Yeah, he's perfectly innocent and that was a "perfect call"...
Quote: President Trump said Thursday he may end the practice of having national security and foreign service staff listen in on his calls with foreign leaders after a July call with the president of Ukraine triggered his impeachment in the House....
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... stone-case
Trump supporters are all over the place now, trying to pull the wool over our eyes, saying yeah, Trump shouldn't tweet, but he had no influence over Barr changing the sentencing recommendation. ("If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.... it's a unicorn!"). I had to turn off NPR in the car this morning, when one of these guys then started going on about how the Mueller report just revealed "process crimes." "Process crimes" has become one of those buzzwords they use to imply that Trump obstructing justice and possibly collaborating with Russian hackers was no big deal, and you immediately know the person is a Trump toady.
Quote: President Trump on Wednesday celebrated Attorney General William Barr for “taking charge” of the case against Roger Stone, questioning whether the charges should have been brought against his longtime associate and friend in the first place....
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress
When all four of the prosecuting lawyers quit the case they won, and one quits the DOJ (another seems to have severed ties in some way, too, though they're still working for another office), there should be major alarm bells going off everywhere. Something seriously stinks.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/1 ... ent-114684
Quote: President Donald Trump’s post-impeachment acquittal behavior is casting a chill in Washington, with Attorney General William Barr emerging as a key ally in the president’s quest for vengeance against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine investigations....
With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,” said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.... Ayer called the attorney general’s apparent intervention “really shocking,” because Barr “has now entered into the area of criminal sanction, which is the one area probably more than any other where it’s most important that the Justice Department’s conduct be above reproach and beyond suspicion.” ...
Barr’s evident intervention in matters of personal interest to the president, particularly as they relate to former campaign advisers once at the center of Mueller’s Russia probe, has now put the reputation of an entire institution at risk, DOJ veterans said. It sent an alarming signal to hundreds of line attorneys inside the department, who may now fear that any work touching on the president’s allies will be subject to political interference, they said. And it could undo decades of post-Watergate work to separate the president from the justice system, in ways that could damage DOJ’s credibility with federal judges and with the public as a whole....
...DOJ veterans and other legal experts who spoke to POLITICO unanimously agreed that Tuesday’s act of protest by the career prosecutors on the Stone case was unprecedented....
Ultimately, Stone’s fate will be left to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who Trump has attacked with unfounded accusations of political bias. ...
I saw, in passing, that CNN was reporting that other DOJ lawyers are also thinking of leaving now.
I was disturbed today to see this sentence in The Hill's article.
This is technically true, but it implies Trump was exonerated. What Mueller actually said was that he couldn't find enough evidence for a conspiracy, but that Trump and his associates actively hid things from the investigators and refused to talk. Mueller also said that he would have exonerated Trump if he could, but he can't.
Quote: Trump has consistently lashed out at Mueller’s investigation, which did not find evidence of a conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow...
So it seems Trump and Barr have succeeded in changing the narrative. Perhaps it's a good time to re-post an analysis.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ump-226664
Quote: For nearly a month, the American public has been under the impression, thanks to a four-page "summary" by Attorney General William Barr, that Robert Mueller could not decide whether President Donald Trump had obstructed justice because of “difficult questions of law and fact.” Barr suggested that the special counsel, after 22 months of investigation, simply couldn’t make up his mind and left it to his boss to decide.
Now that we have seen almost the entire report of more than 400 pages, we know Barr intentionally misled the American people about Mueller’s findings and his legal reasoning. As a former federal prosecutor, when I look at Mueller’s work, I don’t see a murky set of facts. I see a case meticulously laid out by a prosecutor who knew he was not allowed to bring it.
Mueller’s report detailed extraordinary efforts by Trump to abuse his power as president to undermine Mueller’s investigation. ... [but] Department of Justice policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president....
That is not the only time Barr deliberately misled the American people. His letter from March is full of half-truths and highly misleading statements. For example, Barr quoted the following passage from the report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Barr omitted the first part of that sentence, which read: “Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”...
Interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/p ... trump.html
There is more than one possible interpretation of this (the New York Times thinks it's an "extraordinary rebuke" of Trump), but color me skeptical. I think it's all for show. My guess is that Barr is facing some revolt in the DOJ. So far, his actions certainly suggest he's being influenced by Trump - from massaging the Mueller report's conclusions to opening multiple investigations on Trump's enemies - from McCabe and Comey to Biden's son - to refusing to accept the conclusions of one of his own investigators (Horowitz?) when they didn't say what Trump hoped. He even had that suspicious meeting with the owner of Fox news shortly before Shep Smith abruptly left.
Quote: “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody,” Mr. Barr said in an interview with ABC News. “And I said, whether it’s Congress, newspaper editorial board, or the president, I’m going to do what I think is right. I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
...Mr. Trump’s criticisms “make it impossible for me to do my job and to assure the courts and the prosecutors in the department that we’re doing our work with integrity,” Mr. Barr said.
He added, “It’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”
Though I wouldn't be at all surprised if Barr wanted Trump to stop tweeting and undercutting his defenders when they try to spin his words to something less damning. It would all be much simpler if it was done in private.
Will the Republicans, the former party of states' rights, be upset that Trump wants to dictate what New York state will do? I think it's unlikely.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... ce-meeting
“New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes,” sounds like a threat to me. "Or else" is definitely implied with the recent retaliation.
Quote: President Trump took a shot at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) brother shortly before their planned meeting at the White House, telling the governor not to bring “Fredo” in reference to his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo.
“I’m seeing Governor Cuomo today at The White House. He must understand that National Security far exceeds politics,” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon, about an hour before the two were scheduled to meet in the Oval Office.
“New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes,” Trump tweeted. “Build relationships, but don’t bring Fredo!” ...
Cuomo is meeting with Trump over the retaliation against New York for closing its drivers license records to the federal government. Trump/DHS now won't let New York residents apply for or renew Global Entry and other trusted traveler programs (I'm not sure whether it applies to Pre-check, but haven't heard that mentioned). Cuomo was going to propose that they allow access to the records only for those people applying for Global Entry, etc.
If Trump refuses, that signals to me that there is absolutely no justification for his action.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... its-i-file
Quote: New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Thursday denounced President Trump after he suggested that the state and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) need to stop filing lawsuits against him in order for its residents to be able to enroll in Global Entry and other Trusted Traveler Programs (TTPs).
"When you stop violating the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, we will stand down," James said on Twitter.
"[By the way], I file the lawsuits, not the Governor," she added....
Trump has clearly learned how to evade Congress's control over the budget. Will the Party of Trump members in Congress protest? (unlikely).
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/4830 ... -at-border
I laughed at "action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis." Trump creates humanitarian crises; he isn't concerned about them. And he certainly doesn't fix them.
Quote: President Trump on Thursday renewed a state of emergency he declared on the Southern border, which he has used to reprogram billions of dollars to building his border wall....
"The executive branch has taken steps to address the crisis, but further action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis and to control unlawful migration and the flow of narcotics and criminals across the southern border of the United States," he continued....
The notice comes just hours after reports surfaced that Trump was moving an additional $3.8 billion in defense funds toward building the wall. Those funds came from aircraft, ship-building and National Guard funds....
Previous transfers emptied accounts slated for military construction projects such as repairing barracks.
This is the guy who is no longer allowed to run a charity without supervision because he misled donors and used it as a personal piggy bank. And we're supposed to believe he cares about those who are less fortunate? Especially those brown-skinned folks he always rails against?
Definitely a new version of reality.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... mp/606496/
https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -criticism
Quote: John Kelly Finally Lets Loose on Trump
The former chief of staff explained, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings about Trump’s behavior regarding North Korea, immigration, and Ukraine.
Those unenforceable non-disclosure agreements Trump made everyone sign, maybe? Experts have already pointed out that those are not legal to demand from members of the federal government, though I expect they may intimidate some former employees who don't want to spend their time and money fighting Trump's pet lawyers.
Quote: Former national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday came to the defense of former chief of staff John Kelly after President Trump lashed out over a series of criticisms Kelly made during an appearance at a New Jersey university.
"John Kelly is an honorable man. John and I have disagreed at times, as is commonplace at senior government levels, but he has always served his country faithfully," Bolton tweeted. "Conservatives especially have a responsibility to reject baseless attacks upon him."
Bolton and Kelly overlapped during their time at the White House, and their relationship was not always cordial. ...But they have defended each other at points after they both came under attack from Trump....
Trump ripped Kelly earlier ...
"When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn’t do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head. Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him," Trump tweeted. "He came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut, which he actually has a military and legal obligation to do."...
Early in the Trump presidency, someone said that, in the end, it may come down to the decent people from both parties fighting a common cause. I don't like Bolton's political aims and methods, and I've said that many times. But it seems that, underneath, he has a sense of fair play and a line he won't cross, and I respect that in him.