Tag Archives: Mueller report

Democracy, Donald Trump, Off the Rails

The nation is at the mercy of a raging Donald Trump — with a strong assist from the GOP

In the past week, Donald Trump, who has shrugged off most of his responsibilities as president (while he watches TV, talks to folks who encourage his crusade against the election results, and golfs — and, yesterday, decides to take off for Mar-a-Lago), has found ways — nearly every day since the election — to keep the attention of the media on himself, as well as to breach the guardrails of American democracy in unprecedented ways.

With cascades of lies and howls of grievance, Trump has fought against the fact of his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden. Last Friday, he hosted a White House meeting (described as “raucous” by the New York Times, which broke the initial story) featuring conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell (whom Trump considered naming special counsel to investigate voter fraud); retired Lt. General Michael Flynn (who recently suggested on Newsmax that Trump declare martial law, so battleground states he lost could have do-over elections); and, by phone, Rudy Giuliani (who has advocated that the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines as a step to overthrow the election). White House chief of staff Mark Meadows (former chair of the House Freedom Caucus and no slouch when it comes to disruptive far-right antics) pushed back with White House counsel Pat Cipollone (who appealed to the Constitution) against Flynn and others.

Trump has turned on his closest allies (Senators McConnell and Thune and Vice President Pence), after previously attacking Georgia’s governor and election officials, and even Fox News Channel; dismissed the significance of the recent sprawling cyberattack and endeavored to shift blame from Vladimir Putin’s Russia; and threatened to unravel legislation to provide overdue relief to Americans during an economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the spotlight shifts inevitably toward Joe Biden, Trump satisfies his craving for attention, rewards those he deems loyal, and lashes out at those he faults for disloyalty. Trump is still president for four more weeks. He can wield power in ways unprecedented in American history. No one else has departed the presidency as he is doing. His avalanche of shady pardons and commutations is a case study in Trump’s governing style.

With few checks on the president’s pardon power, Trump can enjoy instant gratification with the stroke of a pen. He can pardon and commute sentences without the cooperation of Congress, the courts, or any executive branch department. This power is his alone to use as he sees fit.

Unique among American presidents, Trump has dished out pardons overwhelmingly to his friends, political allies, and family members. George H.W. Bush pardoned Casper Weinberger and other Reagan officials caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal, while Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother and Marc Rich (the big money donor who had fled the country to escape prosecution). These, though, were exceptions, neither routine, nor representative of the pardons granted by either Bush or Clinton.

Among the crooks, grifters, scofflaws, and war criminals whom Trump has pardoned or whose sentences he has commuted, the vast majority have had a connection to Trump; or they have benefited from special pleading by friends, family, celebrities who have Trump’s attention, Republican members of Congress, and conservative media, led by Fox News Channel.

Last month, Jack Goldsmith, law professor at Harvard noted:

First, of the 41 people who received pardons or commutations (or both) from Mr. Trump, 36 (or 88 percent) have a personal or political connection to the president. They advanced an aspect of Mr. Trump’s political agenda, knew the president personally (or had a connection to someone close to him), were someone he learned about on television (usually on Fox) or a celebrity he admired. By contrast, only five of Mr. Trump’s pardons lacked a personal or political connection and appeared to be vetted through the traditional Justice Department clearing process. No president has come close to using the pardon power in such persistently self-serving ways.

That pattern, with Trump’s recent pardon spree, hasn’t changed. And yesterday’s White House announcement was especially noteworthy.

Paul Manafort—Today, President Trump has issued a full and complete pardon to Paul Manafort, stemming from convictions prosecuted in the course of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, which was premised on the Russian collusion hoax.  Mr. Manafort has already spent two years in prison, including a stretch of time in solitary confinement – treatment worse than what many of the most violent criminals receive.  As a result of blatant prosecutorial overreach, Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair treatment and is one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history.  As Mr. Manafort’s trial judge observed, prior to the Special Counsel investigation, Mr. Manafort had led an “otherwise blameless life.”  Since May, Mr. Manafort has been released to home confinement as a result of COVID-19 concerns.

Roger Stone— Today, President Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Roger Stone, Jr.  President Trump had previously commuted Mr. Stone’s sentence in July of this year.  Mr. Stone is a 68-year-old man with numerous medical conditions.  Due to prosecutorial misconduct by Special Counsel Mueller’s team, Mr. Stone was treated very unfairly.  He was subjected to a pre-dawn raid of his home, which the media conveniently captured on camera.  Mr. Stone also faced potential political bias at his jury trial.  Pardoning him will help to right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation.

With the stroke of a pen, Trump’s defiance of the Mueller investigation is complete. The many successful convictions expose the White House lies (attesting to a “hoax” and a “witch hunt”), but Trump has triumphed in the end. The cover-up — ensuring that neither Stone, nor Manafort turned on Trump, and in exchange are let off the hook — has to rank as one of the greatest successes of the Trump presidency.

It also represents a blow against democracy. The Constitution provides means to check a president. In the past four years, the Republican Party — with control of the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court — has been intent on ensuring that Donald Trump would evade the most significant checks on his power. The Senate, especially, has enabled and emboldened him.

We’re living with the consequences of the Republican Party’s decision. Our country — with a rampaging president who won’t accept the results of a democratic election, and who brandishes his power to distort the rule of law to benefit himself — increasingly resembles a tin pot nation, not the world’s oldest democracy. The Republican Party has embraced this authoritarian model, which will have repercussions long past the next 30 days.

(Image: CNN on YouTube.)

Off the Rails, Republicans

Adam Schiff: Bill Barr is the second most dangerous man in the country

“But I do want to, before we move on from the subject of Barr and contempt, talk about, I think, the most grave concern about Bill Barr. And that is, during his Senate testimony, he opined that the president could have made the Mueller investigation go away any time he wanted because he thought it was unfair. That’s his view of the unitary executive.

Under that view a president is truly above the law. Because what president would not think an investigation against him or her was unfair? It also means that the president can make go away any of the investigations that were farmed out to any of the other elements of the Department of Justice. And, because they are stonewalling us on just about everything, it also means that we might not know – unless whistleblowers step forward – whether Bill Barr is abusing his authority even beyond the fundamental abuse by trying to exonerate the president on obstruction of justice.

And so we find ourselves, I think, for the first time with an attorney general who really is the president’s defense lawyer and spokesperson. And who’s quite good at it. And has the veneer of respectability to camouflage what he’s doing. He is not the sophist that Giuliani is. He’s much more dangerous. And I think he’s the second most dangerous man in the country for that reason.

When you listen to his interviews and you listen to the way he dissembles—when he was asked, even on Fox News, about, well, Didn’t Don McGahn call for Mueller to be fired? His answer was, No, he called for him to be removed, as if that’s a distinction that really makes a difference here. When he was asked, Well, you said that the president fully cooperated, but the president wouldn’t even sit down for an interview. No, no, I said the White House fully cooperated.

When you have an attorney general willing to dissemble that way. When you have an attorney general—and I hesitate to use the word, but there’s no other word that seems to apply here—that lies to Congress as he did when Charlie Christ asked him about whether he was aware of these revelations that had been reported about the Mueller team, and he said that he was not. That’s a very dangerous situation.

And as someone who came out of that department—I spent six years with the Justice department. I venerate the department. To think that it is being led by someone this way—you know, it breaks my heart for the department, but it’s profoundly concerning for the country.” – Congressman Adam Schiff on Attorney General Bill Barr, Council on Foreign Relations, June 4, 2019

Ryan Goodman, at Just Security, provides a side by side comparison of Barr’s and Mueller’s statements about the Special Counsel Report. Goodman comments:

“Whether or not Mueller was intentionally trying to correct the record, the differences between what he and Barr said are, in many cases, stark. Some of the differences involve near complete contradictions—in other words Mueller’s statement and Barr’s statements cannot both be true. Other differences are more a matter of emphasis or tone (e.g., references to the threat posed by the Russian operations, descriptions of the qualities of the special counsel staff).

The special counsel’s Report also contradicts some of Barr’s statements (such as his claim that the Report found no evidence of “collusion,” his suggestion that difficult issues of law and fact stopped the special counsel from concluding the president engaged in criminal obstruction, his claim that the President cooperate fully with the investigation). The following analysis, however, does not include the Report. Instead, it focuses only on Mueller’s public statement and how it compares to statements made by Barr between March 22 (the date that the special counsel handed his final report to the attorney general) and May 29 (the date of Mueller’s statement). This includes statements made by Barr in his 4-page summary submitted to Congress, a formal press briefing, and three congressional hearings, but it does not include Barr’s interviews with Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.”

Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump

Tick tock, tick tock – Why hasn’t the House staged televised hearings with live witnesses?

Well, finally: “In their attempt to move forward with impeachment, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee is reaching way back, calling Watergate star John Dean to testify on June 10.”

It’s a beginning and long overdue.

Never mind what you think about impeachment, or Nancy Pelosi’s resistance to it, or optimal timing for it, or initiating impeachment proceedings, or any other permutations. Why haven’t we had televised hearings with live witnesses in the House of Representatives every week since Bill Barr released his redacted version of Robert Mueller’s report? There are scads of people whose testimony the Trump White House can’t possibly block – including many B-List folks who aren’t household names, but (as in the Watergate hearings of another era) can advance the narrative of presidential wrongdoing. (John Dean is fine, as a warm-up, though the Mueller Report mentions a cavalcade of others who have a closer connection to Donald Trump.)

The absence of hearings up till now represents Congressional malpractice. Numerous commentators have highlighted the importance of telling a story through House hearings:

June 6 – Jonathan Bernstein (“Stop Obsessing About Impeachment Poll Numbers“):

What the House can do is relentlessly dramatize and amplify the story that the Mueller report tells, along with other Trump impeachable malfeasance and scandals. So far, they haven’t really done that effectively.

June 4 – Josh Marshall (“Thoughts on Impeachment“):

The most effective action the House can take is to investigate the President’s wrongdoing and bring it before the public and hold the possibility of impeachment in the offing as they bring new evidence to the public about the President’s misrule.
But here’s the thing. . . .
If the most aggressive stance toward President Trump isn’t impeachment but aggressive investigation – which I firmly believe – then you actually have to be aggressive and show you’re being aggressive.

June 2 – Francis Wilkinson (“Before Impeachment, Democrats Must Win the War for Truth“):

Democrats . . . should methodically highlight the truth of Trump’s ethical and policy failures, day after day, in hearings, reports, news conferences and events in Washington and around the country. And then they must get up each succeeding day and do it all over again.

May 30 – Donna Edwards (“Democrats need to repackage the Mueller report for TV“):

It’s time for Democratic leaders to repackage Mueller’s findings in a form that will be more readily digested by the American people. Unfortunately, the current approach of investigations in no fewer than six committees, multiple subpoenas, innumerable court proceedings and White House delay tactics just creates more confusion. How can the United States focus on the findings if a Democratic House will not singularly focus its investigations? From the cheap seats, it appears that there may be too many balls in the air.
It is no surprise that few Americans are talking about the report over the water cooler. The only voice that breaks through with a consistent (if mostly untrue) message is President Trump’s, especially absent an alternative narrative. Democrats should look at this differently. Mueller has given Democrats cover to present that narrative and proceed with impeachment as the appropriate process under the Constitution.

May 29 – Benjamin Wittes (“Mueller Bows Out: What Does Congress Do Now?“)

Congress’s current strategy is an incoherent muddle. . . .
The better approach, in my view, is to focus on live testimony from witnesses who supplied the material about President Trump’s conduct that Mueller made public in the report—mostly but not exclusively in Volume II. There are a lot of these witnesses. Congress could easily hold weekly hearings that would be riveting television. Who knows? They might even get what the president most values in the world: good ratings. The goal would be to focus public attention on the president’s abuse of the intelligence and law enforcement communities and his individual conduct with respect to Russia. Such hearings could develop new information. They could also enrich our understanding of the existing factual record. They would serve to publicly validate and elucidate Mueller’s findings and, critically, to shift those findings from the voice of Mueller himself to the voice of the president’s closest aides. Perhaps most importantly, they would create a sustained vehicle for focusing on Trump’s conduct—which is, and needs to be, the central issue.
If I were in charge of the House judiciary committee, a wide array of witnesses named in the report would receive an invitation for public testimony—and any of them who did not immediately agree to appear would receive a subpoena in short order. The idea would be to bring the Mueller report to life and, along the way, to establish clearly in case law the ability of Congress to conduct such oversight hearings against a recalcitrant executive.

May 22 – David Corn (“Have the Democrats Blown the Trump-Russia Scandal?“):

For five months now, the Democrats have held power within the House. While passing legislation to address voters’ needs and while battling to enforce subpoenas, they could also be telling the story—with hearings featuring witnesses who could present compelling accounts that have a chance of grabbing the nation’s attention for at least a few minutes.
Three percent of Americans say they have read the Mueller report. That number is probably high. Yes, many have seen the headlines and the news accounts summarizing the report’s findings and allegations. But there is something visceral about a well-run hearing. It is a different way of presenting information to the citizenry. (John Dean’s testimony during the Watergate hearings continued for days and captivated the nation.) Congressional hearings could be used to convey the basics of the Trump-Russia scandal that have disappeared in the ceaseless shuffle—and been shoved aside by the debates over collusion and obstruction.

May 5 – Jonathan Bernstein, who has been at it a while (“Impeaching Trump Would Constrain Democrats Too Much“):

The “before” question is whether to continue investigations and hearings as part of regular House oversight, or as part of an explicit impeachment inquiry.
Are there advantages with the latter? Not really, I don’t think. Whether it’s called impeachment or not, what matters at this stage is whether Democrats can find ways to publicize Trump’s malfeasance, in hopes of both hurting Trump’s popularity and of finding new allies among any weak Trump supporters among congressional Republicans.

April 22 – Norman Ornstein (“Impeachment Is Not the Answer. At Least Not Yet“):

What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, such as WikiLeaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Robert Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York attorney general, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money laundering. The witnesses need to include Mueller and Rosenstein, of course, but also the range of figures mentioned in the report, and also a range of experts in areas such as ethics, constitutional violations, intelligence operations, and election administration and security.
Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good example might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit, if not abandon, opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, leading to utterly disjointed discourse, making it easy for hostile witnesses to evade, filibuster, or otherwise avoid follow-ups and get through a five minute period, which is then followed by a five-minute breather with an ally on the Republican side, and then another five minutes from the next member of the panel that may have nothing to do with the previous round of questions.

(Photo of John Dean: screengrab.)

Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Congressman Justin Amash – the exception that proves the rule

Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) has read and recognized the significance of the Mueller Report. Then he has spoken truthfully about it. Because of the ‘R’ next to his name, this is remarkable: an impressive exception, though it seems unlikely to change much of anything.*

Here are my principal conclusions:

  1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.

  2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.

  3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.

  4. Few members of Congress have read the report.

*Update: Mitt Romney, the Republican Senator (from a Red state that is not all-in with Trump) who has been most critical of Trump, has weighed in on Amash’s comments:

“My own view is that Justin Amash has reached a different conclusion than I have. I respect him. I think it’s a courageous statement, but …” . . .

“As I read the report, I was troubled by it, was very disappointed for a number of reasons. But it did not suggest to me that it was time to call for impeachment. . . .

… I think a number of things that were done were really, really troubling and unfortunate and distressing. Clearly the number of times that there were items of dishonesty, misleading the American public and the media – those are things that really you would not want to see from the highest office in the land. . . .

I don’t think impeachment is the right way to go.”

(Image from the Congressman’s Twitter page.)

Off the Rails, Republicans

Republicans have become as thoroughly shameless as the President they defend

As the Washington Post headline reminds us, the lack of shame confers political advantage. Donald Trump is shameless. Republicans’ defense of Trump – of his assault on truth, the rule of law, and institutional safeguards that preserve our democracy – is not possible without shedding all sense of shame.

In 2015 Jack Shafer of Politico, analyzing Trump’s “ability to wipe yesterday’s slate clean but suffer little political damage,” observed, “You can’t shame a shameless man.” In 2017, Jack Goldsmith of the Atlantic wrote, “A corollary to Trump’s shamelessness is that he often doesn’t seek to hide or even spin his norm-breaking.” The Republican Party circa 2019, the party of Trump, is all-in with the shameless trashing of democratic norms.

After delivery of a searing report by Robert Mueller (a man with a sterling career of public service, from Marine Corps officer in Vietnam to Director of the FBI, whose integrity was accepted by both Republicans and Democrats in Washington) concluded, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion,” and “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome,” Republicans (once the party of ‘law and order’ and of staunch opposition to U.S. adversaries abroad) are now undaunted by the spectacle of a lawless president elected with the help of Russia.

William Barr, the consensus view had it, was a well-regarded, old-school institutionalist returning to the Justice Department as he neared retirement. Certainly, he would be concerned with his reputation and place in history. He would step up to embrace the role of Attorney General of the United States at a time – with a president, hostile to the rule of law, who had attacked the FBI, the intelligence agencies, Justice Department, and even the courts – when the nation needed a reassuring presence. Didn’t happen. Barr chose another course.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, ignoring a heretofore unimaginable number of contacts between Russian agents and Trump campaign operatives, and ten prima facie episodes of obstruction of justice by the President, declares, “Case closed. Case closed.” (McConnell, of course, may be the political archetype of the shameless partisan.)

Chairman Lindsay Graham of the Senate Judiciary Committee, once a Trump critic and a loud, proud defender of national security, is on the same page as McConnell. “The Mueller Report is over for me. Done.”

While Graham and McConnell feign an interest in repelling foreign interference in American elections, the President’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, doesn’t bother. He publicly announced – never mind that he walked it back, a Giuliani mannerism: he has already signaled to our foreign foe what he wants – that he intended to press the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into a Democratic presidential contender:

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he said. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

And this week, when information came to light that the Senate Intelligence Committee – which traditionally has functioned in a bipartisan way, because the nation’s security is not a partisan issue – has subpoenaed Donald J. Trump, Jr. to return as a witness (after apparent conflicts in his previous testimony with other witnesses and documented evidence, and DJTJ declined to return voluntarily), so the committee can clarify the role of Russia in the attack on our country, Chairman Richard Burr was pilloried by a host of his fellow Republicans in the Senate and the House. That doesn’t happen very often, but defense of Trump requires it. The mob included Senators Rand Paul, Tom Tillis, and John Cornyn, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Chairman of the Freedom Caucus in the House, Mark Meadows.

When Trump’s campaign began, most Republican leaders kept their distance (and a modicum of self-respect). At the beginning of his presidency, Trump still faced occasional push-back from Congressional Republicans, among others, who valued their professional reputations. Post-Mueller, the Trumpification of the Republican Party is virtually complete.

Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decries “unhinged partisanship”

Mitch McConnell has a brazen, unwavering message to every Republican – from U.S. Senators to voters across the country. Get on board. This is where we make our stand. We lock arms with Trump and Fox News Channel and every other person, group, and institution that is with us.

McConnell, who knows a thing or two about unhinged partisanship, is reinforcing the party line.

This is tribal warfare. Republican leaders will put aside the nation’s welfare, fidelity to truth, defense of the Constitution, and commitment to the rule of law to dismiss the Mueller report. The courts must be packed with rightwing ideologues (to preempt any meaningful progressive policies in the foreseeable future); tax giveaways must be dished to corporations and the wealthiest Americans; and when the fiscal crisis finally comes,  there is a social safety net to defund.

This has been Bill Barr’s signal – from his 4-page summary of the Mueller report, to his news conference at Justice, to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. This was Lindsay Graham’s signal, when he declared after the committee hearing, “I’m all good. I’m done with the Mueller report.”

These are the tribal chieftains  of the Grand Old Party – the ones a notch below Trump, but folks who are more entrenched; who play the game much better; who have been doing it for generations; and – along with others moving up in the hierarchy – will be doing it after Trump is gone.

And if Republican leaders stay on script — Attention to the Mueller report, concern with Presidential wrongdoing, commitment to traditional Congressional oversight are nothing more than unhinged partisanship — then this becomes an effective message for folks outside (or on the periphery of) the GOP tent. This message — repeated by party leaders and amplified by the mainstream media — will have far greater bandwidth than any Trump tweet or Fox News Channel broadcast.

Republicans who aren’t plugged into Hannity or Limbaugh; folks who voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016; low information voters, who don’t especially like Trump, but who don’t know why Congress can’t get anything done: they will hear a message that the dispute over the Mueller report is all just more bickering between the parties.

Mitch McConnell embraces the principle that bipartisanship harms the Republican agenda (see January 2011 quotation below). His signal to Republicans seeks to ensure that partisanship (which he is pretending to decry) is amplified. That intense partisan message helps Republicans muddy the waters regarding Trump and his Congressional enablers.

McConnell is a master of this game:

May 7, 2019 – on unhinged partisanship:

“This investigation went on for two years. It’s finally over. Many Americans were waiting to see how their elected officials would respond. With an exhaustive investigation complete, would the country finally unify to confront the real challenges before us? Would we finally be able to move on from partisan paralysis and breathless conspiracy theorizing? Or would we remain consumed by unhinged partisanship, and keep dividing ourselves to the point that Putin and his agents need only stand on the sidelines and watch as their job is done for them?”

March 24, 2019 – on Russian interference:

“It is deeply disturbing that the Obama administration was apparently insufficiently prepared to anticipate and counter these Russian threats,”McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. “It was hardly a secret prior to November 2016 that Putin’s Russia was not and is not our friend. And yet, for years, the previous administration ignored, excused and failed to confront Putin’s malign activities, both at home and abroad.”

Both former vice president Joe Biden and Obama White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough have accused McConnell of looking to soft-pedal their warnings about Russia interference before the election.

Date uncertain – on Russian interference: Here’s a quotation from Greg Miller’s book, The Apprentice, on McConnell’s role in squelching a bipartisan Congressional statement on intelligence officials’ conclusion that Russia was actively interfering with the 2016 election: “You’re trying to screw the Republican candidate,” declared Senator McConnell.

August 6, 2016 – on hijacking the Merrick Garland nomination:

“One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.’”

January 4, 2011 – on saying ‘No’ to every single Obama legislative initiative for eight years:

“We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals,” McConnell says. “Because we thought—correctly, I think—that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was going on was if the measures were not bipartisan. When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”

October 23, 2010 – on his paramount goal for the country after the 2008 election:

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

(Image: screen grab of McConnell’s remarks.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Attorney General Barr’s disinformation campaign: the definitive assessment

Quote of the day from Benjamin Wittes, Editor in Chief of Lawfare, who reviews the Attorney General’s wrenching mischaracterizations to protect the President from March 24, when Barr sent his first letter to Congress, to yesterday’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Barr did not lie in any of these statements. He did not, as some people insist, commit perjury. I haven’t found a sentence he has written or said that cannot be defended as truthful on its own terms, if only in some literal sense. But it is possible to mislead without lying. One can be dishonest before Congress without perjury. And one can convey sweeping untruths without substantial factual misstatement. This is what Barr has been doing since that first letter. And it is utterly beneath the United States Department of Justice.

Wittes, who after initially granting Barr the benefit the doubt has concluded that his actions regarding the Mueller report have been catastrophic, analyzes “seven different layers of substantive misrepresentation, layers which build on one another into a dramatic rewriting of the president’s conduct—and of Mueller’s findings about the president’s conduct. It is worth unpacking and disentangling these misrepresentations, because each is mischievous on its own, but together they operate as a disinformation campaign being run by the senior leadership of the Justice Department.” (“The Catastrophic Performance of Bill Barr,” Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic, May 2, 2019)

Years ago I recall hearing an expression, which was attributed to the speaker’s mother: ‘You can tell a lie with what you say and you can tell a lie with what you don’t say.’ Bill Barr, clever lawyer and ruthless political operative, has mastered the latter technique (albeit not altogether convincingly). I regard Benjamin Wittes’ analysis (as of this morning) as the definite assessment of Barr’s disinformation methodology vis-à-vis the Mueller report. I highly recommend spending a few minutes to read it. A couple of brief quotations hardly do the essay justice.

I’ll offer one more quote, where Wittes offers a link to another assessment (also worth a read):

The dishonesty only begins with the laughably selective quotation of Mueller’s report in Barr’s original letter, the scope of which Charlie Savage laid out in a remarkable New York Times article shortly after the full report was released. I urge people to look at Savage’s side-by-side quotations. The distortion of Mueller’s meaning across a range of areas is not subtle, and it’s not hard to understand why Mueller himself wrote to Barr saying that the attorney general’s letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.”

(Image: Pinocchio via wikipedia.)


Off the Rails, Republicans, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham averts his gaze from the Mueller Report

“I’m all good, I’m done with the Mueller report,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham in an interview with CNN in South Carolina. “We will have (Attorney General William) Barr come in and tell us about what he found. I made sure that Mueller was able to do his job without interference. The Mueller report is over for me. Done.”

Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

Fun fact: Graham served as a House manager (aka prosecutor) during the Clinton impeachment. His point of view toward presidential wrongdoing was different than it is today:

“So the point I’m trying to make is, you don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic, if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role. … Because impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office.”

Quotation from this video on Twitter:

April 27 update – Graham again as House manager:

“Article 3 of the impeachment against Richard Nixon … was based on the idea that Richard Nixon as president failed to comply with subpoenas of Congress. Congress was going through its oversight function …. When asked for information, Richard Nixon chose not to comply and the Congress back in that time said: You’re … becoming the judge and jury. It is not your job to tell us what we need. It is your job to comply with what we need to apply oversight to you. The day Richard Nixon failed to answer that subpoena is the day he was subject to impeachment, because he took the power … away from Congress. And he became the judge and jury.”

Quotation from this Twitter video:

(Image from wikipedia.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

William Barr is first and foremost a tribal chieftain of the GOP

A post in two parts on William Barr’s shenanigans regarding the Mueller Report. [April 20 update: I’ve added a third part.]

  1. What did Barr do?

In William Barr’s notorious 4-page summary, he quotes from the Mueller report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The complete sentence (Mueller Report, Introduction to Volume I, pp. 1-2) reads:

Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

From his summary letter on March 24, through his “spying” testimony before Congress last week, to his news conference an hour or so before releasing his redacted version of the Mueller report – Bill Barr’s intent to mislead and distract has been abundantly clear.

No fewer than five times in his news conference he says some variation of this: “In other words, there was no evidence of Trump campaign ‘collusion’ with the Russian government’s hacking.”

Those ‘other words,’ of course are a familiar Donald Trump refrain. Never mind that collusion – outside of anti-trust law – is not a legal concept Barr learned at the George Washington University Law School, or during his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, or anytime or anyplace else during his decades-long legal career in either government or private practice. It is a Trump talking point.

The Mueller Report, in contrast, clearly explains that “collusion” is not a federal crime and thus was not addressed at all in the investigation (Introduction to Volume I, p. 2):

In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of “collusion.” In so doing, the Office recognized that the word “collud[ e]” was used in communications with the Acting Attorney General confirming certain aspects of the investigation’s scope and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation. But collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the Office’s focus in analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law.

Barr’s references to collusion include this statement from his news conference, which seeks to undermine the basis for the investigation and minimize Trump’s attempts to obstruct it with excuses about the President’s unsettled emotional state. Said Barr:

In assessing the President’s actions discussed in the report, it is important to bear in mind the context. President Trump faced an unprecedented situation. As he entered into office, and sought to perform his responsibilities as President, federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct before and after taking office, and the conduct of some of his associates. At the same time, there was relentless speculation in the news media about the President’s personal culpability. Yet, as he said from the beginning, there was in fact no collusion. And as the Special Counsel’s report acknowledges, there is substantial evidence to show that the President was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks. Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims. And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation. Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.


Barr throws up so much chaff here, it is hard to see or breathe. Yes, Trump was in “an unprecedented situation,” having won election with the aggressive covert assistance of the Russian government. “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systemic fashion.” (Introduction to Volume I, p. 1)

Yes, “federal agents and prosecutors were scrutinizing his conduct” with sufficient evidence of a national security threat to obtain a FISA warrant. Yes, there was “relentless speculation … about the President’s personal culpability,” based in great measure on the conduct in plain sight of Trump personally, and of Trump’s campaign and associates – and of their misdirection and lies to cover up their culpability. No, it is not a fact that “there was in fact no collusion.” And, grant that “the President was frustrated and angered,” does that earn him a pass on bad conduct?

Mueller’s report adds to abundant public evidence of Trump’s capacity for lying, which calls into question why we should be moved by references to the man’s “sincere belief.” While Barr’s assertion that “the White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation,” is belied by the President’s refusal to sit down for an interview with the Special Counsel or to answer even in writing questions about obstruction of justice.

If the President “took no act in fact” that thwarted the investigation, it was not for lack of trying. For example, after firing Comey and learning learning that an obstruction-of-justice investigation into his own conduct had begun, Trump “attempted to remove the Special Counsel; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions unrecuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between the Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.” (Volume II, II. Factual Results Of The Obstruction Investigation, L. Overarching Factual Issues, 2.b., p. 158)

Finally, “Apart from whether the acts were obstructive, this evidence of non-corrupt motives weighs heavily against any allegation that the President had a corrupt intent to obstruct the investigation.” I’ll note, simply, that the Mueller Report has page after page of evidence of corrupt intent – and obstructive actions by the President of the United States.

2. What’s the point?

In my March 27 post, I suggested that Barr’s 4-page letter was designed to lock-in a false narrative prior to releasing the (redacted) Mueller report. The letter led to several days of reporting that Mueller had found no collusion, nor convincing evidence of obstruction. Barr’s news conference – an hour or so before release of the report – kept up the charade. Why bother, especially only an hour or two before folks could see for themselves that Barr was again spinning furiously?

Certainly Barr (as with many Trump associates inside and outside of government) knows how to play to an audience of one on TV. But far more significant to Barr was a much wider audience. Barr is acting as a prominent leader of the Republican Party (that is to say, his Tribe). He is signaling to Trump defenders – wherever they may be – that, regardless of how solid or extensive the evidence of corruption, instability, and wrongdoing is, the party line is unchanged: this was a witch hunt, his enemies spied on the president, they’ll use any means necessary to bring him down, and Trump defenders must continue to push back.

From Fox News Channel to Mitch McConnell to GOP Congressional backbenchers to the grassroots: Barr has a loud, proud message. He has stayed on message consistently, regardless of the logic or the facts. He has endured criticism and a diminishing reputation. So be it.

William Barr is demonstrating the remorseless tribal politics of the Republican Party circa 2019.

3. Barr as “Coverup-General” in the George H.W. Bush administration.

This just came to my attention, though it is hardly news, since it took place when Bill Barr served as A.G. the first time (1991-1993), under George H.W. Bush: he has a history of covering up for Republican presidents and cabinet members.

Noah Feldman at Bloomberg reviewed this history in January: “The most significant single act of Barr’s career in the Department of Justice was to advise President George H.W. Bush to pardon six officials from Ronald Reagan’s administration, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for crimes associated with the Iran-Contra affair. At the time, Barr was — you guessed it — attorney general. His recommendation gave Bush the cover he needed to issue the pardons.”

Even before this episode, which garnered a banner page one headline in the New York Times, William Safire had dubbed Barr “the Coverup-General” (while the headline mocked him as The Patsy Prosecutor) for his role in resisting appointment of an independent counsel in yet another Bush administration scandal.

So, insofar as Barr has damaged his reputation (as I suggested above), it may be only because folks have poor memories that Barr’s reputation was not in tatters even before his shenanigans regarding Robert Mueller’s report. Certainly this history puts things in perspective.

(NPR and Slate also reported on this history earlier this year.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Front page review: News of the Mueller report in American newspapers the morning after

Talking Points Memo displays an array of front pages from this morning’s newspapers, via Newseum, which has hundreds of examples (but requires a search and registration). As a quick look demonstrates, Bill Barr’s shilling for Donald Trump hasn’t found much success outside the conservative media bubble – but, in my view, Trump’s A.G. is savvy enough to have expected this. He achieved his purpose.