Skip to content

Month: December 2019

“more than enough proof exists for the House to impeach” by tristero

Published by tristero on December 11, 2019

“more than enough proof exists for the House to impeach” 

by tristero

No kidding, but it’s important to have the Washington Post say so, and so clearly:

…it is our view that more than enough proof exists for the House to impeach Mr. Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, based on his own actions and the testimony of the 17 present and former administration officials who courageously appeared before the House Intelligence Committee…

We take no pleasure in recommending the president’s impeachment and are aware of the considerable costs and risks: further dividing and inflaming our politics; turning impeachment into one more tool of partisan warfare; perhaps giving Mr. Trump unwarranted aid in his reelection effort. But the House must make its decision based on the facts and merits, setting aside unpredictable second-order effects.

That is particularly true because, unlike any previous president, Mr. Trump has refused all cooperation with the congressional inquiry. He has prevented the testimony of a dozen present or former senior officials and the release of documents by the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and three Cabinet departments. 

The House Intelligence Committee’s report rightly warns that “this unprecedented campaign of obstruction” poses a serious threat to U.S. democracy. “The damage to our system of checks and balances . . . will be long-lasting and potentially irrevocable if the President’s ability to stonewall Congress goes unchecked.” 

Congress prepared an article of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon for a less comprehensive refusal to cooperate. Mr. Trump’s actions demand that Congress again act to protect a foundation of U.S. democracy.

I too take no pleasure that, as with Nixon, the United States has a criminal for president (and who has turned so many members of his administration into his criminal accomplices). However, I am unapologetically glad and relieved that Trump will be held accountable for at least a portion of the many, many crimes he has committed while in office.

Personally, I wish he was also being impeached for the cagings, for the denial of healthcare to sick children, for the pardons of Arpaio and the war criminals, and for the obstruction/coverup of the Russia investigation — all of which clearly rise to the level of impeachable offenses.

To Republican enablers of Trump in Congress who still, somewhere, have something resembling an ember of decency left:

If you think this is the worst Trump has done (or will do) and that the rest of it won’t come out, you are sorely mistaken.

He will take you down with him. So get out now. Vote to impeach.

Will the Senate muster the cojones to deny Trump his show rtial?

Published by digby on December 11, 2019

Will the Senate muster the cojones to deny Trump his show trial?


by digby

 I don’t know how this will come out, but I wrote about the underlying tactic for Salon yesterday. I talk about how these disinformation campaigns work and how having to publicly rebut them actually makes them gain currency. It’s a very difficult problem.

CNN reports on the current state of play:

President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are both looking ahead to the Senate impeachment trial, but there is a growing divide between the two over what that trial should look like, CNN has learned.


In conversations with the White House, the Kentucky Republican has made clear he hopes to end the trial as soon as he can, an effort to both get impeachment off his lap and protect his conference from potentially damaging votes should the process break out into partisan warfare. That will include a continuous whip count until McConnell feels he has the votes to acquit the President and end the show. He has even floated a 10-day minimum during these talks, one person said.

But the show is exactly what Trump wants. He’s made clear to advisers privately that rather than end the trial as quickly as possible, he is hoping for a dramatic event, according to two people familiar with his thinking. He wants Hunter Biden, Rep. Adam Schiff and the whistleblower to testify. He wants the witnesses to be live, not clips of taped depositions. And he’s hoping to turn it into a spectacle, which he thinks is his best chance to hurt Democrats in the election.

Democrats introduce two articles of impeachment against Trump
People close to the President say this is because he has been sitting back and watching as current and former aides testified for hours before lawmakers about his behavior that they described as inappropriate, problematic and potentially dangerous.

Infuriated, Trump has been told he will have his day to defend himself soon, one person said.
Both the White House and McConnell’s office declined to comment.


Speaking to reporters Tuesday, McConnell said he did not foresee the Senate taking up the impeachment matter before the holidays — meaning the trial is likely to begin early next year.
He said a decision on hearing from witnesses live, as opposed to on taped depositions, would come after hearing the opening argument in the matter.

Any difference of strategic opinion is as much a reflection of the fluid nature on what a Senate trial will entail, multiple people involved said. McConnell himself has repeatedly said publicly that at this point, there simply isn’t an answer as to the length, structure or potential witnesses until the House moves further along with its articles of impeachment. For the moment, these people say, ideas or specific positions on how a trial should go are just that: ideas and opinions. The final form will likely be dictated by where McConnell’s 53-member conference stands on the issue in the weeks ahead.

McConnell is also planning to meet with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer at some point soon to see if a bipartisan resolution laying out the rules of the road — akin to what was agreed to during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial — is possible. Such a resolution might address many of the elements that remain clear unknowns at the moment.

But Trump’s position is the opposite of what some Republican senators, including some of Trump’s closest allies on the Capitol Hill, are advising at this point. In closed-door meetings and phone calls over the course of the last month, several Republican senators have warned Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, not to “turn the Senate into a circus,” according to one Republican senator. A source familiar with the matter said there was no daylight between Trump and Cipollone on the trial.

Instead, there has been a concerted push to allow both sides — the House Democratic managers and the White House defense team — to present their case, then quickly move to a vote to end the proceedings. It would give enough time for moderate Republicans to see it as a fulsome and fair process, while shielding the conference from divisive votes on potential witnesses, one person involved with internal GOP discussions said.

After House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump on Tuesday, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the move “does not hurt the President, it hurts the American people, who expect their elected officials to work on their behalf to strengthen our Nation.” 
“The President will address these false charges in the Senate and expects to be fully exonerated, because he did nothing wrong,” Grisham added.

While it was initially unclear if that meant Trump himself wanted to testify, a White House source familiar said the line was intended to convey that the President’s case will be made through his lawyers. This person said there aren’t plans as of now for Trump to play a direct role.

Well that’s a relief. It would certainly be unfaaaair for anyone but Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and (probably) Hillary Clinton and Christopher Steele to appear sincethis whole thing is about how they conspired with Ukraine to frame Russia and Donald Trump.

.

The Inspector General’s Report is clear: the FBI had an authorized purpose to open its investigation

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

The Inspector General’s Report is clear: the FBI had an authorized purpose to open its investigation

by digby

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that

“[T’he FBI had an authorized purpose when it opened Crossfire Hurricane — the investigation into the Trump campaign — to obtain information about, or protect against, a national security threat or federal crime.  We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions …”

That report is the result of an 18 month investigation, with over 170 interviews and reviews of a million pages of documents. It was thorough.

Here’s former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe months ago spelling out what they saw and why they did it:

<iframe src=”https://www.cbsnews.com/video/andrew-mccabe-tells-60-minutes-why-he-opened-investigations-involving-trump/” id=”cbsNewsVideo” allowfullscreen allow=”fullscreen” frameborder=”0″ width=”620″ height=”349″></iframe>

“I’m saying that the FBI had reason to investigate that.”

Of course they did.  Along with the chatter from Papadopoulos and elsewhere about the Russians planning to sabotage Clinton’s campaign, they had been investigating Paul Manafort for months on his illegal pro-Russia Ukraine business dealings when Trump suddenly up and hired him to be his campaign manager! If they hadn’t been suspicious they would have been derelict in their duties.

And remember, they were concurrently investigating Clinton for “her emails” AND for the Uranium One nonsense, which was “predicated” on the right wing political hit job called “Clinton Cash” by Steve Bannon’s partner. So this ridiculous hand-wringing by Barr over “investigating political actors” sure does seem to only go one way.

But there are few people sitting in jail who were involved in all this and a whole bunch of indictments of Russians who did exactly what the FBI and the Intelligence Community suspected them of doing. Because of Trump’s obstruction of justice as president all they could do was prove that the campaign had “welcomed” the Russian help, which should be impeachable all by itself.

And yes the Carter Page FISA process was deeply flawed, coming as no surprise to people who actually follow these issues and know how that happens, but it was not central to the case, had nothing to do with why they opened the investigation, took place after Page had left the Trump campaign (due to his ties to Russia. The weaknesses in tht system need to be fixed — and have needed to be fixed for a long time, although until now the Republicans were opposed nearly across the board. I hope they all see the need to give some money to the ACLU not that they are born again civil libertarians.

.

If only it were bipartisan!

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

If only it were bipartisan!


by digby

This piece by Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post just nails it:

You bet I would love to support impeachment! Nothing would delight me more — if it were just bipartisan, which unfortunately it’s not, because I have vowed to oppose it at all costs. This is sure an unfortunate coincidence. I keep asking: Why isn’t there bipartisan support for this? I could support it, if only I were not against it — which I am, vehemently, and will hear no reason to change my mind. A most ingenious paradox!

If only these proceedings had my support, I would support them, but they don’t, and there we are. If only this were not a witch hunt (I declared it a witch hunt from the outset), I would consider it legitimate. There is, clearly, such a thing as a legitimate procedure: It is one that I do not oppose.

I should maybe mention now that I would oppose any impeachment procedure against this president, on the grounds that (a) people voted for him, and I do not wish to disrespect them, which impeaching him would do, and (b) previously people described him as “highly impeachable” and “the kind of guy who just screams ‘impeach me,’” and they uttered phrases such as “Impeach the [expletive]” and so now that they are impeaching him, de facto, or perhaps ipso facto, it cannot be fair! People are not allowed to be right about how someone’s presidency will turn out. If, in the end, he did commit technically a high crime or misdemeanor, it is really their fault, for not believing in him, and I am not going to reward their bad behavior.

We must consider the facts. Alas, the facts are in dispute, coincidentally again by me. So, there we are. Who can say what’s true? I understand you to be saying that a certain set of things are demonstrably true, but to that I say, “What if they weren’t? Also, think about President Andrew Johnson.”

Such a shame! I’m so saddened by this. Because I really, I truly want to give impeachment a fair shake, you know. I would! I just wish this process had support from both sides, as the wolf said when the sheep suggested “not eating the sheep” as a plan. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of thing on which we are going to agree.

It is your fault that this impeachment process is not bipartisan, and you ought to feel bad. If I had not vowed that this process was illegitimate and I would oppose it, I would consider it legitimate, and support it. It is your fault that I won’t, for starting this process, instead of waiting for me to start it.

Which I would have! If the president were a Democrat.

So, so right. 

.

Who was prepared to start impeachment proceedings right after the election?

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

Who was prepared to start impeachment proceedings right after the election?


by digby

As you listen to the Republicans clutch their pearls and rend their garments over the fact that some Democrats wanted to impeach Trump since the early days of his presidency over the Russian collusion, think about this:

November 3, 2016 NYT editorial, five days before the election:

Rudy Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s most zealous acolytes, echoed this cry to carry the battle forward into a Clinton administration. “I guarantee you in one year she’ll be impeached and indicted,” Mr. Giuliani promised Iowa voters this week. “It’s just going to happen. We’re going to sort of vote for a Watergate.”

Trump, of course, was making the same argument. After Comey made his inane decision to re-open the emails case, Trump started saying every day on the trail that voting for Clinton would mean that we would have a constitutional crisis because she would be under investigation.

And they were right. She would have been. Indeed, they wanted to continue it even after she lost. And Trump still wants to “lock her up!”

.

Why is Barr doing this? To ensure the authorities don’t try to stop the 2020 interference

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

Why is Barr doing this? To ensure the authorities don’t try to stop the 2020 interference



by digby

I’ll just leave this here for now. Let’s just be clear, though. The only reason Barr is going to such lengths is to allow Donald Trump to cheat again without fear of anyone trying to stop him. If you see the full interview, you will see that he pulls a full Sergeant Schultz over Ukraine, acting like he hasn’t even thought about it and doesn’t see any problem with it.

He is ensuring that no one with any government investigative tools will look into anything Trump is doing. I suspect he will not have the same issue with anyone looking into his opponents. He certainly seems to be fine with a foreign government doing so at the president’s behest, under threat of losing US support:

Aaaaand: The Russian government agrees:

Here’s the article from NBC. You can see more of the interview there. It’s utterly mind-blowing. Barr is something else:

Attorney General William Barr said he still believes the FBI may have operated out of “bad faith” when it investigated whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, and he contends the FBI acted improperly by continuing the investigation after Donald Trump took office. 

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Barr essentially dismissed the findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor, John Durham, will have the last word on the matter.

“I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said. “I think there were gross abuses …and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.” 

“I think that leaves open the possibility that there was bad faith.” 

Barr’s blistering criticism of the FBI’s conduct in the Russia investigation, which went well beyond the errors outlined in the inspector general report, is bound to stoke further controversy about whether the attorney general is acting in good faith, or as a political hatchet man for Trump. 

Inspector General Michael Horowitz, after reviewing a million documents and interviewing 100 people, concluded that he “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open” the investigations into Trump campaign aides. 

But Barr argued that Horowitz didn’t look very hard, and that the inspector general accepted the FBI’s explanations at face value. 

“All he said was, people gave me an explanation and I didn’t find anything to contradict it … he hasn’t decided the issue of improper motive,” Barr said. “I think we have to wait until the full investigation is done.” 

Barr said he stood by his assertion that the Trump campaign was spied on, noting that the FBI used confidential informants who recorded conversations with Trump campaign officials. 

“It was clearly spied upon,” he said. “That’s what electronic surveillance is … going through people’s emails, wiring people up.” 

Barr portrayed the Russia investigation as a bogus endeavor that was foisted on Trump, rather than something undertaken by career civil servants who were concerned about whether a foreign power had compromised a political campaign. 

“From a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state … both to spy on political opponents but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of an election,” Barr said. He added that this was the first time in history that “counterintelligence techniques,” were used against a presidential campaign. 

Barr said that presidential campaigns are frequently in contact with foreigners, contradicting the comments of numerous political professionals who have said for two years that there is rarely, if ever, a reason for a presidential campaign to be in touch with Russians. 

Barr added, “There was and never has been any evidence of collusion and yet this campaign and the president’s administration has been dominated by this investigation into what turns out to be completely baseless.” 

But the biggest outrage, Barr said, is that the FBI’s “case collapsed after the election and they never told the court and they kept on getting these renewals.” 

 The inspector general report does not say the FBI’s Russia case collapsed after the election. It does say that the FBI interviewed some of the sources for the dossier written by a British operative, who raised questions about his reporting. But by then, the investigation had moved well beyond anything in the dossier.

I will have a lot more on this later.

.

They get the job done

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

They get the job done

by digby

By the way, this article about how two housekeepers took on the president — and revealed that his company employed undocumented immigrants is just fascinating. We even find out what kind of make-up Trump uses to create his complexion’s lovely orange hue.

These rich people may not see the immigrant servants who clean up after them as human beings, but they are. And they see everything.


.

All the president’s alchemists by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 10, 2019

All the president’s alchemists
by Tom Sullivan

Q: Who said the whistle blower’s report got everything wrong?
A: President Trump.

Q: Who claimed the FBI spied on his presidential campaign?
A: President Trump.

Both the House impeachment inquiry and a report issued Monday by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General have debunked those claims.

False claims by this president could fill volumes. Few of those claims are justiciable. Fewer still because he refuses to testify under oath to what he knew and when he knew it.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) appropriated that formulation from the Nixon-Watergate investigation to make a sharp point about just how much we know do about Donald Trump’s actions on Ukraine. Swalwell used his five minutes of questioning in the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing to ask Democratic counsel Daniel S. Goldman a rapid series of questions with a two-word answer (watch the clip for the full exchange):

“Mr. Goldman, who sent Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to smear Joe Biden?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“Who fired the anti-corruption ambassador in Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“Who ordered his own chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to withhold critical military assistance for Ukraine?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“Who refused to meet with President Zelensky in the Oval Office?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“Who personally asked President Zelensky to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“Who stood on the White House lawn and confirmed that he wanted Ukraine to investigate Vice President Biden?” Swalwell asked. “President Trump,” Goldman replied.

“As to anything that we do not know in this investigation, who has blocked us from knowing it?” asked Swalwell. “President Trump and the White House,” Goldman said.

“So as it relates to President Trump,” Swalwell concluded, “is he an incidental player or a central player in this scheme?”

“President Trump,” Goldman said, “is the central player in this scheme.”

What really ought to be knotting Trump’s gut is that his Republican “allies” in Congress offer no defense of his actions. But they complain endlessly about the “unfair” process. They decry the lack of “fact witnesses” to Trump’s alleged misdeeds while demanding testimony from Joe and Hunter Biden, who witnessed none of them.

They will respond to the IG report in similar fashion. The IG report clears the FBI of wrongdoing in opening its Russia investigation. Trump’s defenders will focus instead on errors made in the process because the central findings are stated so plainly (pg. 410). Opening the Russian counterintelligence investigation “was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision.” Furthermore, “we found no evidence that the FBI attempted to place any CHSs within the Trump campaign, recruit members of the Trump campaign as CHSs, or task CHSs to report on the Trump campaign. [CHS: confidential human source]

None of this will prevent the president and his men from hard-selling “alternative facts,” a moniker for the Trump administration presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway coined nearly three years ago. No sooner had the IG report hit the streets than Department of Justice head Attorney General Bill Barr issued a statement disagreeing with the findings of his own department, similar except in timing to his prebuttal of the Mueller report this spring.

Republican members repeatedly complained about Democrats relying so heavily on testimony by European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Beside those on the infamous July 25 call, Sondland was the only Trump direct report to testify, they well know, because Trump refuses to allow his subpoenaed subordinates to testify.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and other Trump allies loudly and proudly repeat conspiracy theories and alternative facts as if red-faced repetition will turn lies into truth. Michelle Goldberg last week suggested ranking Republican Rep. Doug Collins’s insistence “There are no set facts here” amounts to “epistemological nihilism.” But their belief that loudly chanting lies enough times will transform them into truth is also a kind of epistemological alchemy.

Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires by tristero

Published by tristero on December 10, 2019

Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires

by tristero

In the first days after 9/11, I emailed other New Yorkers that I was opposed to any invasion of Afghanistan. I said that the last thing any country should do is what their enemy clearly wants them to do. And it was obvious, at least to me, that bin Laden was doing everything possible to provoke Bush to invade Afghanistan? Why? Because bin Laden thought it would spark an Islamist revolution against the US and other Western governments.*

Bush, of course, was too incompetent and bloodthirsty to resist bin Laden’s bait. So sure enough, he invaded Afghanistan. This is the result:

All told, the cost of nearly 18 years of war in Afghanistan will amount to more than $2 trillion. Was the money well spent? 

There is little to show for it. 

Could an American president, after 9/11, not invaded Afghanistan? That is, was it politically feasible to do so? In my opinion, yes, but it would have taken a great statesman to make the non-invasion case to the American people.

But assuming an Afghanistan invasion to be inevitable (as stupid as it would be), there were surely ways to avoid the catastrophe Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, and the rest of that sick crew created. But incompetence was rampant in foreign and military policy under Bush. And here, $2 trillion dollars later, we are.

*By the way, many of the New Yorkers I was in contact with agreed that invading Afghanistan was the height of stupidity back in September 2001. They included people who lived less than 10 blocks from the World Trade Center.

Some more highlights

Published by digby on December 10, 2019

Some more highlights

by digby

I’m sure most of you have better things to do than sit in front of the TV and watch these hearings from start to finish. But before you let the pundits tell you how boring and useless they all were, here are a few highlights.

First, the best one of the five minute rounds, in my opinion:

Swalwell: How many times has Trump spoken to Putin? 16. How many times has he met with Zelensky at the WH? Zero. Who is he meeting with tomorrow. Does withholding aid help any country?

Goldman: Russia.

Swalwell: Who sent Rudy to Ukraine. Who fired anti-corruption Ambassador Yovanovitch. Who refused to meet with Z in oval office? Who ignored NSC anti-corruption talking points? Who personally asked Z to investigate Biden?

Goldman: Trump Trump Trump Trump

Now for the comic relief. Mostly the Republicans whined and cried and had temper tantrums. Everything is just so UNFAAAIIIRRRR.

And then there was this gross exchange:

.