It's Mueller Time, Con't

Ben Wittes from Lawfare takes to The Atlantic to remind us that he too is a Republican, and believes that William Barr will deliver on his promise of transparency.

Here’s a radical idea: For the next two weeks, let’s give Attorney General William Barr the benefit of the doubt.

I understand why so many people are suspicious of Barr and are lining up to denounce him—and there may well come a day, and it might come soon, when I will get in line and join them.

Barr’s initial letter summarizing the top-line conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation allowed President Donald Trump to claim exoneration and vilify those who had called for the investigation, even as it managed not to answer any substantive questions about L’Affaire Russe. What’s more, the letter put the attorney general’s personal stamp on the exoneration of the president for obstruction of justice, an outcome that is apparently not what Mueller himself intended. It is not clear to me why Barr needed to do this, and it certainly had the effect of helping the president seize control of the narrative. So I understand why many people are suspicious.

Yet I am still inclined to give Barr the benefit of the doubt on the release of the Mueller report, if only in a kind of “trust but verify” sort of way. The reason, in short, is that Barr has promised numerous times to show his work. He has promised to do so in the short term. The equities he has insisted on protecting are, in my view, reasonable ones. And he has taken in his most recent letter an appropriate, even gutsy, stand on executive privilege with respect to the White House. He has, in short, described a reasonable process by which Congress and the public should shortly get access to Mueller’s findings. I am inclined to assume him serious about this until he fails to deliver on what he has promised. There will be plenty of time to criticize his failures if and when they materialize.

Let’s unpack this a bit.

Barr has said since his confirmation hearings that he is committed to maximum public access to Mueller’s findings consistent with the law. Since Mueller delivered his report, he has stood by this and said he means to expeditiously review a 400-page document and release as much as he can. His time frame has clarified over the past week, from soon to “weeks not months” to “mid-April, if not sooner.” Congressional Democrats are demanding the report by Tuesday. This difference is not material. If the Justice Department releases Mueller’s report in a capacious and reasonable fashion in mid-April, that is a perfectly fine outcome.

Barr has also laid out what material he believes he must redact from the document. On some of these matters, he is simply correct. For example, Barr says he means to remove grand-jury material; it is actually unlawful, criminal even, to disclose grand-jury material without the authorization of the court. In the short term, there is no way to give this material to Congress, let alone make it public; it would require substantial litigation to do so.

Moreover, Barr says he means to redact “material the intelligence community identifies as potentially compromising sensitive sources and methods.” Note that he is not saying he will redact all classified material. But it is quite irresponsible to demand that the attorney general dump in the public domain sensitive intelligence matters in a fashion that could burn collection capabilities or human sources. There is no way the attorney general is going to release a 400-page document summarizing a counterintelligence investigation without a careful review for national-security information. And going through a lengthy document with a lot of information from different sources in a review for both national-security and grand-jury material takes time—legitimately. Getting it done in a few short weeks would require having a team working on it around the clock.

Barr also says he will redact “material that could affect other ongoing matters, including those that the Special Counsel has referred to other Department offices.” This strikes me as reasonable as well. Mueller has kicked a variety of matters back to the Justice Department. Do we really want Barr to screw up those investigations by prematurely releasing the department’s analysis of them? We didn’t want Mueller to do this. I don’t want Barr to, either. This category of redaction is potentially subject to abuse, but I am not going to assume preemptively that it will be abused.

Finally, Barr says he will redact “information that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.” Depending on how one reads the words unduly and peripheral, this could either be a reasonable effort to protect drive-by reputational harm to people quite removed from the core public interest in this matter or it could be a loophole big enough to drive a truck through that could protect, say, the president’s kids. So again, could this be a mechanism to black out large segments of the report? Yes. But I see no reason to assume that this is what Barr wants to do, given his more general public commitments to maximum transparency in this matter.

One important area in which Barr has said publicly that he won’t be doing any redactions is the area of executive privilege. This is actually a big deal. The White House made noises about reviewing the document for supposedly privileged material. But on this point, Barr has publicly, if somewhat backhandedly, taken a stand. In his letter on Friday, Barr wrote that “although the President would have the right to assert privilege over certain parts of the report, he has stated publicly that he intends to defer to me and, accordingly, there are no plans to submit the report to the White House for a privilege review.” 

If Wittes is right, then Barr would indeed do the honorable thing and we'd get to see virtually all of the report.

The problem is of course that William Barr decided to work for Donald Trump.

I do not believe for a second he is honorable.

Senator Batboy's Guide To Health Care

I have to admit, whoever is writing the Trump Show that we're all stuck in presently keeps making such beautifully obscene villain casting choices that even Hollywood is jealous.  Take this week's example where our old friend Rick Scott, recently upgraded from Governor to Senator by many, many Florida Men, is now the Trump regime's pointman on health care.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott is taking the lead on Republican health care policy as the Trump administration tries once again to end Obamacare. 

President Trump named Scott and fellow GOP U.S. Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana as his point people on Capitol Hill at a question-and-answer session at the White House. 

"They are going to come up with something really spectacular," Trump told reporters Thursday. 

Scott’s new role is a long way from his political origins in 2009 and 2010, when as one of the earliest critics of Obamacare, he launched ads arguing that pre-existing condition protections would cause premiums to skyrocket.

Scott also was the CEO of the hospital company Columbia/HCA in the 1990s, who resigned four months after a federal inquiry into the company was made public. The company was later fined $1.7 billion in 2000 and 2007 for what was then the largest case of Medicare fraud in history.

And yet somehow he was able to parlay billions in Medicare fraud into a lucrative political career long before Trump was ever elected, just another argument in favor of the theory that the GOP is the problem and Trump is the symptom. Rick Scott should be serving his second decade in prison going on his third.  Instead, he's serving in the US Senate.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what's wrong with America.

Scott goes on to say that he wants to lower prescription drug prices, but the catch is that prices can't be higher than other "industrialized nations" and of course, Scott gets to define what that means.

It sounds great, but of course Scott is a professional conman, fraudster, and grifter.  What his real plan happens to be is one the Dems will reject on the fine print in both the House and Senate so the GOP can run attack ads.  Pretty sick April Fools' joke if you ask me.

It's Dems' own fault if they can't see this trap a mile away.

StupidiNews!

• Former VP Joe Biden has responded to allegations that he made Nevada politician Lucy Flores "uneasy" in 2014 when he kissed the back of her head, Biden says he did not act "inappropriately".
• The White House wants to create a $100 billion slush fund to bankroll Trump's pet projects, the Trump regime wants to use the tactic to do an end run around sequestration spending caps.
• Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AK Party has lost local elections in Istanbul after losing in Ankara, the losses represent a major blow to his power base and future as President. 
• As the UK Parliament takes over Brexit proceedings on Monday as the government of PM Theresa May spirals out of control, the Tories are making plans for possible snap general elections.
• New research finds that preventable outbreaks of childhood diseases cost tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money every year across the country.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

Donald Trump has threatened to close the southern border with Mexico several times in the last year over what he sees as President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's "failure" to stop undocumented immigration, but this time he really really means it you guys.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday that President Donald Trump is serious about possibly closing the U.S.-Mexico border this week.

“It certainly isn’t a bluff. You can take the president seriously," she said on "Fox News Sunday," adding, Congress "can fix this."

"Congress can fix the problem of immigration that they’ve failed to fix. This president is looking at the metrics," she said, adding the U.S. has "never seen a surge" in immigration "like this."

On Friday, Trump said “there’s a very good likelihood” he would close the southern border this week.

"Mexico is going to have to do something, otherwise I’m closing the border," Trump said.

"I’ll just close the border," he added. "When you close the border, also you will stop a lot of the drugs from coming in."

She also defended the president's decision to cut off aid to the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Trump has claimed the governments of those countries had "set up" migrant caravans for entry into the United States.

"We need to send a message," Conway said.

It's a bluff and everyone knows it.  Closing the border with Mexico would cost the country billions in trade dollars a day and Republicans in Congress aren't about to put up with that.  Trump has already blown a hole in the side of the US economy with his tariffs.  Closing the border with Mexico would only make things worse.

And speaking of making things worse...

Taking drastic action over illegal immigration, President Donald Trump moved Saturday to cut direct aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, whose citizens are fleeing north and overwhelming U.S. resources at the southern border.

The State Department notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the U.S. border.

Amplified by conservative media, Trump has turned the caravans into the symbol of what he says are the dangers of illegal immigration — a central theme of his midterm campaigning last fall. With the special counsel’s Russia probe seemingly behind him, Trump has revived his warnings of the caravans’ presence.

Trump also has returned to a previous threat he never carried out — closing the border with Mexico. He brought up that possibility on Friday and revisited it in tweets Saturday, blaming Democrats and Mexico for problems at the border and beyond despite warnings that a closed border could create economic havoc on both sides.

“It would be so easy to fix our weak and very stupid Democrat inspired immigration laws,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “In less than one hour, and then a vote, the problem would be solved. But the Dems don’t care about the crime, they don’t want any victory for Trump and the Republicans, even if good for USA!′

If Republicans wanted to fix immigration, they could have done it at any time when they controlled the House, Senate, and White House in 2017 and 2018.  They chose not to.

But it's the Democrats' fault?

Please.

The Crown Prince, The King Of Amazon, And The Orange Jester

So it turns out that Jeff Bezos's affair wasn't just blabbed by his mistress's brother to the National Enquirer after all, but instead it was all part of a Saudi operation to destroy Bezos for the Washington Post's coverage of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman's ordering of the murder of Post reporter and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. This information comes directly from Bezos's lead investigator on the matter, Gavin de Becker, who took to The Daily Beast to spill the beans.

I’m writing this today because it’s exactly what the Enquirer scheme was intended to prevent me from doing. Their contract also contained terms that would have inhibited both me and Bezos from initiating a report to law enforcement.

Things didn’t work out as they hoped.

When the terms for avoiding publication of personal photos were presented to Jeff Bezos, he responded immediately: “No thank you.” Within hours, he wrote an essay describing his reasons for rejecting AMI’s threatening proposal. Then he posted it all on Medium, including AMI’s actual emails and their salacious descriptions of private photos. (After the Medium post, AMI put out a limp statement saying it “believed fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos.”)

The issues Bezos raised in his Medium post have nothing whatsoever to do with Michael Sanchez, any more than revealing the name of a low-level Watergate burglar sheds light on the architects of the Watergate cover-up. Bezos was not expressing concerns about the Enquirer’s original story; he was focused on what he called “extortion and blackmail.”

Next, Bezos directed me to “spend whatever is needed” to learn who may have been complicit in the scheme, and why they did it.

That investigation is now complete. As has been reported elsewhere, my results have been turned over to federal officials. Since it is now out of my hands, I intend today’s writing to be my last public statement on the matter. Further, to respect officials pursuing this case, I won’t disclose details from our investigation. I am, however, comfortable confirming one key fact:

Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information. As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details.
We did not reach our conclusions lightly. The inquiry included a broad array of resources: investigative interviews with current and former AMI executives and sources, extensive discussions with top Middle East experts in the intelligence community, leading cyber security experts who have tracked Saudi spyware, discussions with current and former advisers to President Trump, Saudi whistleblowers, people who personally know the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (also known as MBS), people who work with his close associate Saud al-Qahtani, Saudi dissidents, and other targets of Saudi action, including writer/activist Iyad el-Baghdadi.

Experts with whom we consulted confirmed New York Times reports on the Saudi capability to “collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace—including phone calls, texts, emails”—and confirmed that hacking was a key part of the Saudi’s “extensive surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of [Washington Post] journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”

Some Americans will be surprised to learn that the Saudi government has been very intent on harming Jeff Bezos since last October, when the Post began its relentless coverage of Khashoggi’s murder. The Saudi campaign against Bezos has already been reported by CNN International, Bloomberg, The Daily Beast, and others.

Saudi Arabia attacks people in many ways, obviously, including through their elaborate social media program that uses sophisticated technology and paid surrogates to create artificially trending hashtags. To give you an idea of how this program has infected the U.S., the New York Times reported that the Saudis even had an operative inside Twitter, which fired the suspect employee, and later advised select activists and others that “your Twitter account is one of a small group of accounts that may have been targeted by state-sponsored actors.”

In October, the Saudi government unleashed its cyber army on Bezos (and later me). Their multi-pronged campaign included public calls for boycotts against Amazon.com and its Saudi subsidiary, Souq.com. Just three examples among thousands:

“We as Saudis will never accept to be attacked by the Washington Post in the morning, only to buy products from Amazon and Souq.com by night! Strange that all three companies are owned by the same Jew who attacks us by day, and sells us products by night!”
“Our weapon is to boycott… because the owner of the newspaper is the same as their owner.”

“We're after you - the Jew, worshipper of money, will go bankrupt by the will of God at the hands of Saudi Arabia... the owner of Amazon and Souq is the owner of the Washington Post is the spiteful Jew who insults us every day.”
Bezos is not Jewish, but you get the point.

We studied the well-documented and close relationship between MBS and AMI chairman, David Pecker. That alliance includes David Pecker bringing MBS intermediary Kacy Grine to a private White House meeting with President Trump and Jared Kushner. Mr. Pecker has also traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Crown Prince. Though we don’t know what was discussed in those private meetings, AMI’s actions afterwards are telling. To coincide with MBS’ March 2018 U.S. tour, AMI created a 100-page, ad-free, glossy magazine called The New Kingdom. Since MBS wasn’t yet a notorious figure in the West (this was before the murder of Jamal Khashoggi), AMI’s magazine introduced him to Americans as “the most influential Arab leader—transforming the world at 32,” and “improving lives of his people & hopes for peace.”

The Associated Press reported that AMI sent an advance digital copy of their laudatory magazine to the Saudi Embassy three weeks before printing and distributing 200,000 issues. (Despite AP’s substantial forensic evidence, the kingdom denied it received the magazine’s content in advance. While we’re on denials, the kingdom says Saudi Arabia had nothing to with the Bezos matter. The kingdom also says MBS had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.)

When AMI publicly insisted that nobody outside of their executives and editors “had any influence on this publication or its content,” I guess they meant other than Kacy Grine, the very same MBS-intermediary Pecker had brought to The White House. I say that because AMI soon had to disclose to the Department of Justice National Security Division that their mystery magazine included content written by Grine, and that they also gave him the whole working draft for advance review, and that he suggested changes, and that they implemented his changes, and that he provided better photographs of MBS. With friends like AMI, you don’t need… publicists.

My firm has done many investigations into Enquirer misconduct, including one that became the subject of a 60 Minutesinvestigative piece way back in 1990. Before then, tabloids had been seen as almost funny publications, mixing celebrity gossip with space aliens and Elvis sightings. But when the Enquirer’s on-again-off-again relationship with the truth percolated into politics, it wasn’t so funny anymore.

Though relatively benign at first (“Al Gore’s Diet Is Making Him Stupid”), the Trump/Pecker relationship has metastasized: In effect, the Enquirer became an enforcement arm of the Trump presidential campaign, and presidency, as the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York laid out in its case against Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty. The U.S. Attorney has done the country a service by levying extensive controls on AMI, David Pecker, and his deputy Dylan Howard, through a non-prosecution agreement that requires them to commit no other crimes for three years, and requires everyone at AMI to attend annual training on federal election laws. I’m guessing that’s not how they used to spend their time.

If de Becker's information is solid -- and there's every reason to believe it is -- then we have a foreign operation against a US citizen in order to wreck his life in revenge for his newspaper publishing the truth about the Saudi Crown Prince's murderous ways.

And if you think the Trump Justice Department is going to lift a finger to investigate this, I have my own newspaper to sell you.  Hell, there's even odds that Trump knew about this beforehand and tacitly gave his permission.  Trump despises Jeff Bezos for the same Washington Post that prints the truth about Trump.

Again, this is what autocrats do.  I think there may have even been a quid pro quo here, Trump covers MBS on Khashoggi's murder (and you notice that months later our relationship with the Saudis hasn't changed one bit) and in return, MBS exposes Bezos's affair, which did destroy his marriage and his soon-to-be ex-wife Mackenzie is walking away with $70 billion of Bezos's fortune.

You tell me who won in this mess, because it sure looks like to me that MBS and Trump are getting away with this.

Sunday Long Read: A Volunteer Detective

Barack Obama was arguably the best President in recent history when it came to Native issues.  He actually gave a damn about a section of America that is ignored to the point of criminal neglect under Donald Trump.  The death of Olivia Kerry Lone Bear rocked the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota, and it took an amateur sleuth named Lissa Yellowbird-Chase to find her body, when the police had completely given up.

On a blazing hot day in late July, Lissa Yellowbird-Chase drove her black SUV, license plate "SEARCH", to a muddy landing on Lake Sakakawea. It was a remote entrance to the water on the northern edge of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota - not much more than a rickety dock at the end of an uneven gravel road.

Hitched to the back of Yellowbird-Chase's truck was a 14-foot boat with a half-broken motor and a set of fishing sonar. By her own admission, she was not a particularly skilled or experienced boater, nor an expert in sonar. But she had a plan.

Along with a couple of volunteers from her group, the Sahnish Scouts of North Dakota, they would motor along the shoreline of the bay, scanning the lakebed for anomalies, moving further and further away from the shore with each pass. They would keep going until Yellowbird-Chase satisfied the nagging feeling she'd had about this spot for months.

"I don't know what it was - I was drawn to that place," she recalled later. "I actually stood in that bay last fall."

Nine months earlier, in the autumn of 2017, a young mother of five named Olivia Kerri Lone Bear vanished from New Town, a tiny oil-boom city on the Fort Berthold Reservation. The 32-year-old was last seen on 24 October, at the wheel of a teal-coloured Chevy Silverado pick-up truck that she often borrowed from a friend. She was a caretaker for her father, and the following day, he found her wallet and mobile phone at his home.

Since then, the Lone Bear family had been searching for Olivia in vain. Yellowbird-Chase joined the effort along with the Sahnish Scouts, a group she founded in 2015 to search and recover missing people in Indian Country - though she had been doing the work on her own since about 2011.

"PLEASE SHARE," she posted on Facebook five days after Olivia disappeared, alongside a missing poster with telephone numbers for the Lone Bear family and her own personal mobile number. "You can remain anonymous."

In the weeks that followed, large groups of volunteers fanned out across the 1-million acre reservation on foot, and on all-terrain vehicles. Her family took over a tribal government building and established a search headquarters with a tipline, which they manned every day for months. Reported sightings came from as far away as California and Arizona.

But once the tundra-like North Dakota winter set in, all search efforts - aside from keeping the phone line open - had to be suspended until spring. The lake froze over, sealing itself under a thick crust of ice.

By July, when Yellowbird-Chase pushed out in her boat, summer was in its full height, and the waters were wide open.

She tried not to get excited when, a few hundred feet from the shore, her sonar picked up a rectangular object on what should have been the blank, featureless lakebed. In the early 1950s, the US Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River and created Lake Sakakawea, flooding farmland that belonged to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes, and swallowing towns whole. The anomaly she saw on the screen could be nothing more than an old building foundation or a chimney, she thought.

till, she took a photo and texted it to Keith Cormican, a technical diver and certified underwater sonar operator in Wisconsin. While Yellowbird-Chase was a sonar novice, she considered Cormican her "mentor" - his organisation Bruce's Legacy has located and recovered 27 drowning victims since 2013.

"I knew she had a vehicle," he recalled.

He texted back that she should keep taking scans at different times of day, to catch shadows coming off the object that would give it better definition.

After days of obsessively motoring back and forth over the same spot, and struggling with their broken motor, Yellowbird-Chase texted a new image to Corey Bristol, the then-chief deputy of the Mountrail County Sheriff's Office. It was a Saturday, and Bristol was 70 miles away, spending his day off with his father. But when he looked down at his phone and saw a pixellated image featuring what looked like a tiny Tonka truck at the centre, he jumped in his car and accelerated back towards New Town.

"We definitely wanted to find out what was down there," he said.

It was indeed Olivia Kerry Lone Bear's body.  The crime has not been solved, because the system in place absolutely favors non-Native suspects, who get regular police proceedings.  But when the victim is Native, a broken and overloaded system takes over and the gathering of evidence and even determining if there's a body can take years.

And the cases die.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

America's opinion on the Mueller probe has taken a stark partisan spin in the last few weeks, with Democrats nowhere near satisfied with Bill Barr's four-page summary.

Americans are split over whether House Democrats should continue to investigate President Trump after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III made no determination about whether he attempted to obstruct justice during the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, a Washington Post-Schar School poll finds.

The division marks a clear break from public support for Russia-related investigations at the start of the year, when an overall majority supported House Democrats’ efforts to examine whether Trump’s subordinates conspired with Russia as well as Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Six House panels are digging into aspects of Trump’s campaign, his finances and his efforts to discredit Mueller’s inquiry as a “witch hunt,” while they wrestle with Attorney General William P. Barr for access to Mueller’s full report and the underlying evidence that informed his conclusions. Mueller did not find that Trump or his campaign conspired with Russia in 2016.

An overwhelming 83 percent say the Mueller report should be made public in its entirety, and 57 percent say Barr — who described some of Mueller’s principal findings in a letter to Congress this month — has not released enough details about the report.

The Post-Schar School national poll, conducted Tuesday through Friday, underscores how much the political dynamics surrounding Mueller’s report have changed between when it was a work in progress and its completion just over one week ago.

Nearly 8 in 10 Republicans say they feel “satisfied” with the investigation’s conclusions, a strikingly positive assessment for a group that widely disapproved of Mueller’s handling of the investigation just last month.

Among Democrats, who long expressed faith in Mueller during the inquiry, 53 percent now say they are disappointed with its conclusions. And while most still approve of Mueller’s efforts, more than 6 in 10 Democrats do not accept his finding on whether Trump conspired with Russia.

Over the course of Mueller’s 22-month investigation, and as the special counsel racked up indictments of individuals in Trump’s inner circle, many Democrats in public office had expressed confidence that the inquiry would reveal something crippling about Trump, and were as shocked as once-skeptical Republicans were elated when Barr delivered Mueller’s principal conclusions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the end of the investigation has done little to shake partisans’ convictions about Trump’s guilt or innocence. A 76 percent majority of Democrats thinks Trump committed serious wrongdoing related to Russian election interference or the investigation that followed, including nearly two-thirds who say he committed a crime. Separately, 8 in 10 Democrats think Trump tried to hinder the Russia investigation and committed obstruction of justice in the process.

Barr is in the process of redacting and editing the Mueller report as we speak.  We will *never* get the full report in our lifetimes.  It's why he was appointed.

I wish people would understand that.

Last Call For Enemies Of The People

Senate Republicans are now signaling that they will spend the next two years investigating Obama officials as traitors to Dear Leader Trump in order to exact revenge for the Mueller probe.

Republicans are setting their sights on top Obama-era officials as they plan their own probe into the 2016 election. 

Eager to move on from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign, GOP senators are gearing up to investigate the investigators. The idea is gaining traction with the Republican caucus, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(Ky.). 

Mueller’s report hasn’t been released yet, but Republicans have seized on a four-page letter from Attorney General William Barr that summarized key conclusions of the two-year probe, including that Mueller "did not establish" that President Trump or members of his campaign coordinated or colluded with Moscow in its election interference. 

"Republicans believe that the FBI and [Department of Justice] — the top people — took the law in their own hands because they wanted [Hillary] Clinton to win and Trump to lose," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said during an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto as part of a media blitz discussing his plans for an investigation. 

He said that he will be looking at "abuse" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application process and the counterintelligence operation into Trump’s campaign, adding that "there will be a lot of inquiry as to how this all happened." 

GOP senators are already naming former officials who would be at the top of their lists to question, including former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. 

"The Judiciary Committee has primary jurisdiction and doing oversight of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and so that ... is something we need to do. Trying to find out how this thing got off the rails and hopefully prevent it from happening again," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Cornyn rattled off a list of Obama-era officials he would want to speak with, including Lynch, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, but he homed in on Comey. 

"I think Director Comey is probably near the top. He’s the one who said that his intention of leaking memos of his conversation was designed to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. It just strikes me as some vindictiveness and animus toward the president motivating a lot of the action," Cornyn said. 

Graham, who earlier this month teased that he wants to bring in Comey, added that the former official would be called to publicly testify and "will answer for your time as FBI director." 

Expect the next 20 months or more to be endless Senate investigations in order to "prove" Democrats are traitors and enemies of the people who must be "dealt with".  They won't stop until they can lock up Clinton, Obama, and everyone involved in them.

It's now about vengeance.

The Adventures Of Pete's Dragon

Like me, Paul Waldman is pretty goddamn tired of Democrats telling us that the problem in America is Democrats don't understand Trump voters, and nobody's been more guilty of that in the short 2020 campaign season so far then South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

If you thought we were past the tiresome “How can Democrats appeal to Trump-loving Trump voters in Trump Country?” conversation, I’m going to disappoint you. And I’d like to use some recent comments from South Bend, Ind., Mayor and presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg to illustrate how problematic the discussion among Democrats is when it comes to thinking about different areas of the country and what kind of people live where.

Buttigieg was in the coastal enclave of San Francisco when he gave a radio interview that included this:

There are some folks I encounter here who seem to have trouble believing that things like Trump voters actually exist. And so I feel sometimes like I’m an emissary from the middle of the country, just pointing out that things look a little bit different in rural communities, industrial communities like mine, and that we really need to find ways to knit this picture back together into one America.
There’s a bit more to the discussion, but it goes on in that vein. Buttigieg’s intentions are good, since he wants to promote mutual understanding and common purpose. But he frames the problem as one that stems from condescending liberals who don’t sufficiently appreciate the lives and perspectives of people in the Midwest. In other words, the divide that exists is the fault of liberals alone. If they could just do more to understand the people who wind up voting for someone like Donald Trump, that would be the path to achieving unity.

I have a crazy dream that goes like this. After a whole bunch of think pieces asking why Republicans are so contemptuous toward components of the Democratic base — let’s say African Americans — a Republican contender for president starts telling his party that they have to change the way they think, feel and talk. “For too long, members of my party have treated African Americans with scorn,” he’d tell an interviewer. “But as someone who has spent time in those communities, let me explain how they see the state of our country, and why we need to find ways to meet them where they live. Republicans are out of touch and that has to change.”

Of course, a Republican presidential candidate would never say that, because a Republican presidential candidate would never criticize his own party's voters. They're happy to disrespect and insult Democratic voters and the places where they live, but they will testify that their own base is made up of only the most worthy of Americans, hailing from the small towns and rural areas where all virtue finds its true home.

And for the love of god he's right.  Can you imagine what would happen if a Republican said "We need to do a better job of understanding black voters" or "Latino voters" or "Asian voters" or "LGBTQ voters" because "We've treated them as less than American and less than human"

I'm tired of guys like Buttigieg saying I have to bow to a party that wants to strip me of everything.

He's going to have a really hard time in the primaries and deservedly so.

Jussie-fied By The Circumstances, Con't

The villain being portrayed by the right on the Jussie Smollett case is Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx, multiple Chicago cops, the state bar association, Republicans ranging from local to Donald Trump want her strung up.  Last night Foxx hit back at her critics in the Chicago Tribune to explain why the case was dropped.

There was considerable evidence, uncovered in large part due to the investigative work of the Chicago Police Department, suggesting that portions of Smollett’s claims may have been untrue and that he had direct contact with his so-called attackers. Claims by Smollett or others that the outcome of this case has “exonerated” him or that he has been found innocent are simply wrong. He has not been exonerated; he has not been found innocent.

Falsely reporting any crime is itself a crime; falsely reporting a hate crime is so much worse, and I condemn in the strongest possible way anyone who does that. Falsely reporting a hate crime causes immeasurable harm to the victims of actual crimes, whether because they are less likely to be believed or, worse, because they are afraid to report their crimes in the first place for fear of not being believed.

So, why isn’t Smollett in prison or at least on trial? There are two different answers to this, both equally important.

First, the law. There were specific aspects of the evidence and testimony presented to the office that would have made securing a conviction against Smollett uncertain. In determining whether or not to pursue charges, prosecutors are required to balance the severity of the crime against the likelihood of securing a conviction. For a variety of reasons, including public statements made about the evidence in this case, my office believed the likelihood of securing a conviction was not certain.

In the interest of full transparency, I would prefer these records be made public. However, in this case, Illinois law allows defendants in certain circumstances to request that public records remain sealed. Smollett chose to pursue that avenue, and so my office is barred from releasing those records without his approval.

Another key factor is that the crime here was a Class 4 felony, the least serious category, which also covers things like falsely pulling a fire alarm in school and “draft card mutilation.” These felonies are routinely resolved, particularly in cases involving suspects with no prior criminal record, long before a case ever nears a courtroom and often without either jail time or monetary penalties. Any prosecutor, law-enforcement leader or elected official not grandstanding or clouded by political expediency understands the purpose of sentencing guidelines.
But more important than the dispassionate legal justification, there was another reason that I believe our decision not to prosecute the case was the right one.

Yes, falsely reporting a hate crime makes me angry, and anyone who does that deserves the community’s outrage. But, as I’ve said since before I was elected, we must separate the people at whom we are angry from the people of whom we are afraid. I am angry at anyone who falsely reports a crime. I am afraid when I see a little girl shot dead while sitting on her mother’s lap. I am afraid when I see a CPD commander slain by a four-time felon who was walking the streets. I am also afraid when I see CPD resources used to initially cover up the shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
I was elected on a promise to rethink the justice system, to keep people out of prison who do not pose a danger to the community. I promised to spend my office’s finite resources on the most serious crimes in order to create communities that are both safer and fairer.

Our community is safer in every sense of the word when murderers and rapists are locked away. But we can’t allow fearmongers to devalue the tremendous progress we’ve made in the last year. Since taking office, I’ve sought to employ alternative prosecutions, diversions, alternate outcomes and other forms of smart justice, and it has been working — violent crime in Chicago is down overall. In addition to the benefits of smart justice on recidivism and keeping families together, it also creates bandwidth for my office to dedicate more resources to combating not only truly violent crimes but also the opioid crisis, holding big banks accountable for their actions, protecting consumers from data breaches and other critical work.

So, the decision to seal the case was Smollett's, and it was his right to do so.  And yes, the prosecutor made the call that the conviction could not be gotten because the Chicago PD has screwed up again.

Just as I suspected.

Foxx will be shredded for this and will almost certainly lose her job, as there are very powerful angry white men who want her head on a wall and Smollett's too.

We'll see.

Corporate Citizenship Comes At A Cost

Dick's Sporting Goods started restricting the sales of firearms after the killer at the Parkland school massacre used weapons from their store.  The sales restrictions have cost the company a healthy chunk of change, but the CEO says that it's worth the cost.

Last February, when Dick’s Sporting Goods boss Ed Stack announced he was restricting gun sales at the country’s largest sports retailer, he knew it’d be costly.

At the time, Dick’s was a major seller of firearms. Guns also drove the sale of soft goods—boots, hats, jackets. What’s more, Stack, the retailer's chief executive officer, suspected the position could drive off some of his customers on political principle.

He was right. Dick’s estimates the policy change cost the company about $150 million in lost sales, an amount equivalent to 1.7 percent of annual revenue. Stack says it was worth it.

“The system does not work,” Stack said. “It’s important that when you know there’s something that’s not working, and it’s to the detriment of the public, you have to stand up.”

The 2018 school massacre at Parkland, Florida, touched a nerve for the company. Nikolas Cruz, the shooter, had legally purchased a shotgun from Dick’s a few months before the attack. A day after Cruz was arrested, police in Vermont apprehended a teenager with plans to shoot up his high school. He, too, had legally purchased a shotgun from Dick’s.

The two incidents were a last straw for Stack, a one-time Republican donor who in 35 years had turned his father’s bait-and-tackle shop into the country’s largest sports retailer. Two weeks after those arrests, Stack announced he was pulling assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines out of all Dick’s stores. He vowed he’d never sell another firearm to anyone under 21.

The response was predictable. The National Rifle Association criticized his “strange business model.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation expelled Dick’s from its membership. Gun manufacturers like Mossberg refused to do business with him at all, and some shoppers followed suit.

Some people applauded the CEO’s decision and promised to show their appreciation with their business—a phenomenon called “buycotting”—but those people didn’t stick around. “Love is fleeting. Hate is forever,” Stack said.

What happened at Dick’s confirms new study results out of Stanford University. Respondents said they were more likely to buy a product to support a CEO’s political stance than they were to boycott in disagreement, but their actions revealed the opposite. When asked for specific examples, 69 percent could name a product they’d stopped buying, and only 21 percent could recall a product they started buying.

The stock price hasn’t suffered. Dick’s shares, which didn’t move much following the announcement last February, have climbed 14 percent in the 13 months since, outpacing the 4 percent rise in the benchmark Russell 3000 Index. On Friday, the company’s shares rose as much as 0.6 percent in New York. 

It goes to show you just how much Americans spend on sporting equipment every year.  It hasn't made a difference in the store's bottom line, or the number of firearms in the country.  It's a start, but it's a drop in the ocean.

And that ocean is a blood-red as it gets.

Last Call For Meat The Press, Con't

The Trump regime is now gearing up to intimidate members of the press directly with paid political attack ads if they dare to challenge the Trump regime's narrative that Democrats are conspiratorial traitors that created the "lie" of Russian collusion.

Trump allies see Barr’s letter as a kind of Swiss Army knife—a tool useful in all kinds of situations. Not only is it exculpatory, they say, but it also implicitly rebukes the press for its coverage of the Russia investigation, inoculating Trump from any future scandal that reporters might unearth. According to a source familiar with internal discussions at the Republican National Committee and the pro-Trump super PAC America First, both organizations are “geared up for any nonsense to come.”

They’re already prepared to attack reporters. “Any reporter who tries that will be hit with 30-second spots of all their ridiculous claims about collusion,” said the source, who, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity to describe private conversations. “Their tweets have all been screencapped. It’s all ready to go.” (“It's the same thing we've been doing the last two years. We're going to hold the media accountable when we see fit,” an RNC official clarified, adding that this would include digital clips shared on social media.)

Earlier this week, Trump’s campaign previewed the in-your-face tactics they have in mind. A campaign official sent a letter to TV producers cautioning them against booking certain guests who had alleged that Trump colluded with Russia, including Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of California, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.

“It’s not hard to figure where we’re going to go with this,” a current campaign official told The Atlantic. “We’re still in victory-lap mode, but it will turn into a message that [Democrats] will say or do anything to stop us from making America great again, including making up lies about the president and ruining a lot of people’s lives.”

White House officials suggested that the president has no plans to move on from the report because Democrats aren’t moving on. Instead, “they are doubling and tripling down,” says the White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.

At some level, letting go would be out of character. From the first, Trump has personalized the presidency. He still obsesses over the crowd size at his inauguration, along with perceived betrayals from Senator John McCain of Arizona, who died last summer. The Mueller investigation shadowed Trump for nearly two years. Now that it’s over, he is indulging in a bit of triumphalism.

Again, and I can't stress this enough, in an America where journalists have been gunned down by Trump supporters, the Trump regime is ready to weaponize their base by directly and specifically targeting journalists and Democrats as traitors who must be dealt with.

This goes well beyond attacking political opponents.  This is targeting journalists with political-style attack ads in order to stoke rage, rage that could very well be acted upon by an already wound-up group of people.

Trump is going to get more journalists hurt and killed until they stop criticizing him.

Trump Cards, Con't

Again, I keep hearing how Donald Trump is all talk and no action on things.  At the same time, I keep seeing Trump continually violating presidential norms to do whatever he wants.  18 months ago Trump was obsessed with North Korea, and apparently he made it clear that while he was visiting Puerto Rico to survey damage from Hurricane Maria that he can start a nuclear war anytime he feels like it.

He was there to survey the path of destruction left by Hurricane Maria. But when President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in October 2017, the island's dire predicament was hardly the only topic on his mind. 

People familiar with the visit said the President was distracted by other matters -- including his then-devolving war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un -- as he toured devastated neighborhoods and took an aerial tour of the damage. 

At one point, Trump pointed to the "nuclear football" -- a briefcase always in the President's vicinity that can be used to authorize a nuclear attack -- and claimed he could use it on Kim whenever he felt. 

"This is what I have for Kim," he said, according to three people familiar who witnessed the remark.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the incident. 

So why are we only hearing about this now?  Guess.

The episode came amid an increasingly acrimonious period that saw Trump boast of the size of his "nuclear button" and threaten to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea. Since then, he and Kim have developed a warm friendship and met for two summits. 

But at the time, the casual reference to his nuclear capabilities was another sign of the spiraling rhetoric that marked his early interactions with Kim. 

And, to some officials, it was an indication of Trump's disinterest in the plight of Puerto Ricans, who suffered for months without power and limited resources as their island recovered from the walloping storm. 

"There were other topics that were being discussed and my view is that the sole focus of that trip should have been on Puerto Rico," said Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

Trump had made life hell for Puerto Rico, abandoning Americans because Trump hates them so much for being Americans when he doesn't think they count.

Now Gov. Rossello has returned the favor.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Just a reminder that Trump regime refuses to process migrants crossing into the US and is keeping them in camps in order to create a border crisis and a humanitarian crisis that will of course require "extraordinary emergency measures" to resolve.

The nation’s top border official warned that the U.S. immigration enforcement system along the nation’s southern boundary is at “the breaking point” and said Wednesday that authorities are having to release migrants into the country after cursory background checks because of a crush of asylum-seeking families with children.

Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that for the first time in more than a decade, his agency is “reluctantly” performing direct releases of migrants, meaning they are not turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are not detained, they are not given ankle bracelets to track their movements and they are allowed to leave with just a notice to appear in court at a later date.

He said that this is a “negative outcome” but that it is “the only current option we have” because of overcrowding at detention facilities as Central Americans stream to the border knowing they will be able to gain entry with asylum claims.

The number of migrant families coming to the border has reached new highs month after month, a trend that dramatically accelerated after President Trump announced parents and children would no longer be separated, reversing course on his “zero tolerance” crackdown.

McAleenan said the agency detained more than 4,100 migrants Tuesday, the highest one-day total at the border in more than a decade, and agency projections have border apprehensions on pace to exceed 100,000 this month — an increase of more than 30 percent. By comparison, at the height of the last border crisis, in May 2014, agents apprehended more than 68,800 migrants that month.

The massive influx of families seeking asylum has strained almost every aspect of U.S. operations on the border, McAleenan said, nowhere more evident than here, along the Rio Grande. Crossings have been overwhelmed with hundreds of migrants seeking asylum daily; Border Patrol stations are crammed and have no space for detainees; the immigration court system is backed up with hundreds of thousands of cases; and health services are having to triage batches of patients who have a variety of ailments and communicable diseases.

“That breaking point has arrived this week,” McAleenan said, standing in front of a border fence. “CBP is facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our southwest border, and nowhere has that crisis manifested more acutely than here in El Paso.” 

Again, everything here from Trump's false "end" the child separation to "reluctantly" releasing migrants without processing them is designed to visibly create a crisis, and if you don't believe me, note this is being done on purpose in El Paso.

Beto O' Rourke's congressional district.

Everything is calculated revenge, and Trump doesn't care how many human lives are destroyed in the process. And now, as I have told you for more than a year, Deportation Nation is almost here.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will ask Congress for the authority to deport unaccompanied migrant children more quickly, to hold families seeking asylum in detention until their cases are decided and to allow immigrants to apply for asylum from their home countries, according to a copy of the request obtained by NBC News.

In a letter to Congress, Nielsen said she will be seeking a legislative proposal in the coming days to address what she called the "root causes of the emergency" that has led to a spike in border crossings in recent weeks. The letter has not yet been sent.

The legislative proposal would have to clear the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, which is likely to respond with strong opposition.

The trap is simple: make Democrats vote on keeping migrant kids in cages versus mass deportations of migrant kids without their parents and blast them for whatever happens as 100% their fault.

While that won't be true, Democrats got maneuvered into this trap more than a year ago, and now it is closing around their necks.

Thousands of kids will suffer as a result.

StupidiNews!

• A federal judge has ordered the Trump regime to turn over all of former FBI Director James Comey's contemporaneous memos, the judge says the unredacted memos will be kept under seal.
• Donald Trump attacked House Democrats for over an hour last night at a campaign rally in Michigan, calling them "traitors" and "sick, sick people" who will soon be on "artificial respiration".
• Banking giant Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan has stepped down, Sloan is the second CEO to leave the bank in light of continuing sales practices scandals involving fabricated bank accounts.
• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is barring Senate opposition leader Juan Guaido from office for 15 years, the country's comptroller is accusing Guaido of falsifying tax statements.
• Former NSA contractor Harold Martin has pleaded guilty to one count of willful retention of National Security information, prosecutors are dropping 19 other charges and seeking a nine-year sentence.