Trump Trades Blows, Con't

With tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports going from 10% to 25% and new tariffs coming on another $300 billion in goods from Beijing, it's the American people who will be on the hook for billions in new taxes, and Trump is lying about every word of China picking up the tab. The NYT editorial board:

President Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese imports, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, are taxes that will be paid by Americans. That is a simple fact, and it remains true no matter how many times Mr. Trump insists the money will come from China.

Mr. Trump’s latest escalation of his trade fight with China is a 25 percent tariff, or import tax, on products that compose about one third of China’s exports to the United States, including Chinese bicycles, circuit boards and wooden doors. The tariff rate on those goods was previously 10 percent. Mr. Trump also has threatened to impose the 25 percent rate on virtually all products imported from China — more than $500 billion in goods last year.

Mr. Trump could make an honest case for this tax increase. He could argue that Americans must endure higher prices because China will suffer too — while China does not bear the direct cost of the tariffs, it is likely to suffer a loss of sales — and the United States needs that leverage as it presses China to change its economic policies.

Instead, Mr. Trump continues to repeat the false claim that the money will come from China, even though he has been told repeatedly that this claim has no basis in fact. He is willfully peddling a falsehood for political gain.

The mechanics of tariffs are not complicated: The government sends a tax bill to the company that brings goods into the country. Most of those tax bills go to American companies, often import firms that specialize in dealing with the customs process.

It doesn’t really matter who gets the bill, however. The important question is where the money to pay it comes from. And in broad terms, there are only two options: It comes either from the firms that make, move and sell the products or from the pockets of the buyers.

Consider the case of washing machines. In January 2018, Mr. Trump imposed a tariff on washing machines, initially at a rate of 20 percent. The tariff caused a 12 percent increase in the price of washing machines, according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve and the University of Chicago. It also resulted in a similar increase in the price of dryers. Americans responded by buying more domestic washing machines, creating about 1,800 new jobs. But the cost of the tariffs was borne entirely by American consumers. The study estimated that each of those new jobs came at a cost of more than $815,000.

And retaliatory tariffs are killing American farmers, who are already having a brutally bad year due to record Midwestern flooding. But Trump blaming China is working.  Farmers are rallying aroundthe flag just like in any other stupid, pointless GOP-caused war.

In Shelby County, Ind., Phil Ramsey said he appreciated the president’s reasons for revisiting trade deals, but said the ailing farm economy had been brutal in deeply personal ways. He said he was going without health insurance to save money. He said he has delayed some equipment purchases.

“I was very patient a year ago,” said Mr. Ramsey, who grows corn, soybeans and wheat. “I’ve gone from being very patient to being very anxious.”

But Mr. Ramsey, a Republican who voted for the president, said his primary frustrations were with China, which the United States accused of reneging on some trade promises, and with Congress, which has not approved a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

“He can’t do it by himself,” Mr. Ramsey said of the president. “He needs the support of all the U.S. government.”

The lack of a trade deal was especially painful in Nebraska, which saw widespread damage from flooding in March. The damage there, as well as in parts of Missouri and Iowa, has turned cropland into debris fields and forced some farmers to evaluate whether they could continue making a living off the land.

“It’s a little bit of piling on when you have so many different things that you’re struggling against,” said Steve Nelson, the president of the Nebraska Farm Bureau. “Obviously, the trade issue is one of those. The weather is one of those.”

Lance Atwater, 29, who farms corn and soybeans near Ayr, Neb., escaped the worst of the flooding but said that he has seen prices for some of his crops plunge. Mr. Atwater, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump, said he was eager for a trade deal but taking a wait-and-see approach on the president’s policies.

“He’s claimed that he’ll get these trade deals worked out and that it will be a better deal,” Mr. Atwater said on Friday as he hauled grain. “That’s what we’re wanting to see — see those results.”

Jerry Mohr, 66, a fourth-generation farmer who grows corn and soybeans near Eldridge, Iowa, said he was growing frustrated.

“I admire the president for wanting to make change,” said Mr. Mohr, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump, “but now we need to perform.”

He said the president’s success in finalizing trade deals, as well as expanding ethanol production, would help determine what happens in next year’s election.

“If the president comes through on what he says he was going to do, it would be hard for him to lose,” Mr. Mohr said. “If he doesn’t, it’s going to be hard for him to win.”

US farms are going to get wrecked over the next 18 months.  But they'll blame China and Mexico and Congress and not the guy imposing a brutal trade war that will wipe out farms across the country.  Really, the only question is how many taxpayer billions farmers will get from the government to help them through this tough time, but don't you dare call it socialism.

And in November of next year, they'll vote for Trump again.

It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Trump no longer cares about the appearance of his criminality and is openly announcing to the world that's he's doing illegal things because he believes that nobody in this country can or will stop him. Whether or not he's right is the real argument now.

Within a day of the release of the Mueller report last month, President Trump sought to have former White House counsel Don McGahn declare he didn’t consider the president’s 2017 directive that he seek Robert Mueller’s dismissal to be obstruction of justice, but Mr. McGahn rebuffed the request, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump has publicly denied asking Mr. McGahn to fire the Russia probe special counsel since the release of the report. Mr. Mueller’s report detailed that directive, and a subsequent request by Mr. Trump that Mr. McGahn deny that conversation ever happened, and said that Mr. McGahn rebuffed both. Last month, Mr. Trump tweeted: “If I wanted to fire Mueller, I didn’t need McGahn to do it, I could have done it myself.”

Privately, Mr. Trump asked White House special counsel Emmet Flood to inquire whether Mr. McGahn would release a statement asserting that he didn’t believe those interactions with the president—and Mr. Trump’s subsequent efforts to have Mr. McGahn deny news reports about that request—amounted to obstruction, the people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Flood didn’t respond to a request for comment.

William Burck, a lawyer for Mr. McGahn, said in a statement about the request: “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister. It was a request, professionally and cordially made.”

Mr. McGahn turned down the request because he didn’t want to weigh in on the totality of evidence in the report beyond his own testimony, and didn’t want to comment on his own testimony in isolation, the people said. Mr. McGahn also didn’t view his personal opinion as relevant, because Attorney General William Barr had already said he didn’t believe the evidence in Mr. Mueller’s report amounted to obstruction of justice, the people said.

Mr. Flood, as he sought the statement from Mr. McGahn, pointed to previous assertions by Mr. Burck that if Mr. McGahn believed Mr. Trump had committed a crime, he would have resigned his post, the people said.

Obstruction of justice is just baked in to the normalization process.  And the corruption will continue through the 2020 campaign and beyond.

President Donald Trump told POLITICO on Friday that it would be “appropriate” for him to speak to Attorney General Bill Barr about launching an investigation into his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, or his son, Hunter.

The question of whether Trump could pressure Barr to probe Biden is coming under scrutiny after Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said he would be traveling to Ukraine to urge the incoming government there to look at Hunter Biden’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company that has reportedly been in prosecutors’ crosshairs. The efforts appear to be part of a broader campaign by Trump’s allies to damage the former Democratic vice president’s White House campaign and have raised questions about whether Trump’s team is trying to enlist a foreign government to aid the president’s re-election bid.

“Certainly it would be an appropriate thing to speak to him about, but I have not done that as of yet. … It could be a very big situation,” Trump said in a 15-minute telephone interview on Friday afternoon, which stemmed from POLITICO’s inquiries for a separate story.

Barr also drew attention during his recent congressional testimony when he demurred on a question about whether anybody in the White House had ever suggested that he launch an investigation.

The two Bidens’ connections to Ukraine have become a subject of deep interest among the president’s political allies, who charge that Biden as vice president pressured the Ukrainian government to oust a prosecutor in order to benefit his son. The Ukrainian prosecutor had reportedly faced allegations of ignoring corruption among Ukraine’s business and political elite. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden was acting to assist his son, and it is not clear that the official was probing the company at the time.

I mean at this point Trump is giving away the plot because like a pulp villain, he doesn't believe the heroes can stop it from happening.  He's absolutely announcing that it's "appropriate" to have "his" Attorney General open an investigation into the 2020 frontrunner opponent.

We'll see if he's right.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

The next step in the Trump regime's coming roundup and mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants from the country took a dark step closer to reality this week with news of HUD plans to evict more than 100,000 undocumented immigrants from public housing and putting tens of thousands of US citizen kids in detention camps.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged that a Trump administration plan to purge undocumented immigrants from public housing could displace more than 55,000 children who are all legal U.S. residents or citizens.

The proposed rule, published Friday in the Federal Register, would tighten regulations against undocumented immigrantsaccessing federally subsidized housing to “make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said last month.

But the agency’s analysis of the rule’s regulatory impact concluded that half of current residents living in households potentially facing eviction and homelessness are children who are legally qualified for aid.

Current rules bar undocumented immigrants from receiving federal housing subsidies but allow families of mixed-immigration status as long as one person — a child born in the United States or a citizen spouse — is eligible. The subsidies are prorated to cover only eligible residents.

The new rule, pushed by White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, would require every household member be of “eligible immigration status.”
Undocumented immigrants may no longer sign the leases of subsidized housing, even if their children are entitled to prorated benefits.

Approximately 25,000 households, representing about 108,000 people, now living in subsidized housing have at least one ineligible member, according to the HUD analysis.

Among these mixed-status households, 70 percent, or 76,000 people, are legally eligible for benefits — of whom 55,000 are children, HUD says. The vast majority live in California, Texas and New York.

We're about to put 55,000 more kids in concentration camps, guys.

This is what America is now.  It will only get worse later as a few court decisions allow the Trump regime to declare that immigration status must be checked before a housing lease is signed anywhere in America, and then the real deportations begin.

Keep in mind all of this:

• from the building of the private ICE camps with government funding and blessing, 
• to expanding ICE and Border Patrol boots on the ground, 
• to bringing in ICE/BP as "intelligence agencies", 
• to going after "sanctuary cities", 
• to increased ICE raids at workplaces, 
• to attacking "birthright citizenship", 
• to ignoring legalized asylum policies that the rest of the planet allows,
• to child separation policies, 
• to the Muslim visa ban, 
• to making passports harder to get for trans folks, 
• to effectively ending legal immigration (except from Russia it seems),
• to the leadership purges at Homeland Security and ICE,
• and now to HUD's policy to evict undocumented,

all of this is being done on purpose to build the legal justification framework, the logistics, the manpower, and the social normalization of one singular evil, twisted goal.

That goal is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mass deportations of undocumented out of the country in the name of demographic reversal and white supremacy.

Never forget that.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

In the 36 hours or so since NC GOP Sen. Richard Burr announced he would be issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. over the younger Trump's lies to the Senate Intel Committee involving the Trump Corporation's plans to build a hotel in Putin's backyard, the response from a stunned White House and furious Senate GOP has been unprecedented.

A single senator criticizing a fellow senator of the same party, especially a committee chair, is rare enough, but six Republican senators criticized the decision by Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. about the Russia investigation.

What's next: We're told Don Jr. won't show up. Options include daring the committee to hold him in contempt, taking the Fifth in writing, or (most likely) a compromise like answering written questions.

A Trump ally said: "We're drawing battle lines: If you touch Don, we'll come after you. ... And our base will come after you."

Burr is not the only GOP NC senator facing crucifixion by his party if he follows through with this.

Donald Trump Jr.’s political allies launched an all-out war against the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, turning several Republican senators Thursday against the panel’s chairman amid news that he subpoenaed testimony from the president’s son.

The broadsides included tweets targeting the Republican chairman, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, calls from people close to the president to at least one vulnerable Republican senator, and a Breitbart story aimed at senators including the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, according to multiple people involved in the effort.

Even President Trump got involved on Thursday, telling reporters he was “pretty surprised” his son — “a very good person” — would be subpoenaed after Mr. Burr had said publicly he had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The main target of the pressure campaign appeared to be Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, a close ally of Mr. Burr’s who is facing a conservative primary challenger next year. Some of Mr. Trump’s allies said they anticipated that the president would tweet support for Mr. Tillis’s primary opponent if the senator did not speak out.

The extraordinary pressure campaign, taking place in public and private, is forcing the party’s senators to choose between their loyalty to the Intelligence Committee and to the president’s family as it attempts to quash any remaining investigations of the president after the completion of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

It also put Mr. Burr and the Intelligence Committee on their heels. After two years of conducting the only bipartisan congressional investigation into Russia’s election interference campaign, the committee is in the final stages of its work and had hoped to avoid partisan fireworks that would distract from the substance of its final warnings about the Russian threat.

Burr's fine, he's not going anywhere.  Tillis however, that's a much different story, there's a very real chance he loses his primary seat.  But at this point Junior here obviously feels 100% safe from a congressional subpoena, and besides, in the end all of it is up to Mitch McConnell anyway.

A source with direct knowledge confirmed to Power Up that McConnell defended Burr's decision to issue a subpoena during a closed-door GOP lunch on Thursday. Publicly, the GOP leader spent the week pushing the line “case closed” with regards Mueller's investigation (not to mention placing an op-ed defending Trump in his favorite newspaper: The New York Post).  

“Mr. McConnell’s remarks seemed to many to run counter to a closely watched speech he delivered on the Senate floor this week, in which he declared the “case closed” on Russian collusion after the Mueller report. Donald Trump Jr. and several Republican senators pointed to the speech as evidence that Mr. Burr was missing his cues,” the New York Times's Nicholas Fandos, Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns report.  

“However, McConnell also acknowledged an exception for the Intelligence Committee’s probe, which he said should continue,” Seung Min and Karoun reported.

GOP strategists and Senate staffers viewed McConnell's "case closed” rhetoric as a deliberate decision to lay down a marker in an effort to move people off the topic. 

“McConnell is where he is because he's a Zen master at navigating precarious positions,” GOP strategist Kevin Madden told Power Up. “This isn't the first committee chair to do what they believe is best for their committee. McConnell knows exactly where to shore up bulwarks of support elsewhere in his conference. As far as popularity as a measure, his political capital is always expertly deployed inside his home state and inside his Senate majority. That's how you become the longest serving leader in your party.”

“McConnell is a political survivor,” a GOP Senate staffer told Power Up, adding that certain parts of the country like “what the Trumps are doing,” and McConnell understands that better than anyone.

“People have fallen in line with the McConnell messaging tone and context more than the alternative. A lot of folks have come out and made it clear that it is case closed,” the GOP strategist added.

Anyone expecting more than Trump Jr.'s lawyers handling a Burr written questionnaire is making a sucker's bet, but it's entirely possible that Junior is just as much of an asshole as his dad and will make a point of taking the 5th and daring Burr to do any single goddamn thing about it, too.

We'll see.

Trump Cards, Con't

If you want to know where a second Trump term is going in the future, look at the path where Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán has been. The Atlantic's Franklin Foer:

Orbán’s first stint as prime minister ended after four years, with his defeat in the 2002 elections. The loss caught him by surprise, and it was followed by another, four years later. Orbán vowed that he would never suffer defeat again. In a closed-door speech in 2009, leaked to Hungary’s formerly robust media, he said that he wanted to create “a central political force field” that would allow conservatives to rule for “the coming 15 to 20 years.” As he put it in another speech, “We have only to win once, but then properly.”

When scandal and recession crashed his socialist opponents in 2010, Orbán returned to power, reinventing himself as the field marshal of a civilizational Kulturkampf. His old resentments became the basis for his political platform. He alone would defend the integrity of the family, the nation, and Christendom against “the holy alliance of Brussels bureaucrats, the liberal world media, and insatiable international capital.” He stoked mass hysteria about a wave of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa that arrived in the autumn of 2015, passing through Budapest on their way north.

His masterstroke was to describe the migration crisis as the handiwork of an odious cabal, orchestrated by a Jewish puppet master. In one typical attack, he bellowed, “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward, but crafty; not honest, but base; not national, but international; does not believe in working, but speculates with money.” All of the time-honored tropes of anti-Semitism were unmistakably heaped on George Soros. Soon billboards appeared across the country with an image of Soros cackling and the caption don’t let him have the last laugh.

This counteroffensive was wholly cynical. Soros had long ago ceased to be much of a player in the country. By 2016, his annual spending on nongovernmental organizations in Hungary had dwindled to $3.6 million. “When they started the anti-Soros campaign, nobody thought it would be this successful,” Péter Kréko, a political analyst at the think tank Political Capital Institute, told me. “The polling data showed Soros was an unknown figure. Nobody hated him. In one and a half years, Orbán turned him into a diabolical figure.”

In the face of his demagoguery, the country had already suffered a brain drain. “Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving,” Kréko said. “They will transfer money home, but they don’t vote here. They don’t go to protests. The government likes having a smaller population that is more loyal.” But if one generation of critics exits, the universities can always generate another, so the government set out to shred the academy, too. When Orbán moved against CEU, it wasn’t just political posturing or spleen. Destroying Hungary’s finest institution of higher education was a crucial step in his quest for eternal political life.

Trump absolutely wants this.  The Know-Nothing approach to attacking higher education as a "Soros plot" is there for a reason, and it worked beautifully in Hungary.

When I asked [US Ambassador To Hungary David] Cornstein about Orbán’s description of his own government as an “illiberal democracy,” the ambassador shifted forward and rested his elbows on a table. “It’s a question of a personal view, or what the American people, or the president of the United States, think of illiberal democracy, and what its definition is.” As he danced around the question, never quite arriving at an opinion, he added, “I can tell you, knowing the president for a good 25 or 30 years, that he would love to have the situation that Viktor Orbán has, but he doesn’t.”

He doesn't yet.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

On the heels of Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine signing an unconstitutional "heartbeat" bill last month that would effective outlaw abortion in the state if it takes effect in July, and new legislation that would ban insurance coverage of all abortion procedures in or out of state, Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp has signed an even worse bill that would not only end abortion in the state, it would effectively criminalize not bringing a pregnancy to full term with up to life in prison or even the death penalty for women.

The primary purpose of HB 481 is to prohibit doctors from terminating any pregnancy after they can detect “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity,” which typically occurs at six weeks’ gestation. But the bill does far more than that. In one sweeping provision, it declares that “unborn children are a class of living, distinct person” that deserves “full legal recognition.” Thus, Georgia law must “recognize unborn children as natural persons”—not just for the purposes of abortion, but as a legal rule.

This radical revision of Georgia law is quite deliberate: The bill confirms that fetuses “shall be included in population based determinations” from now on, because they are legally humans, and residents of the state. But it is not clear whether the bill’s drafters contemplated the more dramatic consequences of granting legal personhood to fetuses. For instance, as Georgia appellate attorney Andrew Fleischman has pointed out, the moment this bill takes effect on Jan. 1, 2020, the state will be illegally holding thousands of citizens in jail without bond. That’s because, under HB 481, pregnant inmates’ fetuses have independent rights—including the right to due process. Can a juvenile attorney represent an inmate’s fetus and demand its release? If not, why? It is an egregious due process violation to punish one human for the crimes of another. If an inmate’s fetus is a human, how can Georgia lawfully detain it for a crime it did not commit?

But the most startling effect of HB 481 may be its criminalization of women who seek out unlawful abortions or terminate their own pregnancies. An earlier Georgia law imposing criminal penalties for illegal abortions does not apply to women who self-terminate; the new measure, by contrast, conspicuously lacks such a limitation. It can, and would, be used to prosecute women. Misoprostol, a drug that treats stomach ulcers but also induces abortions, is extremely easy to obtain on the internet, and American women routinely use it to self-terminate. It is highly effective in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Anti-abortion advocates generally insist that they do not want to punish women who undergo abortions. But HB 481 does exactly that. Once it takes effect, a woman who self-terminates will have, as a matter of law, killed a human—thereby committing murder. The penalty for that crime in Georgia is life imprisonment or capital punishment.

HB 481 would also have consequences for women who get abortions from doctors or miscarry. A woman who seeks out an illegal abortion from a health care provider would be a party to murder, subject to life in prison. And a woman who miscarries because of her own conduct—say, using drugs while pregnant—would be liable for second-degree murder, punishable by 10 to 30 years’ imprisonment. Prosecutors may interrogate women who miscarry to determine whether they can be held responsible; if they find evidence of culpability, they may charge, detain, and try these women for the death of their fetuses.

Even women who seek lawful abortions out of state may not escape punishment. If a Georgia resident plans to travel elsewhere to obtain an abortion, she may be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment. An individual who helps a woman plan her trip to get an out-of-state abortion, or transports her to the clinic, may also be charged with conspiracy. These individuals, after all, are “conspiring” to end of the life of a “person” with “full legal recognition” under Georgia law.

It is entirely possible that Georgia prosecutors armed with this new statute will bring charges against women who terminate their pregnancies illegally. In 2015, a Georgia prosecutor chargedKenlissia Jones with murder after she self-terminated; he only dropped the charges after concluding that “criminal prosecution of a pregnant woman for her own actions against her unborn child does not seem permitted.” Starting in 2020, however, Georgia law will permit precisely this kind of prosecution. There is no reason to doubt that history will repeat itself, and more prosecutors will charge women who undergo abortions with murder.

There's no mistake, this law is so egregiously unconstitutional it's frightening, but the thrust of this law is to criminalize women for failure to give birth if they conceive, and putting 100% of that undue burden on women and women alone.

It is the road to Margaret Atwood's Gilead, the setting of The Handmaid's Tale.  The closest we've been so far.

And it will become the law in more and more states.  Should the Supreme Court uphold Georgia's law, we become Gilead overnight.

The Drums Of War, Con't

We now know what Donald Trump's 90-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin was meant to accomplish: talking Trump out of regime change in Venezuela and oh yeah, giving Moscow a permanent Atlantic military presence in South America.

President Trump is questioning his administration’s aggressive strategy in Venezuela following the failure of a U.S.-backed effort to oust President Nicolás Maduro, complaining he was misled about how easy it would be to replace the socialist strongman with a young opposition figure, according to administration officials and White House advisers.

The president’s dissatisfaction has crystallized around national security adviser John Bolton and what Trump has groused is an interventionist stance at odds with his view that the United States should stay out of foreign quagmires.

Trump has said in recent days that Bolton wants to get him “into a war” — a comment that he has made in jest in the past but that now betrays his more serious concerns, one senior administration official said.

The administration’s policy is officially unchanged in the wake of a fizzled power play last week by U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó. But U.S. officials have since been more cautious in their predictions of Maduro’s swift exit, while reassessing what one official described as the likelihood of a diplomatic “long haul.”

U.S. officials point to the president’s sustained commitment to the Venezuela issue, from the first weeks of his presidency as evidence that he holds a realistic view of the challenges there and does not think there is a quick fix.

But Trump has nonetheless complained over the past week that Bolton and others underestimated Maduro, according to three senior administration officials who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Trump has said that Maduro is a “tough cookie” and that aides should not have led him to believe that the Venezuelan leader could be ousted last week, when Guaidó led mass street protests that turned deadly.

Instead, Maduro rejected an offer to leave the country and two key figures in his government backed out of what Bolton said had been a plan to defect. Maduro publicly mocked Trump in response and said he wasn’t going anywhere, saying the United States had attempted a “foolish” coup.

Let's review.

It's entirely possible that Maduro was on the way out.  But he got a better offer from a smarter, stronger player in this game: Vladimir Putin.  Expect to see a significant warming of the relationship between Caracas and Moscow in the coming weeks and months.  Putin will try to stabilize the Venezuelan economy in exchange for oil and of course, maybe a military presence in-country.

Republicans are bound to be disappointed.  Blowing up Maduro's regime was high on the Bolton neo-con board and in their minds would have been the perfect distraction from Mueller and impeachment in order to rally the country around the unpopular Trump and the flag.

That focus has shifted to Iran, as I said yesterday.  And now it looks like the table's being set for the main course.

In a highly unusual move, National Security Adviser John Bolton convened a meeting at CIA headquarters last week with the Trump administration's top intelligence, diplomatic and military advisers to discuss Iran, according to six current U.S. officials.

The meeting was held at 7:00 a.m. on Monday, April 29, and included CIA Director Gina Haspel, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joe Dunford, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, five of the officials said.

National security meetings are typically held in the White House Situation Room. The six current officials, as well as multiple former officials, said it is extremely rare for senior White House officials or cabinet members to attend a meeting at CIA headquarters.

The officials said the discussion was not about the intelligence that led to the decision in the following days to surge a carrier strike group and bomber task force to the Middle East, but did not describe what the meeting covered.

Five former CIA operations officers and military officials said that in the past, such meetings have been held at CIA headquarters to brief top officials on highly sensitive covert actions, either the results of existing operations or options for new ones.

Of course, this is all complete garbage.

On Sunday, the National Security Council announced that the U.S. was sending a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf in response to “troubling and escalatory” warnings from Iran—an eye-popping move that raised fears of a potential military confrontation with Tehran. Justifying the move, anonymous government officials cited intelligence indicating Iran had crafted plans to use proxies to strike U.S. forces, both off the coast of Yemen and stationed in Iraq. National Security Adviser John Bolton also discussed the intelligence on the record. A consensus appeared to be emerging: that Iran was gearing up for war.

But multiple sources close to the situation told The Daily Beast that the administration blew it out of proportion, characterizing the threat as more significant than it actually was.

“It’s not that the administration is mischaracterizing the intelligence, so much as overreacting to it,” said one U.S. government official briefed on it.

Another source familiar with the situation agreed that the Trump administration’s response was an “overreaction” but didn’t dispute that a threat exists. Gen. Qasem Soleimani—the head of the Quds Force, Iran’s covert action arm—has told proxy forces in Iraq that a conflict with the U.S. will come soon, this source noted.

“I would characterize the current situation as shaping operations on both sides to tilt the field in preparation for a possible coming conflict,” continued the second source, who is also a U.S. government official. “The risk is a low-level proxy unit miscalculating and escalating things. We’re sending a message with this reaction to the intelligence, even though the threat might not be as imminent as portrayed.”

But Moscow is friendly with Tehran, too.  And Putin has already gotten total victory in Ukraine, Syria and now it appears Venezuela.  Will Tehran follow?

Or will Trump's paranoia overcome his ego and lead us into a fatal miscalculation?

Russian To Judgment, Con't

On Tuesday, Mitch McConnell declared an end to the Mueller report fight by Democrats, declaring "case closed".

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday sought to slam the door on further investigations of President Donald Trump by declaring “case closed” after a two-year probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections, even as House Democrats’ war with the White House intensified.

McConnell, the top Republican in the U.S. Congress, delivered a stinging rebuke of Democrats seeking additional information on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that found no evidence Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.

“The special counsel’s finding is clear. Case closed,” McConnell declared.

On Wednesday, somebody forgot to give GOP Sen. Richard Burr and the Senate Intel Committee the memo.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation, sources with direct knowledge told Axios.

Why it matters: It's the first congressional subpoena — that we know about — of one of President Trump's children. The subpoena sets up a fight that's unprecedented in the Trump era: A Republican committee chair pit against the Republican president's eldest son.

It's also a sign that the Russia investigations in Congress aren't over despite the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it's time to move on from the Russia probe.

A Senate Intelligence Committee spokesperson told Axios: "We do not discuss the details of witness engagements with the Committee. Throughout the investigation, the Committee has reserved the right to recall witnesses for additional testimony as needed, as every witness and witness counsel has been made aware."

Between the lines: Mueller, whose investigation did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, did not indict Trump Jr., despite speculation that he would.

Unlike many congressional investigations in the Trump era, the Senate Intelligence probe — led by Republican chairman Richard Burr and ranking Democrat Mark Warner — has been largely bipartisan.

The fact that they're subpoenaing Trump Jr. is a strong signal that he declined a request to appear before the committee again.

The backstory: Trump Jr. testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that he was only "peripherally aware" of proposed plans for the Moscow project. His testimony was released. He testified for a total of more than 25 hours with three different committees, per a source familiar with the situation.

Again, for a Senate Republican-led committee issuing a subpoena against Donald Trump Jr. at this stage of the game when McConnell and the GOP have spent weeks screaming at Democrats to "move on for the good of the country" there's at least one Senate Republican that's not exactly with the program.

We'll see what comes of this.  This might be the first real crack in the dam, or it might be nothing.  The White House was caught looking on this one and I can only imagine that Donald Trump is furious and wants Richard Burr's head.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• BATF agents in Los Angeles seized more than 1,000 firearms from a home near Beverly Hills on Wednesday after agent received a tip involving illegal manufacture and sale of weapons.
• Texas Republicans are continuing voter suppression efforts in the state with legislation criminalizing mistakes on voter registration forms and driving others to the polls.
• Denver has become the first city to decriminalize "magic mushrooms", under a ballot initiative passed this week the city would drop criminal penalties for psilocybin possession and use.
• The Trump regime is searching for a test case to end nationwide injunctions by federal judges, the White House is tasking VP Mike Pence and AG Bill Barr to lead the effort. 
• Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley is sponsoring legislation to end "loot boxes" and other microtransactions in video games in order to protect children from exploitation.

Last Call For Meat The Press, Con't

I've been warning about this coming for months now and the Trump regime's vengeance for last night's Trump tax story was the catalyst for a swift and brutal purging the White House press corps of credentials across the board.  

The White House today immediately instituted a "new standard" for credentials based on how often reporters were on the White House grounds, something of course that happens to get rid of credentials for most non-FOX reporters completely.  Again, the vast majority of press reporters, technicians, and camera operators for America's press organizations all lost their White House press credentials today.

As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank lays out, "exceptions" were made for some "senior" reporters, but those can now be revoked at will by the White House.  And those "senior" reporters do not include Milbank, who has covered the White House for 21 years.

The Post requested exceptions for its six White House reporters and for me, saying that this access is essential to our work (in my case, I often write “sketches” describing the White House scene). The White House press office granted exceptions to the other six, but not to me. I strongly suspect it’s because I’m a Trump critic. The move is perfectly in line with Trump’s banning of certain news organizations, including The Post, from his campaign events, and his threats to revoke White House credentials of journalists he doesn’t like.

White House officials provided me no comment for the record.

I’m not looking for pity. Trump’s elimination of briefings and other changes have devalued White House coverage anyway. But there’s something wrong with a president having the power to decide which journalists can cover him.

Now, virtually the entire White House press corps is credentialed under “exceptions,” which means, in a sense, that they all serve at the pleasure of press secretary Sarah Sanders because they all fail to meet credentialing requirements — and therefore, in theory, can have their credentials revoked any time they annoy Trump or his aides, like CNN’s Jim Acosta did.

Last year, Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ordered the White House to restore Acosta’s press credentials, saying that the White House’s process for revoking his access (after Acosta had aggressively questioned Trump) was “shrouded in mystery.”

In response, it seems, the White House established a clear — if nearly impossible — standard: No credentials to any journalist who is not in the building on at least 90 out of the previous 180 days — in other words, seven of every 10 workdays. The White House wouldn’t provide numbers, but it appears most of the White House press corps didn’t qualify for credentials under the new standard, including regulars for The Post and the Associated Press. (Trump, who has spent more than 200 days at Trump properties and many more on travel, is barely in the White House this much himself.)

The White House said it would grant exceptions for “senior journalists” who are “consistently engaged in covering the White House” and for those with “special circumstances.” Though the culling properly eliminated some (including at The Post) who no longer needed credentials, the victims hurt most were freelance camera operators and technicians who now could lose their livelihood.

The White House, in rescinding my credentials, told me I had only been in the building seven times in the previous 180 days (two foot surgeries during that period kept me at home, though I never came close to the 90-day standard).

More important is that the White House is drastically curtailing access for all journalists. Briefings have been abolished in favor of unscheduled “gaggles” ( on the record, but impromptu and haphazard) in the White House driveway. The Pentagon and State Department have done similarly.

The fact that this policy was rolled out less than 24 hours after the Trump tax story hit the presses last night is no coincidence.  The White House was given the heads up on the story some time ago when the NY Times called for comment.  They had the time to work this out, and when the story landed with a bang last night, today was the revenge.

We've taken a dark and rapid turn into authoritarianism with a looming shooting war and possible impeachment hearings.  No doubt this message pitch for America's press is very clear: you will report what we want you to report, or you will be gone...

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Neither the Trump regime nor House Democrats were bluffing today when it came to carrying out their threatened actions this week on the impeachment front, as the House Judiciary Committee voted 24-10 to hold AG Bill Barr in contempt of Congress, and the Trump regime asserted executive privilege over the unredacted Mueller report.

President Donald Trump has asserted executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted report as the House Judiciary Committee prepares to vote to hold his attorney general, William Barr, in contempt of Congress.

Faced with "blatant abuse of power" by Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the president "has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege," the White House said Wednesday.

The committee vote and Trump's assertion of privilege represents a major escalation of the battle between congressional Democrats and the president. It will likely lead to a protracted legal war over Mueller’s 448-page report on alleged obstruction of justice by Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

The Justice Department had told lawmakers Tuesday ahead of the session that it would recommend that Trump assert executive privilege to that material.

Members of the Judiciary Committee were expected to spend the Wednesday markup discussing the resolution to hold Barr in contempt, as well as a supporting 27-page report in which Democrats raised the prospect of impeachment as a result of their investigation relating to the Mueller probe.

In his opening remarks, Nadler said it was "not a step we take lightly," but rather the "culmination of nearly three months of requests, discussions and negotiations with the Department of Justice."

"In response to our latest good-faith offer, the Department abruptly announced that if we move forward today, it would ask President Trump to invoke what it refers to as a protective assertion of executive privilege on all of the materials subject to our subpoena. Just minutes ago, it took that dramatic step," Nadler continued.

"Let me be clear: The information we are requesting is entirely within our legal rights to receive and is no different from what has been provided to Congress on numerous occasions, going back nearly a century," he added.

Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the committee, said in his opening statement that Democrats on the committee were rushing the oversight process because they are "angry" that "the special counsel's report did not produce the material or conclusions they expected to pave their path to impeaching the president" — sullying Barr's reputation in the process.

"I ask you to recognize that craven and insincere politics yield anemic dividends for Americans who have asked us to legislate," Collins said. "As I have told you on multiple occasions and proved at last week’s pharmaceuticals markup, I stand ready to work with you to promote solutions. I will not, though, become a bystander as you assail the attorney general and this committee. Our democracy deserves better."

Once the Judiciary Committee signs off on the contempt resolution, it will go to a vote in the full House. The timing of that vote would be up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Pelosi, for her part, says Trump is becoming "self-impeachable".  Whatever that means.

“The point is that every single day, whether it’s obstruction, obstruction, obstruction — obstruction of having people come to the table with facts, ignoring subpoenas . . . every single day, the president is making a case — he’s becoming self-impeachable, in terms of some of the things that he is doing,” Pelosi said at a Washington Post Live event.

I agree with Greg Sargent.  The only Democrat right now really taking Trump's impeachment seriously as a necessary duty to preserve the republic is Elizabeth Warren.

Is President Trump an aberration whose defeat in 2020 would allow the nation to begin rebounding toward normalcy? Or does his ascendance reflect long-running national pathologies and deeply ingrained structural economic and political problems that will intractably endure long after he’s gone?

The answer to this question — which has been thrust to the forefront by the Democratic presidential primaries — is, in a sense, both. Trump represents both a continuation of and a dramatic exacerbation of those long running pathologies and problems.

As of now, Elizabeth Warren appears to be the Democratic candidate who most fully grasps the need to take both of those aspects of the Trump threat seriously. The Massachusetts senator is, I think, offering what amounts to the most fully rounded and multidimensional response to that threat.

In recent days, Warren has addressed the deeper issues raised by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report — and the reaction to it from Trump and Republicans — in by far the most comprehensive way.

In an important moment on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Warren took strong issue with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s profoundly cynical effort to treat this all as a closed matter. “Case closed,” McConnell said, speaking not just about Mueller’s extensive findings of likely criminal obstruction of justice by Trump but also about Trump’s eagerness to reap gain from Russia’s sabotage of our elections, which McConnell blamed on Barack Obama.

In response, Warren again called for an impeachment inquiry, but she did more than that: She indicted the Republican Party as a whole for shrugging off Trump’s epic misconduct and wrongdoing.

Warren has also pointed out more forcefully than any rival has that Trump tried to derail an investigation not just into his own campaign’s conduct, but also into the Russian attack on our democracy — which Trump has refused to acknowledge happened at all, hamstringing preparations for the next attack.

It is this dereliction of duty on Trump's part that poses the most serious threat.

Unfortunately, America just doesn't give a damn.

There's been a lot of bandwidth devoted to the Mueller Report.

The public mostly accepts the Democrats' conclusions, i.e. that Trump hasn't been honest, probably obstructed, probably committed crimes.

It doesn't think that warrants impeachment, though.https://t.co/yOWmcscfey https://t.co/cvM24aJNco

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 7, 2019

Contrast that, by the way, to the stories that have gotten the most news coverage, which of course includes Russia at/near the top. The idea that Democrats haven't done enough to focus the public's attention on Russia seems really wrong to me. https://t.co/jUXbPoAZsG pic.twitter.com/AgzdIJobhR

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 8, 2019

A grand total of zero respondents said it was the most important issue to their 2020 vote when CNN asked two months ago.

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) May 8, 2019

Liz Warren is "out of touch" for wanting to save the country and the country just doesn't want to deal with it.  Period.  Maybe that changes, but that's apparently up to Democrats to convince America that's the case and despite the massive coverage of it, the country literally could not care less about it.

That's where we are right now.  We were told Hillary didn't make the case she was going to be better than Trump in 2016.  Now we're being told Democrats haven't made the case for impeachment in 2019.

All evidence points to 2020's election being far too late.

The Drums Of War, Con't

Trump's efforts to get the media off Mueller and impeachment has now reached a critical juncture.  It's now a matter of time before we're in a shooting war, the only question is where.  On one side, Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido is all but asking Trump for US troops to enact bloody regime change.

One week after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's calls for mass protests failed to incite a military uprising and force Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of office, Guaidó has suggested to CBS News that he is open to a U.S. military intervention in his country. 

"We are open to options that offer a low social cost and that will grant us the ability and the stability to hold a truly free election," Guaidó told CBS News' Adriana Diaz in Caracas. "We want the best exit out of this conflict, and if there are options we have to consider and alternatives, then we will." 

But it seems the United States isn't Guaidó's only option. A member of Guaido's team told Diaz that they are in touch with Russian officials, which Guaidó confirmed. He said those talks were happening in an unofficial capacity, with various officials from high to low levels in the Moscow government.

The U.S. and Russia accuse each other of interfering in the Venezuelan crisis. On Monday, speaking from Moscow, Venezuela's foreign minister said his country may expand the amount of Russian specialists there.

President Trump's top aides say all options — including military action — remain on the table.

As I said before, a simple US invasion won't happen.  What will happen could be much, much worse.  Look no further than Syria to see how this will go.  A civil war with Putin controlling both sides by proxy is a dream scenario for him and he knows it.

And as we get into a calculated dog and pony show in Caracas, we also come closer to a flamethrower in a fireworks factory scenario in Tehran.

Consequently, as the first anniversary of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord approaches, the action-reaction spiral the administration set in motion with its maximum pressure campaign has produced a very ominous situation—one in which the risk of military confrontation grows by the day. 

Thousands of U.S. troops and Iranian-backed forces operate in close proximity to one another in Iraq, Syria, and the crowded waters of the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to pursue their air campaign against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen despite international outrage over the world’s worst humanitarian disaster there. And Israel regularly conducts military strikes against Iranian arms shipments and infrastructure in Syria. In this volatile context, the scenarios for an intentional or inadvertent U.S.-Iran war are legion. 

If Iran or its proxies respond to U.S. pressure in ways that draw American blood or deal a major blow to critical oil infrastructure in the region, things could quickly get out of hand.

All else being equal, Trump probably doesn’t want another U.S. war in the Middle East. But, if past is prologue, his gut instinct will be to respond (likely via Twitter) to any Iranian provocation with bellicose rhetoric that pours fuel on the fire. It is also easy to envision Iranian actions triggering intense political pressure from the president’s right-wing donors, congressional hawks, and regional allies—the same forces that pressed Trump to exit the Iran deal—for military action. And Trump is no longer surrounded by former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and other cooler heads. He is now enveloped by advisors like Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who have long called for war against Iran. Unlike in the latter years of the Obama administration, there are currently no high-level lines of communication between Washington and Tehran to manage a crisis. And hard-liners on all sides seem keen for a fight, looking for opportunities to escalate, rather than de-escalate, tensions.

Indeed, Trump’s advisors appear to be contemplating precisely this eventuality and its possible legal justifications. Last month, during a hearing in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Sen. Rand Paul asked Pompeo whether the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its associated forces gave the Trump administration the authority to go to war with Iran. Pompeo refused to give a straight forward answer, but—in a dark echo of the lead-up to the Iraq War—said the Trump administration believes there is a connection between Iran and al Qaeda.

It's going to be a long summer, and a bloody one.

StupidiNews!

• Two suspects are in custody after killing one student and injuring 7 more in a school shooting in Colorado, the attack took place less than ten miles from Columbine High School.
• US soybean farmers are urging Donald Trump not to raise tariffs on Chinese imports on Friday as stock markets plummeted again on Tuesday.
• A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court decision blocking the Trump regime from sending asylum seekers to Mexico to await case action.
• Former VP Joe Biden is attacking the Trump regime's immigration plan as he campaigns in Nevada, saying Trump is using immigration "to demonize people".
• German prosecutors are hitting automaker Porsche with a $600 million fine to settle prosecution from the diesel emissions cheating from 2018.

Last Call For A Taxing Explanation

Oh man.

This is gonna be good.

Somebody leaked Trump's taxes to the NY Times, at least his early stuff from 1985 to 1994, and it shows Trump lost more than a billion dollars over a decade.

By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the I.R.S. later required changes after audits.

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, journalists at The Times and elsewhere have been trying to piece together Mr. Trump’s complex and concealed finances. While The Times did not obtain the president’s actual tax returns, it received the information contained in the returns from someone who had legal access to it. The Times was then able to find matching results in the I.R.S. information on top earners — a publicly available database that each year comprises a one-third sampling of those taxpayers, with identifying details removed. It also confirmed significant findings using other public documents, along with confidential Trump family tax and financial records from the newspaper’s 2018 investigation into the origin of the president’s wealth.

The Times contacted the White House for a statement.  Several times.  The statements kept changing.

Several weeks ago, a senior official issued a statement saying: “The president got massive depreciation and tax shelter because of large-scale construction and subsidized developments. That is why the president has always scoffed at the tax system and said you need to change the tax laws. You can make a large income and not have to pay large amount of taxes.”

On Saturday, after further inquiries from The Times, a lawyer for the president, Charles J. Harder, wrote that the tax information was “demonstrably false,” and that the paper’s statements “about the president’s tax returns and business from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate.” He cited no specific errors, but on Tuesday added that “I.R.S. transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate” and “would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer’s return.”

Mark J. Mazur, a former director of research, analysis and statistics at the I.R.S., said that, far from being considered unreliable, data used to create such transcripts had undergone quality control for decades and had been used to analyze economic trends and set national policy. In addition, I.R.S. auditors often refer to the transcripts as “handy” summaries of tax returns, said Mr. Mazur, now director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.

In fact, the source of The Times’s newly obtained information was able to provide several years of unpublished tax figures from the president’s father, the builder Fred C. Trump. They matched up precisely with Fred Trump’s actual returns, which had been obtained by The Times in the earlier investigation.

To recap:

Donald Trump is one of the worst businessmen in American history.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

So it turns out that four years after she died in a Texas jail, Sandra Bland filmed her police stop herself in new footage only now released thanks to a Dallas news station.

As Trooper Brian Encinia angrily threatened her with a stun gun from just outside her car window, Sandra Bland recorded the encounter on her cellphone, shown in a newly released 39-second video that has prompted Ms. Bland’s family to call for a renewed investigation into her arrest and death nearly four years ago.

Ms. Bland, a 28-year-old African-American from Chicago, was taken into custody in southeast Texas following the confrontational 2015 traffic stop and was found hanging in a jail cell three days later in what was officially ruled a suicide. The case, which drew international attention, intensified outrage over the treatment of black people by white police officers and was considered a turning point in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The video surfaced for the first time publicly Monday night in an investigative report on the Dallas television station WFAA that included interviews with Ms. Bland’s family and supporters, who accused officials of concealing information that they say should have been made public early in the investigation.

The authorities released the trooper’s dashcam video days after Ms. Bland’s death but the fact that Ms. Bland recorded the encounter from the front seat of her car was not public knowledge. Cannon Lambert, a lawyer who represents the Bland family, said the video, by showing Ms. Bland with a cellphone in her hand, seriously undercut the trooper’s claim that he feared for his safety as he approached the woman’s vehicle.

“What the video shows is that Encinia had no reason to be in fear of his safety,” Mr. Lambert, who represented the family in a $1.9 million legal settlement, said in a telephone interview. “The video shows that he wasn’t in fear of his safety. You could see that it was a cellphone, he was looking right at it.”

Mr. Encinia said during internal interviews with Department of Public Safety officials that he had been worried about his safety. “My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” he told department interviewers.

Mr. Encinia was indicted on a charge of perjury — the only criminal charge arising from the case — after grand jurors accused him of making a false statement in his claim that he removed Ms. Bland from her car to more safely conduct a traffic investigation. But the charge was later dismissed on a motion by prosecutors in exchange for the trooper’s promise that he would never again work in law enforcement.

The prosecuting team concluded that Mr. Encinia’s permanent ban from law enforcement was the best option because there was no certainty of obtaining a conviction on the perjury charge, one of the prosecutors said at the time.

So another black person died because of police racism and hatred of black bodies in a country that has always allowed for black deaths at the hands of police.  And now, four years after Sandar Bland died, we find that police lied again.

Police exist to protect white America from black America, nothing less, and nothing more.