William Barr Needs to Be Removed from Office

The Attorney General of the United States ("AG") is supposed to be the nation's top lawyer and is supposed to oversee the Department of Justice and by extension the FBI -  all for the goal of furthering the protection and interests of the American public. Unfortunately, the current AG, William Barr ( a bloated toad, in my view), has perverted his office and is now serving as the attorney of Donald Trump and conducting investigation that further Trump's interest even as he denigrates and attacks the FBI and spins untruths. It's the type of behavior one expects in authoritarian regimes such as Putin's Russia, not the behavior of an AG seeking to uphold his or her oath of office.  Columns in both the Washington Post and the New York Times make the case for Barr's removal and detail his departure from the duties he should be performing.  The Post column says this: 

[Trump’s] his most senior aides have done him no favors by acting as accelerators rather than brakes on his unconscionable conduct.

Three senior officials, in particular, could have tried to dissuade [Trump] the president from misusing his office for personal gain, but there is no evidence that they ever attempted to do so. History will record their names along with Trump’s in the annals of ignominy. [Trump's] The president’s principal accomplices in his brazen assault on the rule of law are Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William P. Barr.

The attorney general has already misled the country about the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation by falsely claiming that the president had been absolved of collusion and obstruction of justice. Barr then refused to investigate complaints that a crime had been committed during Trump’s call with Zelensky. Now, he is flying around the world to pressure allies to cooperate with his politically motivated probe designed to show that the investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia was actually a “witch hunt” by the so-called deep state — just as Trump claims. Barr’s highly improper requests have stirred a backlash in Italy, Australia and Britain — close allies that have no desire to be thrust into U.S. domestic politics.

The Times column examines the ways in which Barr is damaging the FBI and law enforcement in general and causing damage that will out last his tenure.  He needs to be removed from office.  Here are column highlights: 

Donald Trump famously said that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not “lose any voters.” I don’t know about that. But I’m confident that he wouldn’t lose Bill Barr.

Execution privilege, Barr would probably call it. He’d release a statement or hold a news conference to say that Trump had a spastic trigger finger or was triggered by Adam Schiff or was set up by those dastardly Ukrainians, who are never up to any good. Such is the magnitude of Barr’s servility, the doggedness of his deference. He’s [Trump's] the president’s moral launderer. Trump does evil, and Barr washes him clean.

As attorney general, he’s supposed to be the nation’s lawyer. But he has bought into the autocratic delusion that Trump equals America, that national interest and presidential prerogative are inextricably intertwined. So he’s Trump’s advocate, come hell or high crimes, as surely as Pat Cipollone or Rudy Giuliani is.

On Monday, showing fresh contempt for the people who work under him in the Justice Department, Barr renounced a determination by the department’s inspector general that the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia was legitimate and that anti-Trump bias was not its animating force. He did this instantly. And then, on Tuesday, did it again, with even less subtlety and more sanctimony. . . . He was dismissing the whole effort as rotten. It was an eerie echo of his efforts last spring, when he sought to neuter Robert Mueller’s findings about the Trump campaign’s openness to Russian help and the president’s attempts to obstruct justice. But what of the Constitution? What of common decency? Barr isn’t concerning himself with those. To appreciate his perspective, you must travel back two months, to the University of Notre Dame, where he delivered a speech that garnered some headlines but not nearly enough of them. You should note his remarks’ obsession with morality and you should try not to laugh, the same way you stifle chuckles when you’re reminded that Mike Pompeo is a putatively worshipful Christian and you try to square that with how he abetted the persecution of Marie Yovanovitch, leaves his State Department charges twisting in the wind and genuflects before a false prophet. In Trump he trusts.

You should dwell on the part of Barr’s jeremiad where he says that “men are subject to powerful passions and appetites and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community.” Ruthless? Roughshod? That’s Trump in an alliterative nutshell, but Barr seemed to be perversely oblivious to that.

All these supposedly godly men — Barr, Pompeo, Mike Pence, Ben Carson, Rick Perry and more — cluster around such a demonstrably godless one. They rationalize that Trump’s indulgence of certain religious factions absolves him of his sins. Barr is the principal agent of that absolution. [I]f Barr could dig out his conscience from under all those layers of ego, he’d see that the rapacious individual in direst need of restraint is the one he’s letting roam free.

Trump Co-Conspirator, Roger Stone Indicted in Mueller Investigation

Trump and Stone - both working for Russia?

If Donald Trump has been having bad days as his approval ratings have plunged to only 34% and 71% of Americans say his wall is not worth the damage of the government shutdown, today is likely far worse with the indictment of Roger Stone, the likely go between between Russian intelligence operatives, Wikileaks, and the Trump campaign, by a federal grand jury.   If there was a conspiracy with Putin's Russia, Stone could be the keystone in bringing the details into view.  And that's without considering what the new investigations of Deutsche Bank and Russian  money laundering to perhaps benefit Trump will reveal.  Stone was arrested by the FBI at 6:00 am this morning at his home.  The New York Times looks at this stunning development in the Russiagate probe (the indictment can be viewed here).  Expect Trump to rant and do something to try to distract media coverage.  Here are article highlights:

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was indicted Friday in the special counsel investigation.

Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel’s office.

Stone, a self-described dirty trickster who began his career as a campaign aide for Richard M. Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back, has long maintained that he had no connection to Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies, daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian meddling campaign.

[T]he special counsel’s investigators spent months encircling Mr. Stone, renewing scrutiny about his role during the 2016 presidential race. Investigators interviewed former Trump campaign advisers and several of his associates about both about Mr. Stone’s fund-raising during the campaign and his contacts with WikiLeaks, one of the organizations that made thousands of Democratic emails public in the months before the election.

Three senior Trump campaign officials have told Mr. Mueller’s team that Mr. Stone created the impression that he was a conduit for inside information from WikiLeaks, according to people familiar with their witness interviews. One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks’ actions, but also that he took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

In social media posts and numerous interviews before the 2016 election, Mr. Stone indicated that he had advance knowledge that a trove of information damaging to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign might be about to spill into public, and even suggested that he had personally spoken to the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. . . . in the weeks before the election, Mr. Stone was messaging on Twitter with Guccifer 2.0, a pseudonym used by one or more operatives in the Russian intelligence scheme to steal the emails and funnel them to WikiLeaks. The tumultuous relationship between Mr. Stone and Mr. Trump goes back decades, with Mr. Stone acting as an informal adviser to Mr. Trump as he considered running for president several times. When Mr. Trump formally announced during the spring of 2015 that he was running for president, Mr. Stone was one of the first members of the team, but within months, he had a public dispute with Mr. Trump and left the campaign.  The two men have remained close, though, speaking often by telephone.

Giuliani’s Meltdown Foreshadows Another Russia Bombshell

Rudy Giuliani's latest episode of diarrhea of the mouth during an interview with Chris Cuomo makes me wonder whether (i) Giuliani is suffering from growing dementia, or (ii) Giuliani belatedly realizes that his client, Donald Trump, has been lying to him and is in fact guilty of conspiring with Russia against the United States and its electoral process. If it is the later, Giuliani has a couple of options, one of which is to resign and run as far away from Trump as quickly as possible.  The other is to try to spin the situation and lower public shock when Robert Mueller's report shows comprehensive conspiring by the Trump/Pence campaign with a hostile foreign power. Part of that spin will be that Trump knew nothing about what his campaign was doing.  The problem is that this spin confirms one of two things: Trump is incompetent or he;s lying yet again.   A piece in Vanity Fair looks at what Giuliani may be up to.  Here are highlights:

Watching Rudy Giuliani’s latest televised confessional on Wednesday, one Washington defense attorney called to express his astonishment at the spectacle of Donald Trump’s personal attorney intimating that perhaps the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, after all. “I think it is long past due that we disregard anything he says about the law because I think he is confused,” the attorney said of Giuliani. “If he ever knew anything about it, he doesn’t remember.”

The interview was indeed baffling: over the course of a prolonged, heated exchange with Chris Cuomo on CNN, Giuliani claimed that he “never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign”; that if there was any collusion, “it happened a long time ago”; and argued that the “only crime you could commit here” would have been if the president had “conspired with the Russians to hack the D.N.C.”

“Whatever Giuliani‘s motives for going on a show with Chris Cuomo, he’s clearly looking to sharply redefine the issue in the Russia collusion case,” said Bob Bauer, former White House general counsel to Barack Obama. During the campaign through the first several months of the Mueller probe, Trump and his allies were insistent that there had been “no contact” with any Russians and certainly “no collusion” to influence the 2016 election. Over the past year, however, those claims have broken down in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. . . . . Court filings in federal cases involving Trump’s former campaign chairman, former lawyer, and national security adviser, among many others, all paint a portrait of a sweeping Russian influence campaign. On Thursday, Giuliani appeared to concede that some Trump associates might have coordinated their efforts with Russian agents, telling CNN: “Neither he nor I can possibly know what everyone on the campaign was doing.”

Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, suggested that Giuliani’s prime-time interview—while rambling and inarticulate—represented a calculated shift in Trump’s legal strategy: “He had no choice. . . . . he’s pivoting to a different fallback argument: ‘O.K., even if there was collusion, Trump didn’t know about it.’”

There’s two problems with that claim, Katyal said. “First, it means the whole ‘witch hunt’ story Trump has been saying for years is false—if it is a witch hunt, Mueller found a coven. And second, since the Trump defense was entirely wrong on ‘no collusion,’ what is there to give us confidence about the accuracy of the Trump defense that he didn’t know about it?”

Eric Columbus, a former top-ranking attorney in the Justice Department, zeroed in on Giuliani’s perplexing remark about hacking. “To me, the biggest goalpost shift is Giuliani saying that there’s no evidence that Trump ‘committed the only crime you could commit here—conspired with the Russians to hack the D.N.C.,’” he told told me. “That’s far from the only possible crime, and it raises questions about whether Giuliani is trying to get out in front of new and damaging revelations about his client’s actions.”

Giuliani has previously admitted that his cable-news appearances are for “public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach.” To that end, Giuliani’s most recent on-air meltdown might be seen as the latest in a series of efforts to reset expectations for the president, continually lowering the bar for what might be perceived as unethical behavior.

Cuomo, on Wednesday, was not having it. “Crime is not the bar of accountability for a president,” he protested when Giuliani made that point. “It’s about what you knew, what was right and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about.” But Trump’s legal team seems to think that differentiation will be enough to save him from impeachment.

Those are “bogus talking points to the base,” not a legal argument, said former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman. “It has nothing to do with the law and even nothing to do with a persuasive rhetorical strategy to anybody who for instance remembers the things he said last week.”

But even bogus assurances for the base may come back to haunt Giuliani and his client, once Mueller delivers his final report. “If anything, I think that he is hurting the president’s defense, because now the president’s defense is ‘he didn’t know.’ Well, what happens if that falls apart?” the D.C. defense attorney told me. “It is like Bill Clinton. I will never forget when Bill Clinton wagged his finger in a press conference and said I never had sex with that woman. And then we all know what happened after that.”

It’s Dangerous to Forget about Mike Pence

With all the focus on Donald Trump and the FBI's launch of an investigation  of his possible role as an agent of Russia and his efforts to hide communications with Russia, including interpreter notes from one on one meetings with Vladimir Putin, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that a removal of Trump from office could potentially hand the White House to Mike Pence, provided, of course, Pence is not swept up into the effort to collude with Russia.  As noted a number of times before on this blog, Pence is about as extreme as one can get and has an ugly history of embracing discrimination, particularly anti-LGBT discrimination.  Moreover, like Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli (who are a  little too hysterically anti-gay), Pence has all of the hallmarks of an extreme self-loathing closeted gay who believes attacks on the LGBT community are his best camouflage for his hidden "secret." His wife, Karen Pence, a/k/a mother per Pence himself, is not much better given her current work with a school that bans gay employees.  Thus, removing Trump who is demonstratively unfit for office could place someone equally unhinged in but a different way in a position to do great harm.  A piece in The Progressive looks at Trump's ugly history. Here are excerpts:

Since his Inauguration, Trump’s merry-go-round administration has been a consistent source of horror and amusement, most recently illustrated in Michaels Wolff’s expose, Fire and Fury. In the midst of the chaotic palace intrigue, one man seems to remain above the fray: Vice President Michael Richard Pence.

But it’s a bad idea to lose track of Mike Pence, particularly if you care about gay, lesbian, trans, and queer rights. In many ways, the Vice President has made attacking LGBTQ+ rights the cornerstone of his political career. And a look at his past crusades against this community leaves little room for doubt that he will continue that mission. 

As Vice President, he has made six tie breaking votes in Senate, more than Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden combined. He cast the final vote scrapping federal rules to protect consumers from predatory financial organizations, what Senator Elizabeth Warren called a “giant wet kiss to Wall Street.”

It was Pence’s vote that confirmed Trump nominee Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education and kickstarted a debate on Obamacare repeal. Most controversial, perhaps, was Pence’s approval of a bill to allow states to withhold federal funds for Planned Parenthood and other organizations providing reproductive healthcare, a longtime goal of Pence and his rightwing evangelical Christian allies.

Predictably, Pence used religious justification to push his agenda. “The day Obamacare passed was also a day of disappointment for the sanctity of life, but hope is finally shining through,” Pence said. “When this bill passes, it will be one of the defining victories for life.” According to a March 2017 poll, 75 percent of Americans, Republicans as well as Democrats, support the federal government’s continued funding of Planned Parenthood.

From early in his career, Pence has expressed outlier views. . . . . In an op-ed in 2000, Pence denied the correlation between smoking cigarettes and mortality. . . . . In similar fashion, Pence has denied global warming, citing “growing skepticism among scientists” about climate change and saying CO2 from fossil fuels can’t increase temperatures because it “is a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature.” He has also dismissed climate change as “an issue for the left."

But it is toward the gay community that Pence has expressed his most extreme views, so much so that Donald Trump once joked that Pence “wants to hang them all.”

In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the most-conservative House members, he defended marriage as between a man and a woman and argued that any change to that threatens the stability of society.

In 2010, he opposed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which barred military service people from openly identifying as gay, claiming the military was no place for “social experimentation.” The website for his 2000 congressional campaign asserted that funding for HIV prevention “should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”

Pence gained infamy that same year for a pushing a bill to jail same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses.

The passing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was met with outrage by companies, celebrities, and thousands of Indiana residents. Angie’s List cancelled its $40 million expansion in Indianapolis, a move that would have brought a thousand new jobs to Indiana. New York, Washington, Connecticut, and Vermont all banned state-funded travel to Indiana. . . . Even the Republican mayor of Indianapolis, Greg Ballard, called on the legislature to repeal the bill, saying it “sends the wrong signal.”

Following the backlash, Pence signed a revised amendment to the bill, barring businesses from discriminating based on gender identity or sexual orientation. However, statewide laws concerning discrimination outside the workplace remained unchanged.

Pence’s dogged championing of “religious freedom” at the expense of civil rights for LGTBQ+ people poses equally dangerous threats for groups already very vulnerable to prejudice and violence.

In twenty-eight states, LGBTQ+ people don’t have anti-discrimination laws that protect them in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations.

And Pence remains dedicated to rolling back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ people. He was behind the implementation of a transgender ban in the military, an effort subsequently blocked by federal judges. He also championed the transgender bathroom ban in public schools, a policy Trump later adopted.

A survey by the Human Rights Campaign released in January 2017 showed that 36 percent of transgender youth reported being personally bullied or harassed, and 56 percent had changed their self-expression or future plans since the election.  Just recently, on December 28, Kerrice Lewis, a lesbian woman of colour, was shot and burnt alive in the trunk of a car in Washington, D.C.

In pushing “religious freedom” at the explicit expense of this community’s safety and well-being, Mike Pence reveals the depth of his dangerous bias. A country that allows discrimination on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or gender identity is not a country with equal rights.

Our Worse Fears Are Being Realized

The gift America most needs.

Anyone who followed Donald Trump's real estate career and public life in general - ask New Yorkers who knew he best - and it should have been a foregone conclusion that the man was unfit for the White House or any public office.  Yet by playing the race card and playing to white fears of loss of privilege, Trump convinced 70,000 voters spread across three states to throw away decency, morality and even common sense and vote for him.  Now, we are seeing the spectacle so many of us feared borne out in the form of a dangerous narcissist in the White House who is creating chaos on literally every front.  Wall Street, with its ominous December stock market plunge has belatedly signaled its fear of a madman in the White House. International relations with long time allies are in chaos as well with Trump giving a nod to dictators and enemies of the United States to do as they wish.  NONE of this should be a surprise to anyone not blinded by racism and hatred towards those who are different.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this realization of responsible Americans' worse fears.  Here are highlights:

When the new year begins next week, President Trump will have an acting chief of staff, an acting secretary of defense, an acting attorney general, an acting EPA administrator, no interior secretary, and no ambassador to the United Nations. The officials originally in all those positions have either been fired or have quit in various measures of disgust or scandal. His former campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, national security adviser and personal lawyer have all pleaded guilty to crimes. His campaign, his transition, his foundation and his business are all under investigation. The United States’ allies are horrified at the chaos Trump has brought to our foreign policy. The stock market is experiencing wild swings as investors are gripped with fear over what might be coming and what Trump might do to make it worse — a situation alarming enough that the treasury secretary felt the need to call up the CEOs of major banks to assure them that everything is under control.

And, oh yeah, the government is shut down.  This, my friends, is exactly what we were afraid of when Trump somehow managed to get elected president two years ago. This is what we warned you about.

. . . . here’s what happened over the weekend with regard to the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, widely regarded as the sanest of Trump’s national security team and one of the few original members of Trump’s Cabinet who did not show himself to be incompetent, corrupt, or both. . . . . Mattis, who has watched in dismay as Trump has set about to degrade the alliances that have shaped U.S. foreign policy for the last seven decades.

So Mattis tendered his resignation. . . . Trump decided hastily to remove Mattis in reaction to negative news coverage, according to senior administration officials, one of whom said the president was eager to retaliate against Mattis and show up the widely respected former general.

Nothing says “well-oiled machine” like that distinctly Trumpian combination of paranoia and vindictiveness.

Meanwhile, the government shutdown is expected to last into the new year, a shutdown that is happening because a bunch of Fox News and talk-radio hosts criticized the president for not being tough enough in fighting for his ludicrous border wall. Trump, always deeply insecure and eager to feed his base’s endless rage and desire for conflict, responded quickly to the accusation of weakness. “He spends ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely,” reports the New York Times.

Two years ago, as we were still trying to wrap our heads around the idea that Trump was actually going to be president of the United States, it was not uncommon to hear the hopeful prediction that things wouldn’t work out as badly as we feared. The weighty responsibilities of the office would turn Trump serious, sober, “presidential.”

That has not occurred. If anything, Trump has shown himself to be even more of a despicable human being than he appeared then, and utterly incapable of growing into the office. He is just as petty, just as impulsive, just as narcissistic, just as dishonest and, perhaps, even more corrupt than we realized.

[I]f you’re a Republican, he has done many things that pleased you, such as cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, or slashing regulations that protect workers, consumers, and people who enjoy breathing air and drinking water. If you thrill to the sight of immigrant children being ripped from the arms of their parents, then this presidency has been a joy.

[I]n so many ways, he has shown himself again and again to be not just as bad as we thought, but worse. As as we look forward to the next two years, we must realize that there will be no stability, no settling down, no period of calm. The best we can hope for are brief moments when the lunacy pouring from the White House is more comical than terrifying. But most of the time, they’ll probably be both.

A second column adds this summary:

The chaos all around us is what happens when the nation elects an incompetent, narcissistic, impulsive and amoral man as president. This Christmas, heaven help us all.

It is difficult, at the moment, to fully assess the damage Trump is wreaking. We have never had a president like him, so history is a poor guide. For his racism, we can perhaps look back to Woodrow Wilson; his general unfitness to hold the nation’s highest office recalls the hapless Andrew Johnson. Maybe Andrew Jackson was as impetuous, maybe Richard M. Nixon as venal.

As multiple investigations close in, including the one led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump will surely lash out. I believe things will get worse before they get better.

Have Americans Finally Had Enough of Trump

One thing often missing from the political narrative is the reality that less than 30% of eligible voters voted for Donald Trump. The man lost the popular vote and never had any mandate despite his - and the GOP's - delusions to the contrary.  The 2018 midterm elections for the House of Representatives with a flip of 40 seats to Democrats showed the broad revulsion toward  Trump.  Some will try to point to GOP gains in the Senate to argue against this reality, but look at the states where the GOP wins occurred: all are increasing backwater states that are being left behind in the new economy.  On top of that, the 2020 map for the GOP in the Senate elections will be far less favorable that was the case in 2018. If the economy continues to stall as many see happening and moves to recession, the bloodbath for the GOP could be horrific. Thus, the question becomes one of whether the majority of Americans have reached the point where they have had enough of Trump - and hopefully Pence as well - and the pressure will grow to see him removed from office.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at this question.  Here are column excerpts:

Trump may have misread — if was reading at all — the vast majority of Americans' patience for an hysterical, chaos-creating and non-functioning president. What in the past worked to delight his audience and throw mainstream media off balance (e.g., a new scandal to replace an old one, vicious personal attacks on opponents and the press, new stock market highs) no longer works to keep his leaky ship of state afloat. Shutting down the government, rewarding Russia and Iran in the Middle East, losing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and sending the markets reeling may have moved us to a tipping point, the moment when lawmakers and voters decide Trump is far more trouble than he’s worth. Once the realization hits that he’s a net drag on the economy and a needless headache, the country is collectively far more willing to consider grounds for getting rid of him. Coming at a time of maximum chaos (perhaps what precipitated the chaos overload) are significant legal developments — Michael Cohen pleading guilty to a crime Trump directed, Michael Flynn getting bashed for a favorite conspiracy theory of the kooky right, jettisoning a foundation that state authorities identified as akin to an illegal slush fund, and the revelation that Paul Manafort continued to communicate with the White House and lie in violation of his plea deal. After more than 7,000 lies, Trump’s habitual dishonesty is now a given — and his excuses and accusations now habitually ignored by most Americans. As a result of the chaos, the legal quicksand and the lies, Trump faces a country willing to accept that their president is, as Richard Nixon put it, a crook. Let me suggest the American public is moving toward two disturbing conclusions: The president is a menace, and the president likely broke the law. What’s the implication of all that? First, his chances of reelection are sinking fast. It’s one thing to resist impeachment; it’s another to sign up for four more years of turmoil with a liar and miscreant. Republicans had better start looking for options for 2020.
 Second, the public, I’d suggest, is far more likely to accept at face value special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report findings. If they already suspect Trump ordered illegal payments or obstructed justice, Mueller’s report will likely solidify that view beyond the confines of the Trump cult (which shrinks as his performance worsens).
 Third, impeachment becomes less akin to a risky option and more like a constitutional obligation compelled by events.

Fourth, watching the turn in public opinion and the meltdown in the executive branch (especially the loss of the only trustworthy national security adviser), more senators will begin to consider seriously removing Trump from office.
 And finally, as we have previously discussed, the option of indicting him and/or his business organization becomes only a question of timing (now or after he leaves office). In sum, the ground shifted substantially over the last week or so. The cracks in his Republican wall of support are widening as actual fear grips Republican officeholders; the public becomes far more willing — anxious even — to see him go. Whether all that will result in his departure from office before 2020 is unknown, but it no longer seems like a pipe dream.

Shockingly, Nixon looks honest and completely sane and law abiding compared to Trump.

Russian Intelligence Teams Are Targeting Robert S. Mueller

In the wake of a Senate report yesterday that looked at the pervasive and broad scale efforts of Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, yet another Senate report reveals similar efforts by Russian agents to attack and discredit  Robert Mueller and the Russiagate investigation. Further, as in the presidential contest, numerous Americans all too willing to support Trump because he (and the Russians) have played to their prejudices have re-posted and bought into lies that track directly to enemies of the United States. The other disturbing aspect of the report is how the various social media platforms did far too little, too late to stop Russian efforts.  Seemingly, money and outwardly expanding usage of their platforms was far more important than protecting users from manipulation and stopping subversion of the nation's election system. A long piece in the Washington Post looks at how Mueller was targeted to the delight of the Fox News viewing segment of the public.  The unanswered question is one of how much the Trump/Pence regime has coordinated with the Russian effort.  Here are highlights:

Months after President Trump took office, Russia’s disinformation teams trained their sights on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there.

The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram — which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal — claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with “radical Islamic groups.”

Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters.

One of the reports, written by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and network analysis firm Graphika, became public when The Washington Post obtained it and published its highlights Sunday. The other report was by social media research firm New Knowledge, Columbia University and Canfield Research.

Together the reports describe the Russian campaign with sweep and detail not before available. The researchers analyzed more than 10 million posts and messages on every major social media platform to understand how the Russians used American technology to build a sprawling online disinformation machine, with each piece playing a designated role while supporting the others with links and other connections.

Twitter hit political and journalistic elites. Facebook and its advertising targeting tools divided the electorate into demographic and ideological segments ripe for manipulation, with particular focus on energizing conservatives and suppressing African Americans, who traditionally are more likely to vote for Democrats.

YouTube provided a free online library of more than 1,100 disinformation videos. PayPal helped raise money and move politically themed merchandise designed by the Russian teams, such as “I SUPPORT AMERICAN LAW ENFORCEMENT” T-shirts. Tumblr, Medium, Vine, Reddit and various other websites also played roles.

One unexpected star of the new reports Monday was Facebook’s photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram. Over the years of the disinformation campaign, Instagram generated responses on a scale beyond any of the others — with 187 million comments, likes and other user reactions, more than Twitter and Facebook combined. . . . . Instagram’s use by the Russian teams more than doubled in the first six months after Trump’s election, the researchers found. It also offered access to a younger demographic and provided easy likes in a simple, engaging format.

On Monday, the NAACP called for a week-long boycott of Facebook starting Tuesday, saying the company’s business practices — and the spread of “disingenuous portrayals of the African American community” on its site — should prompt further congressional investigation. 

The emergence of Mueller as a significant target also highlights the adaptability of the Russian campaign. He was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate allegations of Russian influence on the Trump campaign. In that role, he has indicted on criminal charges a Kremlin-linked troll farm called the Internet Research Agency and others affiliated with the disinformation campaign.

A Clemson University research team, not affiliated with either of the reports released Monday, found that the Russians tweeted about Mueller more than 5,000 times, including retweets first posted by others. Some called for his firing, while others mocked him as incompetent and still others campaigned for the end of his “entire fake investigation.”

The report by New Knowledge highlighted the focus on Mueller and fired FBI director James B. Comey, who was falsely portrayed as “a dirty cop.”

On Capitol Hill, top Democrats said Monday that the revelations in the pair of Senate reports underscored the need to study social media and consider fresh regulation in order to stop Russia and other foreign actors from manipulating American democracy in future elections.

In particular, Schiff described the Instagram revelations as “surprising,” contradicting the data and testimony Facebook previously provided to the committee. “If Facebook was unaware of it, it’s one problem,” he said. “If they were aware of it and didn’t share that information, that’s a completely different problem.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the committee that asked the researchers to analyze the tech companies’ data, said the findings show “how aggressively Russia sought to divide Americans by race, religion and ideology.”

Sadly, far too many of my Republican "friends" took the Russian bait hook, line and sinker as they retweeted and re-posted Russian derived lies, never bother to check out the truth of the wild claims. 

Conway's Husband: Trump Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional

Trump sycophant  and illegally appointed acting AG Matthew Whitaker (who seemingly is trying for the Mussolini look).

Not to diminish the horror of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California  - or the need for the Democrat controlled House to pass gun legislation come January, 2019 - Donald Trump is deliberately causing a Constitutional crisis as he ignores the U.S. Constitution's requirements and (i) seeks to place an unfit (in my view and that of many others) individual in the office of Attorney General and (ii) in all likelihood seeks to kill the Russiagate investigation of his own potential wrongdoing.  The move is something one would expect of Vladimir Putin, Josef Stalin or some other self-absorbed dictator.  Ironically, in today's New York Times the husband of Kelly Anne Conway - one of Trump's skanks-in-chief in my view - a noted DC attorney in his own right co-authored a column that flat out calls Trumps appointment of Trump sycophant Matthew Whitaker unconstitutional.  Trump, of course, has always viewed himself above the law as demonstrated by his years in New York City working with the mob and then the Russian Mafia.  It should come as no surprise that Trump holds constitutional requirements in contempt.  Here are column highlights:

What now seems an eternity ago, the conservative law professor Steven Calabresi published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May arguing that Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. . . . . He argued that Mr. Mueller was a principal officer because he is exercising significant law enforcement authority and that since he has not been confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was unconstitutional. As one of us argued at the time, he was wrong. What makes an officer a principal officer is that he or she reports only to the president. No one else in government is that person’s boss. But Mr. Mueller reports to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. So, Mr. Mueller is what is known as an inferior officer, not a principal one, and his appointment without Senate approval was valid.

But Professor Calabresi and Mr. Trump were right about the core principle. A principal officer must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very significant consequence today. It means that Mr. Trump’s installation of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general of the United States after forcing the resignation of Jeff Sessions is unconstitutional. It’s illegal. And it means that anything Mr. Whitaker does, or tries to do, in that position is invalid.

Much of the commentary about Mr. Whitaker’s appointment has focused on all sorts of technical points about the Vacancies Reform Act and Justice Department succession statutes. But the flaw in the appointment of Mr. Whitaker, who was Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff at the Justice Department, runs much deeper. It defies one of the explicit checks and balances set out in the Constitution, a provision designed to protect us all against the centralization of government power.

If you don’t believe us, then take it from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Mr. Trump once called his “favorite” sitting justice. Last year, the Supreme Court examined the question of whether the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board had been lawfully appointed to his job without Senate confirmation. The Supreme Court held the appointment invalid on a statutory ground.

Justice Thomas agreed with the judgment, but wrote separately to emphasize that even if the statute had allowed the appointment, the Constitution’s Appointments Clause would not have. The officer in question was a principal officer, he concluded. And the public interest protected by the Appointments Clause was a critical one: The Constitution’s drafters, Justice Thomas argued, “recognized the serious risk for abuse and corruption posed by permitting one person to fill every office in the government.” Which is why, he pointed out, the framers provided for advice and consent of the Senate.

What goes for a mere lawyer at the N.L.R.B. goes in spades for the attorney general of the United States, the head of the Justice Department and one of the most important people in the federal government.

We cannot tolerate such an evasion of the Constitution’s very explicit, textually precise design. Senate confirmation exists for a simple, and good, reason. Constitutionally, Matthew Whitaker is a nobody. His job as Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff did not require Senate confirmation. (Yes, he was confirmed as a federal prosecutor in Iowa, in 2004, but Mr. Trump can’t cut and paste that old, lapsed confirmation to today.) For the president to install Mr. Whitaker as our chief law enforcement officer is to betray the entire structure of our charter document.

Because Mr. Whitaker has not undergone the process of Senate confirmation, there has been no mechanism for scrutinizing whether he has the character and ability to evenhandedly enforce the law in a position of such grave responsibility. The public is entitled to that assurance, especially since Mr. Whitaker’s only supervisor is Mr. Trump himself, and the president is hopelessly compromised by the Mueller investigation. That is why adherence to the requirements of the Appointments Clause is so important here, and always.

[T]he Constitution is a bipartisan document, written for the ages to guard against wrongdoing by officials of any party. Mr. Whitaker’s installation makes a mockery of our Constitution and our founders’ ideals. As Justice Thomas’s opinion in the N.L.R.B. case reminds us, the Constitution’s framers “had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked.” He added “they knew that liberty could be preserved only by ensuring that the powers of government would never be consolidated in one body.”  We must heed those words today.

Very well said and accurate.  One can only hope that Senate Republicans will remember that thir oath is to the U.S. Constitution and NOT to Der  Trumpenführer.

One Day After Midterms Trump Reminds Us He's A Danger to the Rule of Law

One very next day after the 2018 midterm elections saw Democrats set to retake control of the House of Representatives, Donald Trump reminded us all that he is a clear and present danger to the rule of law, continues to be a strident racist and  will perhaps go to any and all lengths to kill the Mueller Russiagate investigation to protect family members and himself from criminal indictment and/or impeachment. By firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump seems to be openly endeavoring to obstruct justice and place himself above the law.  For those of us of a certain age, it brings back a sense of deja vu of the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre."  The main difference between then and now is that today's Congressional Republicans put their party over democracy and the U.S. Constitution.   Trump's rant today that he can fire anyone he wants and trashing of news reports shows that he has a mind set akin to that of the dictators of the 1930's.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the looming constitutional crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Just in case the Democratic capture of the House of Representatives tempted you to relax for a moment about the state of our country, President Trump quickly moved to remind us that we still have no idea how low he’s going to sink — or how much damage he’ll do along the way.

This happened on multiple fronts. Here’s the most immediate one:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned on Wednesday at President Trump’s request, ending the tenure of a loyalist Trump had soured on shortly after Sessions took office in 2017 because the former senator from Alabama had recused himself from oversight of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

At the center of this decision to force out Sessions is the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Trump has long raged at Sessions for recusing himself from the probe, rather than constraining it on Trump’s behalf. We all knew this day would come as a result, because, as The Post notes, the two men were fundamentally at odds over whether it’s the proper role of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to protect Trump’s personal and legal interests . . . . it has long been obvious that any attorney general who did not place Trump’s own interests over those of the country would have to go. Democrats immediately pounced on the news that Whitaker will replace him, pointing to highly questionable comments he’s made about the Mueller probe. Before becoming Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker suggested regulations allowed for Trump to put in an acting replacement for the attorney general — meaning one who would not have to be confirmed by the Senate — who could, if he wished, starve the Mueller probe of funds . . . . Now this person, conveniently enough, is Whitaker.
 Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein oversees the investigation, but the new acting attorney general, by not recusing himself, might be able to carry out such a scenario. According to legal expert Stephen Vladeck, Whitaker supplants Rosenstein as overseer of the investigation. This raises at least the possibility that some sort of effort to constrain the probe could be put in motion during the lame-duck period, that is, before Democrats take over the House. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer is calling on Whitaker to recuse himself over his previous comments. And Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Intelligence Committee, just put out a statement pointing out that “replacing the Attorney General with a non-Senate-confirmed political staffer is highly irregular and unacceptable.” Blumenthal called for new legislation to protect the Mueller investigation, describing this as a “break the glass moment.” [N]ote that it comes after Trump gave a startlingly unhinged performance at a news conference Wednesday. He flatly declared he can “fire” everyone associated with the Mueller investigation if he wishes . . . . . then, after a reporter pressed Trump on whether his declaration that he is a “nationalist” amounted to an embrace of white nationalism . . . . [Trump] dress[ed] down a black reporter’s question (Trump was also very abusive toward another black female reporter, April Ryan) about his white nationalism as “racist.” Given that these groups are already emboldened by the ongoing mainstreaming of their views at the hands of Trump and others, this is just an extraordinary act of malicious and destructive intent. There is a tendency after big electoral victories such as the one last night to grow a bit complacent, to imagine that a semblance of normalcy has been restored. In multiple ways, Trump reminded us today that we can’t relax even for a second.

I remain convinced that, if allowed to do his job, Mueller will likely expose massive money laundering operations involving Trump and his organizations and Russians and perhaps even treason.  Crimes that would put Trump in prison for the rest of his life and see Ivanka and Donnie Jr. spend many years in prison along with him.  The Mueller investigation must be protected at all costs.

Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings

With all of the other news occupying the media, the Russiagate investigation has fallen below the radar screen.  But that does not mean that Robert Mueller and his team have been idle.  As Bloomberg reports, it is expected that Mueller will unveil key findings shortly after the 2018 midterm elections.  The big question, of course, is to what lengths Donald Trump and Vichy Republicans will go to bury the report and keep it from the public.  Many predict that Trump will fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after the midterms and seek to appoint a replacement who will do Trump's bidding and close down the investigation which has seen numerous indictments and a number of guilty pleas from Trump campaign officials.  The investigation has proven itself to be anything but a "witch hunt" as screeched by Der Trumpenführer and his 1930's German-like supporters. Here are highlights from Bloomberg on where the matter stands currently:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

With three weeks to go before the midterm elections, it’s unlikely Mueller will take any overt action that could be turned into a campaign issue. Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors should avoid any major steps close to an election that could be seen as influencing the outcome.

That suggests the days and weeks immediately after the Nov. 6 election may be the most pivotal time since Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year and a half ago. So far, Mueller has secured more than two dozen indictments or guilty pleas.

Several matters could keep the probe going, such as another significant prosecution or new lines of inquiry. And because Mueller’s investigation has been proceeding quietly, out of the public eye, it’s possible there have been other major developments behind the scenes.

Mueller’s prosecutors also have met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Cohen pleaded guilty in New York in August to tax evasion, bank fraud and violations of campaign finance laws. That separate investigation, headed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, is one of several New York probes involving the Trump Organization, and could ultimately prove to be more damaging to [Trump] the president than Mueller’s work.

Manafort is also key to understanding a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians who had promised damaging information concerning Clinton, the former official said.

Manafort appears to have good material to offer, said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Duke University School of Law. “He’s not going to get that deal unless he can help Mueller make a case against one or more people,” Buell said. Cooperators can’t expect leniency unless they provide "substantial assistance in the prosecution of others," Buell added, citing sentencing guidelines.

Even if Mueller’s probe stretched through 2019, the timeline wouldn’t be unprecedented. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr spent four years investigating President Bill Clinton before releasing his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair, which spun out of a probe into an Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

It took almost two years for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice in October 2005 in the investigation into the public outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

What Manafort's Plea Deal May Mean

Some - including Der Trumpenführer - claimed that Paul Manafort would never enter into a plead deal with Robert Mueller's investigation.  Today, those claims crashed and burned as Manafort plead guilty to two charges and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team in exchange for avoiding a second lengthy and costly trial.   The speculation now, of course, is what goods does Manafort have to offer Mueller in exchange for the plea deal.  If there was nothing of value, Mueller would not have accepted the deal.  Odds are Trump will be issuing twitter attacks on both Manafort and the Russiagate investigation.  A column in the Washington Post by former Republican, Jennifer Rubin, looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

The Post reports:

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty Friday to two criminal charges under terms of a plea deal that includes his cooperation as a potential witness for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. . . . .

That’s the news Trump never wanted to hear. The prospect of just such a deal is why his lawyers reportedly dangled the promise of a pardon in front of Manafort’s lawyers. A plea deal that could put the Russians inside Trump’s campaign blows to smithereens the notion that only low-level, non-players or those distantly related to the campaign had Russian connections. Trump, who was praising Manafort to the heavens just weeks ago, will find it hard (but not impossible) to now smear him as a liar.

“The relentless Mueller push continues — as does that of the rule of law,” observes former White House ethics counsel Norman Eisen. “The reported cooperation agreement could be devastating to the president — and those around him. Manafort for example could  implicate not only the president in the Trump Tower meeting — but also others who were involved such as Don Jr. or [Jared] Kushner. The same is true on the mysterious [RNC] platform change, and indeed on all the possible collision offenses.”

The plea certainly explodes Trump’s claim that Mueller is engaged in a “witch hunt.” The only “hoax” here is the pretense that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on inside the Trump campaign or that it was too disorganized to have spent time colluding with Russians.
Trump also loses the argument that Mueller is wasting taxpayer money. As part of the plea deal, Manafort is going to cough up $46 million in forfeited assets, according to news reports.
What we will find out in the days and weeks ahead is just how much Manafort knows and how much he can tell us about what Trump knew regarding Russian interference on his behalf. For Republicans who have been carrying water for the president, it might be time to put down the buckets and run for their political lives. Frankly, voting for impeachment and removal might be a good option for Republicans at some point. Before we get there, however, there are the midterms, which are shaping up to be a wipeout for the GOP.