Friday, May 17, 2019

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Attorney General Bill Barr absolutely gave the game away today on Fox News as to what is coming.  Donald Trump wants Democrats in jail for the Mueller probe, and Bill Barr is all but promising to deliver indictments.  Greg Sargent:

Barr confirmed, as he has before, that he is currently investigating the investigators -- that is, taking another look at the genesis of the investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign’s possible complicity with it. This is, of course, exactly what Trump has demanded for years
.

“I’ve been trying to get answers to the questions and I’ve found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together,” Barr said, stressing how important it is to know “whether government officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale.”

This is more than just a declaration that the FBI launched an investigation of a foreign attack on our political system and possible coordination with it by Americans. It also subtly bolsters the idea that the FBI did this in a way that was designed to harm the Trump campaign.

Indeed, Barr openly validated Trump’s longtime claim that the whole FBI probe was a “witch hunt.”
“I think if I had been falsely accused I would be comfortable saying it was a witch hunt,” Barr said.

This echoes Barr’s extraordinary press conference just before releasing the Mueller report, at which he appealed to us to understand how victimized Trump felt by the Mueller investigation when considering his efforts to obstruct it.

Now Barr has gone all the way and validated the phrase “witch hunt.”

Perhaps most strikingly, Barr hinted darkly that Democrats should be worried about the outcome of his investigation of the investigators. Asked about Democratic charges that he’d previously misled Congress, Barr said:

“It’s a laughable charge, and I think it’s largely being made to try to discredit me, partly because they may be concerned about the outcome of a review of what happened during the election.”


Really? The attorney general of the United States is telegraphing that the conclusion of an unfinished investigation should be feared by one of two major political parties?

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the attorney general to be casting DOJ actions in terms of whether they’re good or bad for one political party," Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told us. “He’s implying that what’s going on behind the scenes at DOJ will be good for Republicans and bad for Democrats.” 


The fix is in, fellas.  And when Trump's political enemies start going to jail, what then?

It's (Still) Mueller Time, Con't

Please remember that the obstruction of justice investigation and other investigations into the Trump regime are continuing, and cooperation of Mueller witnesses remain ongoing, while any congressional testimony from Mueller himself remains in permanent limbo because the White House is invoking executive privilege over anything he might have to say involving the Mueller report.

The White House’s decision to assert executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s report could prevent Mueller from answering lawmakers questions during a potential testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, The Wall Street Journal reported.

According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the WSJ, discussions over that matter have stalled negotiations about Mueller’s possible testimony. The executive privilege assertion could prevent Mueller from speaking about anything that’s not included in the redacted version of the report. The Justice Department’s lawyers are reportedly studying the situation and are expected to offer both sides guidance soon.

But that doesn't mean Mueller's hands are tied.  In the last 24 hours we got two very interesting pieces of information released, first that former Trump National Security Adviser (and convicted felon) Michael Flynn is still cooperating and is offering new insight on possible obstruction of justice by somebody not Donald Trump according to newly revealed Mueller probe court information.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn told investigators that people linked to the Trump administration and Congress reached out to him in an effort to interfere in the Russia probe, according to newly-unredacted court papers filed Thursday. 
The court filing from special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to mark the first public acknowledgement that a person connected to Capitol Hill was suspected of engaging in an attempt to impede the investigation into Russian election interference.

“The defendant informed the government of multiple instances, both before and after his guilty plea, where either he or his attorneys received communications from persons connected to the Administration or Congress that could’ve affected both his willingness to cooperate and the completeness of that cooperation,” the court papers say. 
Flynn even provided a voicemail recording of one such communication, the court papers say. 
Prosecutors did not identify any of the people who reached out to Flynn, but said the special counsel's office was in some instances "unaware of the outreach until being alerted to it by the defendant." 
No other details were provided in the filing, but the Mueller report noted that President Donald Trump's personal lawyer left a voicemail message for Flynn in late November 2017 that addressed the possibility of him cooperating with the government. 
"[I]t wouldn't surprise me if you've gone on to make a deal with ... the government," the attorney said in the voicemail message, according to Mueller. 
[I]f... there's information that implicates the President, then we've got a national security issue [so] ... we need some kind of heads up. Just for the sake of protecting all our interests if we can .... [R]emember what we've always said about the President and his feelings toward Flynn and, that still remains."

One: Mueller is still playing hardball.  Bill Barr better watch his step.

Two: Did you catch the "and Congress" part of obstruction of justice there?  There are two possibilities that I've seen people floating as to which member of Congress, and they're both GOP Intelligence Committee heads.  The first is House GOP Devin Nunes, who if you'll recall had to recuse himself from the Mueller mess because he kept leaking info to the White House.  The other is of course Senate Intelligence Committee chair Lindsey Graham, who has done a complete heel turn and has become Trump's loyal bully.

If Flynn has a recording of Graham or Nunes actually asking him to cover for Trump, and that's going to become public very soon, well, that would explain the entire week in Trump nastiness, wouldn't it?

That brings us to the second bit of info: a judge has indeed ordered that voicemail to made public, along with Flynn's 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak which got him into trouble in the first place.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered that prosecutors make public a transcript of a phone call that former national security adviser Michael Flynn tried hard to hide with a lie: his conversation with a Russian ambassador in late 2016.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered the government also to provide a public transcript of a November 2017 voice mail involving Flynn. In that sensitive call, President Trump’s attorney left a message for Flynn’s attorney reminding him of the president’s fondness for Flynn at a time when Flynn was considering cooperating with federal investigators.

The transcripts, which the judge ordered be posted on a court website by May 31, would reveal conversations at the center of two major avenues of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. So far they have been disclosed to the public only in fragments in court filings and the Mueller report.

Sullivan also ordered that still-redacted portions of the Mueller report that relate to Flynn be given to the court and made public.

Sullivan’s orders came very shortly after government prosecutors agreed to release some sealed records in Flynn’s case. The release was in response to a motion filed with the court earlier this year by The Washington Post, which argued that the public deserved to know more about Flynn’s role in key events and cooperation with investigators.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to one felony count of making a false statement to FBI investigators about his contact with the ambassador and awaits sentencing.

So yeah, the Washington Post argued that if Flynn cooperated, there's no reason to redact his role in the Muller investigation.  A judge agreed, and we should have that information within the next two weeks.  Flynn's lawyers wanted this information out in the public too in order to argue that Flynn's sentence should be shortened because of the "value" of his cooperation, which they want the country to be able to judge openly.

That's going to be a bad day for Trump when it comes out.  But remember, there's at least one member of Congress who is facing obstruction of justice charges too.  And all the executive privilege in the world won't save them.

Deportation Nation, Con't

This is one hell of a trial balloon if true, and one vile scare tactic if it's all horseshit.  Either one is reasonably plausible with this crew of evil bastards.  Warning, this is a Daily Caller story, so the veracity is "Who knows?"

President Donald Trump is planning on using the Insurrection Act to remove illegal immigrants from the United States, The Daily Caller has learned.

According to multiple senior administration officials, the president intends to invoke the “tremendous powers” of the act to remove illegal immigrants from the country.

“We’re doing the Insurrection Act,” one official said.


Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, the president has the authority to use the National Guard and military in order to combat “unlawful obstruction or rebellion” within U.S. borders. The act was last invoked in 1992 by George H.W. Bush to quell the Los Angeles riots, and was also used by Eisenhower in 1957 to enforce school desegregation in the south.

An official expressed concerns that Trump’s use of the act’s powers would face legal challenges, pointing to the lawsuits against the president’s travel ban from majority-Muslim countries. However, as the official noted, the travel ban ultimately prevailed in the Supreme Court.

In addition to the Insurrection Act, the president is also considering declaring the country full and insisting that the U.S. can no longer handle the massive influx of illegal immigrants. 2019 is currently on pace to reach the highest levels of illegal immigration in a decade.

“If you take a ship and it holds 1,000 people maximum — one more person and the ship is going to collapse,” the official explained. “The country is full.”

“Our hospitals are full, our detention centers are full,” they added
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The "official" sounds like Stephen Miller to me.  But if this is true, having the National Guard start rounding up undocumented is even worse than having ICE do it.  These would be military-trained troops with military-grade weapons and vehicles used against people inside the country.  It doesn't get much more jackboot fascist Nazi-analogy-of-your-choice than this, guys.

"Trump regime" wouldn't be just the moniker I hang on these clods, it would be one in function as well. This morning in a tweet Trump made it very clear what's coming:



I don't know what to say other than this is getting close to really being as bad as I warned about.  This is literally what fascist regimes do, guys.

StupidiNews!