"Moscow Mitch" Fumes at Being Called Out

The Mueller Report and the findings of all of America's intelligence services are in agreement that Russia conducted a cyber attack on the United States in 2016 and will likely do so again in 2020.  Yet despite this unanimous view of the need for increased election security, Mitch McConnell, Republican majority leader in the U.S. Senate, has blocked all legislation that would fund beefed up cyber security and aid states in upgrading their election systems and machinery. Why? Most likely because McConnell believes Russian interference in 2020 is needed to help re-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans - including perhaps McConnell himself.  Yet McConnell bristles at the nickname "Moscow Mitch."  Sorry, but if the nickname fits and aptly describes his conduct, then I hope it sticks to McConnell like the strongest glue or adhesive.  Yes, Donald Trump is foul and an insult to common decency and morality, but so is Mitch McConnell who has proven to be one of Trump's most toxic enablers.  A piece in the New York Times looks at McConnell's efforts to make Russian interference easier and his conniption fit over being called out.  Here are excerpts:

Senator Mitch McConnell is usually impervious to criticism, even celebrating the nasty nicknames critics bestow on him. But Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is incensed by the name “Moscow Mitch,” and even more miffed that he has been called a “Russian asset” by critics who accuse him of single-handedly blocking stronger election security measures after Russia’s interference in 2016.

Democrats had been making the case for months, but it was supercharged last week by the testimony of Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, who told the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians were back at it “as we sit here.”

Mr. McConnell cites several reasons for his opposition — a longstanding resistance to federal control over state elections, newly enacted security improvements that were shown to have worked in the 2018 voting and his suspicion that Democrats are trying to gain partisan advantage with a host of proposals.

But whatever Mr. McConnell’s reasoning, the criticism has taken hold — even back home in Kentucky, where the majority leader faces re-election next year.

“Democrats want more aggressive legislation to protect America’s elections after Robert Mueller’s stark warning about Russian interference,” began one report aired on a Louisville television station last week. “Mitch McConnell blocked it.”  Even President Trump felt compelled to come to his defense — as only he could. That did not relieve the heat on the majority leader, who on Monday had appeared to open the door ever so slightly to doing more on election preparedness. For once, Democrats seemed to be getting to a man who has embraced his portrayal as Darth Vader and the Grim Reaper overseeing a Senate graveyard for legislation that he opposes. Democrats pressed their advantage. And why not? The hashtag #MoscowMitchMcTraitor was trending on Twitter, and Senate Republicans of all stripes were being asked about the blockade.

“So long as the Senate Republicans prevent legislation from reaching the floor, so long as they oppose additional appropriations to the states, so long as they malign election security provisions as, quote, partisan wish lists, the critics are right to say Leader McConnell and Republican senators are blocking election security,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said on the floor Tuesday.

Mr. Schumer has in the past suggested that another potential reason behind Mr. McConnell’s position is the thought that interference emanating from Russia could aid Republicans. “I hope it’s not because he thinks it will benefit him, because Putin could turn around in a minute, and then do things that he doesn’t like,” Mr. Schumer said in June. Mr. McConnell’s opposition to any and all election legislation has bottled up the bills in the Senate Rules Committee. The panel’s chairman, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, has hesitated to advance any of the measures since they would go nowhere on the floor. Proponents of the bills say they are devised to keep the states in the lead. A Democratic measure approved by the House would send more than $1 billion to state and local governments to tighten election security, but would also demand that states use the money for machines with backup paper ballots and require a national strategy to protect American democratic institutions against cyberattacks. States would be required to spend federal funds only on federally certified “election infrastructure vendors.”

A bipartisan measure in both chambers would require internet companies like Facebook to disclose the purchasers of political ads. Another bipartisan Senate proposal would codify cyberinformation-sharing initiatives between federal intelligence services and state election officials, speed up the granting of security clearances to state officials and provide federal incentives for states to adopt backup paper ballots.

All of the proposals mentioned are common sense in nature and would better protect the nation.  That McConnell opposes all of them leaves truly one conclusion: he wants Russian interference in 2020 and believes it will aid Trump and Republicans. 

Mueller Speaks: No Exoneration of Trump; Barr Mislead Public

Robert Mueller finally broke his silence and released a statement that he read today.  The statement confirms that Mueller's investigation did NOT conclude that Trump/his campaign had not committed a crime. Stated another way, the report in way exonerates Trump. Trump's claims to the contrary are, like so many other of his utterances, lies.  Mueller's statement also makes it clear that Attorney General William Barr has mislead the American public and seemingly has been more concerned with acting as Trump's consigliere than serving the citizens of  America.  One columnist in the Washington Post summed up Mueller's statement and the perilous state of our democracy in this manner:

If this man of precise language was not inviting Congress to impeach the president, he certainly seemed to be inviting the belief that he didn’t charge Trump with crimes only because he couldn’t. And because Mueller chooses words carefully, it’s also worth noting which one he didn’t use: “collusion.” Instead, he implicitly rebuked a president who constantly, maddeningly, refers to Vladimir Putin’s interference in the 2016 election as the “Russian hoax.” 

Mueller ended his nearly 10-minute statement where it began, and where the entire investigation began: with a Russian attack on the United States. There “were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American,” Mueller said.

If our country’s political health were better, the Russian attack would get the attention of every American. But Mueller gives us more credit than we deserve. His report assumed that our leaders would take seriously the Russian threat when presented with overwhelming evidence. It assumed that political leaders would soberly weigh the evidence that Trump obstructed his investigation.

Instead, Trump laughs about the whole thing with Putin, Republican leaders quash bipartisan efforts to protect the 2020 election from another attack, and GOP lawmakers, instead of pondering the president’s culpability and Mueller’s damning findings, demand investigations of investigators’ “treason” and attempted “coup.”  In appealing to their better angels, Mueller was naive. 

Russia is preparing to attack us — again. Trump is poised to benefit — again. Unlike in 2016, we now know Russia’s bad intentions, thanks to Mueller. That Trump and his allies facilitate the Russian attack by refusing to protect against it is the essence of collusion. 

Frighteningly, as the column notes, Trump, Putin, Russian intelligence agents and William Barr have other would be co-conspirators: Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and every other Republican member of Congress who continues to act to protect Trump - and their own re-election chances - and giving Trump and his base political fellatio at the express of the nation as a whole.  For those inclined to read (which rules out Fox News viewers), the following is Mueller's entire statement as published by CNN.  Read it if you question my reading of it.

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel's Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking today because our investigation is complete. The Attorney General has made the report on our investigation largely public. And we are formally closing the Special Counsel's Office. As well, I am resigning from the Department of Justice and returning to private life.

I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work. But beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office's written work speak for itself.

Let me begin where the appointment order begins: and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election.

As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system.

The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information, and then released that information through fake online identities and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate.

And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to interfere in the election.

These indictments contain allegations. And we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.

The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood. That is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office.

That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate.

The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy.

And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the President.

The order appointing me Special Counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation and we kept the office of the Acting Attorney General apprised of the progress of our work.

As set forth in our report, after that investigation, if we had confidence that the President clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said that.

We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the President did commit a crime. The introduction to volume two of our report explains that decision.

It explains that under long-standing Department policy, a President cannot be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view—that too is prohibited.

The Special Counsel's Office is part of the Department of Justice and, by regulation, it was bound by that Department policy. Charging [Trump] the President with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.

The Department's written opinion explaining the policy against charging a President makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report. And I will describe two of them:

First, the opinion explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting President because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents are available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could now be charged.

And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.

And beyond Department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of an actual charge.

So that was the Justice Department policy and those were the principles under which we operated. From them we concluded that we would not reach a determination -- one way or the other -- about whether [Trump] the President committed a crime. That is the office's final position and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the President.

We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the Attorney General—as required by Department regulations.

The Attorney General then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and the American people.

At one point in time I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The Attorney General preferred to make the entire report public all at once. We appreciate that the Attorney General made the report largely public. I do not question the Attorney General's good faith in that decision.

I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak about this matter. I am making that decision myself—no one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter.

There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself.

The report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.

In addition, access to our underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office.

So beyond what I have said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress.

It is for that reason that I will not take questions here today.

Before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the FBI agents, the analysts, and the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. These individuals, who spent nearly two years with the Special Counsel's Office, were of the highest integrity.

I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments—that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.Thank you.

I for one are very fearful for the future if Republicans continue to put their increasingly toxic and corrupt party ahead of the best interests of the nation. Hopefully, history will deal with Trump, McConnell, Graham and others very harshly and they will rank with Hitler's collaborators who similarly worked to destroy Germany's democracy in the 1930's.

Former Prosecutors: Were He Not President, Trump Would Have Been Indicted

Over the weekend, I saw a headline of a poll that said 57% of Americans think Trump is a criminal. That view ties in well with the opinion of four hundred and fifty (450) former federal prosecutors who state that but for his occupancy of the White House, Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice. Sadly, the view of the Justice Department policy - and it is only a policy - that a sitting president cannot be indicted places the holder of the office of president above the law.   The obvious conclusion is that William Barr is more concerned with protection Trump very wide ass and duping the American public that providing an honest analysis of Trump's wrong doings.  The Washington Post looks at the statement of the prosecutors.  Here are highlights:

More than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he holds.

The statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime.

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the former federal prosecutors wrote.

“We emphasize that these are not matters of close professional judgment,” they added. “Of course, there are potential defenses or arguments that could be raised in response to an indictment of the nature we describe here. . . . But, to look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice — the standard set out in Principles of Federal Prosecution — runs counter to logic and our experience.”

The statement is notable for the number of people who signed it — 375 as of early Monday afternoon, growing to 459 in the hours after it published — and the positions and political affiliations of some on the list. Among the high-profile signers are Bill Weld, a former U.S. attorney and Justice Department official in the Reagan administration who is running against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination; Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration; John S. Martin, a former U.S. attorney and federal judge appointed to his posts by Republican presidents; Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; and Jeffrey Harris, who worked as the principal assistant to Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was at the Justice Department in the Reagan administration.

The list also includes more than 20 former U.S. attorneys and more than 100 people with at least 20 years of service at the Justice Department — most of them former career officials. The signers worked in every presidential administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former federal prosecutor, joined the letter after news of it broke, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his support for its premise .

“We strongly believe that Americans deserve to hear from the men and women who spent their careers weighing evidence and making decisions about whether it was sufficient to justify prosecution, so we agreed to send out a call for signatories,” Vail said. “The response was overwhelming. This effort reflects the voices of former prosecutors who have served at DOJ and signed the statement.” Weld said by the time he reviewed the statement, it already had more than 100 signatures, and he affixed his name because he had concluded the evidence “goes well beyond what is required to support criminal charges of obstruction of justice.”

“I hope the letter will be persuasive evidence that Attorney General Barr’s apparent legal theory is incorrect,” he said.

Many legal analysts have wondered since Mueller’s report was released whether the special counsel believed he had sufficient evidence to charge Trump and was just unwilling to say it out loud. “All of this conduct — trying to control and impede the investigation against the President by leveraging his authority over others — is similar to conduct we have seen charged against other public officials and people in powerful positions,” the former federal prosecutors wrote in their letter. They wrote that prosecuting such cases was “critical because unchecked obstruction — which allows intentional interference with criminal investigations to go unpunished — puts our whole system of justice at risk.”

No one is above the law.  Trump needs to be indicted, tried, and hopefully convicted and removed from office. 

Lindsey Graham’s Shamelessness

Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen - a study in hypocrisy.

One of the things that has been illuminating about Donald Trump and his candidacy and toxic and pathologically lying regime is just how morally bankrupt so many Republicans have proven to be.  For reasons I still cannot grasp - other than fear of the increasingly ugly GOP base - those who once pretended to have some basic understanding of both decency and constitutional and legal norms have shown themselves only too eager to prostitute themselves for Trump.  Among the worse is Senator Lindsey Graham who flatly stated the standard for removal of a president from office during the Clinton impeachment debacle.  Indeed, under Graham's own enunciated standard an indictable crime was not a prerequisite for use of impeachment to "cleanse the office" and "restore honor and integrity to the office [of the presidency]."  Now, faced with far more egregious conduct by Trump, Graham has thrown aside his own standard and is only too willing to look the other way and whine a far different song.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Graham's shameless hypocrisy.  Here are highlights: 

One difficulty about a career in politics is that the longer you’re in the business, the longer a track record of quotes and video your opponents can scour to undercut you. It’s something former vice president Joe Biden is contending with as he enters the Democratic primary, and it’s an obstacle his old Senate colleague Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has run into in the wake of the Mueller report.

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Graham spoke to host Margaret Brennan; naturally, much of the interview focused on Attorney General William P. Barr’s planned testimony to Congress this week. As the new chair of the Judiciary Committee, Graham has shown enthusiasm for thoroughly investigating some scandals through to the end, such as the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. He showed the same enthusiasm during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, when he was one of the House’s prosecutors during Clinton’s trial in the Senate.

But Graham’s doggedness has disappeared when it comes to a Republican White House, replaced by a deliberate ignorance. “From my point of view, I’ve heard all I need to really know,” he told Brennan. He reiterated the sentiment again and again, especially regarding Trump’s ordering then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Brennan. “I don’t care what he said to Don McGahn. … I don’t care what happened between him and Don McGahn. … No, I’m — I’m done.”
 Asked what he wants the Barr hearings to focus on, Graham replied, “Does the report support his summary? Does the report actually indicate there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians?” Graham left out, of course, that Mueller made no finding regarding the nonlegal concept of “collusion,” only one regarding the higher standard of criminal conspiracy. And he left out that there was significant evidence that individuals associated with the Trump campaign conspired with WikiLeaks over the release of stolen Democratic emails.

Democrats are suggesting that a president who orders his staff to obstruct an independent investigation maybe shouldn’t be president — hardly a crazy standard.

Then Graham had to face his past, as Brennan played his words from the Clinton impeachment trial:

The point I am trying to make is you don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic, if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. Thank God you did that, because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.

Graham tried to reconcile his hypocrisy. “What President Clinton did was interfere in a lawsuit against him by Paula Jones and others, hide the evidence, encourage people to lie. So, to me, he took the legal system and turned it upside down.”

Note the words “encourage people to lie.” Note that Graham didn’t say, “People lied with his encouragement.” That Clinton allegedly told people to lie was enough for Graham (then and now), regardless of whether the Democratic president’s entreaties were successful. But this president is a Republican, so Graham’s standard changes.

Graham is far from the first hypocritical politician. But the South Carolina senator particularly prides himself on being no-nonsense and on his legal experience. That he has opted for such an obvious double standard is especially shameless.

The Diminishing Power of Trump's Lies

Outside of Donald Trump's white supremacist and right wing Christian extremist base where the truth and objective facts have never mattered, the Mueller report has helped to do one thing, namely demonstrate just how dishonest Trump and many of his minion - e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders who learned to lie from a master liar, her father - have been from day one of the Trump campaign.  Indeed, the volume of lies has only increased. In my view, it is to a point where the press needs to start skipping White House press briefings and cease reporting what are deliberate lies.  Why disseminate Trump's lies for him and a bunch of lies for liars who have proven their credibility to be less than that of a sleazy carnival barker selling snake oil?  Stop amplifying the lies. Thankfully, some in the press seem to be waking up to reality and questioning their actions in broadcasting known lies and untruths. A piece in Politico looks at the growing media reluctance to accept Trump's non-stop lies.  Here are highlights:

President Donald Trump wants New York Times journalists to beg for forgiveness on their knees, and White House aides say they’re ready to accept apologies from the press corps at large. They’re in for a long wait.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s bombshell 448-page report has unleashed a very different kind of reckoning among Washington reporters and media watchdogs.

The report detailed multiple efforts by Trump and his senior aides to mislead journalists and the public, reigniting a long-running media debate about how to cover such an unprecedented presidency — and when, if ever, to accept White House denials at face value.

The repeated public rejections of key aspects of the report in the face of sworn, on-the-record statements from his own advisers have diminished the power of a denial from the president of the United States — something that once carried weight.

“Reporters have to start assuming that this White House is going to continue to lie and manipulate the media,” Columbia Journalism Review editor-in-chief Kyle Pope said in an interview.

Pope even questioned the value of quoting or interviewing Trump’s principal spokesperson, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who admitted to Mueller’s investigators that she made unfounded claims that the ousted FBI director James Comey had lost support among rank-and-file agents. Sanders later tried to defend her statement, saying the “sentiment” was accurate without offering any proof to support her claim.

“I don’t think Sanders has any credibility whatsoever,” he said.  Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump and his staffers have responded to the Mueller report with nearly simultaneous claims of vindication and frustration. [Trump's] The president’s delight that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election has been quickly replaced with rage.

After initially claiming “total exoneration,” [Trump] the president now calls some of the report’s findings “total bulls--t,” and he has bashed ex-staffers who supplied detailed notes about crucial behind-the-scenes moments at the White House. Trump is particularly furious with former White House counsel Don McGahn, who told investigators that Trump repeatedly told him to oust Mueller, a directive he ignored. The president denies McGahn’s assertion, although Mueller found ample evidence to substantiate it.

“Journalists shouldn't take anything said by any president at face value, but the Mueller report reminds us that [Trump] this president in particular says so many things that are flatly untrue that we shouldn't trust anything without checking it,” said veteran New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker.

“And we didn't even need Mueller to tell us that,” Baker added. “Every White House reporter has experienced it over the last couple years. Time after time, he has denied things that were confirmed elsewhere.”

Earlier this month, for example, Trump denied reports that he had offered then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon had he been jailed for illegally blocking migrant from entering the country.

Privately, White House reporters said they felt vindicated by Mueller’s report, noting that it supported much of their reporting about the president over the past two years. They have no plans to apologize for their coverage.

But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his aides from calling for journalists to beg for forgiveness. . . The New York Times has not apologized to the president for its 2016 coverage.

Asked whether reporters’ approach to White House coverage should change in the aftermath of the report, Bob Woodward said, “I don’t think so. I think, by and large, people have maintained their aggressive edge.”

Woodward, in an interview, added that reporters should focus less on allegations of Russian collusion and more on what he called the “governing crisis” created by the internal chaos in the White House. Issues like Trump’s policy toward Iran are deeply consequential and warrant deeper scrutiny from the press, he said.

Trust nothing that Trump and his sycophants say and cease giving him a platform to disseminate lies.  Question everything coming out of his thoroughly dishonest regime. 

Keeping Trump in Office will Destroy the Republican Party

As Democrats in the House of Representatives debate what action to take in the wake of the release of the Mueller report, some are arguing that impeachment would be a foolish move and could harm Democrat prospects in 2020, especially f the party fails to nominate a viable candidate and the cultist in the Sanders camp keep their vow to vote for Trump if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee (a move, in my view, that shows they are irrational at best).  Instead, continued investigations of Trump under the guise of Congressional oversight, a constitutional duty, and allowing Trump to further alienate more and more of the populace could be the Democrats' best bet at destroying the Republican Party - or more aptly, allowing Trump and his knuckle dragging base to destroy it. For decades the GOP has had no long term plan and Trump is accelerating the GOP's self-inflicted suicide.  Here are highlights from an op-ed in the New York Times that makes this argument:

In the fall of 1998, Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with the speaker of the House. Mr. Bowles enjoyed a better relationship with Speaker Newt Gingrich than anyone in the Clinton White House, partly based on a shared Southern heritage and commitment to fiscal conservatism. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Bowles put a very direct question to Mr. Gingrich: Why were the Republicans intent on impeaching Bill Clinton? The speaker replied, “Because we can.”

Just as Speaker Gingrich did in 1998, Speaker Nancy Pelosi could direct the impeachment of President Trump because she can. Unlike in 1998, she stands on firmer ground: The Clinton case involved an egregious personal mistake and purported steps to cover it up; the Trump case involves an effort to thwart an investigation into a foreign attack on our democratic system.

Inevitably the news media and the political chattering class, of which I count myself as a card-carrying member, have focused on the party politics of impeachment. With the benefit of hindsight, impeaching President Clinton was a disaster for the Republicans. Mr. Clinton’s job approval was at a record 73 percent the month he was impeached, Democrats defied the odds and picked up seats in the midterm elections and Mr. Gingrich returned to the private sector.

Impeaching Bill Clinton was wholly a political decision; the substance mattered little in 1998. Two decades later, Democrats face almost the exact opposite dynamics.

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation. Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Mr. Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. . . . What’s left of the party [GOP] is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson — a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

[K]eeping President Trump in office is the best way to cement Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party.

Republicans themselves know it, and that simple fact is a huge problem for them: By and large they don’t like him, and they know he’s a long-term problem for the party — but in the short term they know they can’t get re-elected without his voters. For Democrats, it’s the dream scenario — as long as he completes his term.

President Trump should be impeached because he is unfit for the presidency. . . . But if Newt Gingrich taught us anything, impeaching the president is likely to be bad politics.

Nothing will unite an increasingly fraying Republican Party more than trying to remove the president anywhere but at the ballot box. Democrats risk the kind of overreach that doomed the Republicans 20 years ago. And in any case Democrats are not likely to succeed in getting votes in the Senate to convict the president. And in politics, a loss is a loss — there are no moral victories.

I fully understand the historical imperative of holding the president accountable for his behavior. I also share the sentiment of so many Americans who want to punish him for what he’s done to the country. But I believe there is something bigger at stake.

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble — and this is the best bet we’ve had in a long time.

The argument makes good sense. Pray that the Democrats come up with a credible 2020 presidential nominee - someone other than Warren and Sanders - and Biden.

What Next for the Democrats?

It is becoming increasingly clear that Attorney General William Barr basically lied about much of what is contained in the Mueller report and as more details emerge, Trump is clearly a lawless and dangerous force in the White House.   That said, rushing to impeach him - like the usually suspects, including Elizabeth Warren are already doing - could prove counterproductive and politically damaging.  Before any such effort is made  (if made at all), House Democrats need to carefully undertake further investigations and make the case for (i) Trump's unfitness for office, and (ii) why impeachment rather than merely voting Trump out of office in 2020 is the responsible move.  The goal would be to convince non-politically voters, including soccer moms more worried about PTA events and children sporting events that the destruction of America's democracy, why impeachment would not be a raw political exercise and put pressure on Republicans to belatedly stand to protect the constitutional order.  A column in The Atlantic makes the case for this reasoned and judicious approach.  Here are highlights:

What next? The substance of the Mueller report is only now beginning to penetrate through the fog of lies and distortions coming from the Attorney General William Barr, backed by his loyal lieutenant Rod Rosenstein. Even the redacted version makes visible the despicable behavior that emanated from the Trump campaign and the Trump White House, not to mention Trump himself, and the shocking penetration of Russia into our elections—with no visible response then or now from Republicans in power. But most Americans will not read or even get the gist of the Mueller report, or know much of what is in it, as they lead their own lives largely unfocused on politics and government.

So what should Democrats do? There is ample evidence of behavior on the part of the president that fits any reasonable definition of high crimes and misdemeanors—and most likely there will be a lot more, when the Southern District of New York and other jurisdictions of the Justice Department finish their work—at least if Barr does not stymie them. There is a constitutional responsibility for the House to follow up.

But a formal impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee would be politically perilous—and while politics cannot override duty, Democrats cannot risk the kind of 2020 backlash that would come if a large share of the voting public came to see the House as Javert-like, abandoning its focus on health care, jobs and the other issues that dominate most Americans’ lives in a monomaniacal quest to get Trump. A quick move to impeachment would be used by Trump and his acolytes, from the Senate to Fox and talk radio, to incite and outrage the GOP base.

That said, a failure to act, to do anything meaningful to bring this president and his gang of corrupt miscreants to heel, would rightfully enrage most liberal voters. Remember that the rage Republican primary voters felt at their party establishment in 2016, over broken promises to bring Obama to his knees, led to the nomination of Trump. A parallel rage among Democrats could lead to a deeply divided party and a disastrous presidential nomination.

There is, I believe, a reasonable path forward that, besides being politically palatable, has the added advantage of being the right thing to do. It starts with a coordinated and in-depth examination of the Mueller report by the House.

What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, like Wikileaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York Attorney General, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money-laundering.

Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good examples might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit if not abandon opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, . . .

Give the counsel an hour to set the frame and ask in-depth questions. Either follow that with another round for the counsel or have a small group of committee members take 15 or 30 minutes to ask questions in a sustained way with coordinated themes. This system might cause hard feelings among members who will not get their five minutes in the sun—and would reduce the public role for chairs—but it is better-suited to accomplish the larger goal. And that larger goal is to build a compelling record, through vivid testimony, of what Trump and his people, including his children, did and did not do, said and did not say truthfully, that are the core of Mueller’s report.

That kind of forum should be supplemented by another. Committees should do a series of roundtables, discussions with leading experts with deep experience in the Justice Department, including the FBI, in the White House, in the intelligence world, and elsewhere, to discuss in depth whether the behaviors they have seen in the Trump administration are typical or unusual, acceptable or unacceptable.

All of this is, in my view, a necessary predicate to the formal impeachment inquiry that could then follow. If done well—even as the House brought up measures to shore up the Affordable Care Act, to protect children from family separation, to improve the lives of working families, to begin to address infrastructure needs and clean energy, along with oversight of failures in disaster relief, border activities, college loan policy, and corruption in many departments—then impeachment would look powerfully more like a logical and necessary step, less like a vindictive, partisan move.

Democrats should not jump the gun on impeachment. But it would be a serious dereliction of duty if they did not move now to set the stage for what should happen when the time and setting are right.

Mueller Report is No Vindication for Trump

Donald Trump continues to make claims that the newly released Mueller Report is a vindication of him and completely exonerates him. The claims - let's call them lies since that is what they are just like most of what Trump says or tweets - simply are not supported by the report which, while not recommending indictments, paint a very ugly picture of Trump and his total corruption.  Meanwhile, seemingly a majority of Republicans want to "move on" and ignore the cesspool that is the Trump White House.  Ditto for evangelical Christians the majority of whom continue to support a man who is the living embodiment of the seven deadly sins and what one would never want one's children to be when adults.  Some former Republicans, thankfully are speaking out and condemning Trump and indirectly those who continue to support his toxic regime.  One is Michael Gerson who lets loose in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are column excerpts:

President Trump’s claim of vindication by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report depends on some creative thinking. The president, it seems, is not guilty of conspiracy with the Russians to influence the 2016 election. He is only guilty of wishing really, really hard for Russian help and having his fondest desire miraculously granted. On July 27, 2016, Trump made a public plea to the Russians to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. “Within approximately five hours of Trump’s statement,” the Mueller report reveals, “GRU [Russian intelligence] officers targeted for the first time Clinton’s personal office.”

This, evidently, doesn’t qualify as conspiracy. But can it really be a coincidence? . . . Whatever the non-collusive reason, Trump is clearly a lucky, lucky man.

What is less clear is how we are to accept a detailed, damning, 448-page moral and political indictment as good news for Trump and his administration. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” according to the report. This included a “social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump” and “computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign. Though Trump campaign officials didn’t directly coordinate with Russian intelligence activities, they welcomed and rooted for them. More than ever, the 2016 presidential election deserves an asterisk, indicating a serious chance that it was won with foreign help.

Trump, during his campaign and well into his presidency, dismissed this influence as a myth. . . . Trump, it turns out, is perfectly willing to minimize a national security threat for political reasons. But that isn’t conspiracy, either. Just friends helping friends.

The Mueller report documents an atmosphere of routine, rewarded deception at the White House. In one case, after ordering then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire Mueller, Trump ordered McGahn to publicly deny that the request to fire Mueller was ever made. (McGahn, to his credit, refused both orders.) In another case, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders lied about the extent of opposition within the FBI to former director James B. Comey. Looking at the tape of her statement, it is remarkable how smoothly she dissembles. Obviously a valued skill in Trump’s orbit.

And the report strongly hints that obstruction of justice took place, even though the Justice Department does not believe the prosecution of such a crime is a legal option during Trump’s term in office.

“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over . . . investigations . . . . The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels.”

At other times, the effort was not hidden at all: “Many of the president’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, occurred in public view.”

The evidence in the report is quite specific. In one instance, Trump “sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate.”

As I read it, the case for obstruction of justice is strong. And the report takes pains to point out a possible congressional role in examining obstruction claims. “The Constitution does not authorize the President to engage in such conduct, and those actions would transgress the President’s duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’ ”

[C]ongressional leaders have some major choices ahead.

So: No evidence of direct conspiracy between Trump officials and the Russians, but plenty of evidence of desired conspiracy. And: Limited ways to prosecute Trump for obstruction of justice while he is president, but strong evidence that obstruction was intended and occurred.

Already, Republicans are urging the country to move on. In this case, moving on would ignore and reward corruption on a grand scale.

It’s Not the Collusion, It’s the Corruption

I have not had an opportunity to read the Mueller Report in full.  However, from those who have read portions, it does not appear to be the complete exoneration that Der Trumpenführer and the key element to remember is that the feds only issue indictments when they believe they have a near slam dunk case.  A failure to find a basis for indictment does not mean that there was lots of questionable  and borderline criminal activity. Plus, one must be mindful of the ridiculous Justice Department position that a sitting president cannot be indicted - something that elevates the presidency to near monarchy status.   Frequent GOP apologist David Brooks - who helped give rise to a Republican Part ythat could nominate someone like Trump - makes the case that the Mueller Report is not good news for Trump and his sycophants  and that some of the findings should be disturbing to thinking, truly patriotic Americans. Here are column highlights:

The Mueller report is like a legal version of a thriller movie in which three malevolent forces are attacking a city all at once. Everybody’s wondering if the three attackers are working together. The report concludes that they weren't, but that doesn’t make the situation any less scary or the threat any less real.

The first force is Donald Trump, who represents a threat to the American systems of governance. Centuries ago our founders created a system of laws and not men. In our system of government there are procedures in place, based on certain values — impartiality, respect for institutions, the idea that a public office is a public trust, not a private bauble.

When Trump appears in the Mueller report, he is often running roughshod over these systems and violating these values. He asks his lawyer to hamper an investigation. He asks his F.B.I. director to take the heat off his allies. He tries to get the relevant investigators fired. I don’t know if his actions meet the legal standard of obstruction of justice, but they certainly meet the common-sense standard of interference with justice.

The second force is Russia. If Trump is a threat to the institutional infrastructure, the Russians are a threat to our informational infrastructure. We knew this already, but it was still startling to see the fact declared so bluntly — that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election “in sweeping and systematic fashion.”

[I]f a foreign government is attacking the factual record on which democracy runs, it is still a sort of warfare. The Russians are trying to undermine the information we use to converse, and the trust that makes conversation possible.

The third force is Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. They are a threat to our deliberative infrastructure. Any organization needs to be able to hold private conversations in order to deliberate. Whether it is State Department cables or Democratic National Committee emails, WikiLeaks has violated privacy and made it harder for institutions to function.

We’re now in a situation in which some of the worst people on earth get to determine what gets published.

The Mueller report indicates that Trump was not colluding with Russia. But it also shows that working relationships were beginning to be built, through networkers like Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone. More important, it shows that many of the Trumpists, the Russians and the WikiLeaks crowd all understood that they were somehow adjacent actors in the same project.

I would say that’s the report’s central importance. We are being threatened in a very distinct way. The infrastructure of the society is under threat — the procedures that shape government, the credibility of information, the privacy rules that make deliberation possible. . . . . It is as if somebody is inserting acids into a body that eats away at the ligaments and the tendons.

These forces are motivated by self-interest, but their common feature is an operational nihilism. They are trying to sow disorder at the foundation of society. The goal is not really to convert anybody to a cause; it is to create cynicism and disruption that will open up the space to grab what you want to grab. They rig the system and then tell everybody, “The system is rigged!” And therefore, all values are suspended. Everything is permitted.

The system more or less held this time. But that’s just because people around Trump often refused to do what he told them to do. And we happened to have Robert Mueller, who seems to be a fair referee.

The Justice Department has not been defended from political assault. William Barr’s news conference before the report’s release eroded any claim to impartiality and trustworthiness.

Trump doesn’t seem to have any notion of loyalty to an office. All power in his eye is personal power, and the government is there to serve his Sun God self. He’ll continue to trample the proper systems of government.

It’s easy to recognize when you are attacked head-on. But the U.S. is being attacked from below, at the level of the foundations we take for granted.

Mueller’s Team: Their Findings More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Indicated

Is Barr covering up for Trump?

When Attorney General William Barr issued his 3 and a half page letter summarizing the Mueller report, the reaction of many - including yours truly - was that Barr was trying to protect Donald Trump and sanitize a report that likely contained many disturbing findings on the Trump campaigns contacts with Russian operatives and Der Trumpenführer's efforts to sabotage any meaningful investigation of Trump and his campaign.  Such distrust of Barr hearkens back to his unsolicited memo  to the Department of Justice on the validity of the Mueller investigation ion the issue of obstruction of justice.  Here are reminders from CNN about the Barr's memo:

Nearly a year before his letter Sunday telling lawmakers he did not believe President Donald Trump committed obstruction of justice, Attorney General William Barr authored a memo saying he thought the obstruction investigation was "fatally misconceived."

Barr, then a private citizen and former attorney general to President George H. W. Bush, issued the memo to senior Justice Department officials in June 2018.  In his memo, Barr added that Trump asking then-FBI Director James Comey to let go of the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and later firing Comey was within his powers as head of the executive branch.

In his recent letter, Barr - not surprisingly - found that no obstruction of justice had occurred. Recently, two pundits aptly described Barr's unsolicited memo as the equivalent of a prostitute hiking her skirt up to her waist to show her "wares" as Barr seemingly sought to catch Trump's attention and secure the AG nomination for himself.  Now, members of Mueller's investigative team have alleged that Barr had understated the damaging findings of the Mueller report.  Here are highlights from the New York Times:

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.

The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation.

Barr was also wary of departing from Justice Department practice not to disclose derogatory details in closing an investigation, according to two government officials familiar with Mr. Barr’s thinking.

[T]he report is believed to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation. It was unclear how much discussion Mr. Mueller and his investigators had with senior Justice Department officials about how their findings would be made public. It was also unclear how widespread the vexation is among the special counsel team, which included 19 lawyers, about 40 F.B.I. agents and other personnel. . . . . the special counsel’s investigators fell short of their task by declining to decide whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed the inquiry, according to the two government officials.

A debate over how the special counsel’s conclusions are represented has played out in public as well in recent weeks, with Democrats in Congress accusing Mr. Barr of intervening to color the outcome of the investigation in the president’s favor.

Barr said that Mr. Mueller found no conspiracy between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia’s 2016 election interference. While Mr. Mueller made no decision on his other main question, whether the president illegally obstructed the inquiry, he explicitly stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump.

Mr. Barr’s promises of transparency have done little to appease Democrats who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to let its chairman use a subpoena to try to compel Mr. Barr to hand over a full copy of the Mueller report and its underlying evidence to Congress. The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has not said when he will use the subpoena, but made clear on Wednesday that he did not trust Mr. Barr’s characterization of what Mr. Mueller’s team found.

I remain adamant that the full report - redacted only to protect confidential sources and true national security issues - be publicly released ASAP.  I and other Americans do not need Mr. Barr telling us what a report says that we are perfectly capable of reading for ourselves.