relief for presidential noncompliance would “pose a number of problems for this inquiry, including delay, the uncertainty of relying upon the executive branch to prosecute the chief executive, and doubt whether an incumbent president may be prosecuted for a criminal offense before his impeachment and removal from office.” (This would certainly be applicable today, as any effort to compel compliance could well be tied up in court beyond the 2020 elections.)

The staff finally noted that noncompliance itself might be evidence in an impeachment proceeding.

Still, on April 30, 1974, Nixon attempted to blunt the impact of his intransigence toward both the committee and the second special prosecutor by making a televised address to the nation in which he displayed stacks of binders containing edited transcripts of 33 White House tapes to be delivered to the Judiciary Committee.

The committee then wrote Nixon on May 1 that he had not complied with its subpoena, but — in keeping with the committee’s report on the difficulties of forcing compliance — a motion that day to recommend to the House that Nixon be found in contempt was defeated 32-5.

In opposing the motion to recommend holding Nixon in contempt, then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino said: “We can consider the noncompliance of the president when we are considering the question of possible grounds of impeachment.”

The chairman’s words were prophetic: As an independent ground for impeachment, Article III held that Nixon should be impeached for refusing to produce tapes and records and thereby interfering with congressional exercise of its power of impeachment mandated by the constitution. That article was approved by a vote of 21-17 in July.

In its final report to the House in 1974, the committee explained why a president should be impeached for defying its subpoenas: “Unless the defiance of the committee’s subpoenas under these circumstances is considered grounds for impeachment, it is difficult to conceive of any president acknowledging that he is obligated to supply the relevant evidence necessary for Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility in an impeachment proceeding.”

In 2019, the committee’s warning about what a future president may do has come to pass. Congress must act decisively to preserve its constitutional authority.

The Republicans cheapened impeachment in the Clinton case, probably for a reason. They knew that if they could demonstrate it as a rank partisan act it would lose much of its “nuclear” power. It probably succeeded in doing that to some extent. But impeachment over a cover-up of a betrayal of the country, criminal or not, is very different than impeaching someone over a lie in a civil case about a personal sexual matter. The first is the very definition of a high crime or misdemeanor. The second isn’t.

The Democrats are making themselves appear to be as nakedly partisan as the Republicans were in 1998, by doing the opposite. They are going on television and giving interviews in which they wring their hands and express their fears that impeaching the president will harm them politically. Why they think it’s a good look to show themselves as self-serving pols in light of this assault on the constitution is beyond me. You’d think they at least would make the argument on the merits if they are too scared to impeach. Of course, that would be hard since the only reason one can say that Trump shouldn’t be impeached on the basis of the Mueller Report, as well as his rank corruption and unfitness, is that you believe the citizens of this country have no sense of ethics and morality and will punish you for doing it.

If the Democrats refuse, both parties will have said that a president cannot be indicted while in office and that impeachment is no longer operative for Republicans. If you don’t believe me, just think about the fact that the last Democratic Special Counsel was Archibald Cox. Only Republicans are allowed to investigate. If they let this pass it will be clear that only Republicans are allowed to impeach.

Do you think they wouldn’t have impeached Clinton?

Senior Republican lawmakers are openly discussing the prospect of impeaching Hillary Clinton should she win the presidency, a stark indication that partisan warfare over her tenure as secretary of state will not end on Election Day.

Chairmen of two congressional committees said in media interviews this week they believe Clinton committed impeachable offenses in setting up and using a private email server for official State Department business.

And a third senior Republican, the chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee, told The Washington Post he is personally convinced Clinton should be impeached for influence peddling involving her family foundation. He favors further congressional investigation into that matter.

Trump was ON it:

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