Posted: July 26, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, pardons, Space Cat and the Kittens, the coverup is worse than the crime, Todd Blanche, Watergate |
Good Morning!!
The Caturday illustrations today come from a children’s book: Space Cat and the Kittens, by Ruthven Todd. The illustrator is Paul Galdone. I know it’s a little incongruous to include cute kitten pictures in a depressing political post, but perhaps they will provide a bit of relief from the ongoing evil deeds of Donald Trump and his gang.
Here is the summary of the book from Amazon:
Flyball, the famous Space Cat, is a father now! He and Moofa, the last of the Martian fishing cats, are the proud parents of a pair of mischievous, fun-loving kittens, Marty and Tailspin. The whole family joins Colonel Fred Stone and a new friend, Bill, on a mission to Alpha Centauri to seek out places where humans can live. Along the way, the crew makes an amazing discovery — a planet abounding in iguanodons, pterodactyls, tyrannosauri, and a host of other prehistoric creatures.
Now for today’s news. I admit it. I’m obsessed with the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell story. And so is Donald Trump. He’s living in fear of the gory details of his close relationships with Epstein and Maxwell seeing the light of day. He ran away to play golf and open a new golf course in Scotland yesterday, but he can’t completely escape drip drip drip of revelations. Could this be the scandal that really damages him?
Jeff Zeleny and Adam Liptak at CNN: Trump flees Washington controversies for golf-heavy trip to Scotland.
Fleeing Washington’s oppressive humidity and nonstop questions over heated controversies, President Donald Trump is once again taking weekend refuge at his golf clubs — this time more than 3,000 miles away in Scotland.
While the White House has called his five-day trip a “working visit,” it’s fairly light on the formal itinerary. Trump is poised to hold trade talks Sunday with the chief of the European Union and is scheduled to meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday.
But he’s expected to spend most of his trip out of public view at two of his golf resorts – Trump Turnberry in the west and Trump International about 200 miles away in the north, near his mother’s ancestral homeland….
Even as protesters demonstrated against Trump here on Saturday, the four nights in temperate Scotland come as a summertime respite after six months back in office. His administration is engulfed in a deepening political crisis over its handling of disclosures around the case of Jeffrey Epstein, accused sex trafficker and former friend of the president’s.
Nearly every time Trump has spoken with reporters in recent weeks, he’s been pressed with new questions about the Epstein scandal, many of which are fueled by deep suspicions that he and his followers have been stirring for years. New revelations about his personal ties to the disgraced financier have kept the matter alive.
Scottish folks do not like Trump, to put it mildly.
Authorities in Scotland have spent weeks preparing for Trump’s arrival. Assistant Chief Constable Emma Bond told reporters the security operation would be the largest the country has mounted since the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, including local officers, national security divisions and special constables.
The overall tone toward Trump has been markedly less fond, however. The Friday edition of The National, a liberal-leaning newspaper that supports Scottish independence, rolled out a not-so-welcoming message to Trump with a blaring and bold front-page headline: “Convicted US Felon to Arrive in Scotland.”
A group called Stop Trump Scotland, a coalition of demonstrators, organized protests at Aberdeen and outside the US consulate in Edinburgh as part of a “Festival of Resistance.” A few hundred people turned out Saturday to raise their voices against the visiting American president, waving colorful signs and chanting slogans….
It’s the first visit Trump has made to the country since 2023, when he broke ground on the golf course dedicated to his mother. But returning this weekend as the sitting American president has roused critics, including Green Party leader and member of parliament, Patrick Harvie.
“Donald Trump is a convicted criminal and political extremist,” Harvie told reporters in Scotland this week. “There can be no excuses for trying to cozy up to his increasingly fascist political agenda.”
I hope they make him miserable.
William Kristol at The Bulwark: It’s Starting to Smell Like Trump’s Watergate.
On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s FBI Director, Kash Patel, discussed the Jeffrey Epstein files with podcaster Joe Rogan. “We’ve reviewed all the information,” Patel stressed, “and the American public is going to get as much as we can release.”
One month later, on July 6, a joint, unsigned statement from the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that nothing would be released—except for a prison video. The video turned out not to be, in fact, the “raw” video the statement promised. But it was in any case an attempt at misdirection—an effort to get people to focus on the question of Epstein’s death, rather than on the crimes he committed when alive.
Space cats and brontosaurus
For that is where the danger to Trump lies. And, naturally, that is what is now being covered up.
As a story in yesterday’s New York Times makes clear, the documents about Epstein’s crimes were pretty much ready for release three months ago. The FBI and Justice Department had conducted extensive reviews and re-reviews of the files. They had considered what should and shouldn’t be released due to legal and privacy concerns.
The Times explains:
After the F.B.I. finished its review of the files, the materials were handed over to a team of dozens of Justice Department lawyers who were given the job of double-checking the bureau’s redactions to ensure that neither too much nor too little information was disclosed, according to a person familiar with the process. The lawyers, drawn from multiple divisions from within the department, sat at their desks beginning in late March or early April reviewing documents for the better part of two weeks, the person said. . . . By mid-April, the department’s review had been largely completed.
So in mid-April, the Trump administration was, it seems, very close to being ready to go with the oft-promised release of the bulk of the Epstein files.
But then, in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche briefed President Trump on the files. According to the Times, they told the president his name appeared multiple times.
Two months later, a decision: No files would be released….
But it is the safest of safe bets that Bondi and Patel didn’t simply sit and reflect and deliberate and come to a judicious determination not to release the files. We know Trump had been briefed on the files. We don’t know what subsequent conversations he had about them, or with whom. But we can safely conclude that the Justice Department and the FBI don’t make joint determinations on matters of great interest to the president without consulting him—indeed, without taking direction from him.
It is also the safest of safe bets that it was Trump’s determination that no further disclosure would be “appropriate or warranted.” And it is the safest of safe bets that Trump made that determination because he knew that no further disclosure would be in his interest. At this juncture, it’s impossible, indeed irresponsible, not to note that both Bondi and Blanche served as personal lawyers for Trump prior to taking on their government roles.
Epstein is President Trump’s coverup, as surely as Watergate was President Nixon’s.
And as we all know from Watergate, the cover-up is always worse than the crime. And the cover-up is moving in overdrive.
On his way out of town, Trump dangled a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell, who spent hours Thursday and Friday being interviewed by Trump’s former defense attorney and now second in command at DOJ. It was likely a “queen for a day” interview, in which she was given limited immunity–a guarantee that she can’t be prosecuted for anything she says in the interview, as long as she tells the truth.
NBC News: DOJ granted Ghislaine Maxwell limited immunity during meetings with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A senior administration official confirms to NBC News that Ghislaine Maxwell was granted limited immunity by the Justice Department in order to answer questions about the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Astronauts and Pterodactyls
This type of immunity allowed Maxwell to answer questions from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche without fear that the information she provided could later be used against her in any future cases or proceedings.
The immunity is “limited” because it only covers Maxwell if she tells the truth; if it’s later determined that she lied during the interviews then the deal is off the table.
An immunity agreement like this one, often called “a queen for a day” deal, is common in criminal cases when a defendant offers to cooperate with prosecutors and provide information on an investigation and potential codefendants.
As part of the agreement, that information generally cannot be used against the defendant down the road.
In exchange, prosecutors will commonly consider the defendant’s cooperation while recommending a lighter sentence for a plea deal, or in some cases outright immunity from prosecution.
Aaron Blake at CNN: Trump just made a problematic Ghislaine Maxwell situation look even worse.
Interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell is the Trump administration’s first big move to allay concerns about its hugely unpopular handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday wrapped up two days of interviews with Epstein’s convicted associate.
But there were already all kinds of reasons to be skeptical of this move and what it could produce, given the motivations of the two sides involved.
And President Donald Trump epitomized all of them in a major way on Friday.
While taking questions on his way to Scotland, Trump repeatedly held open the possibility of pardoning Maxwell for her crimes.
“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said initially.
When pressed, he said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about,” while conspicuously adding, “I’m allowed to do it.”
I wonder if the MAGA crowd would be happy if Trump pardoned Maxwell? Anyone who actually cares about the victims would be outraged.
Sarah Ewall-Weiss at The Daily Beast: Ghislaine Handed DOJ 100 Names in Shameless Pardon Quid Pro Quo.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the partner of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, completed a second day of questioning Friday, sharing information on about 100 different people with the Department of Justice.
Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking in connection with the disgraced financier in 2021, met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for about three hours on Friday at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.
Escaping by helicopter
She also sat down with Blanche to answer questions for about six hours on Thursday as the DOJ tries to control the fallout from its handling of the Epstein files….
The meeting between the top Trump official and Maxwell was announced by the Justice Department amid mounting pressure for the administration to release more information on the case after it said there was no Epstein client list and indicated there would be no further prosecutions in a recent memo….
A bombshell report this week by the Wall Street Journal alleged that Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed Trump in May that his name was in the files multiple times, as were other names.
On Friday, the president would not rule out pardoning Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for facilitating and participating in the sex trafficking of teenage girls….
Maxwell’s lawyer said in Florida on Friday that his team has not spoken to Trump about a potential pardon but indicated they will push for one.
“We hope he exercises that power in a right and just way,” Markus said.
No kidding.
Sarah K. Burris at Raw Story: DOJ’s new move raises ‘huge red flags’ — and ‘could blow up in their face’: Legal expert.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met for a second day with Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, and a long-time prosecutor and former general counsel at the FBI is warning it could all “blow up in their face.”
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace noted on her Friday show that she can’t understand why Blanche would ignore the career prosecutors who have been steeped in the case for years and are aware of the details.
New York University Law School Professor Andrew Weissmann connected the dots from the cases involving Epstein and Maxwell to other Justice Department scandals, such as the one involving Mayor Eric Adams.
“Mayor Eric Adams, where this administration learned to shut out the career people,” said Weissmann. “If you are trying to get the defendant or in this case, Ghislaine Maxwell, to say something that will help Donald Trump, if that’s your goal and it’s not about sort of justice writ large, it is a continuation of your work for the president. In other words, you were his personal attorney, and you are still essentially operating as his personal attorney. If that’s your goal, you do not want the career prosecutors and agents in the room for the same reason you didn’t want them in the room for Eric Adams.” [….]
“You’re not engaging in what’s in the public interest. You’re engaging in what is in Donald Trump’s interest, and whether that is to exonerate Donald Trump, as Tim [Miller] suggested, or whether it’s to implicate other people. So, it’s sort of a distraction. Those are things that Todd Blanche can do and can do better when he doesn’t have career people in the room,” Weissmann clarified.
And, of course, Pam Bondi fired the lead prosecutor in the Epstein and Maxwell cases, Maurene Comey.
Kittens and T Rex
Glenn Thrush and Valerie Crowder at The New York Times: After Ghislaine Maxwell Interview, Concerns Mount Over Possibility of Pardon.
Ms. Maxwell has made it clear she wants her 20-year sentence thrown out or reduced or a pardon. President Trump, asked whether he would consider pardoning her, said, “I’m allowed to do it, but it’s something I haven’t thought about.” He made the remarks before he headed off to Scotland, wishing her well….
Mr. Blanche has described his trip as a neutral fact-finding mission, saying he would share details of the discussion “at the appropriate time” — yet he has also declared that the federal criminal investigation into targets beyond Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein remains closed. By that standard, new interviews would appear to serve a function beyond the purposes of traditional law enforcement, unless new evidence of criminality has been discovered, current and former officials said….
Teresa Helm, who was abused by Mr. Epstein and testified against Ms. Maxwell, was blunt about the consequences of such a deal in an interview with MSNBC on Friday. “It would mean the complete crumbling of this justice system that should first and foremost stand for, fight for and protect survivors,” she said, adding that the government had accused Ms. Maxwell of perjury on top of other charges.
“She should stay in prison,” said Lisa Lloyd, 65, the lone protester at the courthouse. “This is wrong. Anyone who is concerned with justice should be appalled by this.” [….]
Some conservative news outlets friendly to Mr. Trump have begun to soften their tone about Ms. Maxwell — whom they previously described as a child sex predator — suggesting she might now be trusted to tell the truth about the case. This week, a host on Newsmax who has praised Mr. Trump went so far as to suggest that Ms. Maxwell “just might be a victim” who was not given a fair legal hearing.
That is outrageous. Maxwell is far from being a victim. She lured young girls and brought them to Epstein to be abused. He couldn’t have had access to as many victims without her help. She also participated in the abuse.
Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori at Politico Magazine: The Epstein Files Timeline Raises Real Questions for Trump.
The revelation this week from The Wall Street Journal about Donald Trump and the so-called Epstein files was shocking — and, for those following the administration closely in recent weeks, not shocking at all.
According to the Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Trump during a White House meeting in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. The fallout continues as we speak, with the White House and Republicans in Congress facing that age-old Washington question: What did they know, and when did they know it?
We have gathered below some of the most significant statements that Trump and his senior officials have made on the topic, focusing in particular on what they have said since Trump returned to office.
Several key themes emerge. Head straight to the timeline here.
For starters, there is a conspicuous rhetorical shift that occurs after May, when Bondi and Blanche reportedly briefed Trump. The administration’s statements became more terse, and Trump in particular began pointing the finger at people — the Democratic Party and the mainstream media — that had little to nothing to do with the Epstein frenzy.
Even before May, Trump himself tended to add qualifiers to his statements that he does not typically use when he talks about investigations — like the probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by special counsel John Durham — that are of interest to him.
In an interview with Fox News last June during the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said that he would release more information if reelected but hastened to add that he was concerned about the impact of revealing more material on third parties and the possibility that there might be “phony stuff” in the government’s investigative files. More recently, Trump has said that he supports the release of “credible” information and “pertinent” grand jury testimony while accusing the media of focusing on old news.
These are concerns that Trump does not typically invoke in other settings. Taken together, Trump’s comments suggest the possibility that he suspected that there may be politically damaging information about him in the files and wanted to preemptively discredit revelations about him. Following the reported briefing in May, Trump appears to have sought to narrow the government’s public disclosures to avoid releasing information. Trump has not been accused of any wrongdoing linked to Epstein.
I’m sure he did. Read the rest at the Politico link.
Space kittens and small horse
One more from Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian: Will the ghost of Epstein finally bring down King Trump?
Brrrr. Brrrr. Brrrrrrr. That’s the sound of Donald’s Trump’s distraction machine, which has been running at full power as the president tries his best to stop us all from talking about Jeffrey Epstein. Or, to be more specific, from talking about just how chummy he was with the dead paedophile.
Though he’s usually a master of controlling the narrative, none of Trump’s normal distraction techniques seem to be working now. Indeed, at this point we should probably rename the Streisand effect the Trump-Epstein effect because the president’s repeated insistence that there is NOTHING TO SEE HERE EXCEPT A VERY NASTY WITCH-HUNT only has people scrutinizing his dealings with Epstein more carefully. From South Park to Scotland to billboards in Times Square, Trump can’t escape his past association with Epstein.
Over the past couple of weeks, a lot of new information has come out about just how close Epstein and the president were. On 17 July, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported Trump allegedly sent Epstein a 50th birthday card in 2003 with a drawing of a naked woman and a message which said, in part, “may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump denied writing the card and filed a $10bn lawsuit against the rightwing paper and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, a day after the outlet published the story.
Trump’s lawsuit clearly didn’t scare off the Journal because, on Wednesday, it published a new report stating Trump’s name appears “multiple times” in justice department files about Epstein. On Wednesday CNN also published newly uncovered photos and video footage of the two men together, including one of Epstein at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993 and footage from a 1999 Victoria’s Secret fashion event. Then, on Thursday, the New York Times confirmed that Trump’s name appeared on a contributor list for a book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday, as the Journal first reported, along with a number of other well-known Epstein associates including Leslie Wexner, then the owner of Victoria’s Secret. The Times further reported that in 1997 the president had written a note calling Epstein “the greatest!” in a copy of Trump: The Art of the Comeback.
While none of these new bits of information are evidence of criminal conduct on Trump’s part, the president’s furious reaction to anything Epstein-related, along with his administration’s sudden U-turn on its promise to release damning evidence related to possible Epstein clients, certainly makes Trump look like he’s got something to hide. And it’s not just Trump, of course. The sudden flurry of reporting about Epstein means that a lot of powerful men, including Bill Clinton, who the Journal says also sent a birthday letter to the disgraced financier, have been having a bad couple of weeks.
The big question now is this: will the renewed interest in Epstein blow over in a few more weeks or could this deal a serious political blow to Trump and his lackeys? Trump is nicknamed the “comeback kid” for good reason: the man has an uncanny ability to shake off scandal. Still, nobody is completely untouchable; could the ghost of Epstein be the thing that finally topples King Trump from his throne? While that’s obviously an impossible question to answer, there are a few ways this could all play out.
Again, read the rest at the link.
That’s it for me today. As I said, I can’t stop thinking about the Epstein story. What’s on your mind today?
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Posted: May 31, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, just because, U.S. Politics | Tags: gun laws, Jill Biden, Joe Biden, media, new civil war, SCOTUS, Senate, Uvalde school shooting, Watergate |
Woman with dog and flowers by Quincy Verdun
Good Afternoon!!
The news continues to be bleak this morning. The Uvalde mass shooting is still at in the headlines, and so are multiple mass shootings that have followed it. Senators are arguing about gun control; and there is no possible solution, because the Senate is broken. Even if the Senate by some miracle passed a new laws on guns, the right-wing Supreme Court would likely overturn them. Meanwhile, President Biden is struggling to deal with so many serious problems while his approval ratings sink. I can’t address all those topics, but here are some stories to check out today.
Last week I wrote a post about the possibility that the U.S. is building up to a new civil war. Today Edward Luce addressed that question at Financial Times: Is America heading for civil war?
In the summer of 2015, America caught a glimpse of how its future could unfold. The US military conducted a routine exercise in the south that triggered a cascade of conspiracy theories, particularly in Texas. Some believed the manoeuvre was the precursor to a Chinese invasion; others thought it would coincide with a massive asteroid strike. The exercise, called Jade Helm 15, stood for “homeland eradication of local militants”, according to one of the right’s dark fantasy sites. Greg Abbot, Texas’s Republican governor, took these ravings seriously. He ensured that the 1,200 federal troops were closely monitored by the armed Texas National Guard. In that bizarre episode, which took place a year before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, we see the germs of an American break-up.
As with any warning of impending civil war, the very mention of another American one sounds impossibly alarmist — like persistent warnings from chief Vitalstatistix in the Asterix comic series that the sky was about to fall on Gaulish heads. America’s dissolution has often been mispredicted.
Yet a clutch of recent books make an alarmingly persuasive case that the warning lights are flashing redder than at any point since 1861. The French philosopher Voltaire once said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” As the University of California’s Barbara Walter shows in her bracing manual, How Civil Wars Start, US democracy today is checking all the wrong boxes.
Dachshund Puppies by Otto Bache
Even before Trump triumphed in the 2016 presidential election, political analysts were warning about the erosion of democracy and drift towards autocracy. The paralysing divisions caused by Trump’s failed putsch of January 6, 2021, has sent it into dangerous new territory. Polls show that most Republicans believe, without evidence, that the election was stolen by Democrats backed by the so-called “deep state”, the Chinese government, rigged Venezuelan voting machines, or a feverish combination thereof.
In This Will Not Pass, a book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Joe Biden is quoted telling a senior Democrat: “I certainly hope [my presidency] works out. If it doesn’t I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.” That a US president could utter something so apocalyptic without raising too many eyebrows shows how routine such dread has become.
Read the rest at Financial Times.
The press is letting us down, writes Margaret Sullivan at The Washington Post: Why the press will never have another Watergate moment.
You’ll be hearing a lot about Watergate in the next several weeks, as the 50th anniversary of the infamous June 17, 1972, burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters approaches. There will be documentaries, cable-news debates, the finale of that Julia Roberts miniseries (“Gaslit”) based on the popular Watergate podcast (“Slow Burn”). I’ll be moderating a panel discussion at the Library of Congress on the anniversary itself — and you can certainly count on a few retrospectives in this very newspaper.
The scandal has great resonance at The Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1973 for its intrepid reporting and the courage it took to publish it. And it has particular meaning for me, because, like many others of my generation, I was first drawn into journalism by the televised Senate hearings in 1973, and I was enthralled by the 1976 movie “All the President’s Men,” based on the book by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Young Girl Reading by Joseph W. Gies
Yet thinking about Watergate saddens me these days. The nation that came together to force a corrupt president from office and send many of hisco-conspiratoraides to prison is a nation that no longer exists.
“The national newspapers mattered in a way that is unimaginable to us today, and even the regional newspapers were incredibly strong,” Garrett Graff, author of “Watergate: A New History,” told me last week. I have been immersed in his nearly 800-page history — a “remarkably rich narrative,” former Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. called it in a review — which sets out to retell the story.
Americans read about Watergate in their daily papers and watched the dramatic hearings on television. Gradually, public opinion changed and Nixon was forced to resign. Sullivan writes and Graff argues conditions are very different today.
Our media environment is far more fractured, and news organizations are far less trusted.
And, in part, we can blame the rise of a right-wing media system. At its heart is Fox News, which was founded in 1996, nearly a quarter-century after the break-in, with a purported mission to provide a “fair and balanced” counterpoint to the mainstream media. Of course, that message often manifested in relentless and damaging criticism of its news rivals. Meanwhile, Fox News and company have served as a highly effective laundry service for Trump’s lies. With that network’s help, his tens of thousands of false or misleading claims have found fertile ground among his fervent supporters — oblivious to the skillful reporting elsewhere that has called out and debunked those lies.
As Graff sees it, the growth of right-wing media has enabled many Republican members of Congress to turn a blind eye to the malfeasance of Team Trump. Not so during the Watergate investigation; after all, it was Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) who posed the immortal question: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” Even the stalwart conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater (Ariz.) was among those who, at the end, managed to convince Nixon that he must resign.
Head over to the WaPo to read the whole column.
ABC News reports that 911 operators did inform police at the site of the Uvalde shooting that children were alive and calling for help: ‘Full of victims’: Video appears to show Texas 911 dispatchers relaying information from children in classroom.
Video obtained by ABC News, taken outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, as last week’s massacre was unfolding inside, appears to capture a 911 dispatcher alerting officers on scene that they were receiving calls from children who were alive inside the classroom that the gunman had entered — as law enforcement continued to wait nearly an hour and a half to enter the room.
Puppies, by Federico Olaria
“Child is advising he is in the room, full of victims,” the dispatcher can be heard saying in the video. “Full of victims at this moment.”
“Is anybody inside of the building at this…?” the dispatcher asked.
Minutes later, the dispatcher says again: “Eight to nine children.”
The video, obtained by ABC News, also shows police rescuing children from inside the school by breaking through a window and pulling them out, and also leading them out the back door to safety….
The video, which appears to show some of what took place outside the school, raises new questions about law enforcement’s response to one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings, which left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The gunman was left inside the classroom for 77 minutes as 19 officers waited in the hallway — and many more waited outside the building — after the incident commander wrongly believed the situation had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject, law enforcement has said.
The Supreme Court is still trying to find out who leaked Alito’s draft opinion on abortion. CNN reports: Exclusive: Supreme Court leak investigation heats up as clerks are asked for phone records in unprecedented move.
Supreme Court officials are escalating their search for the source of the leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits, three sources with knowledge of the efforts have told CNN.
I’ll end with a story that isn’t completely negative. It’s an interview with First Lady Jill Biden at Bazaar: A First Lady Undeterred.
In November 2020, when Joe Biden was elected president, the win seemed to validate not just his decision to enter this race but his entire career in politics. He has been grieving in public since he was sworn in to the United States Senate in 1973 from the hospital where his two young sons were recovering from the car crash that killed his first wife, Neilia, and their one-year-old daughter, Naomi. He married Jill five years later. Toward the end of his second term as vice president, in 2015, one of those sons, Beau, died of brain cancer. He resolved to launch this bid—his third in three decades—after watching white nationalists march on Charlottesville in 2017. The nation was sick and divided. He wanted to heal it.
Pierre Bonnard, Andree Bonnard with her dogs
When the ballots were tallied, Biden was declared the winner. But in the meantime, America had further deteriorated. It was battling one novel virus and several older ones. The pandemic had exposed long-festering discrimination and hate. Hundreds of thousands of people had died. Biden had the kind of credentials no one envies; few in politics could claim more experience with sorrow.
Pundits wrote that Joe Biden had met his moment. But Jill Biden—a patient educator in an era of rampant misinformation, a woman so determined to be present for her people that she spent one weekend in March straining the limits of the space-time continuum—was there to greet it too.
Now the moment has changed. The pandemic stretches on, with new variants making quick work of the Greek alphabet. Health-care workers are burnt out. Teachers are exhausted. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is devastating—and driving up the cost of fuel amid rampant inflation. Biden’s approval numbers have sunk into the low 40s. Several polls ahead of the midterm elections predict dire losses for Democrats, with both the House and the Senate threatening to slip into Republican control.
It’s not the kind of environment that sets an obvious course for the nation’s most scrutinized political spouse—let alone for one who describes herself as an introvert and was so lukewarm on the rites and rituals of the Washington horse race that she spent her husband’s entire Senate career at their home in Delaware. But perhaps that’s for the best. In the absence of a guidebook, Jill Biden is writing her own.
Read the interview at the link.
More stories to check out, links only:
HuffPost: Right-Wing Organization Launches Chilling Map Marking Schools As ‘Woke Hot Spots.’
Clive Irving at The Daily Beast: Life Is Cheap in America. That’s What Makes Us Exceptional.
KHOU11: 11-year-old who survived Uvalde massacre struggles to deal in aftermath.
The New York Times: In the Senate, Chasing an Ever-Elusive Gun Law Deal.
Kate Shaw and John Bash at The New York Times: We Clerked for Justices Scalia and Stevens. America Is Getting Heller Wrong.
Politico: Former Trump aide Navarro says he has received a grand jury subpoena related to Jan. 6.
Take care Sky Dancers. I hope you have a Tuesday filled with positive vibes.
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Posted: May 6, 2019 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: John Mitchell, Martha Mitchell, Slow Burn, Watergate, William Barr |
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I give you exhibit one (see the twitter below) demonstrating that White Nationalist Christianity is a threat to this country. There is absolutely nothing normal, usual, or whatever about this suggestion or response given by the Russian Potted Plant occupying the White House. Jerry Falwell Jr. is a monster. Read on.
How do we explain all this? White Nationalist Christians want to revive the same brutality they inflicted on Black Americans and Indigenous Americans and Trump is their vehicle. They want him in office for as long as possible and the Wisdom Beings know he wants to be there until death sweeps him into the darkness.
This is from Gideon Rachman writing for the Financial Times: “Donald Trump is updating America’s historic ruthlessness. Promising US voters ‘greatness’ has led the president to celebrate a brutal past”
Donald Trump says so many strange and outrageous things that it is impossible to remember them all. But one Trumpian remark that has stuck with me is the US president’s repeated insistence that, after conquering Iraq, “we should have kept the oil”. To the ears of the Washington establishment, this was yet another Trump gaffe. Even Dick Cheney, the former vice-president and most hawkish of hawks, had never portrayed Iraq as a war of conquest. But Mr Trump’s deliberately provocative remark was an insight into both his philosophy and his appeal to voters. When many Americans feel frightened that both US power and their own living standards are in decline, Mr Trump is making an appeal to American ruthlessness. The US president says to voters that the country cannot afford to be “politically correct” any more. The way to Make America Great Again, in the words of his slogan, is to rediscover the ruthless instincts that made America great in the first place. In a nod to past American ruthlessness, Mr Trump has hung the portrait of Andrew Jackson, US president from 1829-1837, on the wall of the Oval Office. Jackson was once seen as one of the great builders of the American nation and his statue stands in Lafayette Square, opposite the White House. But a more recent generation of historians has accused Jackson of complicity in genocide for ordering the forced removal of Native Americans from their land — a policy that led to the “trail of tears” in which thousands died. By honouring Jackson, whom he praised as a “very tough person”, Mr Trump is honouring the brutal policies that allowed the US to conquer the west.
This is completely insane and ignores the rule of law and our constitutionally defined government institutions. I think Nancy Pelosi is right …. if he’s thrown out of office he will not leave either by ballot or impeachment. From WAPO this morning: “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime”.
President Trump on Sunday seemed to warm to the idea of reparations — for himself, and in the form of an unconstitutional, two-year addition to his first term in the White House.
He retweeted a proposal offered by Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, that he be granted another two years in office as recompense for time lost to the Russia investigation. Half of his first term, Trump wrote in a Twitter dispatch of his own, had been “stolen.”
The argument was perhaps tongue-in-cheek, leading some legal experts to dismiss the comments as bravado. Others, however, saw the president’s apparent longing to overstay his four-year term in office as an assault on the rule of law. That it was raised playfully, they said, was small comfort, especially given Trump’s playful refusal, in the fall of 2016, to say that he would accept the outcome of an election that polling suggested he was destined to lose.
“I will keep you in suspense,” he said at the time.
None of this is normal. All of this is crazy.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said they will vote Wednesday on whether to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after Barr missed a deadline to produce a complete version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.
The panel had set a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday for Barr to provide the unredacted version of Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. It announced the planned vote in a statement Monday.
“Although the Committee has attempted to engage in accommodations with Attorney General Barr for several months, it can no longer afford to delay, and must resort to contempt proceedings,” reads the text of a contempt report released by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.). “The Committee urgently requires access to the full, unredacted Mueller Report and to the investigatory and evidentiary materials cited in the Report.”
The only good news is that Mueller has firmed up his commitment to address a hearing. In response, we have a Trumpf Twitter Meltdown:. This is via TBogg at Raw Story.
Reacting to news that special counsel Robert Mueller has made “tentative” plans to appear before a House Committee, President Donald Trump went on a furious Twitter rampage demanding Mueller not show up.
On Twitter, Trump ranted, “After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents – all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION – why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller” before adding, …”to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!”
And to that we remind Trumpf and all his minions of a simple definition that bit Nixon in the ass too. Barr can read up on Nixon’s jailed and disgraced AG John Mitchell.
I doubt any one as old as me will forget the day they actually arrested a US AG.
I was dreaming of my first year in college and just trying to wait out high school during this. Now, we’re living the nightmare again.
On March 2, 1974, a federal grand jury indicted Mitchell on six counts of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, false statements to the F.B.I., false statements to the grand jury and perjury. The charges stem from testimony in which he denied having any knowledge of Nixon’s efforts to spy on his Democratic political rivals.
Eleven months later, Mitchell was convicted on five counts and received sentences “from 20 months to five years on the conspiracy and obstruction counts, to run concurrently; to be followed by three concurrent terms of 10 months to three years for the three counts of lying under oath, for a total of 30 months as a minimum, after which Mr. Mitchell would be eligible for parole, and eight years as a maximum,” the New York Times reported at the time.
Mitchell was also slapped with a $10,000 fine.
Barr may face a similar fate. Democrats in Congress have begun demanding that Barr resign or face impeachment after a letter from Mueller to Barr was released on Tuesday.
In it, Mueller “expressed a frustration over the lack of context” in Barr’s summary of Russian election interference, contacts between Russians and members of Trump’s campaign, and Trump’s efforts to sabotage the investigation.
Barr’s four-page memo to Congress was fuzzy, Mueller wrote, because it downplayed the significance of the evidence Mueller collected, specifically on whether Trump obstructed justice.
“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller said.
Barr took it upon himself to clear Trump of any wrongdoing, however, Mueller was clear in his report that Trump is not innocent and that he can and should face impeachment and/or criminal charges upon leaving office.
“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state,” Mueller wrote. “Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
Instead, Barr made a surprising excuse for Trump. The president, he said, was upset about the investigation, and his alleged attempts to thwart the probe should be viewed as emotional and without criminal intent.
“There is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,” he said.
But the fact that Mueller had informed Barr of his misgivings about how the report was presented to the public conflicts with testimony Barr gave to the Senate last month.
During a hearing on April 10, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) asked Barr if Mueller “supported his conclusion” about Trump’s criminal culpability.
“I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion,” Barr replied.
Mueller’s letter is proof that Barr was not being truthful, and Beschloss’s hat tip to the past has struck a nerve.
I’m going back to the beginning of the year and an article from The New Yorker that might put some perspective on this creature who is determined to out-Nixon Nixon. This is from Sarah Larson: “Slow Burn”: What Can Watergate Teach Us? You should read it. I may have to strart listening to podcasts more and “Slow Burn” seems like a good place to start.
“I’m going to start with a story that you’ve probably never heard,” Neyfakh says at the beginning of the first episode. It’s the story of “the mouth of the South,” Martha Mitchell, whose husband, John Mitchell, is a former U.S. Attorney General and, at the time of the Watergate break-in, in charge of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Martha Mitchell, Neyfakh says, enjoyed snooping on her husband and talking to the press, and was “treated by Nixon’s men as someone who knew too much.” First, Neyfakh says, “she was kept against her will in a California hotel for days. Then she was forcibly tranquilized while being held down in her bed. Later, when she went public, Nixon loyalists tried to discredit her in the press as an unreliable alcoholic.” She was called crazy; she seemed crazy. “But it turned out that she was onto something.”
Imagine John Mitchell’s conundrum, Neyfakh says: “You’re the President’s closest confidant, and you’re in charge of all kinds of political skullduggery. Meanwhile, your wife is famous for listening in on your meetings, getting hammered on whiskey, and blabbing to reporters.“ When John Mitchell heard of the break-in arrests, he and Martha were in California. He didn’t want Martha to learn the identity of one of the burglars, because she knew him: James W. McCord, a former C.I.A. officer who had worked in security for the Mitchells. “So when he left for D.C., Mitchell put a former F.B.I. agent named Steve King in charge of Martha, and he told him to keep her away from newspapers, TV, news, any coverage of the burglary,” Neyfakh says. She was “literally held a prisoner within four walls,” we hear Martha telling David Frost, in her languid Southern accent. She managed to get a copy of the L.A. Timesand call her friend Helen Thomas, the longtime White House correspondent; midway through the call, Thomas says, she heard Mitchell say “Get away! Get away!” We hear Mitchell say that King “rushes in and jerked out the telephone”—tore the cord out of the wall. Later, Neyfakh says, Martha and King got in a scuffle and she put her hand through a plate-glass door. King, now the Ambassador to the Czech Republic, appointed by Donald Trump, did not respond to Neyfakh’s request for comments.
Everybody knew about Martha Mitchell at the time, but if you weren’t of news-consuming age in the early seventies, it’s fascinating to meet her now. Remembering such figures and anecdotes, Neyfakh says on the show, helps us get a feel for the moment to moment, life in the time as it was lived. Martha Mitchell reminds him of Anthony Scaramucci: they are florid, larger-than-life characters who reveal much about the political moment and then are quickly forgotten. Watergate, he says, has “dozens of Scaramucci-level stories.” He goes on, “I think that’s why hearing Martha Mitchell’s story gives me such a vivid sense of what it was like to live through Watergate. It lets me inhabit that moment when no one knew what was going to happen, when the people involved didn’t know, the reporters covering it didn’t know. Nixon himself certainly had no idea.” Most of us listening are hoping that our unknowns will be resolved as definitively as Watergate’s did.
…
These days, “We’re living through this crazy time when we wake up in the morning dreading the alerts on our phones, and we have no idea how this is going to end,” Neyfakh told me. “And the last time we can remember it happening on this scale was during Watergate. Did it feel the way we feel now?” In some ways, yes; in others, no. A significant difference, I pointed out, was that the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Russia scandal, while gravely serious, are also seen as a possible savior from the greater disaster of Trump himself, whereas Nixon, while loathed by seventies liberals, was a more run-of-the-mill politician, feared by few. The stakes are higher now. Considering that idea, Neyfakh stuck up for the craziness of Nixon. “I have the impression that people didn’t quite realize the depth of Richard Nixon’s paranoia, emotional instability, anger, and taste for vengeance until after the tapes came out publicly,” he said. In public, “he was very practiced, and he presented as a President in a way that Trump has no interest in doing.” People were more unnerved about Nixon when they learned what he was really like—a problem we really don’t have. He mentioned a moment that I had found chilling in the episode, in which Feldbaum describes watching Nixon’s post-Saturday Night Massacre speech on TV and thinking, This guy is not well. At that moment, he feared where Presidential emotional instability would lead: What might an unstable Commander-in-Chief do? We’ve all wondered that, too. But Trump, in his hubris, often goofs up, and so did Nixon. Nixon’s particular portfolio of eccentricities, of course, included recording himself, not managing to avoid surrendering the tapes to the authorities, and incriminating himself. Neyfakh and I laughed about this, in amazement.
“It’s truly, in the language of the modern Internet, a great self-own,” Neyfakh said.
All of this is rolling on in front of us in one media platform after another. If Nixon’s tremendous hubris and personality disorders brought him down, I cannot help but believe the same will be done for Trump. It’s just watching this all reach new levels of craziness and lawlessness is not easy. It’s good to remember that we have been through some of these feelings before. It’s just that omnipresent media coverage amps up the assaults and insults.
It’s exhausting. Isn’t it? It is also important to remind ourselves that eventually, Trump never had the support Nixon had at one time. He may fall quicker than we think. However, Nixon loved just enough of the country to leave peacefully when the writing was on the wall. I worry about this with Trump
Remember Martha? She was the woman nobody believed. I don’t believe that Robert Mueller’s appearance before Congress or the folks that worked for him or any other number of Trump whistle blowers that were sent to Martha Land will be silenced by history. That is why Congressional hearings on all of this need to speak louder than the evil likes of Jerry Falwell, Jr. We need to up the volume.
We have to move public opinion. The only way to do that is with the same kinds of hearings we had with Watergate.
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Posted: January 18, 2019 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Iran-Contra, Russian Collusion, Watergate |
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
This promises to be another of those weeks where we breach the outer limits of Republican tolerance of presidential criminality. We have yet more evidence and smoking guns combined with the cunning of a very wise Amy Klobucher who got the incoming AG to admit that a president that suborns perjury is a president that commits high crimes and misdemeanors. But then we knew that. It is exactly what finally got Nixon out of the Oval Office way back when I was busy graduating from high school.
Not only do we know that Michael Cohen can testify to these acts but it’s corraborated by hard evidence. He admitted to his complicity after he was shown hard evidence. This Buzz Feed article that dropped late last night may be the signal of the end of the Trump Family Crime Syndicate.
Here’s the Headline and lede: “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project. Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin.”
And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.
Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying about the deal in testimony and in a two-page statement to the Senate and House intelligence committees. Special counsel Robert Mueller noted that Cohen’s false claim that the project ended in January 2016 was an attempt to “minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1” — widely understood to be Trump — “in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.”
Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.
The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.
This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
But Cohen’s testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.
On the campaign trail, Trump vehemently denied having any business interests in Russia. But behind the scenes, he was pushing the Moscow project, which he hoped could bring his company profits in excess of $300 million. The two law enforcement sources said he had at least 10 face-to-face meetings with Cohen about the deal during the campaign.
As Jonathan Chait writes at NY Mag, “Trump Ordered Michael Cohen to Perjure Himself. It’s Even Worse Than It Sounds.” Remember Senator Amy Klobucher’s questions for William Barr? Yup, she trapped him into going on record on this very behavior.
1. Attorney General William Barr has already defined this behavior as obstruction of justice. In the secret memo Barr wrote to the Department of Justice questioning Robert Mueller’s obstruction inquiry, Barr allowed that of course it was possible the president could obstruct justice if he did something incredibly obvious, such as instruct people to lie in sworn testimony:
At his Senate confirmation hearings, Barr reiterated that suborning perjury would obviously constitute obstruction.
So whatever legal shield Trump believes he is getting in Barr will not help him escape this allegation.
Yes, all those folks saying Senator Klobuchar was a little relaxed with her questions can now go eat shit. She was laying a nice little trap there and he walked straight into it. It makes me wonder if it was women’s intution, the skill of a seasoned prosecutor or student of political history, or a bit of the old insider information. Any which way, it was a brilliant snap of a trap!
Adam Sewer–writing for The Atlantic–believes this is a “straightforwardly impeachable offense”. If only the Republicans will act. It is probably a matter of getting the insane base off of their Fox News habit. Fox News lies are the addiction that is killing our democracy and rule of law.
While evidence that the Trump campaign sought to assist the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election, and that the president then sought to hamper the federal investigation into that effort, has been in public view for some time, evidence that the president directed Cohen to lie to Congress would be something different entirely, a claim that the president conspired to commit a crime in pursuit of personal financial gain. Republicans have tried their best to set expectations so that only the clearest and most shocking of acts would qualify as criminal—and Trump’s reported actions not only meet but exceed them.
The report, if verified, provides a potentially simple narrative for a story that has often seemed complicated: Trump sought to profit from a real-estate deal in Moscow, and so defended Russia against accusations of interference, and then directed his personal attorney to commit perjury to cover up what he had done.
Obstruction of justice and perjury are crimes that turn on state of mind, but the details in the BuzzFeed News report would leave Trump with few defenses. “If President Trump instructed Michael Cohen to testify to Congress, giving an account of the Russia project that Trump knew to be false, that’s obstruction of justice,” said Bruce Green, a law professor at Fordham and a former associate counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation. “It’s hard to imagine that Trump would have had an innocent ‘state of mind.’ The only viable legal defense would be ‘It didn’t happen.’”
During the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence agencies have said, the Russian government ordered a campaign of disinformation and hacking designed to hamper the candidacy of Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and to help put Trump in the White House. The theft and release of emails from the Democratic National Committee and from the Clinton adviser John Podesta were major factors in the election—damaging Clinton’s reputation and altering the news cycle during periods in which the Trump campaign was dealing with negative coverage, and ultimately affecting what turned out to be a startlingly close election in which Trump failed to win the popular vote. Throughout the election, and even his presidency, Trump has used his influence to dismiss the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that the Russian government was responsible for the hacking.
Shortly after becoming president, Trump pressured then–FBI Director James Comey to end an investigation into Trump’s former campaign surrogate and national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had lied to federal investigators about his contacts with Russian officials. Comey refused and was later fired by Trump. Although the Trump administration initially said Comey was fired for improperly disclosing information about the federal investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified emails, he later told Russian officials in the Oval Office and an NBC reporter in a televised interview that he had done so because of the Russia investigation. Trump publicly fumed that his choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from that investigation after misleading Congress about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, rather than protecting Trump.
Republicans have been deaf dumb and blind to the orange pinball. Congressional Democrats are preparing an investigation (via AP).
The Democratic chairmen of two House committees pledged Friday to investigate a report that President Donald Trump directed his personal attorney to lie to Congress about negotiations over a real estate project in Moscow during the 2016 election.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said “we will do what’s necessary to find out if it’s true.” He said the allegation that Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie in his 2017 testimony to Congress “in an effort to curtail the investigation and cover up his business dealings with Russia is among the most serious to date.”
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, said directing a subordinate to lie to Congress is a federal crime.
“The @HouseJudiciary Committee’s job is to get to the bottom of it, and we will do that work,” Nadler tweeted.
It will be interesting to watch the minority members response as the committee hearings unfold.
Susan Glasser’s thought piece in The New Yorker Is worth a read. “Are We Really Where We Are?”: Trump, Putin, and Washington’s Unbelievable New Normal. Regardless of whether Trump ends up making a speech on Capitol Hill on January 29th, the state of the union is not strong, and everyone knows it.”
Sunday will mark the second anniversary of Donald Trump’s Presidency. The U.S. government has been partially shut down for weeks, with no end in sight. The White House is on its third chief of staff, nearly a half-dozen Cabinet seats are empty, and the First Daughter Ivanka, previously known for her fashionable yet affordable line of high heels, appears to be in charge of picking the new head of the World Bank. Since the Defense Secretary quit, in protest over Trump’s withdrawal from Syria, the President has been reported to be unilaterally considering pulling out of Afghanistan and the nato alliance, as well. Congressional Democrats, days into their new House majority, are talking about impeachment, and their leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, effectively disinvited Trump from giving the annual State of the Union address, citing the shutdown. This past Friday, we learned, via the Times, that the F.B.I. opened a counterintelligence investigation of Trump to determine whether he was a Russian intelligence asset.
On Monday, which marked a year and three hundred and fifty-nine days since his Inauguration, President Trump had his “I am not a crook” moment. All weekend, he had avoided giving even a simple denial of what, for any other American President, would have been an unimaginable revelation. Now, on the snow-covered White House drive, after discoursing on the fast-food hamburgers he planned to serve the Clemson University football team that night, Trump told reporters, “I never worked for Russia.” He added, “Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it’s a disgrace that you even asked that question because it’s a whole big fat hoax.”
Regardless of whether Trump ends up making his speech on Capitol Hill, which is scheduled for January 29th, the state of the union is not strong, and everyone knows it. Almost every day since Trump was elected, someone, somewhere, has asked if this is the constitutional crisis we have been waiting for. Was his firing of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, in what seemed to be an effort to stop the investigation into his campaign, the constitutional crisis? Or his continual talk of firing the special counsel, or his actual firing of the attorney general? Days before the midterm elections, when Trump deployed thousands of U.S. troops to the border, to combat a nonexistent “invasion” by a caravan of poor Central American migrants, I thought that might finally be the crisis. But, of course, every day of the last two years has brought something that would have previously been unthinkable. When will we finally learn that just because it is unthinkable doesn’t mean it can’t happen?
It’s really difficult to believe there isn’t enough evidence out there to end all of this and it’s really difficult to quietly sit and wait for a Mueller report that may or may not come depending on the whims of an Trump appointed AG. However, it appears Trump’s due diligence on finding his own Roy Cohn may not have given him peace this time out. From CNN: “Trump startled by cozy Barr-Mueller relationship”.
President Donald Trump was startled Tuesday as he watched television coverage of his nominee for attorney general describing a warm relationship with the special counsel Robert Mueller in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to three people familiar with the matter.
During the first day of his confirmation hearing, William Barr described telling the President the first time he met him in June 2017 that he was friends with Mueller, referring to him on a first name basis.
“I told him how well I knew Bob Mueller and that the Barrs and Muellers were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over,” Barr said. “Bob is a straight-shooter and should be dealt with as such.”
While Barr said during his hearing that Trump “was interested” in hearing about the friendship, the details that emerged this week caught the President off guard, the three sources said. He bristled at Barr’s description of the close relationship, complaining to aides he didn’t realize how much their work overlapped or that they were so close.
There is no indication Trump’s surprise will jeopardize the nomination, however.
Later, Trump privately rationalized the relationship between Barr and Mueller as stemming from both having worked in the Washington legal establishment for years, according to one of the people.
“I have known Bob Mueller for 30 years,” Barr said Tuesday. “We worked closely together throughout my previous tenure at the Department of Justice under President Bush. We’ve been friends since. And I have the utmost respect for Bob and his distinguished record of public service. And when he was named special counsel, I said his selection was ‘good news’ and that, knowing him, I had confidence he would handle the matter properly. And I still have that confidence today.”
On Tuesday, Barr repeatedly sought to reassure senators that he would not interfere with Mueller’s investigation, claiming he wouldn’t be “bullied” into doing anything he deemed improper.
“I am not going to do anything that I think is wrong, and I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong,” Barr told the panel. “By anybody. Whether it be editorial boards, or Congress or the President. I’m going to do what I think is right.”
That doesn’t give me much peace given all the pardons doled out on his recommendations on the Iran Contra Scandal startng with Caspar Weinberger. I’m closing with this quote via NPR with the man who was charged with the prosecution.
To the man who led the Iran-Contra investigation, however, the pardons represented a miscarriage of justice.
“It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences,” said Lawrence Walsh, the independent prosecutor in the case, at the time of the pardons.
Will any of this history repeat on us and will it be the good outcomes instead of those miscarriages of justice?
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Posted: January 26, 2018 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: FBI, firing DOJ officials, Nixon, Trump, Watergate |
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
We learned yesterday that we might have been closer to a repeat Saturday Night Massacre than we thought. KKKremlin Caligula tried to fire Robert Mueller only to back off when the White House Council threatened to resign. We have entered the Nixon Zone.
Here’s some analysis of the NYT investigative piece by Lawfare.
The reported Thursday evening that President Trump ordered the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in June and was only dissuaded when White House Counsel Don McGahn threatened to resign rather than transmit the order to the Justice Department. Mueller has reportedly become aware of the attempt to dismiss him in the course of investigating possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates.
According to the Times, Trump claimed that multiple conflicts of interests disqualified Mueller from overseeing the Russia investigation—including a fee dispute with a Trump golf club, his prior firm’s representation of Jared Kushner, and the fact that Trump had interviewed Mueller to potentially again become FBI director the day before he was appointed as special counsel. In May, career Justice Department ethics officials Mueller to lead the probe, determining that he did not have disqualifying conflicts. In a follow-up story, the Washington Post that McGahn “did not deliver his resignation threat directly to Trump, but was serious about his threat to leave.”
The Times also noted that Trump considered firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, in order to place Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand in charge of the investigation.
At the time Trump ordered Mueller’s firing, he was still represented by his longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz, who took an adversarial approach to the Russia investigation. Reportedly, Trump’s new counsel, Ty Cobb, has convinced the president that “the quickest way to clear the cloud of suspicion was to cooperation with Mr. Mueller, not to fire him.” Nevertheless, the Times reports that Trump has wavered in the intervening months over the decision to fire Mueller and that in his public comments on the subject Trump has kept open the possibility of dismissing Mueller.
A few observations:
First, the Times’s reporting demonstrates just how out of control the president had become in June, less than a month after firing James Comey as FBI director. A few of his tweets from that time offer a stark reminder that the special counsel’s investigation—and Rosenstein’s appointment of Mueller—weighed heavily even in his public statements …
Here’s the highpoints from Axios:
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“Mueller learned about the episode in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials.” (Including the counsel who threatened to resign, Don McGahn!)
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Key point: “McGahn disagreed with the president’s case and told senior White House officials that firing Mr. Mueller would have a catastrophic effect on Mr. Trump’s presidency.”
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“McGahn also told White House officials that Mr. Trump would not follow through on the dismissal on his own. The president then backed off.”
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“Amid the first wave of news media reports that Mr. Mueller was examining a possible obstruction case, the president began to argue that Mr. Mueller had three conflicts of interest that disqualified him.”
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“First, [Trump] claimed that a dispute years ago over fees at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., had prompted Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director at the time, to resign his membership. The president also said Mr. Mueller could not be impartial because he had most recently worked for the law firm that previously represented the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Finally, the president said, Mr. Mueller had been interviewed to return as the F.B.I. director the day before he was appointed special counsel in May.”
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Why it matters: “The White House has denied nearly a dozen times since June that Mr. Trump was considering firing Mr. Mueller.”
Be smart: As we told you Wednesday in our piece about Mueller following Trump like a dark cloud: These actions were taken in office knowing the whole world is watching for a cover-up. It’s the ultimate unforced error — and reason many around Trump fear him testifying.
P.S. CNN’s Groundhog Day headline this morning: “TRUMP TRIP OVERSHADOWED BY CONTROVERSY.”
Julian Zelzer of The Atlantic has the Nixonian take calling the Drumpf regime “The runaway President.”
The reason that so many Americans react badly to the news about Trump is similar to what drove the outrage about President Richard Nixon’s famous Saturday Night Massacre, as the Washington Post reporter David Broder named it, in October of 1973. The path to that scandal started when Alexander Butterfield, a former aide to H.R. Haldeman, revealed to the Watergate congressional committee that the president had recorded secret Oval Office conversations. Archibald Cox, the Harvard professor who had been appointed as an independent special prosecutor in May to investigate Watergate, wanted those tapes. He wanted to know just what they revealed about the June 1972 break in to the Democratic National Headquarters. On October 12, a U.S. Court of Appeals ordered Nixon to comply. Nixon tried to broker an agreement with Cox to release a small portion of the tapes, but the negotiations broke down.
Nixon was livid when he heard that Cox was demanding that the White House release all the recordings. It was bad enough that the Ivy-League professor was being so aggressive with him, but now Cox seemed to be taking the investigation to a new level that could be extremely damaging. Nixon, who believed that his office gave him the power to do almost anything, ordered that Attorney General Eliot Richardson fire Cox. The problem was that Richardson refused. “Let it be on your head,” the president angrily told the attorney general when they met. Soon after, Nixon turned to the next person in command, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who also refused to carry out the order. “I am, of course, sorry that my conscience will not permit me to carry out your instruction to discharge Archibald Cox,” he wrote in his resignation letter. It wasn’t until Solicitor General Robert Bork said yes that Nixon found someone to do what he wanted. “I am, as instructed by the President, discharging you, effective at once, from your position as Special Prosecutor, Watergate Special Prosecution Force,” Bork wrote in a letter. Cox’s staff of 38 lawyers and 50 staff was immediately dismantled.
The response was sheer outrage all over the country. “It was a terrifying night. It felt like we were in a banana republic,” the journalist Elizabeth Drew later recounted in an interview. The fact that the president took it upon himself to try to kill the investigation by getting rid of the investigator was evidence that Nixon was out of control. NBC Newscaster John Chancellor told his viewers: “The country tonight is in the midst of what may be the most serious constitutional crisis in its history.”
Here’s some other news. From WAPO, we learned the Guggenheim trolled the White House with total finesse. “The White House asked to borrow a van Gogh. The Guggenheim offered a gold toilet instead.” The artist “Cattelan has also suggested that he had in mind the wealth that permeates aspects of society, describing the golden toilet “as 1 percent art for the 99 percent.”
The emailed response from the Guggenheim’s chief curator to the White House was polite but firm: The museum could not accommodate a request to borrow a painting by Vincent van Gogh for President and Melania Trump’s private living quarters.
Instead, wrote the curator, Nancy Spector, another piece was available, one that was nothing like “Landscape With Snow,” the 1888 van Gogh rendering of a man in a black hat walking along a path in Arles, France, with his dog.
The curator’s alternative: an 18-karat, fully functioning, solid gold toilet — an interactive work titled “America” that critics have described as pointed satire aimed at the excess of wealth in this country.
For a year, the Guggenheim had exhibited “America” — the creation of contemporary artist Maurizio Cattelan — in a public restroom on the museum’s fifth floor for visitors to use.
But the exhibit was over and the toilet was available “should the President and First Lady have any interest in installing it in the White House,” Spector wrote in an email obtained by The Washington Post.
The artist “would like to offer it to the White House for a long-term loan,” wrote Spector, who has been critical of Trump. “It is, of course, extremely valuable and somewhat fragile, but we would provide all the instructions for its installation and care.”
You’ll have to get this Dutch article translated but it has a particularly interesting bit of news exposing Dutch intelligence on the “cozy bear” 
hackers and the Russian hacking of our 2016 election.
Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with crucial information about Russian interference with the American elections. For years, AIVD had access to the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. That’s what de Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur have uncovered in their investigation.
It’s a fascinating read worthy of a Le Carre novel. It actually begins around 2014.
The Dutch access to the Russian hackers’ network soon pays off. In November, the Russians prepare for an attack on one of their prime targets: the American State Department. By now, they’ve obtained e-mail addresses and the login credentials of several civil servants. They manage to enter the non-classified part of the computer network.
The AIVD and her military counterpart MIVD inform the NSA-liaison at the American embassy in The Hague. He immediately alerts the different American intelligence services.
What follows is a rare battle between the attackers, who are attempting to further infiltrate the State Department, and its defenders, FBI and NSA teams – with clues and intelligence provided by the Dutch. This battle lasts 24 hours, according to American media.
The Russians are extremely aggressive but do not know they’re being spied on. Thanks to the Dutch spies, the NSA and FBI are able to counter the enemy with enormous speed. The Dutch intel is so crucial that the NSA opens a direct line with Zoetermeer, to get the information to the United States as soon as possible.
Finally, Phillip Bump looks at and talks with Hillary voters. Finally! We get our due!!
https://twitter.com/SarahLerner/status/956922420597698562
And then, there’s this one too:
No, life on these blocks centers around a joint on Carpenter Lane called Weavers Way, the venerable corner food co-op that launched in the twilight of the hippie era in 1972, where today senior citizens and young social workers wander down from rambling old-stone houses with their reusable canvas bags to load up on bulk spices, home-baked muffins, or maybe a treat like pumpkin gingersnap ice cream.
It’s the kind of place where the regulars pause on the front steps to check out ads for dog walkers or fiddle lessons, then trade friendly banter with familiar neighbors in the narrow aisles. And so Brittany Barbato, a 29-year-old writer and photographer for mission-driven publications who lives nearby, was when she strolled into Weavers Way on the morning of Nov. 9, 2016 — just hours after Donald Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States.
“Usually there’s a buzz — you can hear people chatting, the bulk canisters flowing with what people are buying — and the cashiers are all chipper and friendly,” said Barbato, standing outside the food co-op in the January chill. “That’s why we love living here, the community. But I remember coming into the store and thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so eerie, so quiet.’ It did feel as if something had died. And I remember thinking, ‘This is how I feel, too.’ ”
More than a year after that funereal morning in Mount Airy, the neighborhood has a bit of a feel of an occupied territory. Behind ancient stone walls, on the narrow, sloping yards, stand the signs of resistance at home after home: “Impeach Trump,” or “Black Lives Matter/Philly Children’s March,” with more than a smattering of “Hillary” yard signs that owners refuse to take down, and one that declares: “In This House, We Believe: Black Lives Matter/Women’s Rights Are Human Rights/No Human Is Illegal/Science Is Real/Love Is Love/No Matter Your Faith Or Ability/Kindness Is Everything.”
Boston Boomer will undoubtedly have a lot to say on Tuesday on why we will not be live blogging the SOTU address. This is something we have done for years but not this one. I, for one, can’t bear to hear or watch him mangle the English language and our American values. However, we might give some consideration to listening to Representative Joseph Kennedy’s response. Let us know how you feel.
Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, one of the Democratic Party’s rising political stars, has been tapped by top party leaders to deliver the official Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union address next week.
The choice thrusts the 37-year-old, three-term congressman from Brookline into the national spotlight more squarely than he has ever been before. The job will put him on national television as the face of the Democratic Party and the voice of chief Trump critic at an extraordinary moment in the country’s politics. For many Americans, it will be their first introduction to the latest Kennedy on the political scene.
“Congressman Kennedy is a relentless fighter for working Americans,” Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a press release announcing the move. “While President Trump has consistently broken his promises to the middle class, Congressman Kennedy profoundly understands the challenges facing hard-working men and women across the country.”
The Republicans and Drumpf continue their assault on the FBI. Slate’s Impeach-O-meter is going off once more but stuck at 45% after the probing of Andrew McCabe’s 2016 voting records. He definitely is stuck on finding all of his men.
Not that I really care about what Bob Woodward thinks but in a recent interview with Poynter he says we’re still not reaching peak Watergate.
Bob Woodward would know better than most of us if Donald Trump was the new Richard Nixon.
But he’s not, said the reporting icon responsible for breaking the Watergate scandal during a talk at the Mahaffey Theater on Wednesday night. At least, it’s too early to tell.
“We talk about maybe what Russia did or the extent to which they did — it’s not clear — meddle in our election,” he said to a predominantly older audience of several hundred people. “But in 1972 we had the real thing: the inside destruction of our electoral system, funded, organized, championed, led by Richard Nixon.”
Woodward insists we still don’t know where it’s going. I think we’re inching closer to definite ‘Obstruction of justice’ charges. We’ll be in a better place after a Blue Wave to take this menace out of office and his little dog Pence too.
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