Judge Denies Trump DOJ Request to Replace Census Case Legal Team

Trump and fellow liar, Wilbur Ross.

In the legal realm, attorneys on a litigation case can withdraw and be replaced only under limited situations and such withdrawal requires court approval.  Among these situations are (i) a private party litigant elects to hire new legal counsel, (ii) the client has failed and refused to pay legitimate legal fees of its legal counsel, and (iii) legal counsel believes the client is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court.  In the case of the lawsuit brought by the Trump DOJ seeking to force a citizenship question on the 2020 census - which the U.S. Supreme Court remanded back to the lower court while noting the alleged need for the question was contrived - the first two situations do not apply.  Now, with a federal judge refusing to allow the Trump DOJ to replace it legal team without explanation, some are conjecturing that the third situation may be what is really going on.  Stated another way, some commentators suspect the original DOJ legal team may be seeking to withdraw because the Trump regime is pressuring the lawyers to lie and defraud the court. In addition to seeking to under count non-whites in the census, Trump appears to be playing to his racist base. As prior post noted, the language directly from the U.S. Constitution mandating the census says NOTHING about citizenship.  It mandates a count of ALL people within the boundaries of the nation. Numerous news outlets are reporting on the court's refusal to grant the request to replace the entire original legal team.  Here is are highlights from the Washington Post: 

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday denied a bid from the Justice Department to replace the team of lawyers on the case about the census citizenship question, writing that its request to do so was “patently deficient.”

The department had earlier this week announced its intention to swap out the legal team on the case, without saying exactly why.

A person familiar with the matter said the decision was driven in part by frustration among some of the career lawyers who had been assigned to the case about how it was being handled, though the department wanted to replace those in both career and political positions.

But U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman denied the formal, legal bid to do so.

“Defendants provide no reasons, let alone ‘satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel,” Furman wrote. He also noted that a filing in the case was due from the department in just three days, and that the department had previously pushed for the matter to be moved along quickly.

“If anything, that urgency — and the need for efficient judicial proceedings — has only grown since that time,” Furman wrote.

He said the department could refile its request, if it gave “satisfactory reasons” for the attorneys’ withdrawal and promises that the attorneys who had worked the case previously would be available upon request. The judge also asked the department to “file an affidavit providing unequivocal assurances that the substitution of counsel will not delay further litigation of this case (or any future related case).”

The judge’s decision was the latest development in the continuing effort by the Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The Justice and Commerce departments then effectively conceded defeat — but Trump soon ordered the lawyers to do an about-face and come up with ways to keep the fight alive.

Furman’s move could force the Justice Department to expose more of its messy, internal debates over the census case. Those attorneys who object to the handling of it might proceed without signing briefs, serving up a regular, public reminder of how fraught the case has become internally. The department might also choose to lay out more detailed reasons for wanting the attorneys off in a subsequent request.

New York Attorney General Letitia James took a tacit swipe at Trump in reacting to the ruling.  “Despite the president attempting to fire his lawyers, this is not an episode of ‘The Apprentice.’ Judge Furman denied his request and required the administration to comply with the rules regarding substitution of counsel, ” said James, in a reference to Trump’s onetime television show.

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School who was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 2015 to 2017, said he had never seen the department swap out an entire team in the middle of litigating a case.

The move was particularly odd given that the previous team was composed of experts in administrative procedure who were steeped in the details of the census litigation, he said. The new team, pulled together from the department’s consumer protection, civil fraud, and office of immigration litigation components, is “a truly random assortment,” he said.

Intensifying the political battle, House Democrats threatened to block funding for government efforts to ask about citizenship status as the White House continued to ponder an executive order to force the issue. 

“I have no intention of allowing this flagrant waste of money,” Rep. José E. Serrano (D-N.Y.), who leads the House panel overseeing funding for the Commerce and Justice departments, said in a statement. “I once again urge the Trump administration to give up this fight and allow for a depoliticized and accurate census, as we always have.”

A spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee confirmed Democrats would seek to block taxpayer money from funding any efforts by the Trump administration to ask about citizenship in next year’s survey “if the issue has not been rendered moot by the courts.”

Barr Has Made a Total Mess of the Mueller Report, and Undermined DOJ

Many felt that William Barr should never have been confirmed as Attorney General given his unseemly effort to audition for the position by releasing an unsolicited opinion that basically trashed the basis for the Mueller report and made the argument that the office of the president was above the law - a concept that would have shocked the Founding Fathers. Through his handling of the release of the Mueller report, Barr has confirmed the worse fears of his critics and, worse yet, has further damaged the reputation and public perception of the U.S. Department of Justice. What is puzzling to many is why Barr - who was retired and had a decent reputation - has chosen a course that will likely sully him in the view of history not to mention further undermine the public trust in governmental institutions. Is the public political fellatio of Donald Trump worth that? Barr's window of opportunity to save his own reputation and that of the Justice Department is closing rapidly and time will tell if he will opt throw away and shred of honor and principle like so many Republicans have done to date.  A piece in Politico looks at the damage Barr is doing. Here are highlights:

Ever since would-be First Gentleman Bill Clinton stepped onto Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s plane in June 2016, the Justice Department has found itself in the worst position possible for a nonpolitical law enforcement agency — that of leading actor in the nation’s most hotly contested political dramas.

William Barr’s confirmation as Sessions’ successor was supposed to provide a reset to those turbulent times. A respected former attorney general who didn’t need the job, he promised that his extensive experience and end-of-career status would allow him to make decisions regardless of what a president notoriously hostile to the Justice Department’s normal practices wanted.

Instead, Barr’s handling of the conclusion of the 22-month long investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election has thrust a new cloud over the Justice Department and his leadership, one that has grown darker with the reports that some members of the special counsel’s team believe he has mischaracterized their findings and needlessly inserted himself into the process to make his own determination as to whether the president obstructed justice.

Barr is now in open warfare with the special counsel’s office, with his spokesperson releasing a statement Thursday that seemed to push back on the contention, leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post, that he could have released a summary written by the special counsel’s office rather than his own version of events.

Barr has also moved the goal posts on what categories of information would be redacted from the report, adding two new ones to the list he announced on March 24, while refusing so far to ask a court for permission to release grand jury material, as the Justice Department did at the conclusion of two previous investigations into presidential misconduct.

The attorney general’s actions raise suspicions about whether he is acting primarily to benefit [Trump] the president because they don’t make sense when viewed through any other lens. Barr is neither inexperienced nor naive, yet when deciding among the several options available to him when he received Mueller’s report, he chose the one course of action that would raise questions about his own integrity and plunge the Justice Department into political controversy.

Barr simply could have told Congress that he had received the report and would make a version available when he had completed his review and made appropriate redactions. He could have released Mueller’s principal findings, as he initially said he would do, without adding his own conclusion on obstruction of justice. Or he could have released one of the multiple summaries prepared by Mueller’s team while review of the full report continued.

Barr instead chose the one path that could call his behavior into question, while negating the entire reason for appointing a special counsel in the first place: to ensure that the taint of politics is removed from the Justice Department’s decision-making. That choice would be odd for any attorney general. It makes even less sense for one whose impartiality was questioned from the outset, given that he was chosen for the job after he wrote an unsolicited memo questioning some of the very foundations of the special counsel’s investigation.

Barr still has a chance to lift the cloud his actions have placed over his leadership, but to do so, he will have to reverse course quickly. . . . he should follow the precedent the department set in both the Starr investigation and the 2016 Clinton email investigation and provide underlying investigative materials to lawmakers.

Mueller is one of the most talented and respected prosecutors of his generation, and his integrity will accrue to Barr’s benefit, if only Barr will let it. The sniping the Justice Department has directed toward the special counsel’s office in the press over the past two weeks, both on the record and through leaks to reporters, is not just unseemly — it also hurts the entire department and its ability to do its job.

If the Justice Department has any hope of restoring the reputation that has been tarnished — sometimes fairly, sometimes not — through the past three years of political combat, it will be by leaning on Mueller’s hard-earned reputation and letting his work speak for itself. Barr should get out of the way and let that happen. Otherwise, he will deserve all the criticism he gets, and both he and the Justice Department will suffer for it.

Mueller Has Filed His Report, the Public Needs to See All of It

Yesterday afternoon, Robert Mueller filed his Russiagate report.  Other than no new indictments, no one knows what's in it.  In my view and the view of Democrat presidential candidates, the entire report needs to be made public, the good, the bad, the entire report. Absent a release of the full report, there will be many that believe a cover up has occurred and confidence in the legal system and the already damaged rule of law will be lost.  Moreover, with the 2020 presidential campaign beginning, voters deserve to know the full contents of the report in evaluating Trump's fitness - or more likely, unfitness - for office.  With the Southern District of New York and New York State still doing their own investigations, Trump is by no means out of potential serious jeopardy.  The New York Times looks at calls for the release of the full report:

Democratic presidential candidates wasted no time Friday evening demanding the immediate public release of the long-awaited report from Robert S. Mueller III, with several saying that Americans deserved to know any findings about President Trump, Russia and the 2016 election in order to form judgments about Mr. Trump and the 2020 race.

Former Representative Beto O’Rourke, campaigning in South Carolina on Friday night, told reporters that “those facts, that truth, needs to be laid out for all Americans to be able to make informed decisions going forward, whether at the ballot box” or in their discussions with their senators and representatives.

Mr. O’Rourke, asked if he supported impeaching Mr. Trump, said he believed the president and his 2016 campaign “at least sought to collude with the Russian government to undermine our democracy” and that Mr. Trump “sought to obstruct justice” once in office.

Marnee Robinson, 62, a local entrepreneur, said in an interview that the report — and questions about Mr. Trump and Russia — were her No. 1 issue as a voter.  “It flows from the top,” she said of what she believed to be questionable behavior, or worse. “Everyone is compromised in some way.”

Several candidates, in calling for the swift release of the report, also sought to gather new supporters and their email addresses by putting out “petitions” calling for complete transparency from the Justice Department.

“The Trump Administration shouldn’t get to lock up Robert Mueller’s report and throw away the key,” Senator Cory Booker argued on Twitter, asking people to sign a petition and provide their names and emails. Such information is often used for future fund-raising solicitations.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and the campaign arm of House Democrats were already placing ads on Facebook demanding the full report’s release, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeking 100,000 signatures for its online petition.

With no detailed information available about the report, Ms. Warren and Mr. Booker — as well as Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris — sought to focus attention and pressure on how quickly Attorney General William P. Barr would release the full report.

Senators Harris, Warren and Gillibrand also joined Mr. Booker and Senator Bernie Sanders in asking supporters to sign their petitions calling for the report’s immediate release.

Five other candidates — Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota; Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii; Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington; former Representative John Delaney; and Julián Castro — also called for the release of the full report.

“As Donald Trump said, ‘Let it come out,’” Senator Sanders wrote on Twitter. “I call on the Trump administration to make Special Counsel Mueller’s full report public as soon as possible. No one, including the president, is above the law.”

Shadowy Right Wing Group Paid Matt Whitaker $1.2 Million

Acting AG Matthew Whitaker accepted over $1.2 million in shady money from unknown sources.

Driving home yesterday evening on satellite radio CNN was reporting that Acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker had not filed required financial disclosure forms.   Now, perhaps we know why as the Washington Post reports that Whitaker was paid $1.2 million by a shadowy and mysterious "charity" with financial sources flowing from the far right.  The disclosure raises yet further questions as to Whitaker's fitness for the position - even if he had received required Senate confirmation - given his role with a business that scammed millions from citizens until it was shut down by government regulators.  Adding further to the mix is the requests by Senate Democrats that the Department of Justice investigate whether Whitaker had been relaying confidential information from the Russiagate investigation directly to Der Trumpenführer.  It would seem the surest bet to a Trump appointment is to have engaged in unscrupulous business practices and to display a lack of moral integrity.  Here are highlights from the Post piece: 

In the three years after he arrived in Washington in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker received more than $1.2 million as the leader of a charity that reported having no other employees, some of the best pay of his career.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust described itself as a new watchdog nonprofit dedicated to exposing unethical conduct by public officials. For Whitaker, it became a lucrative steppingstone in a swift rise from a modest law practice in Iowa to the nation’s top law enforcement job. As FACT’s president, he regularly appeared on radio and television, often to skewer liberals.

But FACT’s origins and the source of funding used to pay Whitaker — now the acting attorney general — remain obscured. An examination of state and federal records, and interviews with those involved, show that the group is part of a national network of nonprofits that often work in concert to amplify conservative messages.

In its application to the IRS for status as a tax-exempt organization, the organizers reported that the group would study the impact of environmental regulations on businesses, records show. In that incarnation, the group took no action and “only existed on paper,” one man named in IRS filings as a board member told The Washington Post. Another named in a state filing as a board member said he never agreed to be on the board.

Whitaker’s 2017 pay from the charity — more than $500,000 for the first nine months, or half the charity’s receipts for the year, according to tax filings — and the group’s earlier, dormant incarnation have not been previously reported by media. 

Whitaker did not respond to requests for interviews. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to answer detailed questions about his involvement in FACT, referring a reporter to the charity.

A FACT spokesman who provided a statement on the condition that his name not be used declined to disclose the source of its funding. . . . . FACT does not and is not required to release its donor information,” the statement said. “This protects free speech rights of all of these groups’ supporters as outlined in the First Amendment.”

[I]n 2012, Whitaker was a former U.S. attorney with a modest legal practice in Iowa that paid him $79,000 that year, according to a later disclosure he filed for a failed Senate bid. He also had several local side businesses, including a day-care center and a trailer manufacturer. 

Noah Wall, now a vice president of advocacy for a conservative nonprofit called FreedomWorks, was listed in Virginia state filings as a director of the group in 2014. Wall said he was surprised to learn of his role. He said he was approached by Wotring but never agreed to join.

“I never signed anything,” he said. “I’m not entirely sure what any of this is.” 

On July 21, 2014, the IRS approved the group’s application for tax-exempt charity status, which was also signed by Wotring, the group’s secretary. In its application, the group said it would be nonpartisan and aim “to develop unbiased research on how government regulations on environmental policy can impact business.” The group by then had changed its address to a UPS Store in Fairfax, which was also used by Americans for Limited Government. [J]ust six weeks later, the newly approved charity changed its name, according to corporate records in Virginia. It was briefly called Working for Rights to Express & Communication.

The name was changed again in October of that year, to the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, according to records in Virginia. That same month, Whitaker, who had lost a primary bid for a U.S. Senate seat, became the group’s leader, according to Kupec, the Justice spokeswoman.

The charity’s mailing address was moved from Virginia to an office suite at a prestigious spot on K Street in the nation’s capital — a virtual office and mailing address shared by 200 organizations.

After the [2016 presidential]election, Whitaker’s focus in those interviews turned to another target, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Whitaker or hosts named Mueller 185 times.

Tax filings show that one of FACT’s biggest contractors was America Rising, a research and communications firm in Arlington, Va., “whose mission is to help its clients defeat Democrats,” according to its website. FACT paid America Rising at least $500,000 for research from 2015 to 2017, tax filings show.

In the three years he worked at the charity, Whitaker’s pay rose sharply each year, tax filings show. Last year, he was paid $55,000 a month. In all, he earned $1,219,000 — more than a third of the donations the group received from 2014 to 2017.
An IRS spokesman declined to comment, citing federal privacy law.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the article is the large sums of money being given by unidentified sources - which could even be foreign sources.  The claim that the First Amendment should allow donor's to remain anonymous is absurd.  Having to put one's name on one's donations in no manner denigrates the right of free speech.  Indeed, the Founding Fathers contemplated that in exercising free speech, one would not be hiding in some murky background. I am opposed to anonymous donations of any kind unless the "charity" is a real charity that supports the poor, the sick, and the homeless.

Is an Overdue Reckoning Coming for the Catholic Church on Sexual Abuse?

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been allowed to be above the law, especially in nationals like Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Germany, but so too in America.  Politicians have deferred to Church prelates and law enforcement officials rarely dared take on the Catholic Church establishment.  This thankfully began to change in 2002 when the Boston Globe blew the lid off of the sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston.  Similar stories have since swept the globe, with the Church going into a free-fall in Ireland and major government investigations like that done in Australia that lead to the first criminal convictions against members of the hierarchy for their role in the cover up of crimes against children and youths.  Now, the U.S. Attorney's office in Philadelphia has announced it is launching an investigation of seven of the eight dioceses in Pennsylvania.  Meanwhile the Attorney General of the District of Columbia is launching an investigation of the Washington Archdiocese.  Since the Vatican and bishops and cardinals have failed to date to come clean and clean house, some are hoping that a long overdue reckoning is about to overtake the Church.   I was never abused by priests, but I know those who were.  The hypocrisy of the hierarchy has been stunning as has the indifference towards crimes against children and youth.  A piece in Rewire looks at what may be coming.  Here are excerpts:

I remember the moment when the gravity of the Catholic hierarchy’s long-term cover-up of rampant sexual abuse within the priestly ranks was driven home to me. It was in 2010, and I was conducting an interview for my book Good Catholics with the noted Catholic feminist theologian Mary Hunt. We were discussing her reflections regarding what had, at that point, been a decades-long adversarial relationship with the powers-that-be in the Catholic Church, dating from when Hunt was one of the leaders of an effort in the mid-1980s to assert the validity of a pro-choice position in the face of an increasingly authoritarian Vatican.

Hunt told me. “We thought we were dealing with people of good will.” But it’s what she said next that sent a chill down my spine. “What we didn’t know then was that we were up against criminal behavior—people participating in criminal behavior and ignoring criminal behavior.”

As last week’s move by the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the abuse of children and young adults by Catholic clergy (and the subsequent cover-up by bishops) makes clear, Hunt was prescient.

The news that former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had been serially abusing young men and seminarians for decades was eclipsed by the damning Pennsylvania grand jury report that detailed decades of abuse and cover-up in dioceses throughout the state. This in turn prompted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl as archbishop of Washington—Wuerl helped formulate the Church’s rules for preventing sexual abuse by priests—for his role in shuffling predator priests around the state when he was the head of the Pittsburgh diocese.

But the recently announced U.S. attorney’s investigation marks a major turning point and a potential moment of reckoning in the long-running and sordid sex abuse scandal that first burst into public view with the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” investigation in early 2002. The Justice Department investigation promises to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the U.S. Catholic Church and civil law enforcement authorities.

To date, no matter how messy the scandal became, civil authorities largely left the Church alone to clean up its own mess. While individual priests have been charged with crimes as the result of abuse, and culpable prelates like Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law were shuffled into retirement, the larger question of criminality on the part of the Church’s leadership has been off the table. It was, admittedly, an odd arrangement, with the U.S. government in effect deferring to the government of the Catholic Church, an arrangement neither codified in the Constitution nor available to any other religion.

But if this federal investigation does go forward—and it should be noted that it’s coming from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, so it could be impeded by higher-ups in the Justice Department—it would be a landmark moment as the federal government usurps the authority that Vatican has long claimed to police its internal affairs.

And the nature of the investigation reported by the AP, which spans seven of the state’s eight dioceses, suggests just how deep such an inquiry could go. According to the Washington Post:

The subpoenas seek years of internal records, including any evidence of church personnel taking children across state lines for purposes of sexual abuse, any evidence of personnel sending sexual material about children electronically and any evidence that church officials reassigned suspected predators or used church resources to further or conceal such conduct.

[T]he prosecutors could be planning a racketeering case against Church leaders: “Human trafficking, child pornography, the Mann Act—any of these could be the underlying crimes for RICO.”

The leveling of criminal conspiracy charges against members of the Catholic hierarchy would be a stunning denouement for men who, until recently, regularly met with U.S. presidents and influenced public policy on everything from women’s access to contraception to the simmering argument about transgender identity. It would signal that after a century of acquiescence to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church as a separate political structure operating with impunity outside of the U.S. legal system, U.S. civil authorities no longer consider the Church above the law.

As Emma Green notes in The Atlantic, the scope of the investigation “will test the Catholic bishops’ stated resolve to give secular authorities full control and transparency in abuse investigations, as the moral and legal stakes of the crisis continue to grow.” This will be especially important if subpoenas seek the contents of so-called secret archives that may hold previously unreleased information about efforts to cover up the activities of abusive priests.

And despite pledges of transparency, there are indications that the Church will not surrender without a fight. Even as bishops in Pennsylvania promised to cooperate with civil authorities in the wake of the grand jury report, behind the scenes the church fought tooth-and-nail to derail a popular measure that would have created an exemption to the state’s statute of limitations for sexual abuse suits.

Now the question becomes: Will the public—both inside and outside of Pennsylvania—stand any longer for the extraordinary dispensation that has been granted for so long to an organization that has engaged in what may prove to be a decades-long criminal conspiracy?

I continue to urge Catholics sickened by the sex abuse cover ups to vote with their feet and walk away.  The Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church offer good alternatives that are free from the thoroughly corrupt Catholic Church hierarchy. 

NRA Affiliated Russian Woman Charged with Spying for Moscow

Russian spy and NRA affiliate, Maria Butina.

On the same day that Donald Trump was throwing America under the bus and serving as Vladimir Putin's bitch boy, Maria Butina, 29, a Russian national affiliated with the National Rifle Association ("NRA"), was indicted for meeting with U.S. politicians and candidates to establish ‘back channels’ and secretly reporting to Kremlin.  Stated more directly, she was indicted for being a Russian spy.  Unlike the other Russians indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, Butina was physically taken into custody and will face active prosecution.  This comes atop stories that the $30 million thrown into the 2016 presidential election to back Trump by the NRA may well have been monies sourced from Russian nationals.   One can only hope that Butina spills her guts to strike a plea deal and helps expose the NRA's nefarious activities.  A piece in The Guardian looks at her arrest.  Here are highlights:

A Russian woman has been charged with spying for Moscow in the US by infiltrating the National Rifle Association (NRA) in an attempt to influence the Republican party and American politics.

Maria Butina, who purported to be a pro-gun activist, met American politicians and candidates to establish “back channels” and secretly reported back to the Kremlin through a high-level Russian official, according to the US justice department.

Prosecutors said in a statement that Butina, 29, had been “developing relationships with US persons and infiltrating organisations having influence in American politics, for the purpose of advancing the interests of the Russian federation”.

Butina was charged with conspiracy to act as a Russian agent within the US without notifying the attorney general. She was arrested on Sunday and appeared before a magistrate in Washington on Monday, officials said. In an affidavit, an FBI agent said investigators had searched Butina’s laptop computer and mobile phone.

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment.

Butina has come under increasing scrutiny amid the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Footage emerged of her asking Trump a question in front of an audience at a conservative event in July 2015.

She is known as a protege of Alexander Torshin, a senior official at the Russian central bank, who is also a longtime associate of the NRA. Torshin, who met Donald Trump Jr at an NRA event in 2016, was placed under sanction by the US in April.

Charging documents unsealed on Monday say Butina was directed by a “high-level official in the Russian government”. The unnamed official’s biography matched that of Torshin, but he was not identified by name.

Two unidentified Americans, one of them described as a “political operative”, were said in the charging documents to have assisted Butina in her efforts to make political contacts in the US. Neither was charged with a crime.

Butina has a longstanding working relationship with Paul Erickson, an NRA member and conservative operative based in South Dakota. Erickson did not respond to a voicemail left on Monday afternoon.

Prosecutors said Butina emailed the first American associate in March 2015, suggesting a specific political party “would likely obtain control over the US government after the 2016 elections” and noting the powerful role in this party played by a certain gun rights organisation.

According to prosecutors, she reported that a Kremlin official had given approval for the back channel she was building, and she told the American: “All we needed is ‘yes’ from Putin’s side. The rest is easier.”

Officials said the investigation into Butina was conducted by the FBI’s Washington office and was being prosecuted by the national security sections of the US attorney’s office in Washington and justice department headquarters. The office of Robert Mueller, the special counsel, played no immediately apparent role.

Little surprise that the NRA and Erickson failed to respond to inquiries.  The irony, of course, is that it is quickly turning out that those who have been the loudest about their supposed patriotism are the ones supporting treason.  Sadly, I doubt the news of the last couple of days will sink in with some "friends" who continue to post what is little better than Russian/Trump propaganda on Facebook.   I sincerely hope that before all of this is over, the Republican Party will become synonymous with treason and traitors. 

How Democracy Dies: The Constitutional Crisis Is Here

Day after day we see Donald Trump behaving little better than a loud mouthed school yard bully - or more appropriately, like a banana republic or African dictator from years ago.  Lies, boasting, and seeing the government apparatus as merely existing to protect and appease him alone.  No one else has rights and concerns for constitutional government and the rule of law are of no consequence.  Indeed, Trump views himself as above the law - a trait demonstrated throughout much of his real estate career - as he tries to torpedo an investigation into his own wrongdoing sparked in no small measure by the sleazy and possibly treasonous minions that he used to staff his 2016 campaign.  Manafort, Page and Gates were ALL on the FBI radar long before they joined the Trump campaign.  In the case of Page, years before Trump ever announced his candidacy.  If anyone is to blame for the investigation, it is Trump himself through his poor choices and, as we have learned, his sycophants' efforts to collude with foreign powers.  Now, Trump, to protect himself, is moving to destroy the rule of law and ultimately democracy in America.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this dangerous crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Stop waiting for the constitutional crisis that President Trump is sure to provoke. It’s here.

On Sunday, via Twitter, Trump demanded that the Justice Department concoct a transparently political investigation, with the aim of smearing veteran professionals at Justice and the FBI and also throwing mud at the previous administration. Trump’s only rational goal is casting doubt on the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which appears to be closing in.

Trump’s power play is a gross misuse of his presidential authority and a dangerous departure from long-standing norms. Strongmen such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin use their justice systems to punish enemies and deflect attention from their own crimes. Presidents of the United States do not — or did not, until Sunday’s tweet:

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Rather than push back and defend the rule of law, Justice tried to mollify [Trump] the president by at least appearing to give him what he wants. The Republican leadership in Congress has been silent as a mouse. This is how uncrossable lines are crossed.

The pretext Trump seized on is the revelation that FBI source Stefan A. Halper made contact with three Trump campaign associates before the election as part of the FBI’s initial investigation into Russian meddling.

The informant was not embedded or implanted or otherwise inserted into the campaign. He was asked to contact several campaign figures whose names had already surfaced in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty not to take a look at Trump advisers with Russia ties, such as Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, when the outlines of a Russian campaign to influence the election were emerging.

This conspiracy theory has so many holes in it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with the glaringly obvious: If the aim was to make Trump lose, why wasn’t all the known information about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections leaked before the election, when it might have had some impact?

The truth appears to be precisely the opposite of what Trump says, which is not uncommon. The record suggests that Justice and the FBI were so uncomfortable investigating a presidential campaign in the weeks and months before an election that they tiptoed around promising lines of inquiry rather than appear to be taking a side. . . . . we had no idea that such a mature investigation of the Trump campaign was underway.

Now that the Mueller probe has bored into Trump’s inner circle — and federal authorities have raided the homes and office of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen — [Trump] the president appears to be in a panic. The question is whether he sees this “spy” nonsense as a way to discredit Mueller’s eventual findings, or as a pretext for trying to end the investigation with a bloody purge akin to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”

The Justice Department answered Trump’s tweeted demand by announcing that an existing investigation by its inspector general will now “include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation” by the FBI. Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein may hope that is enough to avoid a showdown. I fear he is wrong.

None of this is normal or acceptable. One of the bedrock principles of our system of government is that no one is above the law, not even the president. But a gutless Congress has refused, so far, to protect this sacred inheritance.

Trump is determined to use the Justice Department and the FBI to punish those he sees as political enemies. This is a crisis, and it will get worse.

FBI and Justice Department Investigating Cambridge Analytica

The New York Times dropped more potentially bad news for Donald Trump: the Justice Department and FBI are investigating right wing financially backed Cambridge Analytica.  In particular, scrutiny is being directed to the company's finances and bank accounts and also how it received the information taken from Facebook.  The obviously question is whether or not Russian Intelligence personnel   stole the data from Facebook and then provided it to Cambridge Analytica and ultimately the Trump campaign.  If the three main players were connected, then the case of collusion increases.  Here are highlights from the Times piece:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department and the F.B.I. are investigating Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct political data firm, and have sought to question former employees and banks that handled its business, according to an American official and other people familiar with the inquiry.

Prosecutors have questioned potential witnesses in recent weeks, telling them that there is an open investigation into Cambridge Analytica — which worked on President Trump’s election and other Republican campaigns in 2016 — and “associated U.S. persons.” But the prosecutors provided few other details, and the inquiry appears to be in its early stages, with investigators seeking an overview of the company and its business practices.

The investigation compounds the woes of a firm that has come under intense scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators in the United States and Britain. . . . 

This month, Cambridge Analytica announced that it would shut down and declare bankruptcy, saying that negative press and cascading federal and state investigations had driven away customers and made it impossible for the firm to remain in business.

Cambridge Analytica, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.

[T]he firm found itself at the center of a trans-Atlantic furor after the Times and Observer articles appeared. It was then dealt another blow when a British news channel broadcast undercover video in which Alexander Nix, the company’s suspended chief executive, suggested that the company had used seduction and bribery to entrap politicians and influence foreign elections.

The federal investigation in the United States appears to focus on the company’s financial dealings — investigators have reached out to the company’s banks, for instance — and how it acquired and used personal data pulled from Facebook and other sources, according to the American official, who was briefed on the inquiry, and other people familiar with it.

In addition, the investigators have contacted Facebook, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. The official would not provide any other details, and Facebook declined to comment.

[T]he prosecutors involved is the assistant chief of the Justice Department’s securities and financial fraud division, Brian Kidd. The effort is being assisted by at least one agent who investigates cybercrime for the F.B.I., those people said.

The new company was overseen by Mr. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, and then adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, both of whom went on to enjoy influential positions in Mr. Trump’s circle before the president’s break with Mr. Bannon this year.

Also in 2014, a contractor for the new firm used quiz apps and other programs to gather private profile information from as many as 87 million Facebook users, data former Cambridge employees said provided the critical basis for the new company’s voter profiles. The Times also reported in March that the company had sent personnel from Canada and Europe to work on various campaigns in the 2014 midterm elections and in 2016 campaigns, raising questions about Cambridge’s compliance with federal election law, which limits the involvement of non-citizens in election campaigns.

Beware of The Nunes Conspiracy

In the interests of full disclosure, I did NOT listen to Der Trumpenführer "State of the Union" address last evening.  Why? First, I cannot stomach even hearing the man's voice, and second, everything he said is a lie and I did not want to feel the urge to vomit up my dinner.  Simply put, I loath the man and believe that he is the most foul individual to ever occupy the White House.  But perhaps more importantly, while Trump lied using the platform of the State of the Union address, he is waging a war against the pillars of America's national law enforcement agencies, all to hide and cover up his illegal actions be they collusion with Russia or more venial crimes such as money laundering.  Sadly, many congressional Republicans are actively aiding and abetting in the trashing of America's institutions.  Leading the charge is Rep. Devin Nunes who seem more focused on pleasing Vladimir Putin rather than upholding his oath of office to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.  A column in the New York Times looks the ongoing travesty , particularly the conspiracy lead by Nunes to undermine constitutional government.  Here are excerpts:

First, a few words on the State of the Union address. There will be a lot of meaningless commentary about President Trump’s speech tonight. His critics will criticize him, his supporters will praise him and pundits will throw around the word “reset.”

You can safely ignore most of it.  “State of the Union speeches have a celebrated history of not making much of an impact,” . . .

Here’s a challenge: Read the latest coverage about Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and see if you can figure out what he is supposed to have done wrong.

The so-called Nunes memo — an effort by House Republicans to cast aspersions on the Russia investigation — evidently singles out Rosenstein for criticism. The memo, which may be released soon, suggests that he was wrong to extend a wiretap on Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.

The details are complicated, and you can dig into them in The Times’s coverage. The short version: There is no evidence that Rosenstein made a mistake. Page, after all, has had the kind of contact with the Russian government that should interest F.B.I. investigators.

Instead of evidence, the memo engages in the same dark and misleading conspiracy theories that have characterized other efforts by President Trump’s allies to discredit the Russia investigation. But the substance of the claims isn’t really the point. Distraction is the point, and the distraction campaign is having an impact.

Fox News ["Faux News" on this blog and "Trump TV" on the bogs of LGBT activist friends] other and some other parts of the Republican-friendly media spend hours repeating the conspiracies, and many voters now believe them. “The current moment is different from Watergate,” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent wrote yesterday. “There is a massive propaganda apparatus out there — one that reaches deep into the right-wing media and into the Congress that has been pushing the alt-narrative.”

And Trump not only fired James Comey, the F.B.I. director once leading the inquiry, last year, but he has now succeeded in pushing out Andrew McCabe, the deputy F.B.I. director. In both cases, team Trump has justified the moves with dark, misleading suggestions of bias. Now, it seems, team Trump is on the cusp of accelerating a whisper campaign against Rosenstein, who oversees Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the Russia investigation.

In truth, Rosenstein is a Republican — appointed by Trump — who built up a strong reputation over years in the Justice Department. His biggest career blemish was his brief willingness last year to bend to White House pressure and give Trump cover for Comey’s firing.

Since then, though, Rosenstein has chosen to back the rule of law over the rule of Trump. Rosenstein not only appointed Mueller to take over the Russia investigation; he has also defended Mueller — another Republican with a strong bipartisan reputation — against the similar charges of bias.

The smearing of both men, like the smearing of Comey, is a ploy. At the least, it is meant to call into question the ultimate findings of the Russia investigation. At the worst, the smearing is meant to make it politically possible to replace one or both with Trump loyalists who don’t believe in the rule of law.

Related: House Republicans voted yesterday to release the Nunes memo, a move that Justice Department officials have called “extremely reckless.”

Tom Nichols, a Naval War College professor, wrote: “The memo itself is far less important than the fact that GOP Congressmen are now at war with our own law enforcement and intelligence community, something in a lifetime of being a Republican I never expected to see. This will end badly.”

"Masterpiece Cakeshop" Is Not About Religious Freedom

Trump's America

I am addressing the issues raised by the Masterpiece Cakeshop case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court again because the potential damage done to the nation's civil rights and non-discrimination laws will be incalculable should Christofascists secure an exemption for themselves from complying with such laws.  Gays may be the initial targets in the case, but the ultimate targets of the Pharisee like "godly folk" is much more extensive and many more will face discrimination under the guise of "religious freedom" if the Court wrongly decides in favor of the bigoted plaintiff in this case. Four justices, particularly Neil Gorsuch who seemingly believes that religious belief whether feigned or real overrides all else.  Thus, Justice Kennedy may once again be the swing vote on the Court.  A well laid out piece in the New York Times illustrates the dangers a pro-plaintiff ruling in this case presents to many in society, not just the LGBT community.  Here are highlights:

[T]here’s a long history of people using religious liberty as reason to justify their refusal to provide a public service offered by their business. In 1968, the owner of a barbecue restaurant — Piggie Park, in South Carolina — held that his religious beliefs gave him the right to withhold service from African-Americans. The owner, Maurice Bessinger, argued that the Civil Rights Act violated his freedom of religion, because “his religious beliefs compel him to oppose any integration of the races whatever.”

More recently, a pediatrician rejected Krista and Jamie Contreras’s child as a patient in Roseville, Mich., in 2014. The doctor, saying she had given the matter “much prayer,” decided that she couldn’t provide health care to their baby because they are lesbians.

On Tuesday, [December 5, 2017] in a case supported by the Trump administration and a group called Alliance Defending Freedom, a broad right to discriminate on the basis of faith will be argued before the Supreme Court. If you’ve never heard of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the name alone is probably a tip off that freedom is the last thing it’s concerned with defending. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it a hate group.

Yes, we have reached a point in our history where no one is surprised for one moment that in a case being argued before the Supreme Court, the White House is on the same side as a designated hate group.

Jack Phillips refused to make a wedding cake for Charlie Craig and David Mullins, because their loving legal union "violated his Christian beliefs." A series of lower courts has sided with Mr. Craig and Mr. Mullins, but the appeals process has led to the Supreme Court, where it is expected that the swing vote will ultimately rest with Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized marriage equality.

There are two important things to know about the religious freedom/wedding cake case. One is that it’s not about religious freedom — it’s about religious exemption. The other is that it’s about a whole lot more than wedding cakes.

Masterpiece has nothing to do with religious freedom. It’s about enshrining a freedom to discriminate. Historically, religious exemptions from the law have occasionally been granted to protect the person who holds the belief. But this case is different, in that it gives an individual the right to harm someone else. And that’s what the Masterpiece case is about: It would give individuals the right to discriminate. It’s about landlords who could legally refuse to rent to someone because of who they are.

It’s about adoption agencies that could legally deny individuals and couples the right to have a family.

It’s about doctors who could legally refuse services to gay men and lesbians, or their children.

It’s about medical clinics that could refuse service to people who are H.I.V. positive.

It’s about pharmacies that could legally deny birth control to single mothers or to anyone whose relationship the pharmacist might disapprove of.

Some of this havoc has already begun. In Mississippi, a funeral home refused to cremate a man’s husband once it learned the dead man had been gay. In Kentucky, a religious exemption law allows schools to bar L.G.B.T. youth from joining student groups.

Ironically, one group that might wind up discriminated against by the religious exemptions case is — wait for it — religious groups themselves.  . . . . “petitioners’ arguments for a religious exemption permitting denials of service to same-sex couples could also be advanced to support denials of service to people of marginalized faiths.” The long bloody history of the world suggests that giving one faith permission to discriminate against another rarely ends well.

Finally, the court has already considered and rejected faith as justification for discrimination in a previous case. In the Piggie Park decision, the court rejected arguments almost identical to those being made now. That’s why the lawyers for Masterpiece will argue that Mr. Phillips’s cakes are artistic expressions and therefore protected speech.

That argument demands that the court get into the business of defining art itself, a door the justices open at their peril. Is a well-manicured lawn a form of art by this definition? How about a lean corned beef sandwich? What would not be art if the court rules to protect icing and buttercream?

[I]t’s hard to see how the principles they defend could be confined to sexual-orientation discrimination and not carry over to create a defense of racial or gender discrimination. As Paul Smith, a First Amendment expert and professor at Georgetown University’s Law Center, describes it: “We’ve never allowed a commercial business to justify discrimination against a protected class based on the First Amendment. We shouldn’t start now.”

Sadly, in Trump's America, only certain people are "real Americans" and entitled to all of the rights of citizenship and non-discrimination protections.  That the United States Justice Department is filing briefs in support of those of a certified hate group ought to disturb every American.  It may be gays today who are the targets, but tomorrows the Christofascists will add others to the list of who offends their real or feigned religious belief.  Hope and pray a majority of the Court rules against the Pharisee like Jack Phillips. 

Trump's Contempt for the Truth

The list of reasons to despise - perhaps even hate describes the emotion - Donald Trump.  Yet, to me many of them trace back to Trump's most predominant trait other than perhaps his self-absorption and lack of empathy for anyone else: he is a pathological lair who holds the truth on just about any issue one can imagine in contempt.   All of engage in a little white lie from time to time or perhaps embellish a story line from time to time, but with Trump, no matter the issue, rather than honest and truthful, Trump prefers to lie - even when the truth is easily verified.  A column in the New York Times looks at this irreversible character flaw - one of many with Trump - in the context of the Justice Department's confirmation that no wiretapping of Trump ever occurred despite Trump's lie to the contrary. Here are column excerpts:

Once again: Donald Trump is a liar.

The Department of Justice confirmed in a Friday court filing what we all knew to be true: that Trump’s slanderous assertion on Twitter in March that President Barack Obama had Trump’s “ ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” just before the election was in fact a total fabrication.

According to the filing, both the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division “confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.”

To some this lying may seem small, just another defect among many, but to me it is so much more. Honesty is the foundation of character. The truth is the common base from which all else is built.

And yet, this man feels completely unbound by it. He has no respect or reverence for it. For him, honesty is an option, one that he feels no compunction to choose.

Before Trump’s bigotry, race-baiting, misogyny, corruption, bullying and vindictiveness, there is the lying. One could even argue that the lying is a core component of all the rest.

Of the statements by Trump that the fact-checking site PolitiFact has checked, just 5 percent were deemed absolutely true. Another 26 percent were just “mostly true” or “half true.” But a whopping 69 percent were found to be “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire,” the site’s worst rating.

The Washington Post calculated that Trump made 492 false or misleading statements in his first 100 days — “That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day” — and that there were only 10 days without a single false claim. There were five days with 20 or more false claims.But Politico may have been the most insightful. In an article there, Maria Konnikova pointed out . . . . “The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it.”

Trump, we know, lies constantly, about matters as serious as the election results and as trivial as the tiles at Mar-a-Lago.”

Trump is quite literally overwhelming our human capacities with his mendacity. It is not only hard to imagine that any person could lie this much — let alone the leader of the free world — it is also impossible for us to keep pace.

We begin to build into our processing of politics the caveat: Yes, the “president” lies. That’s not new. That’s just what he does.

But we must resist that impulse. It makes normal, or at least rational, something that is neither normal nor rational.

Trump’s incessant lying is obscene. It is a collapse in morality; it is an ethical assault.
This notion that Trump is damaging the sanctity and purity of truth, that truth in the Trump era operates on a floating scale, that for the Trump apologists truth has become a minor inconvenience, should have us all objecting in earnest.

This is not simply about a flawed man, this is about the function of our democracy and American positioning in the world. How is one supposed to debate policy with someone who almost never tells the truth? How can a liar negotiate treaties or navigate international disputes? Without truth, everything falls apart, or more precisely, nothing can be established. . . . America made a colossal mistake, and it cannot be easily undone. . . . the first step is that we must never stop saying: Donald Trump is a liar.

That evangelical Christians continue to support Trump speaks volumes about the moral bankruptcy of this falsely pious, modern day Pharisees.