Month: November 2019

The second most dangerous man in America

by digby

The top prosecutor of the United States does not make even a pretense of being apolitical. https://t.co/bebkRqWJW5

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) November 16, 2019

He doesn’t make even a pretense of being rational. The Federalist Society gave him a standing ovation.

Read all about your lunatic Attorney General who can be counted on to put everything he’s got into ensuring that Donald Trump is never brought to justice and his critics are harassed, intimidated, purged and possibly prosecuted.

This man is just as dangerous as Trump.

To read Bill Barr’s speeches is to see conservative arguments once made with some complexity made crudely; and to see conservative arguments that once usefully challenged progressive legal orthodoxy now used to uphold an increasingly authoritarian variant of conservatism.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 16, 2019

It really wasn’t hard to see this coming …

Here’s the full video in case you need to get your blood pumping today:

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They got Roger Stone

by digby

I thought this twitter thread by Roger Stone documentary biographer succinctly captures the import of the Stone verdict.

I have a lot of thoughts about Roger’s conviction and this thread won’t do them justice. But let me try.
It’s hard having spent 5 1/2 years and hundreds upon hundreds of hours with Roger not to feel compassion for him at this, the worst moment in his life. Above all, I feel sorry for his wife, daughter and family. They don’t deserve to suffer for Roger’s downfall. 

That being said, Roger’s conviction today was completely of his own making. This was not the deep state taking him down. This was the very easiest possible case for the prosecution to prove because Roger put all of his threats and lies in writing. 

Roger’s crimes were completely unnecessary and served no purpose other than to puff up and protect his relationship with Trump. He didn’t lie to Congress for any logical reason and it was utterly nonsensical for him to threaten Randy Credico. 

As @dandoesdocs, @dylan_bank and I showed in our film, Roger has a long history of being his own worst enemy. The crimes that led to his conviction are the most stunning example of all of Roger’s tendancy to self-destruct. No one brought Roger’s downfall upon him but himself. 

Roger’s career has thrived in part because of his galling hubris. And as anyone who has studied Greek tragedy knows, hubris catches up with everyone in the end. 

There is something strikingly anti-climactic about Roger going down because of these specific crimes, which, compared to the magnitude of the irreparable damage he has done to our democracy, are rather small bore. 

Roger’s conviction on these charges is the equivalent of Al Capone going down for tax evasion. 

Roger was integral in creating the K Street Swamp, opening the floodgates for unlimited money to destroy our politics, poisoning our discourse with negative advertising, undermining faith in our electoral system, and weaponizing the media to spread disinformation. 

Roger played a major role in breaking our political system in America and because it is now so broken is a large part of the reason that he was never held accountable for the structural damage he has done to it. 

There was a part of me that thought, even in the face of such a powerful case, that Roger would somehow escape in the end and get the last, nefarious laugh. Perhaps Trump will pardon him and that will still be the case. 

It’s important to note that Roger’s crimes were motivated in large part because of his desire to remain important in Trump’s eyes during the campaign and then to remain loyal to President Trump, clearly to Roger’s own disastrous detriment. 

One would think that Trump would reward Roger for his decades of undying loyalty by granting him a pardon. But there is certainly ample reason to doubt that this will be the case.
mentions I wonder how much faith Roger puts in Trump’s loyalty. My guess is not a lot. 

The x factor here is what does Roger know about Trump that can damage Trump at this point. Few people know the dark shadows of Trump’s pre-Presidential life better than Roger. But is there anything Roger knows that is so problematic that Trump fears it coming out? 

I suspect that the answer to this question will determine whether Stone gets a presidential pardon, not his decades of loyalty to Trump. 

To discover more about Roger’s singular life and the chilling effect he’s had upon your life, watch #GetMeRogerStone on Netflix, which I co-directed with @dandoesdocs and @dylan_bank.

I don’t believe in karma generally but in this case it’s hard not to.

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Trump’s Double Oh Zeroes

by digby

Here’s Trump saying last month of Parnas & Fruman, “I don’t know them. I don’t know about them. I don’t know what they do.” CNN now reports Trump met privately w/them late last year & tasked them with pressuring the Ukrainian govt to investigate the Bidens https://t.co/BSbSyTmV9M pic.twitter.com/z0TZuMBQlh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 16, 2019

People …

Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev  Parnas and Igor  Fruman. 

In the picture, which Parnas posted on social media, he and Fruman are seen smiling alongside Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.

At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting.

Word of the encounter in the White House last December, which has not been previously reported, is further indication that Trump knew Parnas and Fruman, despite Trump publicly stating that he did not on the day after the two men were arrested at Dulles International Airport last month.

Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that “the big guy,” as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“James Bond mission”

In the days immediately following the meeting, Parnas insinuated to the two people he confided in that he clearly believed he’d been given a special assignment by the President; like some sort of “James Bond mission,” according to one of the people.

To Parnas, the chain of command was clear: Giuliani would issue the President’s directives while Parnas, who speaks fluent Russian, would be an on-the-ground investigator alongside Fruman, who has numerous business contacts in Ukraine.

“Parnas viewed the assignment as a great crusade,” says one of the people in whom Parnas confided. “He believed he was doing the right thing for Trump.”

The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comment to a series of questions regarding the meeting and Trump’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman.

Giuliani, through his lawyer, Robert Costello, denies that any private meeting took place that night at the White House, saying it was a mere handshake and photo opportunity. Costello also rejects Parnas’ claims of being put on a “James Bond” style mission, saying that Parnas is “no Sean Connery,” and that he suffers from “delusions of grandeur.”

Joseph A. Bondy, a lawyer for Parnas, told CNN, “Mr. Parnas at all times believed that he was acting only on behalf of the President, as directed by his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and never on behalf of any Ukrainian officials.”

A lawyer for Fruman declined to comment for this article.

In the past, Giuliani has been circumspect about how he became associated with Parnas and Fruman. In previous conversations with CNN, Giuliani has refused to identify his contact, saying simply that a “well-known investigator” connected him with Parnas.

Ken McCallion, a former federal prosecutor with numerous high-level clients in Ukraine, including former and current government officials, told CNN that he’s heard a similar story about the Hanukkah party encounter. Parnas told some of McCallion’s clients and contacts in Ukraine about the encounter. “Parnas told everyone in Ukraine about the White House meeting. He was adamant he was ‘their guy’ — that they chose him to be their ambassador in Ukraine,” McCallion said.

And in February this year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. During that meeting, they extended Poroshenko an invitation for a State dinner at the White House, if he would commit to publicly opening investigations in Ukraine.

The December meeting at the White House is not the first report of Parnas and the President discussing Ukraine. The Washington Post has reported that in April 2018 at a small fundraising dinner in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, Parnas told Trump that the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was unfriendly to him and his interests. Trump, according to the Post report, which cited people familiar with Parnas’ account of the event, suggested that Yovanovitch should be fired.

A year later in May 2019, Yovanovitch was recalled from her post.

Thee’s more. A whole lot more.

If you have wondered how it is that Putin, Erdogan, Sisi, Orban, MBS etc find it so easy to manipulate Trump, this proves once again that it’s exactly what it seems to be. He’s dumb as a post.

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Roger Cohen’s Faulty Logic 

by tristero

Roger Cohen says the way to beat the “brute” — ie., Trump — is for Democrats to convince “sane, moderate Republicans” to vote for a Democratic candidate, He has in mind a Democrat (sic) like Bloomberg or, in a real pinch, Biden.

As an example of the type of voter he has in mind, Cohen found a white, retired 78-year-old pharmaceutical executive and Republican politician who voted for Trump because: (1) the fellow did not like the “scheming” Clintons; (2) he did not like the way the media mocked Trump during the primaries.

Those are not sane reasons to vote for anyone, let alone Donald Trump. Reason #1 is delusional: the Clintons are schemers, compared to Trump???? Reason #2 is simply a vindictive, self-destructive non-sequitur,

This very same exemplar of a sane maoderate the Dems should appeal to also admires Trump  for (1) his energy; (2) his trade war with China;  (3) his tax cuts that benefit corporations; and (4) Trump’s “revitalizing impact on American ambition,”

At least two of these reasons (1 and 4) are objectively nuts. The other two are (in addition to being not entirely rational) hard right/libertarian obsessions. .

In short, Cohen has found not a “sane, moderate Republican” but merely one more wooly-brained hardliner with pretensions of thoughtfulness who, given the chance, would gladly vote for a Ted Cruz over any Democrat, including Bloomberg or Biden.

If this is a “sane, moderate Republican,” I see no point whatsoever in Democrats trying to appeal to such people.

Why it was necessary to smear her
by Tom Sullivan

Testimony Friday by former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was dramatic and powerful, and made more so by the acting president’s attack on her in real time via Twitter.

….They call it “serving at the pleasure of the President.” The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First! With all of that, however, I have done FAR more for Ukraine than O.— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019

Donald Trump sent a signal to Yovanovitch and to follow-up witnesses in these hearings that they might expect a similar digital broadside from the most powerful insecure man in the world. Former independent counsel Ken Starr described Trump’s action as “extraordinarily poor judgment” and “quite injurious.” Even Chris Wallace of Trump-friendly Fox News observed, “It does raise the possibility of witness intimidation or witness tampering as a new charge here.”

Trump removed Yovanovitch as ambassador to Ukraine earlier this year after what she described as a “campaign of disinformation” against her by his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani’s associates, and former conservative opinion contributor John Solomon.

Yovanovitch refuted under oath accusations she had bad-mouthed Trump to embassy officials and circulated a “do not prosecute” list to Yuriy Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general of Ukraine. “These attacks were being repeated by the president himself and his son,” she said.

While Trump’s real-time attack on Yovanovitch drew the most attention Friday, a moment later in the hearing seemed to me more indelible.

Trump’s defenders on Capitol Hill repeated Trump’s assertion Friday that ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president and can be removed at any time. At the end of his questioning, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) repeated the observation that any president has “the right to make his own foreign policy” and his own decisions, President Trump included.

At the end of Wenstrup’s time, Yovanovitch asked to make her own observation about the president’s prerogatives:

“What I’d like to say is, while I obviously don’t dispute that the President has the right to withdraw an ambassador at any time for any reason, but what I do wonder is why it was necessary to smear my reputation … falsely?”

A therapist friend once spoke of an encounter with a man at her condo association meeting. She stood up to raise a question about some detail in changes to the association rules under discussion. Out of nowhere, this man got up and launched into a personal attack on her. Had she not read the memo? Was it not clear to her? Etc., etc.

When he finished, she looked him coolly in the eye and asked, “Do you have a need to have an argument with me tonight?”

He shriveled, sat down, and the meeting continued.

Notice that Trump had not felt the need to give career diplomats William Taylor and George Kent the same treatment on Wednesday. But Yovanovich, a woman, a smart, accomplished one at that, was a target of opportunity to be put in her place. Somewhere under his heel.

Why was it necessary to smear her instead of simply dismissing her? Because even as President of the United States Trump is a small-minded man of low intelligence with an inferiority complex the size of Manhattan. He self-medicates his insecurity by demeaning everyone around him, or by browbeating them into demeaning themselves. (See: Republican congressional caucus.) Capable women threaten him. As a misogynist too, naturally he felt a need to smear her.

In Friday’s Twitter feed, I noticed someone from another country, I think, using Adam Serwer’s “cruelty is the point” to describe Trump’s actions. That understanding has gone global.

Blogger Susie Madrak (help her out here, please) observed:

I almost feel sorry for Trump. He clearly has learning disabilities and his cruel father relentlessly ridiculed him for it. But you know who else went through the same thing? Henry Winkler, who is dyslexic and by all accounts in a real mensch. Trump chose to be an asshole.— Suburban Guerrilla Ω (@SusieMadrak) November 15, 2019

I hope Democrats turn that 30-second Yovanovitch clip into a 2020 campaign ad. Women all across the country need to see it. Over and over and over.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

They’re cute. Really …:)

I’m now positive that people who claim to have seen aliens have actually just seen baby owls. pic.twitter.com/CAr65NG9qR

— Daniel Holland (@DannyDutch) November 14, 2019

Popular Mechanic:

When the video first hit the internet in 2017, multiple sources reported that construction workers stumbled across the scraggly birds, known as eastern barn owls, at a site in Visakhapatnam, capital of the south-eastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. With renewed interest in the monster birds, Popular Mechanics reached out to ornithologist Kevin McGowan of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to find out what makes them look so sinister.

“Baby barn owls are some of the freakiest-looking creatures on Earth,” McGowan says. “They start off looking kind of freaky and they stay that way until they get fully feathered.”

But what makes these particular owl chicks look so strange? Why do we have such a visceral reaction to them? And will we ever be able to sleep at night again?

First, Those Feathers!

ANDREW MILLIGAN – PA IMAGESGETTY IMAGES

McGowan suspects the barn owl chicks in the video were probably between two and three weeks old, so they don’t have the full-grown owl feathers we’re used to seeing.

“These baby barn owls, they have a lot of dense down [feathers] on them, which makes them look white,” McGowan says. They’re working on developing muscles and growing other parts of their bodies before they devote energy to forming the body, or contour feathers for which owls are known.

“There are basically two ways that birds grow up,” says McGowan. Some birds, like ducks and chicks, come out of the shell with fluffy down feathers. Most birds, he says, don’t have much in the way of the feathers when they crack open their shells. They may have a bit of the soft downy plumage, but they largely look like embryos and accumulate body feathers over time.

And once they do grow feathers, they molt.

That Face!

ARTERRAGETTY IMAGES

“Their faces are so freaky, too,” McGowan says. Most people would be right to assume that owls would have a round, spherical face, but they have a flat skull, which is compressed on the side. If you look closely at a barn owl’s face, you’ll notice it’s divided in half.

Barn owls have excellent hearing, and their entire face, McGowan says, is constructed not unlike a giant set of ears, built for funneling sound into their aural opening.

The owl’s eyes tell an incredible evolutionary tale, too. Most prey animals—think other sparrows, deer, and rabbits—have eyes on the side of their head so they can easily swing their neck around and spot whoever is hunting them. Predators, on the other hand—think jaguars, owls, and, yes, humans—have eyes on the front of their head.

“That really comes out with those freaky little youngsters,” says McGowan. “Their eyes just aren’t where you think they ought to be.” Owls swivel their necks because they can’t move their eyes inside their eye sockets.

That Posture!

TWITTER

Posture is key. The owls are standing there with their wings down to their sides, which makes them look a bit like humanoid creatures. “We’re not used to seeing birds in that way,” says McGowan. “They look exactly like the monsters that people create in science fiction.” If you’re picturing the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, or Star Trek, you’re not too far off. Many of them have human-like qualities.

McGowan says these particular birds look startled, so they’re likely backed away from the observer (understandable). “Owls do have very long legs,” he says. “They do look much more upright than I would expect. Most of the time, you can expect to find owls perched on a branch, sitting on their chest or hunched down on their feather-obscured legs.”

Those Creeps!

MARCO BERTORELLOGETTY IMAGES

McGowan says there’s evidence to suggest our earliest ghost stories may have been inspired by the silent fliers. Barn owls, which have bright-white bellies, are notoriously good at soaring silently through the air, flapping their wings without a sound. Imagine seeing their beady eyes and wide stretch of white plumage flying out of a darkened barn or cemetery crypt.

“You can easily see why people thought that the places were haunted,” McGowan says.

The Takeaway

Barn owls are incredible creatures—they’re one of a handful of land-based birds that can be found on six of the seven continents. (Some races of barn owl, like those found in the northeastern part of the U.S., are endangered, according to Cornell Lab’s website.) They love to hide and nest in the rafters of barns and other abandoned buildings, typically hunt mice and other small rodents, and are known for their shrill screech—seriously, it’s terrifying.

But they aren’t aliens and they aren’t ghosts. Maybe they’re just like us: looking for love, rodents, and a beautiful, rustic barn to settle down in somewhere upstate.

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Meanwhile in Bizarro World

by digby

Hannity:

I will tell you that there are some rock stars that are emerging here for the Republicans. I mean, can I just say Yovanovitch “I was devastated that the President, you know, didn’t like me, I was devastated.” I’m like, OK, um, There are so many people that hate me. I just don’t understand snowflake-ism. Get over it! Not everyone in life is going to like you, too bad.

You want a snowflake? I’ll give you a snowflake:

Look, I did nothing wrong. I was spied on. What they did to me was illegal. It was illegal on the other side. I did nothing wrong. Impeachment is a very unfair thing because nothing I did was wrong. Witch hunt! Hoax! Nobody has ever been treated as unfairly as me in the whole history of the world! Waaaaaa! — President Donald Trump approximately 7,567 times over the past three years.

He never stops whining.

Meanwhile, Hannity is lying, of course. Yovanovitch wasn’t devastated because Trump didn’t “like” her. She was devastated that he was smearing her and threatening her. There’s nothing snowflakey about that. He’s a thug who destroys everything he touches. Even his friends.

Here’s some more smearing from just today:

….A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2019

As for Yovanovich, this says it all:

Historic scene. After hearing concludes, the room erupts in applause for Ambassador Yovanovich’s courage as Republicans complain. pic.twitter.com/tYxTvb92RY

— Jesse Lee (@JesseCharlesLee) November 15, 2019

Civility 

by tristero

Whenever it appears that the Republicans are so profoundly on the ropes that they will collapse, the NY Times goes out of its way to both-side things. Their hackiest reporters go to diners in the boonies to take the pulse of Real Americans (once, just once, they should come to the Metro Diner here in NYC and ask us what we think of Trump). And when things start getting real bad for the GOP, the Times starts publishing letters like this one:

To the Editor:
Re “And in This Corner, Wearing a Red Name Tag …” (news article, Nov. 4), about events nationwide that bring people together in an effort to bridge the partisan divide: 

As a Republican living in New York, I would like nothing more than to find a group like this gathering to discuss differing views civilly. I find myself checking all around me in a hush-hush manner before I express my support for President Trump’s policies. Looks of disgust and shock are what make me a closet Republican. I would love to “come out” and find some understanding and acceptance. 

Sonia Schwartz
Valley Stream, N.Y.

Psycho-president loves him some war criminals

by digby

He wanted to give the death penalty to innocent people.

Nobody knows exactly when he plans to do this — he might have done it by the time you read this. But he’s decided:

President Trump is expected to intervene in three military justice cases involving service members charged with war crimes any day, issuing pardons or otherwise clearing them of wrongdoing and preventing the U.S. military from bringing the same charges again, three U.S. officials said Thursday.

White House and Pentagon officials have been working out the details for days, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The details were not all clear but are expected to involve executive clemency, in which Trump can pardon someone or shorten a prison sentence through commutation.

The actions have been anticipated by U.S. officials and advocates for the service members for weeks, and decried by some military justice experts for what they see as a subversion of the legal process. But those experts also acknowledge that, as commander in chief, Trump has broad authority in the cases to act as he sees fit.

I know he hates all the Bush-Obama wars because they’re not the big, good wars that a real man would lead to a glorious victory. But if there is anyone out there who thinks he isn’t a psychopathic warmonger in his dreams they need to think again. He loves war crimes and war criminals. He celebrated torture, even beheading and mass shootings, during the campaign. If the worst happened and we somehow end up at war, you don’t even want to think about what he’s going to do.

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“Barr letter” redux?

by digby

Carter Page and his stupid hat

It looks like we’re going to have yet another DOJ disaster:

President Donald Trump met with Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone in an Oval Office meeting Thursday afternoon in which the so-called Horowitz report came up in conversation, two sources told CNN.

The animated discussions were captured by TV crews outside the Oval Office on the South Lawn of the White House awaiting the President’s departure for Louisiana. Trump held a campaign rally in Louisiana ahead of Saturday’s gubernatorial election in that state.

The Horowitz report refers to a probe by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on the opening of the Russia investigation. Horowitz’s office is expected to wrap up its investigation soon.
Horowitz began his investigation in early 2018, centered on the applications submitted by the FBI in 2016 and 2017 to a secretive surveillance court seeking permission to eavesdrop on Carter Page, the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

The surveillance warrants, which cite a dossier of unverified intelligence on the Trump campaign collected by former British spy Christopher Steele, have since been released and used by Trump and his allies to stand up allegations that the early investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election was driven by politics.

Barr said Wednesday that the report is “imminent,” and confirmed CNN’s reporting that witnesses mentioned in the draft are now being given an opportunity to offer comments.

“It’s been reported and it’s my understanding that it’s imminent,” Barr said at an unrelated law enforcement event in Memphis, Tennessee. “A number of people who are mentioned in the report are having an opportunity right now to comment on how they’re quoted in the report and after that process is over, which should be very short, the report will be issued. That’s what the inspector general himself has suggested.”

CNN reported on Tuesday that multiple witnesses who interviewed with the inspector general’s office have been asked in recent days to come in and review portions of the draft report. Witnesses have set up times for the reviews over the next two weeks, people familiar with the situation said, meaning that the report could be released in the days before or after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Trump gave a rather perfunctory performance at his rally in Louisiana last night. He seemed distracted. I might have expected him to telegraph good news but he didn’t. On the other hand, it’s possible that they talked to him like a dutch uncle about not letting the cat out of the bag because they are timing it to land at the perfect moment to counter the impeachment hearings.

I suppose it’s always possible that this will end up being a fair report but honestly, the safe bet is to assume otherwise at this point. Barr is Trump’s Roy Cohn. It would take a lot to convince me that he’s suddenly acting independently.