Lazy Saturday Reads: Caturday and Kavanaugh
Posted: September 8, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, David Brock, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Supreme Court, vast right wing conspiracy 37 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
I’m getting a slow start today because I’ve been having stabbing pain in my right eye from falling asleep with my face in the pillow. I don’t know why this happens. It might be because I have surgically inserted lenses in my eyes. Anyway, that’s my excuse for being so late.
You’ve probably seen this by now, but when I read it last night everything about fell into place for me. Brett Kavanaugh is the culmination of the “vast right wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton warned us about so long ago.
NBC News: I knew Brett Kavanaugh during his years as a Republican operative. Don’t let him sit on the Supreme Court, by David Brock
Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally.
Brett actually makes a cameo appearance in my memoir of my time in the GOP, “Blinded By The Right.” I describe him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch President Bill Clinton’s 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. When the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating various Clinton scandals — mouth the word “bitch.”
But there’s a lot more to know about Kavanaugh than just his Pavlovian response to Hillary’s image. Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media.
Call it Kavanaugh’s cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.
Brock details how Kavanaugh became the “designated leaker” in the Starr investigation and how used his position to weaponize right wing conspiracy theories.
Another compatriot was George Conway (now Kellyanne’s husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers — we called them “the elves” — who worked behind the scenes directing the litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the Jones team via Conway to Starr’s office — and also that Conway’s go-to man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.
That critical flow of inside information allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair.
Please read the rest if you haven’t already.
The New York Times Editorial Board weighs in on Kavanaugh: Confirmed: Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted. A perfect nominee for a president with no clear relation to the truth.
In a more virtuous world, Judge Brett Kavanaugh would be deeply embarrassed by the manner in which he has arrived at the doorstep of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
He was nominated by a president who undermines daily the nation’s democratic order and mocks the constitutional values that Judge Kavanaugh purports to hold dear.
Now he’s being rammed through his confirmation process with an unprecedented degree of secrecy and partisan maneuvering by Republican senators who, despite their overflowing praise for his legal acumen and sterling credentials, appear terrified for the American people to find out much of anything about him beyond his penchant for coaching girls’ basketball.
Perhaps most concerning, Judge Kavanaugh seems to have trouble remembering certain important facts about his years of service to Republican administrations. More than once this week, he testified in a way that appeared to directly contradict evidence in the record.
Read numerous examples of Kavanaugh’s mendacity at the link.
Kavanaugh received and used stolen Democratic emails when he worked in the Bush White House, and he’s not the least bit sorry. The Washington Post: Leahy says Kavanaugh was ‘not truthful’ about Democratic documents.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said Friday that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was “not truthful” when he denied knowing that he had received documents that Leahy said had been “stolen” from him and other Democrats.
Leahy said that emails disclosed during Kavanaugh’s nomination hearing this week buttress his case that Kavanaugh knew, or should have known, that he had received documents that Republican staffers took from a computer jointly shared with Democrats.
“There were numerous emails sent to him that made it very clear this was stolen information, including a draft letter from me,” Leahy said in an interview….
Leahy’s charge stems from an infamous episode between 2001 and 2003 when a Republican counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, learned that Democrats on the panel had put documents on a computer server shared with Republicans. Miranda said in an interview that he read them to learn about the party’s strategy on judicial nominations coming before the committee.
At the time, Kavanaugh was associate counsel in the White House and was responsible for helping to vet judicial nominees who would appear before the Judiciary Committee.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Kavanaugh lied about this affair in previous confirmation hearings.
Mother Jones: Five Times Brett Kavanaugh Appears to Have Lied to Congress While Under Oath.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has made declarations under oath during his current and past confirmation hearings that are contradicted by documents from his time as a counsel to the president and staff secretary in the George W. Bush White House. Newly released documents have undermined Kavanaugh’s declarations to the Senate Judiciary Committee, contradictions that are drawing close scrutiny from many Democrats. Kavanaugh has denied making any misleading or false statements.
His role in accessing stolen documents: In 2002, a GOP aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, stole thousands of documents belonging to the committee’s Democratic staff. At the time, Kavanaugh was a White House lawyer working on judicial nominations, which included working alongside Miranda. In 2003, President Bush nominated Kavanaugh to his current position on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals and his confirmation hearing was held in 2004—though he was not confirmed until two years later. During his 2004 hearing, Kavanaugh denied ever receiving any of the documents Miranda stole. Asked if he “ever come across memos from internal files of any Democratic members given to you or provided to you in any way?” he replied, “No.” In 2006, also under oath, he again denied ever receiving stolen documents….
Warrantless wiretapping: At a 2006 confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that he knew nothing of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, launched under President George W. Bush, until the New York Times revealed it publicly in 2005. Kavanaugh insisted he’d heard “nothing at all” about the program before that, even though he was a senior administration aide. But a September 17, 2001 email provided to the New York Times this week shows that Kavanaugh was involved in at least initial discussions about the widespread surveillance of phones that characterized the NSA program….
Torture: During the same 2006 confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh told Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that he “was not involved” in legal questions related to the detention of so-called enemy combatants. But Durbin said Thursday that records show that there are at least three recorded examples of Kavanaugh participating in discussions of Bush administration detainee policy. Kavanaugh stood by his prior answer.
Please read the rest of the examples and explanations at Mother Jones.
More interesting reads, links only:
Lisa Graves at Slate: I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About. He should be impeached, not elevated.
Just Security: Judge Kavanaugh’s Testimony on His Constitutional View of Presidential Immunity is Misleading—and It Also Clinches the Case for Recusal.
Bloomberg: DNC Lawyers Raise Prospect That Papadopoulos’s U.K. Contact May Be Dead.
The Daily Beast: We Found the ‘Plaid Shirt Guy’ Who Trolled Trump’s Rally With Hilarious Faces.
The New York Times: Trump Administration Discussed Coup Plans With Rebel Venezuelan Officers.
New York Review of Books: ‘Bless Nixon for Those Tapes’: An Interview with John Dean.
What stories have you been following?
Friday Reads: Sociopaths of a feather Gaslight together
Posted: September 7, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, Crazy Town, Trump is Insane, Trump Rally 39 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I truly have some news items today showing that every one in Trump’s orbit is extremely disturbed. I mean it too.
Okay, let’s just sorta tick off what’s actually in serious media this morning then take a deep breath while realizing these people are making policy decisions for this country that impact the entire wold.
From The NYDN: “White House officials flagged Trump’s behavior to psychiatrist last year”.
White House officials reached out to a noted Yale University psychiatrist last fall out of concern over President Trump’s increasingly erratic behavior.
Dr. Bandy Lee, who edited the best-selling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” told the Daily News Thursday the staffers contacted her because the President was “scaring” them.
Lee’s revelation comes as Trump fumes in response to an anonymous op-ed about administration insiders White House tell-all by journalist Bob Woodward that claims there are grave concerns among the highest ranks of the Trump administration about the President’s judgment.
Lee briefed a dozen lawmakers from the House and Senate last December about Trump’s fitness to be President. But lawmakers on Capitol Hill weren’t the only ones alarmed by the President’s erratic behavior, his troubling tweets or his temper.
A pair of West Wing representatives contacted her two separate times on the same day because they believed the President was “unraveling.”
“I had not mentioned this before because I did not want to confuse my role as an educator to the public,” Lee said when pressed about why she did not speak out sooner. “I thought I would be more effective by retaining my public role than getting involved in either the treatment of those who were feeling scared or in the actual intervention with the President.”
Salon first reported Lee’s claim.
Around the same time, a Trump family friend emailed her over concern for his mental health.
I didn’t watch the Rally last night but there’s all indications that it was a doozy.
And then there was this:
Trump is trying to deflect stories that accuse him of labeling southerners “Dumb” and using the slur “retarded” frequently.This is via the NYT.
“The Woodward book is a scam,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday morning about “Fear: Trump in the White House,” the new volume to be published by Bob Woodward next week. “I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up.”
In particular, Mr. Trump has denied that he called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” or a “dumb Southerner,” as the book reports. “I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing,” the president wrote earlier this week.
But, in fact, Mr. Trump has used the phrase “mentally retarded” on recorded radio shows that have been unearthed this week. And in a previously unreported incident, a journalist who used to interact with Mr. Trump during his days as a real estate developer in New York said this week that he even used the phrase “dumb southerner” to describe his own in-laws.
But then, Trump’s staff isn’t faring any better at looking sane and stable. Here’s a Woodward story about John Kelly.
https://twitter.com/JamesKosur/status/1038085932409344000
John Kelly nearly engaged in a “fistfight” with an ICE official whom President Donald Trump invited to the White House. Bob Woodward’s new book suggests that Kelly had butted heads with the official while Kelly was working as Secretary of Homeland Security.
“I can’t believe you’d let some f–king guy like this into the Oval Office,” Kelly allegedly shouted at Trump in November 2017. Kelly was referring to Chris Crane, the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union
Crane was invited into the oval office by Trump without Kelly’s knowledge. The invite was sent out after the POTUS heard Crane complaining on TV about him and other ICE agents had not been invited to the White House
The heated argument led to Kelly threatening to resign before storming out of the Oval Office. Later on, Trump told aids that it appeared Kelly and Crane were about to get into a “fistfight” over the interaction.
Crane and Kelly had previously fought over ICE’s attempts to execute an extreme plan for crackdowns on certain immigration violations — Kelly blocked the crackdown and Crane didn’t agree with the decision.
Numerous reports have suggested that the quarreling between Donald Trump and John Kelly have been ongoing and heating up for months. Kelly is expected to resign from his position in the near future.
The Kavanaugh Hearing is turning into one of the most incredible things I’ve seen in a long time. Brett Kavanaugh is a lying piece of shit. The Democrats have a strategy that’s pissing off Mitchie McConnell whose screaming “the rules” and “bad behavior” when it’s not like he hasn’t done everything possible the last 8 years to screw up all decorum, tradition and standing rules himself.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in an interview that aired Friday that Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) could face scrutiny from the Senate Ethics Committee for violating a rule that prohibits the release of confidential material.
During Thursday’s hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Booker said he was knowingly violating a Senate rule by releasing an email revealing the nominee’s views on racial profiling. After another senator on the Judiciary Committee said that could result in expulsion, Booker dared his colleagues to take that action.
It turns out that document had already been cleared for public release. But later Thursday afternoon, Booker, who is weighing a 2020 presidential bid, released what he said were 28 documents marked “committee confidential” in a defiant bid to make the confirmation process more transparent.
During a radio interview, McConnell characterized Booker’s actions as “unusual behavior” and said it “wouldn’t surprise me” if it draws the attention of the Ethics Committee.
“When you break the Senate rules, it’s something the Ethics Committee could take a look at,” McConnell told host Hugh Hewitt. “And that would be up to them to decide. But it’s routinely looked at by the Ethics Committee.”
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh seems to think birth control is “abortion-inducing” via Vice.
While the D.C. Circuit court ruled in favor of the Obama administration, denying the religious groups a chance to argue their case before the entire panel, Kavanaugh dissented from the majority.
“The question was first was this a substantial burden on their religious exercise? And it seemed to me, quite clearly, it was,” Kavanaugh explained Thursday. “They said filling out the form would make them complicit in the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to. That phrase — ”abortion-inducing drugs” — is inaccurate and, in the eyes of abortion rights advocates, incredibly telling. In their brief to the Supreme Court, which eventually heard the case, Priests for Life and its fellow plaintiffs argued that they didn’t want to “affirmatively authorize, and facilitate coverage for contraception, sterilization, abortifacients, and related education and counseling.”
Zina Bash must be trolling us all. First, she shows up in a Ruth Bader Ginsberg collar and then she trolls us with the okay (sic) hand signal once again.
Oh, and but his emails via The Daily Beast: “Newly Released Emails Show Brett Kavanaugh May Have Perjured Himself at Least Four Times”.
You can forgive Democratic senators for saying “I told you so.”
For over a month, Democrats (and this writer) have complained that the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is fatally flawed because the records of Kavanaugh’s White House tenure were being redacted by his former deputy, then redacted again by the Trump White House, then redacted a third time by Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
As a result, only 7 percent of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released to the public—compared to 99 percent of Justice Elena Kagan’s, a nominee of President Obama.
Well, so what, Republicans said. You’ve got over 400,000 pages to look at—a few more isn’t going to make a difference.
On Thursday, with the release of a half dozen emails by Grassley and several more by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the Democrats have been proven right. Brett Kavanaugh has misled the Senate at least four times, and the censored emails have been withheld not because of national security or executive privilege, but, at least in part, because they make Kavanaugh look bad.
And Booker is not backing down at all.
My Congressman was one of the folks testifying today against Kavanaugh.
There’s also still the parlor game about the anonymous op ed writer claiming to be a Senior official and White House ‘resister’. Frank Rich’s piece today is brilliant on that account. And yes, I feel like all of this should be coming from the National Enquirer or The Globe along with the Hillary adopts Alien baby stories but we’re all strangers in a strange land right now.
At least when those like Lindsey Graham espouse such a rationale they attach their names to it. Mr. Anonymous is a coward so lacking a moral compass that he doesn’t realize that the best way to “preserve our democratic institutions” (as he claims to be doing) is to identify himself, resign, and report any criminal activity he has witnessed by the president or his colleagues. The Washington Post media columnist Erik Wemple has a point when he dismisses the op-ed as “a P.R. stunt” for the Times, since it adds an intriguing guessing game but no news to what we already know about this White House from Woodward and even Omarosa, not to mention the stalwart work of reporters at the Times and Post since Inauguration Day.
But the piece could also be viewed as a P.R. strategy for its author. It reads like a defense document that’s being put on the record should that rainy day come when Mr. Anonymous, no longer anonymous, will have to defend his own actions in a Nuremberg-like legal reckoning once the king of Crazytownhas been carted off. As any student of Vichy knows, there was no shortage of French collaborators who falsely claimed to have been secretly part of the underground Resistance to the Pétain regime once the war was over.
Rich also takes on Lady Lindsey’s pearl clutching about children seeing protests at the Kavanaugh hearings. Why not worry about all children who happen to watch the US president at a rally on any given day?
What kind of country have we become?” whined Lindsey Graham, appalled that Kavanaugh’s daughters had to witness rude protesters in the hearing room on opening day. Thanks to Graham and his cohort, we have become Trump country. In keeping with that, the hearings are a clown show, a bare simulation of democratic procedure, with withheld evidence, unexamined evidence delivered in a last-minute document dump, and a foregone conclusion. In that spirit, here’s what I would ask Kavanaugh if I were a Democratic senator on the Judiciary Committee: “Explain your thinking when you wrote a legal memo to the independent counsel Kenneth Starr proposing that President Clinton be asked this question and nine others like it: ‘If Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions in the Oval Office area, you used your fingers to stimulate her vagina and bring her to orgasm, would she be lying?’” And in further keeping with the ethos set by the “grab ’em by the pussy” president who nominated Kavanaugh, I would ask that question aloud before the nominee’s family. The answer might well illuminate the future justice’s view of women and their right to govern their own bodies with a specificity missing in his obfuscating filibusters about Roe.
My bottom line is that absolutely none of this should be normalized by the media because it’s all absolutely insane and not worthy of a country whose democracy has been centuries in the making. Actress Alyssa Milano had this to say and I agree.
Actress Alyssa Milano in an interview that aired Thursday on “Rising” said the news media has normalized President Trump throughout his campaign and the first half of his presidency instead of pointing out events she calls “crazy.”
“The media actually normalized some of what he did, and continues to normalize it instead of going ‘Can you believe how crazy this is? This guy wants to do this,’ ” Milano, a frequent critic of Trump, said to Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton on Tuesday.
Sexton noted that some in the media would probably say they have tried to “raise as many alarms as they can.”
“I would wonder if you were to have this conversation with any number of White House correspondents or major news anchors, other than at one channel that I’m sure you could guess, you would probably have a lot of folks saying they’re doing everything that they can to raise as many alarms as they can,” Sexton said.
Milano pushed back on that assertion, saying she does not think the media has done “enough.”
“I don’t think it’s enough, and I don’t think it was enough when he was campaigning,” Milano replied. “I think that we coddled this idea of a man who has been a self-proclaimed pussy grabber.
“During this time, instead of calling it what it was, which was total and crazy bullshit that this guy would actually be allowed to be the leader of the greatest country on the planet, the most powerful country on the planet, the fact that instead of news media going ‘This is just crazy,’ they reported it like it was normal, so it completely normalized the entire thing. We looked at it like ‘This is entertaining. This is getting us ratings.’”
Republicans need to stop collaborating with a clearly unqualified, unhinged man or acting like they can secretly save us from his madness. Mitch McConnell needs to find the drawer where he hid his soul. Are tax cuts and clearly radical judges with outlier opinions really worth what you’re putting the country and our institutions through you feckless asshole?
Grow a fucking pair and ask Cory Booker to show you his if you need some instructions!
East Coast Sky Dancers! Be on the watch out for Florence!
And have a great weekend!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Constitutional Crisis in Crazytown
Posted: September 6, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bill Burck, Brett Kavanaugh, Cory Booker, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Kamala Harris, Kasowitz Benson Torres, Marc Kasowitz, Senate Judiciary Committee 55 Comments
Good Morning!!
It’s difficult to know where to begin. Trump is isolated, melting down, we are certainly in a Constitutional crisis. Here’s a summary of the current situation from Politico: Trump, Alone.
LINE OF THE MORNING … THE WASHINGTON POST’S PHIL RUCKER, ASHLEY PARKER and JOSH DAWSEY said the combination of the Woodward book and the Times op-ed “landed like a thunder clap, portraying Trump as a danger to the country that elected him and feeding the president’s paranoia about whom around him he can trust. … According to one Trump friend, he fretted after Wednesday’s op-ed that he could trust only his children.” WaPo
IN SOME WAYS, this is a version of the same story we’ve been living for the past three years. The Washington establishment appalled, and Trump unmoved. This will, of course, heighten Trump’s distaste for the media, and fuel the media-and-swamp-out-to-get-me narrative.
THINK OF IT LIKE THIS: Trump’s own administration is criticizing him behind the cloak of anonymity. Whereas TRUMP HAS NO ARTIFICE. He just says what he thinks publicly. JUST THIS WEEK HE …
— SAID he might shut down the government if he doesn’t get what he wants on immigration policy. This came after SPEAKER PAUL RYAN sheepishly said Trump knew better than that.
— LASHED OUT AT ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS for allowing the indictment of two Trump supporters in Congress.
— INTIMATED he wouldn’t be terribly critical of Nike because it paid him big rent for its Midtown Manhattan store.
JUST LOOK HOW HE RESPONDED ON TWITTER — @realDonaldTrump at 6:11 p.m.: “TREASON?”
… at 7:40 p.m.: “Does the so-called ‘Senior Administration Official’ really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”
… at 11:22 p.m.: “I’m draining the Swamp, and the Swamp is trying to fight back. Don’t worry, we will win!”
WHAT’S THIS MEAN FOR THE FUTURE? How is it sustainable for the president to operate in an environment in which he trusts nobody? We’re about to find out.
Right now Democrats are staging a rebellion in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the unprecedented way that Republicans are trying to ram through Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh while keeping secret hundreds of thousands of documents about the nominee’s past history.
Cory Booker threatened to release a document having to do with racial profiling, and he challenged Republicans to bring charges against him if he has broken a committee rule. Most other Democrats are supporting him.
Several Democrats have spoken about the process by which an outside private attorney, Bill Burck, who used to work for the nominee and currently works for George W. Bush has been permitted to decide which documents will be made public. Burck is also the criminal attorney for Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon in the Russia investigation!
Vox: Who is Bill Burck? Meet the former Bush attorney vetting Kavanaugh documents.
Bill Burck, a private attorney employed by former president George W. Bush and a longtime Republican, is a key linchpin in the process for reviewing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s lengthy paper trail. In fact, he’s running the show — and Democrats see his involvement as yet another sign of how far norms have shifted in the way the Republican majority has conducted Kavanaugh’s confirmation process.
Bill Burck
Burck’s name may sound familiar because he’s a deeply entrenched player in Republican legal circles. Not only is he reportedly a longtime friend of Kavanaugh’s, he’s also more recently represented at least three current or former Trump White House officials — Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon — regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. He’s currently a co-managing partner at the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
Burck’s representation of McGahn has particularly raised eyebrows, since McGahn is the main Trump White House official in charge of getting Kavanaugh confirmed. It’s also prompted questions given the potential role that Kavanaugh himself could have in ruling on elements of the Mueller investigation, if he advances to the high court.
What’s more, Burck and Kavanaugh were once colleagues in the Bush White House. He was a former special counsel and deputy counsel to President George W. Bush, while Kavanaugh served as White House counsel and staff secretary for the same administration. Certain Democrats argue that his ties across all these venues make him “triply conflicted,” per the Washington Post.
Democrats have also questioned why Burck — a private attorney as well as a very politically charged figure — has now been authorized to analyze and filter through all of Kavanaugh’s former White House records, documents that could include damning evidence about the nominee’s involvement in decisions on wiretapping, torture, and the detention of enemy combatants.
Read the rest at Vox.
Democrats on the Judiciary committee claimed last night that they have evidence that Kavanaugh lied in a previous confirmation hearing. In addition, they are suggesting that Kavanaugh discussed the Mueller investigation with someone in the a law firm that represents Donald Trump, Kasowitz Benson Torres. Kamala Harris questioned Kavanaugh about this last night and he was visibly rattled.
Vox: Kamala Harris’s mysterious Kasowitz question during the Kavanaugh hearings, explained.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) on Wednesday had the entire hearing room on tenterhooks, as she opened her questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with a somewhat mysterious inquiry. Her question centered on a meeting Kavanaugh may have had about the Mueller investigation — with a member of a law firm founded by President Trump’s personal lawyer.
A meeting like this could underscore an inappropriately cozy relationship between Kavanaugh and the Trump administration, adding yet another potential conflict of interest to those that Democrats have been hammering throughout the hearing. And it’s one that a Democratic aide told Vox they believe might have taken place. (Democrats have argued that Kavanaugh’s nomination by Trump already poses a conflict of interest since he could potentially rule on elements of the Russia investigation.)
Kavanaugh, meanwhile, didn’t do much to settle the issue as he repeatedly deflected questions on the subject.
“Have you discussed the Mueller investigation with anyone at Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal lawyer?” Harris asked. “Be sure about your answer, sir.”
“I’m not remembering but if you have something, you want to …” Kavanaugh said, adding, “I’m not sure if I know everyone who works at that law firm … I’m not remembering.”
Harris continued this line of questioning for roughly five minutes, a move that not only seemed to make Kavanaugh uncomfortable but also elicited some broader confusion in the hearing room since she declined to provide immediate specifics about a person or meeting. “I think you’re thinking of someone and don’t want to tell us,” she said.
Democrats said last night that they believe a meeting did take place and they are working to get more information about it.
It looks to be another big news day today and tomorrow the Mueller grand jury meets. ABC News: Two Roger Stone associates to appear before Mueller grand jury Friday.
Two past associates of President Donald Trump ally and veteran political operative Roger Stone are expected to appear before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. on Friday in response to subpoenas from special counsel Robert Mueller, ABC News has learned.
Jerome Corsi, who until recently served as D.C. bureau chief for InfoWars, the alt-right program hosted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and political humorist and radio show host Randy Credico are the two latest Stone associates to be summoned to testify in Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Read more at the link.
There is so much to read today that I’m going to list some stories of possible interest, links only.
Historian Sean Wilentz at The New York Times: Why Was Kavanaugh Obsessed With Vince Foster?
The Washington Post: ‘The sleeper cells have awoken’: Trump and aides shaken by ‘resistance’ op-ed.
The New York Times: Trump Lashes Out After Reports of ‘Quiet Resistance’ by Staff.
LA Times: Now Trump is targeting Vietnamese refugees.
The Washington Post: Trump administration to circumvent court limits on detention of child migrants.The Washington Post: McCain’s former chief of staff says he’s considering Senate bid as a Democrat.
There has been a shooting in Cincinnati, so cable new switched over to covering that. I’m going to keep watching the Kavanaugh hearing on C-Span. What stories are you following today?
Tuesday Reads: Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings and Woodward’s New Book
Posted: September 4, 2018 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Amy Klobuchar, Bill Burck, Brett Kavanaugh, Chuck Grassley, Cory Booker, Dick Durbin, Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Kamala Harris, SCOTUS, Senate Judiciary Committee 59 Comments
Good Morning!!
I had difficulties with my internet connection this morning, so I watched the beginning of the Kavanaugh hearing. The Democrats raised quite a ruckus over the Republicans–and Trump’s–refusal to make documents available from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House. Democrats moved to adjourn the hearing until the documents could be reviewed. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley refused to hold a vote on the motion.
The committee has now begun opening statements by Senators. Awhile ago, Grassley said the committee would adjourn after the opening statements and resume tomorrow. The opening statements are limited to 10 minutes each.
Raw Story: Kavanaugh hearing spirals into chaos as Democrats refuse to let GOP chair read opening statement.
The confirmation hearing for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, began in chaos as several Democratic senators interrupted the opening remarks.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) tried to welcome Kavanaugh and was immediately interrupted by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).
“Good morning. I welcome everyone to this confirmation hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve as associate justice,” Grassley said.
“Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? Mr. Chairman? I would like to be recognized for a question before we proceed,” Harris said.
“Mr. Chairman I would like to be recognized for a question before we proceed. Mr. Chairman. I would like to be recognized to ask a question before we proceed. The committee received [requested documents] just last night, less than 15 hours ago,” Harris said. “We believe this hearing should be postponed.”
Sen. Corey Booker (D-NJ) gave a long speech appealing to Grassley to stop the hearing.
“You are taking advantage of my decency and integrity,” Grassley said.
There was much more after that. I have to at least give the Democrats credit for speaking up.
More from NBC News: Fireworks as Kavanaugh confirmation hearings get underway.
Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA)
The Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh launched with chaotic scenes Tuesday morning as Democrats pushed to adjourn, and protesters repeatedly interrupted the proceedings.
The Senate confirmation hearing for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh launched with chaotic scenes Tuesday morning as Democrats pushed to adjourn, and protesters repeatedly interrupted the proceedings.
The complaints from Democrats on the panel and protester fireworks that lasted through the hearing’s first hour followed the late-night release of tens of thousands of documents related to Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House.
“The committee received just last night, less than 15 hours ago, 42,000 pages of documents that we have not had an opportunity to read, review or analyze,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said moments after the hearing opened. “We cannot possibly move forward with this hearing.”
Sen. Amy Kobuchar (D-MN)
Sen. Amy Klobluchar, D-Minn., chimed in, agreeing with Harris and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., then added, “Mr. Chairman, if we cannot be recognized, I move to adjourn…we had been denied real access to the real documents we need” and also said that Republicans have turned the hearing into a “mockery.”
Other Democrats began to add to the chorus of concerns, interrupting Grassley. “What are we trying to hide? Why are we rushing?” asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
“This process will be tainted and stained forever” if the proceedings were not delayed, said Blumenthal. Grassley eventually denied Blumenthal’s repeated request for a roll call vote to adjourn the hearing.
As the Democratic pushback stretched into the hearing’s second hour, Grassley expressed mounting frustration. “Do you want to go on all afternoon?” he asked the panel’s Democrats.
Much more with background at the link.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed reports on the withholding of documents on Kavanaugh’s time in the White House: The Justice Department Was Behind The Decision To Keep 100,000 Pages Of Kavanaugh’s Record Secret.
After two days of questions about how it was decided that more than 100,000 pages of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s White House work would be withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s review, the Justice Department took responsibility for the decision on Monday night.
“The Department of Justice, which has advised both Democratic and Republican administrations on the application of the Presidential Records Act and constitutional privileges, was responsible for determining which documents were produced to the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores said….
The news that the documents were being kept from the public and the committee was reported on Friday night, when the lawyer overseeing the review sent a letter to congressional leaders about the final status of his review. The development was just the latest step in a series of fights over the millions of documents from Kavanaugh’s time working in George W. Bush’s White House from 2001 until when he was confirmed to his seat on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
The office of former president Bush has been producing some of those documents to the committee in advance of the hearing — a decision that went outside of the usual process for congressional requests under the Presidential Records Act, which is handled by the National Archives.
Instead, lawyers for Bush, led by William Burck of Quinn Emanuel, reviewed the documents requested and then provided the presidential records they found to the Justice Department for review.
“[T]he White House and the Department of Justice have identified certain documents of the type traditionally protected by constitutional privilege,” Burck wrote. “The White House, after consultation with the Department of Justice, has directed that we not provide these documents for this reason.”
I don’t know what the basis is for a claim of “constitutional privilege” or “executive privilege” or why a lawyer who is not connected to the government would be able to make such a claim. Maybe someone else can enlighten me. Senator Dick Durbin said he’d never heard of it.
The mysterious and powerful William Burck of Quinn Emanuel.
The Bush lawyers released 42,000 pages of documents last night, too late for Senators to realistically review the material. Chuck Grassley ludicrously claimed that committee staff for the Republican had reviewed every page of the documents by this morning.
So we’ll see what happens. We know the Republicans are probably going to cram this nomination through, despite what the public wants. The biggest issue is that Kavanaugh would likely vote to overturn Roe V. Wade. According to Aída Chávez at The Intercept: There is No Grassroots Energy Rallying for Brett Kavanaugh. None.
LAST SUNDAY, SEVERAL hundred protestors rallied in Civic Center Park in Denver, Colorado, against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh. Local reporters were on hand, and the protest earned a two-minute segment on that night’s local CBS broadcast. The “Unite for Justice” rally in Denver was just one of dozens held across the country that same day, and viewers of that evening’s news learned that the rally-goers were taking a stand against confirming a justice who would be the fifth vote to repeal Roe v. Wade.
The network’s attempt at balance, however, was foiled by advocates of Kavanaugh — or, more precisely, the lack of them. The anchor, at the end of the segment, deadpanned to the Denver metro viewership and said, “A pro-life rally was scheduled to run in opposition to the protest, but no one attended.”
Abortion opponents’ inability to gather even a handful of counter protesters in Denver made for an awkward aside, but it also underscored the near total absence of organic grassroots energy from a supposedly rabid anti-choice movement. As the Senate began confirmation hearings Tuesday, the politics of the nomination are being shaped by a myth that has been constructed over decades by a small minority of fervent abortion rights opponents: that the country is evenly divided when it comes to abortion.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
In reality, the politics are lopsided. Voters want Roe protected by more than a 2-1 margin, and even oppose overturning it in states like North Dakota, where Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is up for re-election. The opposition that does exist, meanwhile, is concentrated among a minority of hardcore Republicans who consider it a moral travesty to vote for Democrats — not the kind of voter Heitkamp could win over by supporting Kavanaugh.
All of this has been evident for years, yet the sophisticated political antenna of Democratic leaders in Washington suddenly fail them when it comes to reading polls on the question of abortion. Instead, Democratic leadership is worried about the political consequences for Democrats in red states who vote no. If all Democrats vote no, Republicans would need to win Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, Republicans from Maine and Alaska, respectively, who publicly support abortion rights.
Click on the link to read the rest.
In other news, people are already talking about Bob Woodward’s book on the Trump White House, which is scheduled for release next Tuesday. The Washington Post: Bob Woodward’s new book reveals a ‘nervous breakdown’ of Trump’s presidency.
John Dowd was convinced that President Trump would commit perjury if he talked to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. So, on Jan. 27, the president’s then-personal attorney staged a practice session to try to make his point.
In the White House residence, Dowd peppered Trump with questions about the Russia investigation, provoking stumbles, contradictions and lies until the president eventually lost his cool.
Bob Woodward
“This thing’s a goddamn hoax,” Trump erupted at the start of a 30-minute rant that finished with him saying, “I don’t really want to testify.”
The dramatic and previously untold scene is recounted in “Fear,” a forthcoming book by Bob Woodward that paints a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency, based on in-depth interviews with administration officials and other principals.
Woodward depicts Trump’s anger and paranoia about the Russia inquiry as unrelenting, at times paralyzing the West Wing for entire days. Learning of the appointment of Mueller in May 2017, Trump groused, “Everybody’s trying to get me”— part of a venting period that shellshocked aides compared to Richard Nixon’s final days as president.
A bit more:
A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.
Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.
Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders.
At a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19, Trump disregarded the significance of the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, including a special intelligence operation that allows the United States to detect a North Korean missile launch in seven seconds vs. 15 minutes from Alaska, according to Woodward. Trump questioned why the government was spending resources in the region at all.
“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him.
After Trump left the meeting, Woodward reconts, “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”
I’d say that’s being generous. a sixth grader would surely be able to understand that explanation. Read more at the WaPo.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Monday Reads: Storm’s a’brewing
Posted: September 3, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Brett Kavanaugh, hearings, Pool Patrol Patty, Rio Museum Fire, Tropical Storm Gordon, Trump legal problems. Guilliani 34 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Well, I woke up with the news we’re under a Tropical Storm warning and all the models point it straight at us. It’s a rain event–which normally wouldn’t bug me–except I need to get this new roof on my house yesterday. I’ve spent the last 3 days with water coming on to my bed again. My turkey roaster comes in handy for brief storms but I have no idea how I’m going to bail things out from what’s projected from Gordon. I’m trying to find a few people to put more tarps on the roof. I have the roofing guy coming tomorrow oddly enough. I’ve had a hard time scrambling for my deductible and I’m at the point it just needs to be done whatever other bill has to go unpaid.
I used to find these things oddly exciting but I’m not sure if old age or the number of hurricanes/tropical storms I have to deal with, but, this is getting to me. Karma died during the last one and I was without electricity for quite a period. This is the first one I will go through without Miles too. Anyway, I’m a bit of a wreck already and it’s just over the tip of the Florida peninsula headed to us some time tomorrow. Hopefully, it just blows right through and goes away quickly.
Our infrastructure sucks here and costs plenty. I’m expecting a lot of flooding here too. I’m not in danger of that but I know a lot of people that will be. Our Sewage and Water Board is in a state of collapse and the head of the Electric company has been fired. Basically, both utilities are rudderless. I’m just hoping and praying that the people that actually do the hard work are going to be able to do it.
So, here’s a few things you might want to read today.
From the New Yorker and Courts watcher Jeffrey Toobin: How Rudy Giuliani Turned Into Trump’s Clown. The former mayor’s theatrical, combative style of politics anticipated—and perfectly aligns with—the President’s.” Do shit storms count? At least, this one is not aimed at me.
Since joining Trump’s team, Giuliani has greeted every new development as a vindication, even when he’s had to bend and warp the evidence in front of him. Like Trump, he characterizes the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt” and the prosecutors as “thugs.” He has, in effect, become the legal auxiliary to Trump’s Twitter feed, peddling the same chaotic mixture of non sequiturs, exaggerations, half-truths, and falsehoods. Giuliani, like the President, is not seeking converts but comforting the converted.
This has come at considerable cost to his reputation. As a prosecutor, Giuliani was the sheriff of Wall Street and the bane of organized crime. As mayor, he was the law-and-order leader who kicked “squeegee men” off the streets of New York. Now he’s a talking head spouting nonsense on cable news. But this version of Giuliani isn’t new; Trump has merely tapped into tendencies that have been evident all along. Trump learned about law and politics from his mentor Roy Cohn, the notorious sidekick to Joseph McCarthy who, as a lawyer in New York, became a legendary brawler and used the media to bash adversaries. In the early months of his Presidency, as Mueller’s investigation was getting under way, Trump is said to have raged, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” In Giuliani, the President has found him.
…
Giuliani’s behavior has provoked disgust among some of his former fellow-prosecutors. “He has totally sold out to Trump,” John S. Martin, a predecessor to Giuliani as U.S. Attorney who later became a federal judge, said. “He’s making arguments that don’t hold up. I always thought of Rudy as a good lawyer, and he’s not looking anything like a good lawyer today.” Preet Bharara, who served as U.S. Attorney from 2009 until 2017, when he was fired by Trump, told me, “His blatant misrepresentations on television make me sad. It’s sad because I looked up to him at one point, and this bespeaks a sort of cravenness to a particularly hyperbolic client and an unnecessary suspension of honor and truth that’s beneath him. I would not send Rudy at this point in his career into court.” Giuliani’s desire for attention and publicity has always been at odds with the buttoned-up traditions of the Southern District of New York. In 2014, some seven hundred current and former prosecutors for the Southern District met for a gala dinner to celebrate the two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary of the office. Almost every former U.S. Attorney still living gave a speech—except Giuliani, who sent a video, with the excuse that he was attending to his duties as an “ambassador” to the U.S. Ryder Cup golf team. The announcement was greeted with derisive laughter.
The Kavanaugh nomination barrels forward with so much aplomb and gall that it’s really disturbing. Hearings start tomorrow. There’s likely to be a battle of some kind per ABC.
Democrats are expressing alarm over the Trump White House decision to claim executive privilege and withhold some 100,000 pages of documents from Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s time with the George W. Bush administration.
That decision, relayed in a letter late Friday, just days before confirmation hearings are set to begin Tuesday, is a move top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New Yorkcalled a “Friday night document massacre.”
More than 400,000 other pages have been handed over to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Democrats say the withheld documents would give details and color to Kavanaugh’s time as White House Counsel in the Bush White House — when he was involved in some of its most controversial decisions and judicial nominations.
It’s a time Democrats say is key in giving context to his time as a partisan Republican.
Before serving in the Bush White House, Kavanaugh had been a key deputy to Independent Counsel Ken Starr and advocated for tough questioning of President Bill Clinton about his sexual encounters with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Later, he said, after seeing the pressures inside the Bush White House, he wrote in a 2009 article for the Minnesota Law Review that any civil and criminal investigations of a president should be deferred until they’re out of office because they’re “time-consuming and distracting.”
The just over 100,000 pages of material was withheld after the Trump White House “directed that we not provide these documents,” wrote William Burck, the lawyer handling the document release on behalf of the Bush administration.
WAPO has an interesting feature that discusses how the Trump presidency has caused the “Trump Effect” which is basically seen in all that Wypipo outrage about black people in what they consider white spaces. This discusses the small town and “Pool Patrol Paula” who was outraged that young black children would be swimming in their neighborhood pool.
Darshaun’s aunt said she noticed that none of the adults at the pool seemed to be doing anything to help him. She called over Darshaun’s mother to watch. Darshaun told them that he and two friends had been invited to the pool by a family that lives in the subdivision. They were just sitting down at a table and kicking off their shoes when Strempel approached them, asked them if they lived in the subdivision and then accused them of trespassing.
Darshaun’s mother took him to the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office to file an assault complaint.
His aunt looked Strempel up on Facebook and dashed off a quick message.
“Good evening, Stephanie. Is this you in the video?” she asked.
After four hours passed without a response, Darshaun’s aunt posted it to her Facebook page, tagging local activists, two television news stations, the NAACP and the Coast Guard unit where, she had learned, Strempel’s husband was serving.
“This kind of behavior is unacceptable and we WILL NOT TOLERATE IT!!!! PLEASE SHARE!!!!” she wrote. “. . . Racism at its best.”
She hit post at 11 p.m., flipped off her computer and went to sleep.
Online, Strempel would soon be dubbed “Pool Patrol Paula,” joining “ID Adam,” “BBQ Becky,” “Permit Patty,” “Coupon Carl” and others branded as exemplars of racism and white entitlement.
It was 10 the next morning when Strempel, who declined to comment for this article through her attorney, sent her first message to Jovan Hyman. She denied hitting Darshaun — even though the video showed her doing so — and defended herself as an involved member of the community.
“I have children,” she wrote. “My husband is a respected coast guard officer. I have a special needs son. . . . My husband and I are being threatened and slandered all over social media [and it] is not okay.”
By this point, Hyman had watched the video several times, and he had no doubt that Strempel had targeted the boys at the pool because of the color of their skin.
…
Today, Reminisce is reminiscent of a typical Southern suburb, where blacks and whites live side by side but usually avoid sensitive topics such as race and politics. It’s a precinct where Trump took nearly two-thirds of the vote, is mostly white and made up of schoolteachers, police officers, and employees of the nearby Air Force base and Boeing plant.
What follows is a tick tock of how the town dealt with and is still dealing with its race issues.
A devastating fire has leveled a 200 year old museum in Brazil. It was a repository of many artifacts that cannot be replaced.
“It was the biggest natural history museum in Latin America. We have invaluable collections. Collections that are over 100 years old,” Cristiana Serejo, one of the museum’s vice-directors, told the G1 news site.
Marina Silva, a former environment minister and candidate in October’s presidential elections said the fire was like “a lobotomy of the Brazilian memory”.
Luiz Duarte, another vice-director, told TV Globo: “It is an unbearable catastrophe. It is 200 years of this country’s heritage. It is 200 years of memory. It is 200 years of science. It is 200 years of culture, of education.” TV Globo also reported that some firefighters did not have enough water to battle the blaze.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the fire began. The museum was part of Rio’s Federal University but had fallen into disrepair in recent years. Its impressive collections included items brought to Brazil by Dom Pedro I – the Portuguese prince regent who declared the then-colony’s independence from Portugal – Egyptian and Greco-Roman artefacts, “Luzia”, a 12,000 year-old skeleton and the oldest in the Americas, fossils, dinosaurs, and a meteorite found in 1784. Some of the archive was stored in another building but much of the collection is believed to have been destroyed.
Paul Blumenthall–writing for Huffpo–outlines the number of investigations surrounding the Trump Family Crime Syndicate. “It’s Not Just Robert Mueller. President Donald Trump Faces Six Separate Investigations And Lawsuits.Prosecutors are digging into the president’s business from which he refused to divest.”
There are currently five separate investigations into Trump and his associates from four different investigative bodies. An additional lawsuit brought by two state attorneys general challenges whether Trump is in violation of the U.S. Constitution. There are further reports about probes into the financial dealings of the president’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his second eldest son, Eric Trump.
It’s a great list and description of all the investigations from obstruction of justice to emoluments clause violation.
So, I know you’re all likely having a great long weekend. I’ve got to start working on getting ready for this and finishing up my grades. I have no doubt this will likely take me offline for a few days.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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