Last Call For Supreme Misgivings, Con't

The FBI investigation of the sexual assault claims against Trump regime Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is a gigantic scam, and everyone at this point knows it.

The FBI hasn’t interviewed Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh or Christine Blasey Ford because it doesn’t have clear authority from the White House to do so, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Instead, the White House has indicated to the FBI that testimony from Kavanaugh and Ford, who has accused him of attempting to rape her when they were in high school, before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week is sufficient, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the sensitive matter.

The new evidence of constraints on the FBI probe came as Republican Senator Bob Corker told reporters the FBI is likely to give senators a stack of interview reports, probably later on Wednesday. He said senators were told in a GOP meeting that a vote on cutting off debate is likely on Friday to move toward a confirmation vote on Kavanaugh. 

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to force the issue and seek explicit approval from the White House to interview Ford and Kavanaugh. And it wasn’t clear why the FBI hasn’t yet talked to other people who have been recommended by lawyers or who have voluntarily come forward -- or if the bureau would need explicit approval to talk with them as well.

Confusion has now beset the investigation, fed by conflicting signals over what constraints have been placed on the bureau despite President Donald Trump’s comment Monday that “the FBI should interview anybody that they want, within reason.” 

The FBI declined to comment on the investigation or its timing.

The cloture vote is happening Friday regardless of the investigation, and it will have 50 votes.  Mitch still doesn't have enough for the final vote however, and that's the only known thing.   Why risk it?  Why the dog and pony show?  Why draw it out?

Republicans want as much outrage as possible to close the gender gap, and they are counting on white women to once again side with Trump as they did in 2016.

When many conservative women around the country watched Christine Blasey Ford appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, they didn’t find her testimony compelling or convincing, as many liberals did.

They saw a political farce. 

“Honestly, I don’t think I have ever been so angry in all of my adult life,” says Ginger Howard, a Republican national committeewoman from Georgia. “It brings me to the point of tears, it makes me so angry.”

In interviews with roughly a dozen female conservative leaders from as many states, this was the overwhelming sentiment: These women are infuriated with the way the sexual-assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been handled. They are not convinced by Ford or any other woman who has come forward. They resent the implication that all women should support the accusers. And they believe that this scandal will ultimately hurt the cause of women who have been sexually assaulted. 

Above all, these women, and the women they know, are ready to lash out against Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. 

Nearly all the women I spoke with are plugged into state- and local-level conservative politics. Their collective, overwhelming sense is that, like Howard, women voters are angry about what’s happening to Kavanaugh. “I’ve got women in my church who were not politically active at all who were incensed with this,” says Melody Potter, the chairwoman of the West Virginia Republican Party—the first woman to hold that position, she made sure to point out. In her state, the stakes of the Kavanaugh scandal are immense: Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is fighting for his seat in a place where more than two-thirds of voters supported Donald Trump in 2016. With voters “energized” to elect people “who are going to support President Trump,” Potter says, West Virginians are closely watching how Manchin acts on Kavanaugh—especially now that the situation has become so politicized.

Organizers in other states say they’ve been hearing the same thing. “People in Indiana are angry. They are mad. They are changing their mind,” says Jodi Smith, the Indianapolis-based state director for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. When Senator Joe Donnelly, another vulnerable Democrat who is up for reelection in November, declared late last week that he would vote against Kavanaugh, it “started a firestorm of epic proportions,” Smith says. From her perspective on the ground in a highly contested swing state, “this is one of the best things that could happen to us.”
It’s not yet clear whether the Kavanaugh affair will work to the GOP’s advantage; recent polling has not conclusively shown what women, for example, think about these allegations. “If the Republicans don’t get it together and make sure that he gets in there, that’s not going to help us,” says Howard, the Georgia RNC official. “What makes me mad at times about our party is we don’t stand up enough and say, ‘Enough of your shenanigans! We’re not putting up with this!’” And with the full Senate vote delayed and a supplemental FBI investigation under way, it’s not certain that Kavanaugh’s nomination will ultimately be successful.

But if Kavanaugh is confirmed, Howard says, “that will fire up the base even more to say, ‘Look at what a fight we had on our hands.’”

This is what they want.  They want white women to forget about losing their health care, to forget about kids in interment camps, to forget that they were wavering on support.for the GOP, to forget that women overall supported Democrats by more than 20 points.

They want angry white women to vote to protect their white men and white boys against those evil liberals, because our white boys don't assault anyone, they are noble and pure and good.  Their savage animals of men assault us.

It's working.  All of the "concessions" and "concerns" and "uncertainty" over Kavanaugh is there for a reason.  Mitch could have had this vote wrapped up by mid-September if he wanted to.  Instead, he wanted outrage just in time for the Midterms.

And once again, white women are going to come out in favor of the GOP.  All those stories about white women in suburban districts looking like shaky support at best?  This fight was engineered to put that to rest.  They will sign their reproductive freedom away because it will hurt those women more.

Democrats better treat the last month as the fight of their lives.

Because it is.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Republicans, angered by the Kavanaugh confirmation process, are starting to narrow the gap in the polls, according to NPR at least.

Just over a month away from critical elections across the country, the wide Democratic enthusiasm advantage that has defined the 2018 campaign up to this point has disappeared, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. 

In July, there was a 10-point gap between the number of Democrats and Republicans saying the November elections were "very important." Now, that is down to 2 points, a statistical tie. 

Democrats' advantage on which party Americans want to control Congress has also been cut in half since last month. Democrats still retain a 6-point edge on that question, but it was 12 points after a Marist poll conducted in mid-September. 

The results come amid the pitched and hotly partisan confirmation battle over Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court. Multiple women have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when he was in high school and college. He categorically denies all the allegations. The FBI is conducting a supplemental investigation into the accusations that is expected to be wrapped up by the end of this week. 

With Democrats already up fired up for this election, the Kavanaugh confirmation fight has apparently had the effect of rousing a dormant GOP base. 

"The result of hearings, at least in short run, is the Republican base was awakened," noted Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. 

While Democrats and Republicans are now equally enthusiastic about the midterms, the story is very different for key Democratic base groups and independents. While 82 percent of Democrats say the midterms are very important, that's true of just 60 percent of people under 30, 61 percent of Latinos and 65 percent of independents. 

Democrats need to net 23 seats to take back control of the House, but if those groups stay home in large numbers, it would blunt potential Democratic gains. With 34 days to go until Election Day, it all points to another election dominated by party activists.

Once again, Democrats need to act like they are losing by ten and get out there every day to make the case as to why they need to win.

Republicans will absolutely show up in the midterms, regardless.

The only question is Democratic turnout.  If it's 2010 or 2014 levels again, the country is finished.

Deportation Nation, Con't

If you want to know why Trump's child internment camps are being expanded, it's because in addition to family separation of undocumented migrant kids being locked up in cages like animals, we're about to do the same thing to tens of thousands of US kids with full citizenship as families of formerly protected undocumented immigrants under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program are going to be forcibly deported starting next year.

As of October 2017, there were roughly 300,000 TPS beneficiaries from 10 countries living in the United States. These individuals came from a handful of Central American and African countries, along with Haiti, Syria, Yemen and Nepal. But by far the largest group were Salvadorans — close to 200,000 — who were granted TPS by George W. Bush in 2001, following two massive earthquakes that ravaged their country.

Salvadorans were given 18 months to live and work legally in the United States, after which the U.S. government would assess the viability of their returning home. But 18 months later, the Bush administration determined El Salvador had not adequately recovered from the disaster, so it extended TPS again, this time for 12 months. The following year, the administration extended TPS for another 18 months. When Barack Obama became president in 2009, his administration extended TPS again. And then again. By Jan. 8, 2018, TPS for Salvadorans had been extended a total of 11 times. Trump issued a 12th extension, saying it would be the last.

Over nearly two decades, Salvadoran TPS recipients settled into American life. They found employment, fell in love and married. Many of them bought homes and started businesses. They also gave birth to roughly 192,700 American-born children, some 38,000 of whom live in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

“While nothing in the [TPS] statute suggests a pathway to permanent status, a lot of links and dependencies were created,” says Jayesh Rathod, a law professor and founding director of American University’s Immigrant Justice Clinic. “It’s only reasonable to assume that alongside the statutory factors, [previous administrations were] looking at the practical reality and how uprooting that community wouldn’t be feasible, not just to El Salvador, but to American children.”

In canceling TPS for Haitians, Hondurans, Nepalis, Sudanese, Nicaraguans and Salvadorans, the Trump administration forced families like Emily’s to confront the question that past administrations had avoided: What would happen to all these American kids when their parents were officially ordered to leave the country?

The Department of Homeland Security had an answer. “We will coordinate with the Government of El Salvador to better understand what documents might be needed by U.S. citizen children to enroll in local schools, access local health services, or other social services,” a DHS spokeswoman wrote to me in June. In other words, the government expected nearly 193,000 American kids to leave the United States along with their parents. Simple as that.

Except it wasn’t. From the start, parents balked at the idea of uprooting their children from stable communities and removing them to a country plagued with poverty, corruption and gang violence. Come next September, many, perhaps most, will decide to take their chances by becoming undocumented and staying with their kids in the United States. But others, like Emily’s parents, may begin to see separation as a viable option — heading back to their country of origin while leaving their American-citizen children behind.

And so it goes.  We will deport or incarcerate (or both) tens of thousands more kids in the coming months.   They will be US citizens.

And Trump doesn't care.

StupidiNews!

• The US Secret Service is investigating suspicious letters sent to the White House and Pentagon containing what appears to be ricin. 
• The former Chicago police officer who shot unarmed black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014 took the stand at his murder trial Tuesday, saying he had no choice but to open fire.
• Donald Trump claimed at a campaign rally in Mississippi last night that he told Saudi King Salman that "he wouldn't last two weeks" without support of the US military. 
• New York state tax authorities are opening an investigation into Donald Trump's finances based on yesterday's NY Times investigation into Trump's alleged history of tax fraud.
• The 2018 Nobel prize in physics has gone to an international team that researched laser beam "optical tweezers" technology, Canada's Donna Strickland is the first woman to share the prize in 55 years.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

The New York Times today published a massive investigation of Donald Trump's finances and straight up accuses the man in the White House of obtaining the seed of his fortune through decades of fraud.

President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

The president declined repeated requests over several weeks to comment for this article. But a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Monday, one day after The Times sent a detailed description of its findings. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Mr. Harder said. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”

Mr. Harder sought to distance Mr. Trump from the tax strategies used by his family, saying the president had delegated those tasks to relatives and tax professionals. “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters,” he said. “The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”

The president’s brother, Robert Trump, issued a statement on behalf of the Trump family:

“Our dear father, Fred C. Trump, passed away in June 1999. Our beloved mother, Mary Anne Trump, passed away in August 2000. All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid. Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004. Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago, and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls.”

The Times’s findings raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents. According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.

The findings are based on interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire. They include documents culled from public sources — mortgages and deeds, probate records, financial disclosure reports, regulatory records and civil court files.

The investigation also draws on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks. Most notably, the documents include more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts. While the records do not include the president’s personal tax returns and reveal little about his recent business dealings at home and abroad, dozens of corporate, partnership and trust tax returns offer the first public accounting of the income he received for decades from various family enterprises.

What emerges from this body of evidence is a financial biography of the 45th president fundamentally at odds with the story Mr. Trump has sold in his books, his TV shows and his political life. In Mr. Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free of his father’s “tiny” outer-borough operation and parlayed a single $1 million loan from his father (“I had to pay him back with interest!”) into a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos, airlines and golf courses the world over. In Mr. Trump’s version, it was always his guts and gumption that overcame setbacks. Fred Trump was simply a cheerleader.

“I built what I built myself,” Mr. Trump has said, a narrative that was long amplified by often-credulous coverage from news organizations, including The Times.

Certainly a handful of journalists and biographers, notably Wayne Barrett, Gwenda Blair, David Cay Johnston and Timothy L. O’Brien, have challenged this story, especially the claim of being worth $10 billion. They described how Mr. Trump piggybacked off his father’s banking connections to gain a foothold in Manhattan real estate. They poked holes in his go-to talking point about the $1 million loan, citing evidence that he actually got $14 million. They told how Fred Trump once helped his son make a bond payment on an Atlantic City casino by buying $3.5 million in casino chips.

But The Times’s investigation of the Trump family’s finances is unprecedented in scope and precision, offering the first comprehensive look at the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Donald J. Trump a gilded life. The reporting makes clear that in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth.

Donald Trump's money is dirty as hell and always has been, and this is before you factor in the Russian money laundering, crooked real estate deals, mobbed-up casinos and payouts to porn stars.  This one is going to be a field day, and remember:

Whatever the NYT knows, Robert Mueller knows more.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

L'Affair Kavanaugh continues to rage across the political landscape right now, but let's not forget why Trump needs Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court ASAP: as the deciding vote to shield Trump from the consequences of the Mueller probe.

As former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen continues to cooperate with the Mueller probe as part of his August plea deal, details are starting to leak out about Donald Trump's personal involvement in the efforts to obstruct justice through the hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump, and the subsequent cover-up of that arrangement. 

Now we find out today from the Wall Street Journal that Trump not only knew about the hush money and the cover-up, but  that Trump personally directed Cohen and his son Eric Trump to handle the legal action against Daniels.

President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say.

In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms. Clifford was considering giving a media interview about her alleged relationship with Mr. Trump, despite having signed an October 2016 nondisclosure agreement.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen to coordinate the legal response with Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, and another outside lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in other matters, the people said. Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother in Mr. Trump’s absence, then tasked a Trump Organization staff attorney in California with signing off on the arbitration paperwork, these people said.

Direct involvement of the president and his son in the effort to silence Ms. Clifford hasn’t previously been reported. The accounts of that effort recently provided to The Wall Street Journal suggest that the president’s ties to his company continued into this year and contradict public statements made at the time by the Trump Organization, the White House and Mr. Cohen.

The White House referred a request for comment to the president’s outside counsel. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, declined to comment. A person close to the situation said Eric Trump had acted as the president’s son and not in his role as a company executive. The Trump Organization declined to comment. Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.

In March, the Trump Organization denied any role in the arbitration, saying its lawyer assisted in her “individual capacity.” At the same time, the White House issued blanket denials when asked about a hush payment to Ms. Clifford and directed questions to Mr. Cohen, who had called the deal a private transaction between himself and the former adult-film star. Mr. Trump has denied any sexual encounter with Ms. Clifford.

Trump not only lied about Daniels, he personally directed his son and the Trump Organization to handle the dirty work.

And Mueller knows all about it.

Supreme Misgivings, Con't

This may all be over now: Trump regime Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury in his Senate testimony last week if this NBC News story is true, and if so, he's fried like an egg on a sidewalk in Phoenix in July.

In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.

Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.

The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.

In now-public transcripts from an interview with Republican Judiciary Committee staff on September 25, two days after the Ramirez allegations were reported in the New Yorker, Kavanaugh claimed that it was Ramirez who was “calling around to classmates trying to see if they remembered it,” adding that it “strikes me as, you know, what is going on here? When someone is calling around to try to refresh other people? Is that what’s going on? What’s going on with that? That doesn’t sound — that doesn’t sound — good to me. It doesn’t sound fair. It doesn’t sound proper. It sounds like an orchestrated hit to take me out.”

The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI.

This is bad enough, but if these texts are true, they are direct evidence of perjury.  And he may have done so multiple times.  First, in closed-door testimony before the Senate Judiciary on September 25:

Berchem's texts with Yarasavage shed light on Kavanaugh’s personal contact with friends, including that he obtained a copy of a photograph of a small group of friends from Yale at a 1997 wedding in order to show himself smiling alongside Ramirez 10 years after they graduated. Both were in the wedding party: Kavanaugh was a groomsman and Ramirez a bridesmaid at the wedding.

On Sept, 22nd, Yarasavage texted Berchem that she had shared the photo with “Brett’s team.”

But when Kavanaugh was asked about the wedding during a committee interview on Sept. 25th, he said he was “probably” at a wedding with Ramirez. Asked if he interacted with her at the wedding, Kavanaugh replied, “I am sure I saw her because it wasn’t a huge wedding,” but added that he “doesn’t have a specific recollection.” Lying to Congress is a felony whether testimony is taken under oath or not. 

Second, he lied in the public hearing last week under oath.

Further, the texts show Kavanaugh may need to be questioned about how far back he anticipated that Ramirez would air allegations against him. Berchem says in her memo that Kavanaugh “and/or” his friends “may have initiated an anticipatory narrative” as early as July to “conceal or discredit” Ramirez.

Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that the first time he heard of Ramirez’s allegation was in the Sept. 23 article in The New Yorker.

Kavanaugh was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, when he first heard of Ramirez’s allegations. Kavanaugh answered: “In the New Yorker story.”

Kavanaugh was discussing the allegations of Deborah Ramirez with mutual acquaintances before the New Yorker article based on her allegations was published. 

We now find out that these discussions may have happened as early as July, when Kavanaugh was first nominated.  Which means they knew the allegations were coming, "they" in this case being Kavnaugh's team, the Trump White House, and almost certainly Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley.  This is a whole other nasty mess that if true, merits a far-reaching investigation of its own because there should have been no reason to nominate Kavanaugh if they knew these allegations were coming...unless the fix was already in.

That's yet another fight for another day.

But when Kavanaugh answered Sen. Hatch's question about the first time hearing of the allegations being that New Yorker story, he lied under oath.  That's perjury.  That's ballgame.

Period.

Game over.

He's done.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Rosa is headed for landfall this morning on Baja California and the US Southwest with millions already under flood watches for Tuesday.
• Las Vegas remembered the victims Monday on the one-year anniversary of the Mandalay Bay mass shooting that killed 58.
• Former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro, the country's first female president, is in intensive care after suffering an apparent stroke on Monday.
• General Electric has lost $500 billion of its $600 billion market value over the last 18 years as the struggling company unexpectedly replaced CEO John Flannery after 13 months.
• Google is getting into the PC game streaming business to Chrome browsers with a major test of the latest Assassin's Creed title, Odyssey starting this weekend.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

It seems there just might be a limit to how much obvious obstruction that Senate Republicans are willing to deal with from Trump, even when the subject is getting Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court as quickly as possible.

The White House has authorized the F.B.I. to expand its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week, two people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The new directive came in the past 24 hours after a backlash from Democrats, who criticized the White House for limiting the scope of the bureau’s investigation into President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. The F.B.I. has already interviewed the four witnesses its agents were originally asked to talk to, the people said.

Mr. Trump said on Monday that he favored a “comprehensive” F.B.I. investigation and had no problem if the bureau wanted to question Judge Kavanaugh or even a third accuser who was left off the initial witness list if she seemed credible. His only concerns he said, were that the investigation be wrapped up quickly and that it take direction from the Senate Republicans who will determine whether Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed.

“The F.B.I. should interview anybody that they want within reason, but you have to say within reason,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden after an event celebrating a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico. “But they should also be guided, and I’m being guided, by what the senators are looking for.”

But let's be clear here:  Mitch McConnell doesn't care about the investigation at all, and will ram Kavanaugh's nomination through a full vote regardless.  The fix is still very much in.

Senate Republican leaders, however, made clear that they planned to move forward with the confirmation without waiting for the results of the investigation. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said the Senate would take a procedural vote on Friday so it could move quickly to final confirmation once the inquiry was over.

Chastising Democrats on the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell said that he would “bet almost anything” that they would be unsatisfied with the scope of the investigation regardless of how far it went. Reading through a selected summary of Democrats’ comments about the matter, he said, “Do these actions suggest this has ever been about finding the truth?”

So the Senate will vote on cloture Friday, and then anytime after that McConnell can hold the final confirmation vote.  It's clear he will do so as soon as he possibly can.

But it's also clear that, as I said before, he doesn't have the votes yet.  The White House still isn't considering pulling Kavnaugh, they can't at this juncture.  If they do, it all comes crashing down and they know it.  But they still don't know if they can get to 50 for a final vote.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said that the White House counsel should make public what he has told the F.B.I. and emphasize that it was not “the partisan Republican Senate staff that is directing this investigation.” In an interview, Mr. Schumer added, “You can do a full investigation in the seven-day requirement, and that’s what senators on both sides of the aisle expect.”

The revised White House instruction amounted to a risky bet that the F.B.I. will not find anything new in the next four days that could change the public view of the allegations. Republicans have resisted an open-ended investigation that could head in unpredictable directions. But the limited time frame could minimize the danger even as it increases the likelihood that F.B.I. interviews do not resolve the conflicting accounts.

There's also the problem that the Republican plan to claim an anti-liberal backlash to propel Kavanaugh and the GOP to victory and then have it magically materialize isn't actually working.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court convened today with only eight members.  This was supposed to be a done deal by now, an easy slam dunk like Gorsuch.  This is why Republicans stuck with Trump until this point.  With Kavanaugh confirmed, Trump would have served his usefulness and a lasting, generational conservative majority on SCOTUS could undo decades, if not centuries of classic liberalism.

But Kavnaugh's stories are coming apart.  The FBI might not find anything.  The press sure as hell is help them with the hunting.

In the days leading up to a public allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to a college classmate, the judge and his team were communicating behind the scenes with friends to refute the claim, according to text messages obtained by NBC News.

Kerry Berchem, who was at Yale with both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Deborah Ramirez, has tried to get those messages to the FBI for its newly reopened investigation into the matter but says she has yet to be contacted by the bureau.

The texts between Berchem and Karen Yarasavage, both friends of Kavanaugh, suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about Ramirez’s story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public. In one message, Yarasavage said Kavanaugh asked her to go on the record in his defense. Two other messages show communication between Kavanaugh's team and former classmates in advance of the story.

The texts also demonstrate that Kavanaugh and Ramirez were more socially connected than previously understood and that Ramirez was uncomfortable around Kavanaugh when they saw each other at a wedding 10 years after they graduated. Berchem's efforts also show that some potential witnesses have been unable to get important information to the FBI.

And in the end, there's one thing I do know: Mitch doesn't have the votes yet.

As the FBI rushes to finish an investigation into sexual abuse allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is concentrating all his efforts on the "Gang of Three."

McConnell’s focus right now is entirely on the triumvirate of GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona. McConnell needs two out of the three to back Kavanaugh in order for the nomination to succeed, and he is walking a fine line in addressing their concerns while continuing to press toward a final Senate vote.

McConnell has subtly tweaked his language on the Kavanaugh nomination. He’s no longer vowing to “plow right through” and confirm Kavanaugh, as he was just last week, crafting his message instead to appeal to the three Republicans who remain on the fence.

The Kentucky Republican is currently planning a move to end debate on the nomination by mid-week, forcing a critical procedural vote as early as Friday, which would set up a final vote on Kavanaugh by Sunday. But that timetable means the FBI investigation must be complete by Wednesday, and that’s where the situation become dicey for McConnell.

If the FBI doesn’t meet that Wednesday deadline, McConnell and Senate GOP leaders are likely to wait until the FBI report arrives before moving to end debate and starting the countdown clock on Kavanaugh, if only to avoid alienating the Collins-Murkowski-Flake group, according to GOP senators. That could delay the confirmation since Democrats are likely to use their procedural leverage to string out any Kavanaugh vote as long as they can.

He's probably going to get Flake.  But he'd need either Collins or Murkowski too, and I don't know if he can get them at this point.  Without them, even with Flake, he's at 49.

Again, betting on the courage of Republicans to stand up to Mitch has been a sucker's bet so far.  But we don't have much more of a choice...and that's if Dems like Heitkamp and Manchin don't fold in the end too.

Supreme Misgivings, Con't

It's becoming clear at this point that the FBI investigation into the sexual assault allegations surrounding Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is yet another cover-up by a regime that will do anything to get him confirmed as the fifth vote to exonerate Trump from the many traps of his own creation.

The White House appears to be playing all kinds of crafty rhetorical games to obscure the answer to a simple question: Has it deliberately placed limits on the scope of the FBI’s renewed background check into allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, or not?

As of this morning, there are conflicting reports about who will now be interviewed by the FBI. The New York Times reportsthat the White House directed the FBI to interview only four people: Mark Judge, who is alleged by Christine Blasey Ford to have acted as Kavanaugh’s accomplice in the sexual assault; P.J. Smyth and Leland Keyser, who Ford claims were also in the house; and Deborah Ramirez, who has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at Yale.

Meanwhile, The Post reports that Kavanaugh will also be interviewed, but that a third accuser — Julie Swetnick — will not be. It’s also not clear whether Ford herself will be contacted — she has not yet been, according to her lawyer.

You’ll be startled to hear that instead of providing clarity, White House officials have sowed further confusion. Press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News that the White House is “not micromanaging this process.” Similarly, counselor Kellyanne Conway told CNN that, while the investigation will be “limited in scope,” the White House is not setting those limits, which will be “up to the FBI” to set. Conway pointed to President Trump’s weekend tweet saying the FBI should “interview whoever they deem appropriate,” and insisted (somehow without dissolving into giggles at her own cynicism) that Trump respects the FBI’s “independence.”

Yet despite that, Sanders and Conway both also said terms arebeing dictated — by Republican Senators. But the White House has not released the precise directive it gave to the FBI, so we cannot know whether the White House is actively imposing those same limits on those Senators’ behalf. CNN reports that the White House and GOP Senators together developed those limits with the aim of making them “as narrow as possible.”

Clear now? Of course it isn’t. Because that’s exactly how the White House and Republican Senators want it.

And it's because the "investigation", as it is, really exists so that the FBI can find a way to completely discredit Kavanaugh's accusers and more importantly, stall for time to work on wavering Senate Republicans to get to 50 votes.

The uncertainty surrounding the nomination has Republicans and Democrats alike headed into the week raising the stakes of its outcome to a make-or-break moment for their chances of victory in the midterm elections.

“There’s no walking this thing back,” Steve Bannon, the former chief White House strategist, said in an interview Sunday night. “You get Kavanaugh, you’re going to get turnout. You get turnout, you’re going to get victory. This is march or die.”

POLITICO spoke to five people inside and outside the White House involved with the Kavanaugh nomination process.

Democratic activists, meanwhile, reminded voters over the weekend to keep the pressure on three Republican senators — Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — who they noted had so far agreed only to a delay but could still vote to confirm Kavanaugh.

The aggressive pro-Kavanaugh push, however, comes as White House officials and a separate, external war room that has been formed around Kavanaugh — including Bill Burck, a former counsel to President George W. Bush, as well as Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society — are fighting what some of them conceded to be an uphill battle in which time is not on their side.

“Seven days is an eternity,” said a Kavanaugh ally, noting a growing concern that phony allegations might surface. “No good things can happen to Kavanaugh in that time except for calling the vote.”

Another person involved in the nomination fight put the odds of Kavanaugh’s being confirmed as low as 50 percent. But, this person said, the White House could not afford to set a standard that would allow unsubstantiated allegations against a nominee to knock that person out of the running to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Democrats have set off their own alarms about the process. Democratic lawmakers have complained that the White House will seek to narrow the scope of the FBI investigation, and complained about the rushed time frame. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the White House and the FBI on Sunday asking that the directive for the inquiry be released so that its breadth could be understood.

I still believe Senate Republicans will find a way to rush this through and get the vote done as they did with now-Justice Neil Gorsuch last year.  It would take at minimum not one but two Republicans in the Senate to have the courage to say no, and they will be absolutely crucified by angry and violent Trump voters, enraged corporate donors, furious culture-war groups, the right-wing smear machine, and an increasingly unstable leader in the Oval Office.

Dr. Ford and the other women who have come forward may have that kind of courage, but there's nothing to make me think any single Republican currently in the Senate does.  That includes the retiring Jeff Flake, who, when it became clear that Mitch McConnell didn't have 50 votes, fell on his sword to buy his master another week.

That Flake somehow didn't already have this plan worked out as a contingency and that Mitch McConnell would leave anything involving this nomination to chance is ludicrous. Flake in fact gave up the game and admitted last night on CBS's 60 Minutes that if he was running for re-election, he never would have called for the FBI investigation.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on Sunday admitted his impending retirement from Congress played a role in his decision to call for an FBI investigation into the allegations of sexual assault levied against Brett Kavanaugh in recent weeks during a dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Friday.

“No, not a chance,” Flake told “60 Minutes” on Sunday when asked if he would’ve made the same decision had he been seeking reelection. “There’s no value to reaching across the aisle, there’s not currency for that anymore, there’s no incentive.”

Worst-case scenario is that McConnell was truly caught flatfooted by Dr. Ford coming forward and either got bad information from the Trump White House, or didn't get information at all that Kavanaugh had such a hideous background.  He may have made an historic miscalculation that allowed him to get outmaneuvered by Feinstein and Schumer, or more likely, badly underestimated the rage and engagement of women voters.

Now McConnell has to hope that Trump's media allies can create a backlash to the backlash by muddying the waters enough so that Senate Republicans have cover to vote to confirm.  We already saw that over the weekend with Sen. Lindsey Graham leading the way by both saying he wants the FBI to investigate Senate Democrats who brought Dr. Ford's accusations forward and that he will basically vote to confirm Kavanaugh unless there's a "bombshell" in the FBI investigation.

At this point the plan is to stoke enough disengaged Trump voters into outrage to make Senate Republicans confirm Kavanaugh, and to stick around and vote in November too. Whether it will work remains to be seen, but so far betting against how low McConnell is willing to go to win has not paid off in the last four years, with the near singular exception of the late John McCain scuttling the Senate health care rollback.

Still, there's one certainty right now: if McConnell had the 50 votes, he would have confirmed Kavanaugh already.  He doesn't right now. It's a slim hope, but it's there.  And Americans have shifted from a plurality saying it's too soon to know if Kavanaugh should be confirmed to believing that he should not.

Americans are divided and somewhat more opposed to Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination than in favor of it after hearing Thursday from both Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault, Christine Blasey Ford, but strong partisanship increasingly defines the public's views. Republicans have grown more in favor of his confirmation compared to last week, and nearly half say they'd be angry if Kavanaugh isn't eventually confirmed. Democrats are increasingly opposed after the hearings, with nearly half expressing anger at the idea of Kavanaugh eventually being seated on the court.

The net shift in sentiment over the week has been toward opposition. Today 37 percent of Americans do not think the Senate should confirm (up from 30 percent opposed last week) and 35 percent think the Senate should confirm (up from 32 percent last week) as partisan sentiments have hardened. Democratic opposition has gone from 60 percent to 68 percent, and Republican support has gone from 69 percent to 75 percent. Independents are more closely divided and slightly more in favor of confirmation than opposed. 

Last week's testimony did change some minds, at least.  And so far that's benefiting the Democrats.  We'll see what unfolds.

Breathe Out, Breathe In (But Not Too Much)

Hot on the heels of last week's Trump regime edict that fighting climate change doesn't matter because there's nothing we can do anyway and we're all going to die comes this week's smash hit of since we're all going to die anyway, why bother having clean air?

The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.

The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the Trump administration to weaken it and several other pollution rules, while setting the stage for a possible full repeal of the rule.

Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who is now the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected in the coming days to send the proposal to the White House for approval.

The move is the latest, and one of the most significant, in the Trump administration’s steady march of rollbacks of Obama-era health and environmental regulations on polluting industries, particularly coal. The weakening of the mercury rule — which the E.P.A. considers the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry — would represent a major victory for the coal industry. Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses. 

The details of the rollback about to be proposed would also represent a victory for Mr. Wheeler’s former boss, Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Mr. Murray, who was a major donor to President Trump’s inauguration fund, personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Mr. Trump took office, in a written “wish list” he handed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

The proposal would also hand a victory to the former clients of William Wehrum, the E.P.A.’s top clean air official and the chief author of the plan. Mr. Wehrum worked for years as a lawyer for companies that run coal-fired power plants, and that have long sought such a change.

A spokesman for the E.P.A. did not respond to a request for comment.

Bonus: if Trump's SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, on top of all the other damage he would do to reproductive rights, civil rights, and labor rights, you can kiss the Clean Air Act goodbye, too.

The proposal also highlights a key environmental opinion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination hearings have gripped the nation in recent days.

The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. However, Judge Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.

Should the legal battle over the proposed regulatory rollback go before the Supreme Court, some observers expect that Judge Kavanaugh, if elevated to a seat on the high court, would side with the coal industry.

Because of course he would.  Like the Trump regime, Kavanaugh refuses to count the secondary tens of billions in health benefits from reducing carbon and nitrogen oxide that the mercury reduction also grants, and will say that it's bankrupting the energy industry, costing them about $9 billion a year.  Of course, when this rule disappears, I sure bet you won't see any cuts in electric rates either.

But energy company profits will be up.  And so will health issues related to power plant emissions on the already overtaxed American health care system.  Doesn't matter to America though, because at least we didn't elect that Hillary bitch, right?

StupidiNews!

• California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the state's net neutrality bill into law,but the Trump regime has immediately sued to keep the measure from taking effect.
• The death toll in last Friday's magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Indonesia has reached at least 832 as rescue personnel struggle to reach villages cut off by landslides and collapsed roads.
• Okinawa's new governor, Denny Tamaki, the son of a US Marine, won easily on a platform of getting rid of long-controversial US military bases on the Japanese island.
• The US and Canada have reached a preliminary NAFTA deal that could be announced as early as Monday as last night's midnight deadline loomed.
• Half of EU electricity will come from green energy by 2027 according to the International Energy Agency, with nearly a quarter from wind power alone.

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

A reminder that even with all the new Trump outrage, the old Trump outrages still exist, still have not been resolved, and are still enabled by Republicans in Congress.  To whit: America still keeps kids in detention camps in the goddamn desert.

In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.

Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.

But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.

These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.

The average length of time that migrant children spend in custody has nearly doubled over the same period, from 34 days to 59, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees their care.

To deal with the surging shelter populations, which have hovered near 90 percent of capacity since May, a mass reshuffling is underway and shows no signs of slowing. Hundreds of children are being shipped from shelters to West Texas each week, totaling more than 1,600 so far.

Not only does our elected government keep kids in camps in the desert, it takes kids living in shelters and foster homes already and puts them in camps anyway.

We will never have oversight of this as long as Republicans remain in control of this government. We will keep putting kids in camps until the voters punish the people in charge enough so that this stops.

Do we understand?

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

House Republicans are now fully drowning with five weeks to go before midterms, and we've now reached the point where vulnerable Republicans are being cut loose to drown in districts where the GOP no longer wants to waste money on seats they no longer feel they can save.  This week, Paul Ryan cut the throats of Colorado GOP Rep Mike Coffman and Michigan GOP Rep. Mike Bishop and is leaving them to bleed out on the beach as the blue wave comes to wash them away.

Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House GOP leadership, is cutting off support for two Republican incumbents, Michigan Rep. Mike Bishop and Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, according to a person familiar with the group's plans.

The super PAC will cancel its planned TV advertising for both members, a move that comes as the party refocuses its funds on races that leaders feel confident they can win — and away from those it sees as out of reach. The organization had $1 million in TV advertising reserved for Coffman and $2.1 million for Bishop, dollars that will now be redistributed elsewhere.
Party officials say both incumbents are trailing Democratic challengers ahead of the midterm elections, and both are expected to be significantly outspent during the final weeks of their campaigns.

“CLF will continue to run strong field operations in these districts and will continue to conduct polling and evaluate races across the country as we do everything we can to protect the Republican majority,” said Courtney Alexander, a spokeswoman for the group.

There is not complete agreement in the party, however, about Coffman’s prospects. Following the super PAC’s announcement, the National Republican Congressional Committee said it would add $600,000 to its TV reservation in the district, according to a person familiar.

Republicans are waging an uphill battle to protect their 23-seat House majority. In recent weeks they have begun a painful round of political triage, with party officials racing to determine which seats can still be saved. Privately, GOP strategists concede that as many as a dozen of the party’s seats are no longer winnable — half of the margin Democrats need to take back the House.

Among the seats that the party feels increasingly pessimistic about are those held by Minnesota Reps. Erik Paulsen and Jason Lewis, Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, and Iowa Rep. Rod Blum.

Party officials say additional incumbents will likely need to be cut off in the weeks to come.

Even if you don't believe the polling, news like this always makes the situation worse.  It's one thing to stop ads in a district where you're up by 15 points in order to refocus some national money down the line to help somebody in a tighter race.  It's entirely something else to stop ads when you're down by that much, or worse, when you're still relatively close.

Coffman is a dead man walking, he's down big and Cook Political Report has his district rated as Likely Dem at this point as Dem challenger Jason Crow has pulled substantially ahead.  But Bishop is still a Toss-Up in his race against Democrat and Iraq War veteran Elissa Slotkin, and pulling the plug on him means things are far, far worse than the GOP is letting on right now.

And like I said, Coffman and Bishop are far from the only House Republicans being cut off at the knees.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has canceled more than $1 million in planned advertising aimed at helping Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) in the coming weeks.

The decision to cut advertising, described to The Hill by a source familiar with the NRCC's strategic thinking, is a hint that Republicans are pessimistic about Yoder's chances of holding his Kansas City-area district.

Yoder has had significant help from outside groups already. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the largest super PAC backing Republican candidates, has spent about $1.8 million on television advertisements on his behalf. The group still has $750,000 booked in the Kansas City media market for the election's final four weeks.

But the NRCC, which faces a huge battlefield in a political environment in which Democrats have an edge, will use its money elsewhere. The committee was slated to spend $1.2 million on ads beginning Oct. 9.

Yoder has represented the district since winning election in 2010, when he replaced Democrat Dennis Moore. Yoder has never faced a particularly stiff challenge from a Democrat, though he only took 51 percent of the vote in 2016.

This year, he faces Sharice Davids (D), an attorney and first-time candidate who worked as a White House fellow in the Obama administration. She would be the first Native American woman to serve in Congress if she wins.

Yoder too is firmly in the Cook Toss-Up category.  This should be a winnable race for them and they've already put close to two million on keeping his seat.  It's not going to be winnable though.  Republicans are giving up. 

Again though, the blue wave only happens if voters show up.  If you live in any of these districts of have family who does, get engaged and let's finish these guys off.

Sunday Long Read: Some Real Narcotraficante Stuff

In May 2013, in a wealthy Dallas exurb of Southlake, Juan Guererro Chapo was murdered in a drive-by ambush in front of his wife.  He was a former lawyer for Mexico's infamous Gulf Cartel, a man who wanted out of that hell and cut a deal with the US government to get to safety.  He found that there was no such thing as "safe" from Los Zetas.

The brazenness of the crime shocked and titillated the residents of Southlake. There hadn’t been a murder in town in more than a decade—and nothing this dramatic had happened since Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow killed two state troopers nearby, in the thirties. “This sort of thing just doesn’t happen in a place like Southlake,” a Department of Justice official said.

Guerrero’s death was among the lead stories on every local news affiliate for three nights in a row. Fox 4 interviewed one woman who, marveling at the scope of the crime scene, explained that she had to leave her car in a parking lot as investigators examined the area. Another woman, standing by the town’s red brick courthouse, concluded, “It’s a very unsafe situation. Very unstable, and I hope they’re caught very soon.”

The afternoon after the shooting, Southlake police chief Steve Mylett told reporters what many had already concluded on their own: “Obviously, this is a well-orchestrated and deliberate act involving a specific target.” He said the crime appeared to be the work of “an organization that is trained to do this kind of activity.”

Mylett immediately called in help from the FBI and DEA, offering the agencies office space in the local police station, less than half a mile from where Guerrero had been shot. Days later the team was expanded to include representatives from the Texas Rangers, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. All told, there were dozens of officers and agents and analysts assisting the case. But it was largely headed by two men.

The lead investigator, Michael Elsey, is a 25-plus-year veteran FBI agent. He has a deep voice, an affinity for fine cigars, and a remarkable ability to evade media attention. One colleague described him as “the most focused person I’ve ever seen.” Another said, “I would never want to be on Mike’s bad side.”

The lead prosecutor, who worked closely with investigators from the start, was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas named Josh Burgess. Burgess is tall and lean, with a boyish face, and he has a far different reputation from Elsey. He’s funnier, more garrulous, more likely to grab a beer with his co-workers at the end of the week. At the time, he taught a weekly Sunday school class for young married couples at his church in Fort Worth. A former JAG officer in the Air Force who once deployed for six months to serve as the only attorney on a base in Kyrgyzstan, Burgess had spent most of his career at the U.S. attorney’s office prosecuting cases involving organized crime, including several that employed wiretaps and undercover agents. One case involved a yearlong undercover investigation of the Bandidos Motorcycle Club; another was a two-year case that led to more than sixty indictments.

Around 9 p.m. the night of the murder, Burgess was at home, reading a book in a recliner, when he was interrupted by a phone call. His counterpart at the U.S. attorney’s office in South Texas informed him that the man murdered in Southlake, whose face was already splashed across every local news channel, had been a high-level cooperator for the U.S. government. Burgess remembers thinking it wouldn’t take long for the press to break the news he’d just heard, bringing even more attention to the shooting. (Of the six DOJ officials dedicated to the case full-time, Burgess is the only one able to speak on the record about it.)

Little is publicly known about Guerrero’s upbringing and life in Mexico, but investigators quickly uncovered his deep ties to one of the most violent criminal organizations in the world. Guerrero, it turns out, was the longtime personal attorney for Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, the former leader of the Gulf Cartel and one of the founders of its paramilitary enforcement arm, Los Zetas. Cárdenas, whose nickname was El Mata Amigos (“the Friend Killer”), was arrested after a shoot-out with the Mexican military in 2003. He was then extradited to the U.S. in 2007 for drug trafficking, money laundering, and the attempted murder of U.S. agents. The cartel infighting that followed his arrest triggered a famously bloody power struggle that gripped Northern Mexico for a decade. Thousands of people, many of them innocent bystanders, died in the ensuing mayhem.

Two years after Cárdenas’s extradition, he pleaded guilty in federal court. In exchange for a 25-year sentence—and a chance to one day walk out of prison—Cárdenas agreed to turn over $50 million in cash, real estate, and aircraft to the U.S. government. Guerrero was tasked with helping the American agencies collect the assets, an ordeal that included moving several carloads of cash north across the border. Guerrero’s involvement wasn’t made public, but he was nonetheless a potential target; leaders of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel were incensed about the Cárdenas plea deal.

And so, with the knowledge of the U.S. government, Guerrero and his family moved from Monterrey to North Texas. There, he continued cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security. The arrangement was kept so quiet that even high-ranking officials in the local U.S. attorney’s office didn’t know about it until after the murder.

In Texas, Guerrero lived a quiet but complicated life. His autopsy revealed that he had cocaine in his system at the time of his death. He kept a low profile online. His LinkedIn account claimed that he owned a working cattle ranch in the Mexican state of Guanajuato with “a wide range of livestock and farm animals,” including “some of Mexico’s strongest bulls.” It also described, in the third person, his affinity for “the regional flavors of the restaurants in his hometown” and his allegiance to Club León, a second-tier Mexican professional soccer team. A WordPress blog under his name featured three short posts in June 2011 about the Mexican cattle industry. His name was also listed in the paperwork of a few businesses in South Texas, including a gaming corporation and a salvage and recycling company.

The only public photo of him prior to the murder was a mug shot taken in Miami in 2011, in which his dark eyes are glazed and bloodshot, his cheeks bloated and pockmarked. According to a local news report, at around 3 a.m. local officers were dispatched to the posh Fontainebleau hotel, where Guerrero was accused of slapping the 29-year-old woman with whom he was having an affair.

In the spring of 2011, Guerrero was living with Julia and their three kids in Grapevine, just to the east of Southlake, when he got an urgent call from his handler at the Department of Homeland Security. Julia recalled her husband seeming “afraid” and “surprised” after the conversation. “They knew where he lived,” she said. “And they wanted to kill him.”

The family never again returned to the house in Grapevine. They traveled to South Florida, where his brother lived, for spring break, and when they got back to Grapevine, Guerrero told his wife to rent an apartment in her sister’s name and to stop using her cellphone to call Mexico. Soon after, they moved into the house in Southlake. It was purchased in cash, and Guerrero’s name didn’t appear anywhere in the county records.

Julia remembered her husband receiving another distressing call in February 2013, and he fled once again—this time moving from hotel to hotel, traveling to Las Vegas with his brother—but he resumed living with the family again in May. He continued to be cautious, though, she said. He didn’t leave the house often, except to get frozen yogurt.

Even by Mexican cartel true crime standards, this is a good read, and a good reminder of the true cost of the decades-long War on Drugs in America.  We lost it long ago, we just have to decide how the story ends.