Tag: White House

3 October 2019, 6:39 PM

Almost Literally Shooting Someone on 5th Avenue

Trump has doubled down on pressuring foreign government to investigate his political opponents, publicly urging China to investigate Hunter Biden, Joe’s kid.

Let me be clear, the complaint that Hunter Biden trades on his family name has validity, but this does not justify the President^* using the power of his office to coerce foreign nations to do opposition research:

President Trump, already facing impeachment for pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, publicly called on China on Thursday to examine former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as well, an extraordinary request for help from a foreign power that could benefit him in next year’s election.

“China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he left the White House to travel to Florida. His request came just moments after he discussed upcoming trade talks with China and said that “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

The president’s call for Chinese intervention means that Mr. Trump and his attorney general have now solicited assistance in discrediting the president’s political opponents from Ukraine, Australia, Italy and, according to one report, Britain. In speaking so publicly on Thursday, a defiant Mr. Trump pushed back against critics who have called such requests an abuse of power, essentially arguing that there was nothing wrong with seeking foreign help to fight corruption.

Clearly the sort of actions for which impeachment was originally conceived by the founders, but that still makes the chance of a conviction smaller than winning the lottery.

1 October 2019, 7:04 PM

The Cancer on the Presidency* Metastasizes

We already know that Trump tried to coerce the President of the Ukraine into digging dirt up on the Bidens, because of the now-public whistle-blower complaint filed by an intelligence operative.

It’s what led to the Democrats in the House officially opening an impeachment investigation.

What we have now learned that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in on the call, which makes the Secretary of State complicit, and that Attorney General William Barr was personally involved in an investigation to discredit the Mueller report to the point of his personally going to Rome to listen to tapes of a crucial witness, which is certainly inappropriate, and almost certainly conflicted and corrupt.

So pretty much everyone in his most senior cabinet members are implicated in the coverup, but wait, there is more!

It now appears that Trump also strong-armed Australia in his efforts to discredit the Mueller report.

The impeachment investigation should be broadened, because the level of crime here makes the Nixon and Reagan investigations look like an exercise in good governance.

^*It’s a quote from Nixon White House counsel John Dean. Seriously, know your history.

1 October 2019, 6:42 PM

This is Important

This lawsuit predates the impeachment explosion, but this lawsuit from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for an injunction preventing the destruction of Presidential call records is a big deal.

Absent an injunction, we can be sure that Donald Trump and his Evil Minions^™ will be shredding furiously.

Of particular concern is the DoJ’s arguments against this, in which they appear to say that they have the shredders and burn bags on deck:

A government watchdog group asked a federal judge on Tuesday to issue an emergency order requiring the White House to preserve records of all of President Donald Trump’s calls with foreign leaders.

At a court hearing later in the day, a Justice Department lawyer told the judge that she couldn’t immediately commit to assuring that the administration would preserve records of all of Trump’s conversations, as well as other records about how the administration had handled those documents. The judge gave the government until Wednesday afternoon to make a decision.

The case, which accuses the Trump administration of failing to meet its legal obligations to create — and properly save — records of Trump’s and other officials’ conversations with foreign leaders, was originally filed in May. But the plaintiffs are now arguing that the judge needs to take immediate action in light of recent events.

The lawsuit predates the recent flood of information about Trump’s communications with foreign officials, including a July call with the Ukrainian president — when Trump asked for help investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — which the White House sought to keep secret, a whistleblower complaint alleges. Recent reporting has also uncovered the Trump administration’s overtures to other countries to aid in an inquiry into the origins of the Mueller probe, including records of other calls with foreign leaders the White House has sought to restrict access to.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Justice Department lawyer Kathryn Wyer repeatedly pushed back when US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson asked why the administration couldn’t voluntarily give its assurance that it would maintain the “status quo” and not destroy any documents relevant to the case while the judge decided key legal issues, including whether the court has authority to hear the case at all.

Jackson, who sits in Washington, DC, has strongly and repeatedly suggested that the government should consider giving a voluntary assurance, as opposed to having her formally rule on the request filed by the challengers for an emergency order and issue a decision that she said one side “might not appreciate.”

Wyer told Jackson that the department had notified the plaintiffs that it advised administration officials of their obligation to preserve records, and she insisted there was no evidence of any risk that officials would destroy documents in the meantime. Jackson expressed puzzlement at Wyer’s resistance to go a step further and explicitly confirm that documents would remain intact. The government maintains that the assurances the plaintiffs asked for would involve giving up privileged legal advice.

“I’m not sure I understand that position at all,” Jackson said.

It’s pretty easy to understand.

Corrupt and shameless covers it all.

26 September 2019, 6:54 PM

Whistleblower Details Emerge

We now know that the person who filed the report about Trump’s shakedown of the Ukrainian President was CIA agent who was assigned to the White House.

Given that Christine Blasey Ford had to go into hiding with her family because of death threats, I am not particularly sanguine with the New York Times revealing so much information about them.

It is reasonable for the Times to get this information, but I think that publishing in a story that is basically a time line of events was not necessary, and will likely face threats and intimidation as a result.

The White House learned that a C.I.A. officer had lodged allegations against President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine even as the officer’s whistle-blower complaint was moving through a process meant to protect him against reprisals, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

The officer first shared information about potential abuse of power and a White House cover-up with the C.I.A.’s top lawyer through an anonymous process, some of the people said. She shared the officer’s concerns with White House and Justice Department officials, following policy. Around the same time, he also separately filed the whistle-blower complaint.

The revelations provide new insight about how the officer’s allegations moved through the bureaucracy of government. The Trump administration’s handling of the explosive accusations is certain to be scrutinized in the coming days and weeks, particularly by lawmakers weighing the impeachment of the president.

Lawyers for the whistle-blower refused to confirm that he worked for the C.I.A. and said that publishing information about him was dangerous.

“Any decision to report any perceived identifying information of the whistle-blower is deeply concerning and reckless, as it can place the individual in harm’s way,” said Andrew Bakaj, his lead counsel. “The whistle-blower has a right to anonymity.”

I believe that the Times published this (and other) information in this article because they believed that subjecting whoever this is to harassment was somehow a way of showing their “fair and balanced” bonafides.

There was no need to do this, because, as is stated in the article, “Multiple people had raised concerns about Mr. Trump’s call,” which should serve as an indicator of reliability.

The rest of the article is largely a time line, but it is a useful timeline.

17 September 2019, 7:07 PM

Of Course He’s Poisoning Us

The Trump administration is looking to eliminate California’s auto emissions waiver, which allows them to enforce stricter air standards.

I am not sure how they can do this, this waiver is written into the Clean Air Act, but when has the law ever stopped Trump and Evil Minions^™:

The New York Times reports that the Trump administration will use a meeting at the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday to announce the revocation of California’s ability to set its own air pollution standards. The state’s authority was granted by a waiver that allows it to set pollution limits that are stricter than the federal government’s, which is now threatening the administration’s ability to roll back Obama-era standards for automobile fuel economy. This move has been rumored to be under consideration for months and sets up a legal showdown that will pit the federal government against California and the 13 states that plan to follow its lead.

………

During the initial implementation of the Clean Air Act, the Golden State was suffering from extensive smog problems and was granted a waiver that allowed it to set stricter pollution standards than those under the Clean Air Act. The waiver has since given the state significant leverage in negotiations regarding national automotive pollution controls, a position enhanced by the decision of a number of states to adopt whatever standards California sets. Due to the vast size of these states’ collective economies, car companies are compelled to meet its pollution standards or generate two different products: one for California and one for the rest of the country. Most have found it easier to simply involve California in negotiations from the start.

………

All of which would explain why the Trump administration would be interested in revoking the state’s waiver and why it’s already laid out arguments to justify doing so. The Times reports that this isn’t an indication that the EPA has decided what the new standards should be yet, simply that the agency is clearing the way to impose the standards when they’re ready.

But the Clean Air Act waiver mechanics are set up so that the EPA administrator must grant a waiver to any state wanting stricter standards unless the state is acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner or its standards don’t address “compelling and extraordinary conditions.” California would certainly have compelling arguments that climate change represents a compelling and extraordinary condition. And it’s near certain that the state would be willing to test those arguments in court.

Unfortunately, it will be a very close thing in the Supreme Court, because there are now a majority of right wing hypocrite hacks on the bench there.

10 September 2019, 6:49 PM

Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Butt on the Way Out

John Bolton just got fired.

He should never been hired in the first place; he’s so crazy that he makes Trump look sane:

President Trump announced Tuesday that John Bolton was no longer his national security adviser, ending a stormy tenure marked by widening rifts between an unorthodox president seeking a foreign policy victory and an irascible foreign policy hawk who had been deeply skeptical of much of the president’s agenda.

Trump disclosed the departure in a terse Twitter message, saying he would name a replacement as early as next week. Potential candidates include at least two conservative foreign policy commentators who have appeared on Fox News, where Bolton’s fierce attacks on Democrats endeared him to Trump nearly two years ago.

The appeal didn’t last, however, as Bolton’s opposition to elements of Trump’s approach on North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan, among other issues, put him at odds with his boss and other advisers. Trump also largely blamed his third national security adviser for overselling the strength of Venezuela’s political opposition earlier this year.

“I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House,” Trump said on Twitter. “I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service.”

A pity that this could not be settled in a cage match with flame throwers.

9 September 2019, 7:09 PM

The Worst Member of the Trump Administration

I know that this is a target rich environment, but Wilbur Ross, who just threatened to fire people at NOAA for reporting the weather accurately, is high up on any list:

The Secretary of Commerce threatened to fire top employees at the federal scientific agency responsible for weather forecasts last Friday after the agency’s Birmingham office contradicted President Trump’s claim that Hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama, according to three people familiar with the discussion.

That threat led to an unusual, unsigned statement later that Friday by the agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, disavowing the National Weather Service’s position that Alabama was not at risk. The reversal caused widespread anger within the agency and drew accusations from the scientific community that the National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, had been bent to political purposes.

NOAA’s statement on Friday is now being examined by the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, and employees have been asked to preserve their files. NOAA is a division of the Commerce Department.

………

The Commerce Department disputed the account on behalf of the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. “Secretary Ross did not threaten to fire any NOAA staff over forecasting and public statements about Hurricane Dorian,” the department said in a statement issued by a spokesman.

………

The accusations against Mr. Ross are the latest developments in a political imbroglio that began more than a week ago, when Dorian was bearing down on the Bahamas and Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Alabama would be hit “harder than anticipated.” A few minutes later, the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala., posted on Twitter that “Alabama will NOT see any impacts from Dorian. We repeat, no impacts from Hurricane Dorian will be felt across Alabama.”

………

Mr. Ross, the commerce secretary, intervened two days later, early last Friday, according to the three people familiar with his actions. Mr. Ross phoned Neil Jacobs, the acting administrator of NOAA, from Greece where the secretary was traveling for meetings and instructed Dr. Jacobs to fix the agency’s perceived contradiction of the president.

Dr. Jacobs objected to the demand and was told that the political staff at NOAA would be fired if the situation was not fixed, according to the three individuals, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the episode.

………

Craig N. McLean, NOAA’s acting chief scientist, sent an email to staff members Monday notifying the agency that he was looking into “potential violations” in the agency’s decision to ultimately back Mr. Trump’s statements rather than those of its own scientists. He called the agency’s action “a danger to public health and safety.”

………

Richard Hirn, general counsel for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, said what made the NOAA episode extraordinary, though, was that it was not part of an overarching policy dispute on a contentious topic like climate change. “This is just to cover up an embarrassing mistake the president made,” he said.

Mr. Hirn, who said he has worked with the agency through six administrations, added that, “Never before has anybody tried to politicize the weather in all the administrations I’ve worked with.”

Seriously, impeach Ross, and then go after Donald Trump.

F%$# that, just impeach Trump.

24 July 2019, 6:45 PM

I Guess I Have to Say Something About Mueller’s Testimony

Like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity

I did not expect much, an from the reports, I was not disappointed.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party leadership, particularly Speaker Pelosi, have decided that there will be no movement toward impeachment until something is revealed that can get most of the Congressional Republicans to call for Trump’s removal, and even if Mueller were to stand on the desk screaming, “Impeach the mother-f%$#er!” (Spoiler, he didn’t)

One can only hope that the Democrats, particularly House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, decide to initiate an impeachment investigation in defiance of the Speaker, but do not see that happening.

My guess? Democrats will ironically clap their way into a 2^nd Trump term.

18 July 2019, 7:00 PM

About F%$#ing Time

The House has finally voted to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over their machinations on the census:

The House on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for failing to provide documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, escalating the fight between Democrats and the White House over congressional oversight.

………

After a string of legal defeats, Trump last week abruptly retreated from his efforts to add the question to the census, announcing that he will instead order federal agencies to provide the Commerce Department with records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the country.

But lawmakers continue to demand answers about the motivations behind the administration’s 19-month effort to ask about citizenship status on the decennial survey. In May, new evidence emerged suggesting that the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Trump administration has said it needs the information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

………

The impact of the contempt vote is largely symbolic. Those found in criminal contempt are normally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution; in this instance, the Justice Department would not prosecute itself.

I’m not sure if it means much in the grand scheme of things, but I hope that it ends up more than an empty gesture.

11 July 2019, 7:03 PM

Trump Caves

He declared defeat in his effort to put a citizenship question on the censue, though he has promised to use government records to terrorize brown people:

President Trump on Thursday abandoned his quest to place a question about citizenship on the 2020 census, and instructed the government to compile citizenship data from existing federal records instead, ending a bitterly fought legal battle that turned the nonpartisan census into an object of political warfare.

Mr. Trump announced in the Rose Garden that he was giving up on modifying the census two weeks after the Supreme Court rebuked his administration over its effort to do so. Just last week, Mr. Trump had insisted that his administration “must” pursue that goal.

“We are not backing down on our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population,” Mr. Trump said. But rather than carry on the fight over the census, he said he was issuing an executive order instructing federal departments and agencies to provide the Census Bureau with citizenship data from their “vast” databases immediately.

Even that order appears to merely reiterate plans the Commerce Department announced last year, making it less a new policy than a means of covering Mr. Trump’s retreat from the composition of the 2020 census form.

This is definitely a cave by Trump, though he is trying to cast it as another stalwart attempt to promulgate his war against minorities.

9 July 2019, 6:41 PM

Well, I Guess That We Can All Clap Ironically

Seriously, the Trump administration isn’t even trying to create the flimsiest facade of ethics.

Case in point, ~~Bob~~ Bill Barr, who is refusing to recuse himself from the Jeffrey Epstein case, despite the fact that his father hired Epstein at one point, and Barr’s law firm once had him as a client, and defended him from the same charges.

Seeing as how Trump was a close associate of Epstein, we know where THIS is going.

Absolutely shameless:

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr does not plan to recuse himself from the current investigation into multi-millionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to sources who spoke to CNN and Fox News.

A Department of Justice official told CNN on Tuesday that “Bill Barr has consulted with career ethics officials at DOJ and he will not recuse from current Epstein case.”

Barr, however, has recused himself “from any review of the earlier case in Florida,” in which Epstein received a controversial plea deal.

………

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said Barr’s decision not to recuse himself from the current case was “trouble.”

“I have zero confidence Barr will let this case play out in its natural course if it should start to implicate or do collateral damage to powerful, politically-connected people,” he tweeted.

Un-dirty-word-believable.

21 June 2019, 8:44 PM

Totally F%$#ing Evil

The Trump administration’s plan to reduce poverty in the United States is to redefine poverty so far down that starvation won’t count as poverty:

In early May, the Office of Management and Budget announced that it was seeking public comments on a proposal to change how inflation and the consumer price index are calculated, and, by extension, how poverty rates in the United States are estimated.

………

Now, however, the Trump administration looks set to head off in the exact opposite direction. It has come up with a proposal to measure inflation by a “chained consumer price index,” which will most likely take millions of people who were previously considered by the government to be living in poverty, and declare that suddenly, magically, they are no longer poor.

The chained consumer price index is a particularly cautious way of measuring inflation: On a monthly basis, it tries to factor in how people change their consumption patterns in response to price spikes or changes in technology. If, for example, car prices significantly increased, but in response, vastly more people used public transport and thus weren’t as impacted by the industry-specific inflation, it would factor that in and reduce the price increase’s overall impact on the inflation rate.

In theory, that’s all well and good — except for the fact that poor people tend to be less flexible in their spending patterns than more affluent Americans. In recent years, economists have found that poor people actually experience higher rates of inflation than do those with more disposable income. If gas prices go up, for example, a middle-class American might choose to counter that impact by purchasing a hybrid or electric car; a poor person likely won’t have the down-payment or the monthly income needed to purchase a new vehicle and will thus be stuck with the old gas guzzler.

Of course, this is also something that the Obama administration proposed, only to retreat when opposition to this scheme exploded, so while it’s completely evil, it’s by no means unprecedented.

19 June 2019, 10:17 PM

Once Again I Was Too Optimistic

I early expressed some hopefulness about the prospect of Hope Hicks testifying before Congress.

Well, she showed up, and refused to answer any questions:

House Democrats erupted Wednesday at the White House’s repeated interference in their nearly eight-hour interview with Hope Hicks, a longtime confidante of President Donald Trump who was a central witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

Several House Judiciary Committee members exiting the closed-door interview said a White House lawyer present for her testimony repeatedly claimed Hicks had blanket immunity from discussing her tenure as a top aide to the president, including during the presidential transition period. Democrats said she wouldn’t answer questions as basic as where she sat in the West Wing or whether she told the truth to Mueller.

………

“She made clear she wouldn’t answer a single question about her time unless the White House counsel told her it was OK,” an exasperated Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said in an interview. “She couldn’t even characterize her testimony to the special counsel.”

Deutch added that the White House was not formally asserting executive privilege to block Hicks from answering certain questions; rather, the lawyer was referring to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s Tuesday letter claiming that Hicks was “absolutely immune” from discussing her tenure in the Trump administration.

Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) dismissed the White House’s immunity claims and said his committee would “destroy” those assertions in court if he chose to file a lawsuit to enforce the panel’s subpoena that was issued to Hicks earlier this year.

Lieu said the White House lawyers were “making crap up” to block Hicks from testifying. He said she answered some questions about her time on the Trump campaign that provided new information, but Lieu and multiple other lawmakers declined to characterize her comments. A transcript of the interview could be released within 48 hours, aides said.

Jayapal said lawyers even objected to Hicks discussing episodes that occurred after she left the White House — and that Hicks went along with it.

“She is making a choice to follow along with all the claims of absolute immunity,” Jayapal said, adding: “Basically, she can say her name.”

Nadler has not yet gone to court?

It really remarkable just how hard the Democrats are playing to lose.

Ignoring the whole, “Shirking your Constitutional duties,” thing, the politics is horrible.

If the Democrats are unwilling to fight for the truth from the Trump, voters will not take promises that the Democrats are going to fight for them seriously.

13 June 2019, 7:26 PM

Innovations in Criminality

Credit where is due.

The OSC Report

The Trump administration is expanding law breaking to more laws more aggressively than any administration in the history of the United States.

First, we had the Emoluments Clause, which had languished ignored in the Constitution for aver 200 years, and now we have the Office of Special Counsel saying that Kellyanne Conway should be fired for violating the Hatch Act. (Also called, “An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities.”)

I was aware of the act only because I worked a campaign with a federal employee who had to avoid public statements and the like because of the law.

It’s never really been something that you expect to see applied to senior White House officials, because no one has been quite so blatant about partisan politicking while acting in their official capacity before:

The Office of Special Counsel on Thursday recommended the removal of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway from federal office for violating the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in political activity in the course of their work.

The report submitted to President Trump found that Conway violated the Hatch Act on numerous occasions by “disparaging Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity during television interviews and on social media.” The agency described her as a “repeat offender.”

The decision about whether to remove Conway is up to Trump. A senior White House official said Thursday the president is unlikely to punish Conway and instead will defend her. The White House counsel immediately issued a letter calling for the agency to withdraw its recommendation that Conway be removed — a request the Office of Special Counsel declined.

In an interview, Special Counsel Henry Kerner called his recommendation that a political appointee of Conway’s stature be fired “unprecedented.”

“You know what else is unprecedented?” said Kerner, a Trump appointee who has run the agency since December 2017. “Kellyanne Conway’s behavior.”

………

Jacobson said he could not recall a previous episode in which the agency recommended such drastic action against a White House appointee.

“How unique is this? I am not aware of any other time, to my mind, ever, where the Office of Special Counsel has recommended the removal of a White House presidential appointee,” Jacobson said.

………

The reprimands of Conway are among a series of Hatch Act violations by Trump administration officials.

In late 2018, the Office of Special Counsel found six White House officials in violation of the law for using their official Twitter accounts to send or display political messages supporting Trump.

Others sanctioned by the Office of Special Counsel for political messages include former interior secretary Ryan Zinke; Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman; Dan Scavino, former White House social media director; and Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

I’m wondering when they will expand their nefarious activities to things like publishing fake weather reports (18 U.S.C. Section 2074), harassing a golfer on public land (18 USC Section 1865), drunk skydiving (49 U.S.C. Section 46316), and hunting doves with automatic weapons (16 USC Section 707).

12 June 2019, 6:32 PM

Oh Snap

The White House and Congress are in a conflict over census documents.

Basically, it’s painfully obvious that the Trump administration wants to change the census to suppress the count of non-whites in America.

This embarrassing to admit, so they are refusing to turn over documents to Congressional oversight committees.

Congress has threatened Attorney General Barr and Commerce Secretary Ross with contempt citations over that, and Bill Barr has threatened to request that Trump claim executive privilege if they are held in contempt.

In response, the House House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to hold them in comtempt.

I think that committee chairman Elijah Cummings has no f%$#s left to give:

President Trump lashed out Wednesday against a widening web of congressional probes that demonstrated the limits of his strategy to declare victory and try to move past the 22-month special counsel investigation into Russian interference that has consumed much of his presidency.

Yet Trump’s latest efforts to defend himself ran into new obstacles as a House panel moved to hold two Cabinet officials — Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — in contempt of Congress over the administration’s efforts to shield documents related to its decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The committee vote came several hours after Trump asserted executive privilege over the material related to the 2020 Census.By day’s end, there was more potential bad news for the White House as Hope Hicks, the president’s longtime adviser who left last year, agreed to become the first former aide to testify next week for a House Judiciary Committee probe into whether the president sought to obstruct the Russia investigation.

………

The Justice Department and the Oversight Committee are essentially on the same trajectory as the department and the House Judiciary Committee were last month, when the Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt for failing to turn over materials related to Mueller’s probe.

Pass the popcorn.

9 June 2019, 6:15 PM

A Profound Lack of Intestinal Fortitude

I am referring, of course, to Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats, otherwise known as the worst Nickelback cover band ever.

This time, they wimped out on holding Attorney General Barr in contempt.

Don’t worry though, they are still going to file a very strongly worded lawsuit:

After weeks of pledging to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II in contempt for defying subpoenas, House Democrats appear poised to pursue an alternative path to try to force them into sharing information.

A resolution that the House Rules Committee unveiled on Thursday would authorize the House to petition a federal court to enforce its requests for information and testimony related to the report of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, but without mentioning contempt. The committee is expected to consider the proposal on Monday, followed by a full House vote on Tuesday.

The resolution appears to be something of a tactical reversal by Democrats, who did not immediately explain their decision. The Judiciary Committee approved a report last month that formally recommended the House hold Mr. Barr in contempt, and lawmakers continue to use that language to describe next week’s vote.

This sort of bullsh%$ is why people don’t vote for Democrats.

They have no belief that, when push comes to shove, Democrats will fight for them, because they never fight for themselves.

2 June 2019, 6:37 PM

So Not a Surprise

It turns out that the best thing that Thomas Hofeller, a Republican Gerrymandering expert may have ever done was to die.

When he died, his estranged daughter got his computers, where she found that adding the citizenship question to the Census was an integral part of Republican electoral strategy:

Thomas B. Hofeller achieved near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering, the architect of partisan political maps that cemented the party’s dominance across the country.

But after he died last summer, his estranged daughter discovered hard drives in her father’s home that revealed something else: Mr. Hofeller had played a crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Files on those drives showed that he wrote a study in 2015 concluding that adding a citizenship question to the census would allow Republicans to draft even more extreme gerrymandered maps to stymie Democrats. And months after urging President Trump’s transition team to tack the question onto the census, he wrote the key portion of a draft Justice Department letter claiming the question was needed to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — the rationale the administration later used to justify its decision.

Those documents, cited in a federal court filing Thursday by opponents seeking to block the citizenship question, have emerged only weeks before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the citizenship question. Critics say adding the question would deter many immigrants from being counted and shift political power to Republican areas.

The disclosures represent the most explicit evidence to date that the Trump administration added the question to the 2020 census to advance Republican Party interests.

What a surprise: the Trump administration has been lying thought its teeth about why it wanted to add the citizenship question.

Still, it will probably a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in favor by the Trump administration, because the 5 are a bunch of corrupt partisan hacks.

2 June 2019, 6:15 PM

Just Ignoring the Court?

The DoJ has just announced that it will ignore a court order calling for it to release transcripts of conversations between former NSC Chairman Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The DoJ fighting public release of information is something that has been standard operating procedure for a very long time, the Obama administration has fought this tooth and nail against the public release of information, but this is different, because the DoJ is simply refusing to comply.

There has been no request for an appeal or injunction, they are just refusing to follow a judge’s orders:

Federal prosecutors on Friday declined to make public transcripts of recorded conversations between Michael Flynn and Russia’s ambassador to the United States in December 2016, despite a judge’s order.

In a court filing Friday, the Justice Department wrote that it did not rely on such recordings to establish Flynn’s guilt or determine a recommendation for his sentencing.

Prosecutors also failed to release an unredacted version of portions of the Mueller report related to Flynn that the judge had ordered be made public.

………

The government’s unusual response came after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington ordered earlier in May that the Justice Department make public various materials related to the case, including transcripts of any audio recordings of Flynn, such as his conversations with Russian officials.

………

Sullivan made clear he wanted the full transcript of Flynn’s calls to be shared with the public, although he did not provide his reasoning. The Justice Department’s response appeared to duck that order.

There are any number of ways that the DoJ could delay the release of this information.

Just telling a judge to go pound sand is a remarkably lawless, even by the standards of the US State Security Apparatus.

27 May 2019, 8:14 PM

Today’s Must Read

Philadelphia Enquirer columnist Will Bunch has what I believe to be the definitive word on what the Democratic Party should be doing in the age of Trump.

His thesis is pretty straighforward, the Democrats need to stop being cowards:

………

The timidity of Democrats in response to Trump’s take-no-prisoners is disappointing, even after watching decades of battered-dog politics from the center-left. The slow-motion House Democratic strategy of finally issuing some subpoenas after several months in power, then watching them get ignored and finally tied up in court as the clock ticks toward the 2020 election appears hopeless in the face of all-out Roy Cohn-ism. And yet the Democrats are politically terrified of using the only power that matches Trump’s tactics – an impeachment inquiry, and the expanded powers that flow from that.

Read the rest.