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Month: July 2019

Resistance to impeachment is shrinking

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Resistance to impeachment is shrinking

 by digby

Mediaite caught an interesting little data point in the latest polling on impeachment:

A new Fox News poll shows that while support for impeachment has ticked down slightly, opposition to an impeachment inquiry has gone down to just 45 percent.

In June, that poll showed 50 percent of Americans favored beginning an impeachment inquiry, including 7 percent who said Trump should be impeached but not removed as president. In July, 47 percent said he should be impeached, including 5 percent who said Trump should be impeached and not removed.

But the theory of political risk in impeaching Trump relies on the notion that the public would strongly oppose such an action, and according to this same poll, that opposition is squarely in the minority.

In June, 48 percent said Trump should not be impeached at all, a number which fell to 45 percent in the new survey. And among independent voters, opposition to impeachment is at just 41 percent.

What this means is that if Democrats decide to do the right thing, they will probably not face the backlash they seem to believe they will. The public at large isn’t pressing for impeachment. But a vast majority of Democrats are for it and it appears that Independents will go along.

I suspect that there are plenty of people who are sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what the Democrats do — and if they decide to go for it, they will support it. Of course, the Republicans will have a fit. Why would anyone assume otherwise? That’s the way things are in our politics no matter what the issue. 

This one is about the integrity of our democracy.  Republicans are working to protect a lawless president by any means necessary including enabling future interference by an adversarial power on the president’s behalf. They welcome the help. (And the foreign adversary (or adversaries) almost certainly expects to benefit as well…)

They must do the right thing.  If they don’t, Trump could “win” with another dubious election result and there would be no going back. Relentless opposition, using all the tools at their disposal, is the only way to keep them off-balance and on the defensive to stymie their plans. Without free and fair elections, “beating him at the ballot box” will not be possible.

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Rats deserting a sinking ship?

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Rats deserting a sinking ship?

by digby

Republicans are quitting in impressive numbers:

In the past 10 days or so, we’ve had some very intriguing tea leaves about the 2020 elections: Notably, five House Republicans have announced that they’re retiring.

Only one of the five, Texas’ Pete Olson, is in a sharply contested seat. Representatives Rob Bishop of Utah, Mike Conaway of Texas, Paul Mitchell of Michigan and Martha Roby of Alabama will all likely be replaced by candidates of the same party. Even so, they join a string of Republicans who have so far announced that they plan to retire or seek other offices this cycle, with months still to go until various state filing deadlines.

What does a trend like this tell us? One interpretation is that Republicans don’t expect to return to a House majority in 2020. The current breakdown is 235 Democrats, 197 Republicans, one independent (the former Republican Justin Amash), and two vacancies last held by Republicans. So the party, if it holds the two open seats and wins back Amash’s, would only need to gain 18 others to restore its majority. A spate of retirements signals that they don’t really think that’s likely.

The thing about House elections is that expectations matter. A lot. The more a party thinks it’s going to be a good year, the more it will attract the resources needed to win, including strong candidates. It’s true that in the current era of partisan polarization candidate strength may not matter as much as it once did. But overall it’s still better to have strong candidates, plenty of money and tons of volunteer hours, all of which are far likelier when party actors think the partisan tides are favorable.

As for the timing? It’s possible that all the new retirements were long planned. It’s interesting, though, that they come after Robert Mueller’s testimony revived interest in President Donald Trump’s scandals – and, perhaps more relevant, after Trump’s “send her back” rally and his continuing series of bigoted tweets. It’s not crazy to speculate that one or more of these Republicans just didn’t want to campaign for reelection in that kind of atmosphere.

Conaway is particularly interesting. He’s a powerful member of the House Intelligence Committee who presumably knows all the redacted material. One would think he’d be a patriot and speak out if there’s something in all that which makes him want out but these Republican officials don’t seem to be made that way.

This is something worth keeping an eye on. It’s unexpected — most of these people could win re-election. There’s another reason they are jumping ship. Maybe a belated attempt to hold on to a tiny bit of human decency?

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Williamson is not the only one speaking in emotional terms in this campaign

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Williamson is not the only one speaking in emotional terms in this campaign

by digby

I know that many people were moved by Marianne Williamson in the debate last night and that many more are followers of her spiritual instruction through her books and teaching of “A Course in Miracles.” I’m not going to debate that point. I’m not an expert and I am more interested in the political dimension of what she’s talking about in these debates.

I think it’s important to point out that she is not alone in trying to speak to this “emotional turbulence” we are going through but that others are also trying to find material ways to combat it, through policy and politics. Religion, spirituality and self-help are vital aspects of human experience but they aren’t specifically the business of politics. Politics requires both “wonkery” and emotion.

In any case, I invite you to read a few commentsabout some of the other people who are running for president.

Corey Booker:

He would have done pretty much the same routine no matter what, because that’s what he does: method performances of emotions lived out fresh onstage each time, moments from his life stamped into parables of the new agey Gospel of Cory, each one introduced with “I want to tell you a story …” In the Senate and in the presidential field taking shape, he’s more a bundle of feelings than an agenda.

No one walked out with any clue where Booker stands on almost any issue, aside from a riff that talked about the Democratic commitment to Medicaid, Medicare, voting rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, “the party of people who believe that someone who is nice to you but is not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.” (Booker greeted janitors backstage before the speech, and walked around the room again afterward, shaking hands that were dumping the leftover food into the trash.)

But they did walk out saying things like “I so needed that today.” The skepticism wasn’t about his controversial vote on a resolution about importing prescription drugs to lower prices or the work he’s doing pushing sweeping reforms to the criminal-justice system. It was about whether there’d be a big enough market, outside Democrats willing to buy tickets to a dinner to hear him speak, for a message of inclusivity for a black senator from the East Coast. “He was coming in as the savior, but this was the choir,” one said.

A quote:

My heroes have been not afraid to talk about love. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the “beloved community.” He talked about the Greeks, who separated love into three categories: eros, philia, and agape love. I think patriotism, by its very definition, is love of country. But we seem to have become a country where the highest thing we’re reaching for is tolerance. When you say “bipartisan,” you’re really saying, “Hey we’re going to tolerate each other.” Go home and tell somebody that you live with, or your neighbor, “I tolerate you.” That’s not a high aspiration.

He’s been pilloried for his “love” approach by the savvy presidential press corps. If he’d have said the things Williamson said in the debate last night they would have been savage.

How about this guy?

Charlottesville, Va., is home to the author of one of the great documents in human history. We know it by heart: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

We’ve heard it so often, it’s almost a cliché. But it’s who we are. We haven’t always lived up to these ideals; Jefferson himself didn’t. But we have never before walked away from them.

Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there on August of 2017 we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open, their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging, and bearing the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ‘30s. And they were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued and a brave young woman lost her life.

And that’s when we heard the words from the president of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were “some very fine people on both sides.” Very fine people on both sides?

With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.

I wrote at the time that we’re in the battle for the soul of this nation. Well, that’s even more true today. We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.

I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation — who we are — and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.

The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America, is at stake.

That’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for President of the United States.

Folks, America’s an idea, an idea that’s stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It gives hope to the most desperate people on earth, it guarantees that everyone is treated with dignity and gives hate no safe harbor. It instills in every person in this country the belief that no matter where you start in life, there’s nothing you can’t achieve if you work at. We can’t forget what happened in Charlottesville. Even more important, we have to remember who we are.

This is America.

That was Joe Biden’s announcement speech.

Here’s Elizabeth Warren:

In the tale that is captivating crowds on the campaign trail, Warren is not a professor or a political star but a hardscrabble Oklahoma “late-in-life baby” or, as her mother called her, “the surprise.” Her elder brothers had joined the military; she was the last one at home, just a middle-schooler when her father had the massive heart attack that would cost him his job. “I remember the day we lost the station wagon,” she tells crowds, lowering her voice. “I learned the words ‘mortgage’ and ‘foreclosure’ ” listening to her parents talk when they thought she was asleep, she recalls. One day she walked in on her mother in her bedroom, crying and saying over and over, “ ’We are not going to lose this house.’ She was 50 years old,” Warren adds, “had never worked outside the home, and she was terrified.”

This part of the story has been a Warren staple for years: Her mother put on her best dress and her high heels and walked down to a Sears, where she got a minimum-wage job. Warren got a private lesson from her mother’s sacrifice—“You do what you have to to take care of those you love”—and a political one, too. “That minimum-wage job saved our house, and it saved our family.” In the 1960s, she says, “a minimum-wage job could support a family of three. Now the minimum wage can’t keep a momma and a baby out of poverty.”

Or this fella:

They all do it differently, but to say they aren’t trying to speak to the “heartlessness” of American society, as Williamson contends they fail to do, is just wrong.

I’m sure there are other examples from Democrats who appeal, to one degree or another, to the heart and soul of the voters. It’s as big a part of politics as the policy wonkery that dominates these generally painfully frustrating debates.

Williamson is being held up today as if she’s doing something truly unique and I think the only unique thing about it is the fact that she is not required to talk about policy in-depth and can simply offer her observations that America is in a dark place and we should replace it with love without specifics. That’s fine as far as it goes, and I take her seriously as someone with a huge following and a message that resonates with a lot of people. But it’s unfair to say that other candidates are failing to try to connect on this emotional level. They just also have to back it up with policy.

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Promises made, promises kept

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Promises made, promises kept

by digby


He’s sending them back:

Monzer Shakally was 16 years old when he joined the protests in the streets of Damascus, was arrested and tortured by the Syrian government, and, once released, escaped to find safe haven in the U.S. 

Interested in Syria?Add Syria as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Syria news, video, and analysis from ABC News. 

Now 23, and entering his second year of dental school in Iowa City, Shakally must wait on edge as the Trump administration possibly terminates his legal status. 

The administration is considering ending legal status for Shakally and approximately 7,000 other Syrians living in the U.S. — a move that would force them to find a new legal status, leave the U.S. or even face deportation to Syria.

I’ll just re-up this one from last week:

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard “send them back”

by digby


Trump made it clear during his 2016 campaign that he planned to deport millions back to Mexico and other countries south of the border. But he didn’t stop there:


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would send Syrian refugees “back” if he were elected to the White House.

In New Hampshire for the first time since he failed to correct a man’s rant about President Barack Obama being a Muslim, Trump was greeted by a few thousand cheering fans — and he was fired up.

Trump outlined the specifics of his new tax plan. But in typical Trump fashion, he didn’t stop there.

On the topic of Syrian refugees, Trump was forceful: “I’m putting people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, they’re going back!”

He explained: “They could be ISIS …This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army maybe, or if you said 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000, we got problems and that could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible so they’re going back — they’re going back.”


This was big part of his pitch in the early days:

After two days of confusion over whether or not Donald Trump wants to set up a database of Muslims living in the United States, the candidate explained his stance during a political rally on Saturday morning.

“I will absolutely take database on the people coming in from Syria,” Trump said, adding that such a database would not be needed in a Trump administration, as he would kick all Syrian refugees out of the country, regardless of their religion, and allow no more to enter. “If I win, they’re going back. They’re going back. We can’t have them.”

Trump called for heavy surveillance of Syrians, Muslims and anyone with possible ties to the Islamic State. He urged the audience members to be vigilant and report anything suspicious they see to the police.

“I want surveillance of certain mosques, okay? If that’s okay?” Trump said, as thousands of people in the audience cheered. “I want surveillance. And you know what? We’ve had it before, and we’ll have it again.”



His followers cheered that then and they cheer him now. The fact that he didn’t actually do it is meaningless. They just want to make sure that all immigrants of color know that they are not “real Americans” and that this president will make sure they never, ever think they are. It makes them feel good. It makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel relieved that their ugly bigotry is actually ok. 

Trump’s nomination of a partisan toady to DNI signals a full commitment to crude authoritarianism

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Trump’s nomination of a partisan toady to DNI signals a full commitment to crude authoritarianism

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

By this time no one should be surprised when Donald Trump hires a partisan hack to do a previously independent job in a vital government agency. After all, that’s been his habit from the beginning. To the extent there were ever any nonpartisan Cabinet members or top advisers, it has been because he simply didn’t know what the job entailed.

Trump fired both former FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions for being insufficiently loyal. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were effectively forced out for failing to properly toe his line. Since Trump really doesn’t have an agenda beyond harassing immigrants and economic intimidation, the only real criteria at this point in his presidency is whether or not officials will do whatever it takes to protect him personally from myriad legal scandals and possible electoral defeat. Basically, the only job of the Trump administration for the next 15 months is to perpetrate a full-time cover-up.

Robert Mueller’s report followed by his live testimony to Congress last week, made one thing very clear: The Russian government interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Donald Trump in a number of ways, from propaganda to stealing personal emails and dumping them on the internet to probing the election systems in all 50 states. All of this was based upon information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies and allies across the globe.

Despite Trump’s repeated caterwauling about “no collusion!” Mueller made clear what we saw with our own eyes: Trump “welcomed” the election interference from Russia and has said that he would do it again if the same opportunity presented itself. In order to preserve the illusion that all this doesn’t add up to a president who has betrayed his country and benefited from foreign sabotage, Trump and his accomplices in the media and in Congress have been forced to create a ludicrous alternate narrative that the investigation was a partisan witch hunt based on false information from the beginning.

That’s why Trump has finally pulled the trigger and dismissed Dan Coats, the independent-minded director of national intelligence. Trump has announced he will replace Coats with one of his chief congressional henchmen, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas. It was reported last week that Trump consulted with his most slavish loyalist in the House, collaborator, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., about whom to appoint to the position. Ratcliffe is their thoroughly unsurprising choice (although there was initial speculation it might be Nunes himself). He’s been an architect of the hard right’s “investigation origins” conspiracy theory from the start.

As Will Sommer at the Daily Beast reminds us:

One of Ratcliffe’s biggest contributions to the Republican pushback on the investigation came in January 2018, when he claimed he had seen text messages between [Lisa] Page and [Peter] Strzok that suggested the existence of a “secret society” working against Trump. But Ratcliffe’s claims, which were subsequently amplified by pro-Trump media outlets, fell apart when the fuller text exchanges became public.

That was possibly the most embarrassing moment of the House Intelligence Committee’s work under Nunes’ chairmanship. But the willingness to make a fool of oneself in service of the president is considered a resumé builder in Trump’s Washington. Ratcliffe is now being nominated to what is arguably the most powerful intelligence job in the world.

There are many objections to Ratcliffe’s appointment, starting with the fact that he is almost comically unqualified for the job and appears to have seriously embellished his resumé. It’s not clear Ratcliffe has any actual experience in investigating or prosecuting terrorism cases, and he only held the post of U.S. attorney in Texas in an interim capacity for bout a year. There are serious reasons to doubt that he will provide the president with independent, unvarnished intelligence, and strong reasons to believe he will instead politicize the information to fit Trump’s needs.

These are serious concerns to be sure, reminiscent of the ill-fated appointment of Matt Whitaker as acting attorney general. Indeed, one way to interpret this appointment is as a temporary placeholder, more or less in the Whitaker vein. Even the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has reportedly warned Trump that naming a bomb-thrower like Ratcliffe is a mistake.

But there is actually a much bigger problem with Ratcliffe — and likely with anyone else Trump would nominate to that job if he goes down in flames.

Attorney General William Barr has already taken it upon himself to investigate the U.S. intelligence community for alleged partisan motives in initiating the original investigation into Russian interference (something that Burr’s Senate committee ruled out in the first volume of its report.) Trump has also given Barr permission to allow Nunes access to classified information related to the investigation, telling Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “this was a coup attempt … we have some very great people, but we also have some very bad people. And I think we caught them.” (This is part of the GOP’s Bizarro World theory that Hillary Clinton somehow colluded with the intelligence agencies and the Russians — to help the Trump campaign. I know it doesn’t make sense.)

Following that daft line of reasoning, Trump has spelled out clearly what he expects Ratcliffe to do — purge the intelligence services of anyone who participated in collecting information about Russia and Donald Trump.

This is no longer a case of Trump ranting incoherently on Hannity and Twitter. He has his hatchet man Barr in place at the Justice Department, and is about to put a partisan toady in charge of the 17 sprawling intelligence agencies some of them so secret we barely know who works there or what they do.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post asked the question this way: “[C]an President Trump and his loyalists continue to organize large swaths of the government around the single, overarching goal of shielding his corruption, misconduct and wrongdoing from any and all accountability?”

It would certainly appear that’s the goal.

There are some indications that Ratcliffe may be too wild a choice even for the Republican Senate and Trump will end up naming someone more in the vein of Barr — a seasoned partisan warrior who the press will see as an “institutionalist,” but who will nonetheless do the president’s bidding. Considering how many veteran Republicans have eagerly fallen in line to serve Trump, it won’t be hard to find someone to fit that bill.

But whether it’s Ratcliffe or someone else, it’s obvious that Trump is placing loyalists in the top law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the federal government, in advance of an election we have repeatedly been assured is likely to be penetrated by foreign actors. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to pass election security legislation, and having a mini-tantrum over the fact that critics are calling him out for it. When the law enforcement, criminal justice and national security apparatus is led by officials who are loyal to a single leader, and not to the people, that’s the fundamental basis of authoritarian government. And that is exactly the goal of Donald Trump’s administration.

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Beige is the new blue — Democratic moderates by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 31, 2019

Beige is the new blue — Democratic moderates
by Tom Sullivan

“It took over 100 people eight days to build the set for CNN’s Democratic debates. Nine 53-foot semi-trucks were needed to haul in all the equipment,” tweeted CNN’s Oliver Darcy.

“Next time use an old high school gym and spend the money on hiring investigative journalists,” replied Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch.

Watching Part One of the second Democratic debate was an endurance contest. CNN’s 30-second response format was a disaster, barely giving candidates time to formulate a sentence before being cut off. Questions from CNN moderators seemed designed not to probe policy issues, but to get candidates to snipe at each other.

“Question after question was framed up from the ideological perspective of a Heritage Foundation intern,” writes Ashley Feinberg at Slate, “or otherwise crafted as a gotcha to generate a 15-second clip for Republican attack ads down the line.”

Despite that awful format and the gotcha questions, there were a few moments worth the headache.

With Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren at center stage, moderates no longer at the center of Democratic politics tried to find purchase by attacking them from the wings as dreamers with unworkable plans. Their health care plans, they argued, would take away private insurance policies people like and for which unions negotiated.

Warren turned those criticisms back on the moderates.

“Let’s be clear about this. We are the Democrats,” Warren began. “We are not trying to take away health care from anyone,” Warren responded, “and we should stop using Republican talking points” to speak about providing health care.

South Bend, Indiana’s Mayor Pete Buttigieg had improved his debate prep, producing a couple of stand-out moments. First, taking on the predictable Republican line of attack.

Responding to a question meant to get him to comment on Sanders’ age, Buttigieg (at 40 sec.) pivoted to addressing Republicans in Congress directly for enabling a racist demagogue in the Oval Office.

“If you are watching this at home,” Buttigieg said looking straight into the camera, “and you are a Republican member of Congress, consider the fact that when the sun sets on your career and they are writing your story of all the good and bad things you did in your life, the thing you will be remembered for is whether in this moment with this president you found the courage to stand up to him, or you continued to put party over country.”

If Aaron Sorkin had scripted that speech, the camera would slowly have panned in close and stirring music would have swelled.

When Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, another moderate, tried to attack Sanders, claiming he didn’t really understand what his health care plan would do, Sanders snapped to applause, “I do know. I wrote the damned bill!”

“To win this election and to defeat Donald Trump — which by the way, in my view is not going to be easy — we need to have a campaign of energy and excitement and of vision,” Sanders said. Voters would not be getting that from moderates, Sanders implied.

Ryan, Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, former congressman John Delaney of Maryland, and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper each tried to argue their positions would have more appeal for the mushy center of the electorate. Hickenlooper seemed to be pitching a government that is ISO 9001 certified, a message sure to mobilize tens of millions of nonvoters under 40 to knock doors for him.

Each moderate in his way made the same bland pitch: “Vote for me, I’m BEIGE.” Many will not survive to make the next round of dabates.

After multiple assaults on her plans from moderates, Warren won the night by responding to another poor-mouthed critique, this time from Delaney.

“I don’t understand why anyone goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States,” she answered, “just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”

R.I.P., Delaney campaign.

Tonight, round two. Former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris will occupy center stage.

  • Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet
  • New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
  • Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro
  • New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker
  • Former Vice President Joe Biden
  • California Sen. Kamala Harris
  • Andrew Yang
  • Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard
  • Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
  • New York Mayor Bill de Blasio

Update: Somehow cut off some last names in above list while formatting. Fixed. (Thx: BH)

Infested

Published by digby on July 31, 2019

Infested

by digby

I had noticed the hair had a particularly prominent shelf today. It’s way out there as you can see.

Well, here’s something you can’t unsee:

Perhaps it’s spider webs and hairspray that make it as stiff as it is?

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A Big Story that should not be overlooked

Published by digby on July 30, 2019

A Big Story that should not be overlooked

by digby

This reporting by Pro-Publica is mind-blowing. The corruption is so thorough that I suspect when (if) the full truth is known we will not be able to fully grasp it:

President Donald Trump’s inauguration chairman, Tom Barrack, lobbied the new administration to share nuclear power technology with Saudi Arabia while, at the same time, making plans to team up with the Saudis to buy a company that would benefit from the policy change, according to documents obtained by a House committee.

During the campaign, Barrack advised Trump on the Middle East, where he has long-standing business relationships. As Trump clinched the Republican nomination in 2016, Barrack shared a draft of a policy speech with a businessman from the United Arab Emirates, according to text messages quoted in the committee’s report. The businessman then consulted with unspecified others and suggested adding a paragraph praising the powerful princes of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the text messages show.

Barrack incorporated the suggested language and sent a new draft to campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to the report. In an email, Barrack seemed to suggest he knew he was entering an ethical or legal gray area: “This is probably as close as I can get without crossing a lot of lines,” he said.

On the day of the speech, Manafort sent Barrack a final draft, saying, “It has the language you want.”

The Democratic staff of the House Oversight Committee said the documents it received — 60,000 pages from various private companies — do not show whether candidate Trump was aware that his speech had been circulated to at least one foreign official. The report also does not indicate why Barrack wanted foreign input on the speech.

But Barrack, a billionaire investor, went on to pursue a lucrative deal based on the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, a policy that he was helping to shape.

Barrack’s plan, according to the documents, was for his firm and other U.S. investors to join with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to buy Westinghouse, the struggling U.S. manufacturer of nuclear reactors. At the same time, Barrack used his access to the White House to urge top officials to give Westinghouse permission to sell as many as 30 nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

When Westinghouse went to a different buyer, Barrack sought a $50 million stake, according to the documents. The Trump administration is still considering whether to allow Westinghouse to sell reactors to Saudi Arabia — an idea opposed by nonproliferation experts and lawmakers from both parties who fear the kingdom could repurpose the technology to build a nuclear bomb.

Barrack’s role in the proposed Saudi nuclear deal is now part of a federal investigation into illegal foreign lobbying, The New York Times reported on Sunday. Prosecutors have questioned Barrack in the probe, which arose from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and was referred to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, according to the Times.

Barrack’s spokesman said he cooperated with and provided documents to the House committee. “Barrack’s engagement in investment and business development throughout the Middle East for the purpose of better aligned Middle East and U.S. objectives are well known,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Barrack’s consistent attempts to bridge the divide of tolerance and understanding between these two great cultures is etched in the annals of time.”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Federal law requires anyone working to influence U.S. policy on behalf of foreign governments to report their activities to the Justice Department. Manafort, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates and ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn all admitted to violating this law. Barrack did not file any disclosures about his contacts with the Saudis and Emiratis while he was helping to shape Trump’s policies toward the region.

When ProPublica interviewed Barrack in 2017, he acknowledged an interest in investing in Westinghouse, saying, “Westinghouse in bankruptcy today is a business opportunity for lots of people like me.” But the newly released documents reveal that Barrack’s efforts were more serious and advanced than previously known.

“The American people deserve to know the facts about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the president’s personal friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, said in a statement on Monday.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to questions. The White House and multiple federal agencies did not cooperate with the committee’s investigation. Trump has spent the past several days tweeting insults at Cummings.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s cronies knew from the beginning that this was the business opportunity of a lifetime.  Trump himself is an unimaginative, penny-ante conman who inherited a fortune so his corrupt ambitions are more limited. Nonetheless, he’s monetized everything from t-shirts to selling access through his hotels and golf clubs. But there’s little doubt that he’s already got plans to be cut in after he’s out of office.

Update: There are a number of angles on this Barrack story:

UAE enlisted businessman to spy on Trump White House

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