The Commentariat -- May 1, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Kyle Cheney & Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday offered pointed critiques of Robert Mueller's investigation..., suggesting he wasn't sure why the special counsel investigated numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice if he decided he couldn't charge ... Donald Trump with a crime under Justice Department restrictions. At times, Barr contradicted the language and legal framework outlined in Mueller's report, and engaged in hair-splitting arguments with Democrats who accused him of 'purposefully misleading' Congress in previous testimony. 'The other thing that was confusing to me was that the investigation carried on for a while as additional episodes [of obstruction] were looked into,' Barr said. 'The question is, or was, why were those investigated at the end of the day if you weren't going to reach a decision?'... Barr's answers directly contradict the rationale Mueller laid out in his report. Mueller indicated in a legal analysis of obstruction of justice that 'fairness' dictated he not reach a formal judgment on whether the president obstructed justice -- regardless of the evidence." Mrs. McC: Barr ended by calling Mueller's March 27 letter "snitty."

** Here's Mueller's full letter to Barr of March 27, & it's even more shocking than the WashPo story linked below lets on. At the top, Mueller writes that he has previously (March 25) sent Barr the introductions & executive summaries for both section of his report, which were marked with redactions. Mueller's purpose was to provide these sections to the public. Also, twice before Barr released his summary that wasn't a summary, Mueller touted his own summaries to Barr. ...

... As Michael Schmidt & Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times lay out, "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, twice pushed Attorney General William P. Barr to release more of his team's investigative findings in late March, citing a gap between Mr. Barr's interpretation of them and their full report.... Mr. Mueller and his investigators also pressed the Justice Department to include summaries of their work in the hours before Mr. Barr released a four-page letter of his own on March 24, the new document showed." Barr should be tarred & feathered.

** Comey Says Barr & Rosenstein, et al., Are Soulless Wimps. James Comey in a New York Times op-ed: "Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them.... Accomplished people lacking inner strength [like William Barr & Rod Rosenstein] can't resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like [former Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis's to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites."

Tom Hamburger & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "The White House said Wednesday that it will not authorize any executive branch officials to disclose to Congress information about individual security clearances, a move that House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) called 'the latest example of the president's widespread and growing obstruction of Congress.' The Oversight panel has been examining the administration's handling of security clearances and allegations that officials, including ... Jared Kushner, were granted access to sensitive information over the objections of career staff.... The back-and-forth came as former White House personnel security director Carl Kline was set to testify in a closed-door deposition Wednesday morning."

Sarah Ferris & Caitlin Emma of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Congress for $4.5 billion in emergency aid to address the surge of Central American immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. The funding request is the first major move by the White House to respond to what it calls a' humanitarian crisis' at the Southern border and intensifies an ongoing funding battle over border security, just four months after the issue led to a paralyzing 35-day government shutdown."

~~~~~~~~~~~

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Time for Another Episode of the Mini-series "Bill Barr Lies." Hill: "Attorney General William Barr will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday [beginning at 10 am ET], the first of two back-to-back hearings he will take part in on Capitol Hill this week." The report includes a transcript of Barr's prepared opening statement. ...

     ... Update: New York Times reporters are liveblogging the hearing. Mrs. McC: In questioning, as Charlie Savage notes, Barr's suggested "that if Mueller felt he couldn't render a judgment (immediately), he shouldn't have investigated in the first place." IOW, according to Barr, the entire Mueller investigation was unwarranted. Anyhow, Barr is doing a great job as counsel to the President*. Here's something else: Barr keeps expressing surprise & bewilderment when Democratic senators point out some of the more damning facts related in Mueller's report. You might think Bill Barr never read the report. Update: Later, Barr admitted to Kamala Harris that he hadn't reviewed any of the underlying evidence in Mueller's report. That is, he just "made up" his own conclusions, based on his peculiar reading of Mueller's summaries.

Vive la Différence

As the report states: '[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' -- Bill Barr, citing the Mueller Report in his infamous four-page summary that was not a summary

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. -- Full sentence, Mueller Report

** Mueller Called out Barr Con Job. Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump 'did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance' of Mueller's work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.... 'The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office's work and conclusions,' Mueller wrote. 'There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.' The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report's introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials. Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller's letter.... A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials." Read on. ...

Safari Translation of Mueller's Objection: Your summary has COMPLETELY fucked up [notice: 'context/nature/substance'] our report, misrepresenting EVERYTHING [notice: 'work/conclusion'] we've done since we began. (See today's Comments thread.)

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Okay, Bill Barr, you lying sack of shit, now explain that "no collusion" presser you gave weeks after your old friend Bob Mueller complained about your mischaracterization of his report. Explain it to the Senate & House Judiciary Committees, this week, in public, you gutless shill. ...

I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion [regarding Trump's obstruction of justice]. -- Bill Barr, lying to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in sworn testimony, April 10, weeks after Barr received Mueller's letter objecting to Barr's published mischaracterization of the investigation's findings

Update: Van Hollen is now calling for Barr to resign based on this "misleading" testimony & on a "pattern of untrustworthy behavior" ...

SCHIFF called for Barr to resign this AM, per his office, highest ranking lawmaker to do that so far.... 'There's no sugarcoating this. He should step down,' Schiff said on CBS. -- Kyle Cheney of Politico, in tweets this morning ...

... Mark Mazzetti & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, wrote a letter in late March to Attorney General William P. Barr objecting to his early description of the Russia investigation's conclusions that appeared to clear President Trump on possible obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department and three people with direct knowledge of the communication.... The letter adds to the growing evidence of a rift between them and is another sign of the anger among the special counsel's investigators about Mr. Barr's characterization of their findings, which allowed Mr. Trump to wrongly claim he had been vindicated.... The four-page letter that Mr. Barr sent to Congress ... gave little detail about the special counsel's findings and created the impression that Mr. Mueller's team found no wrongdoing, allowing Mr. Trump to declare he had been exonerated. But when Mr. Mueller's report was released on April 18, it painted a far more damning picture ... and showed that Mr. Mueller believed that significant evidence existed that Mr. Trump obstructed justice." ...

... digby: "I guess we know now why Mueller wasn't there the day Barr held his notorious press conference. This is big. Mueller was the one person in the whole country who could have truly validated Trump and Barr's interpretation of the report's conclusions. He didn't." Mrs. McC: Yes, but Barr did have a poked-faced Rosenstein, standing behind him, and for balance, some guy with a beard.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the House Banking Committee, speaking on MSNBC, has called for Barr to resign, and if he refuses to do so, the House should begin impeachment proceedings against him. As former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) said later, Barr should bear in mind that the last time we had an attorney general who participated in a cover-up of presidential wrongdoing, he went to jail. (That would be John Mitchell.) Holtzman was on the House Judiciary Committee at the time it recommended articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.

Juliegrace Brufke of the Hill: "House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said Attorney General William Barr 'must answer' for reports that special counsel Robert Mueller objected to Barr's summarization of the conclusions in the investigation into Russia's election interference.... 'I have demanded the letter & Barr must answer for this. Mueller must be allowed to testify," Nadler tweeted shortly after the Post published its report, which comes two days before Barr is slated to testify before Congress." ...

     ... Here's Nadler's full statement, via Medium.

Erin Banco & Sam Stein of the Daily Beast: "House Democrats tell The Daily Beast they've been told ... Robert Mueller is willing to testify before them about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election but that the Department of Justice has been unwilling to set a date for it to happen."

"Lock Him Up." Robert Reich of Newsweek: "On Sunday, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr if he refuses to testify this week about the Mueller report. But a subpoena is unlikely to elicit Barr's cooperation. 'We're fighting all the subpoenas,' says the President of the United States. In other words, there is to be no congressional oversight of this administration.... Such a blanket edict fits a dictator of a banana republic.... Under [its] inherent power, the House can order its own sergeant-at-arms to arrest the offender, subject him to a trial before the full House, and, if judged to be in contempt, jail that person until he appears before the House and brings whatever documentation the House has subpoenaed. When President Richard Nixon tried to stop key aides from testifying in the Senate Watergate hearings, in 1973, Senator Sam Ervin, chairman of the Watergate select committee, threatened to jail anyone who refused to appear. Congress hasn't actually carried through on the threat since 1935 -- but it could."

David Enrich of the New York Times: "Lawyers for [Deutsche Bank] have spent months cooperating with investigators from two Democratic-controlled congressional committees [regarding financial documents related to Donald Trump], which issued what one lawmaker called a 'friendly subpoena' to the bank in mid-April. The bank could end up sharing decades of his personal and corporate financial records. That prospect prompted Mr. Trump to file a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Monday in an attempt to block Deutsche Bank and another financial company, Capital One, from sharing documents.... The rich trove of records held by Deutsche Bank includes internal corporate documents, descriptions of the value of Mr. Trump's assets, and portions of his personal and business tax returns. The subpoena, issued April 15, casts a wide net for documents related to Mr. Trump's businesses and other entities.... If the bank handed over even parts of Mr. Trump's returns, it would be a dramatic end run around the president, who broke with decades of precedent by refusing to release them during the 2016 campaign.... Bank officials have ... compiled reams of materials to hand over.... Bank officials have told The Times that they were eager to provide the materials to Congress...., [but] the bank appeared ready to leave the legal battle to House Democrats and let the courts decide what it must do." ...

... Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Here's a pro tip for lawyers:... It's a bad idea to tell the court that a case that absolutely eviscerates your legal argument is the best thing you have going for you.... The case is Trump v. Deutsche Bank.... But, of course, any analysis of a lawsuit involving Donald Trump must come with a caveat. The Constitution is also pretty damn clear that the government may not single out people of a particular faith for inferior treatment, but that did not stop this Supreme Court from upholding Trump's Muslim ban.... Trump's only hope of prevailing in the Deutsche Bank case is to pray for judicial lawlessness. Even the very case Trump relies upon in his legal complaint makes it quite clear that he should lose. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "The legal basis for the lawsuit, in layman's terms, is as follows: Congress is mean and only wants the information because it hates Trump.... This same argument runs nearly all of Trump's refusals to abide congressional subpoenas. 'These aren't, like, impartial people,' the president declared of Congress. 'The Democrats are trying to win 2020.' The first thing to understand about this legal theory is that it is not a legal theory.... Trump's notion that he can ignore legal obligations from anybody who isn't 'like, impartial' is especially comic. Trump has spent his presidency trampling on the the entire concept of neutral authority.... Overtly fair-minded figures like Robert Mueller, or even friendly ones like Jeff Sessions, have been the target of Trump's wrath simply for having the temerity to operate outside his personal control.... Trump's extreme litigiousness is a natural extension of his general lack of shame. Once you have forfeited any claim to seriousness, there's not much reputational cost in associating yourself with ridiculous legal assertions." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The final question may come down to whether or not John Roberts decides to be "like, impartial" and rule in Trump's favor, despite Team Trump's failure to locate a valid legal theory for blanket obstruction. ...

... Mark Stern of Slate argues that House Democrats could make their very strong case even stronger if they framed them as preludes to impeachment. "Because 'no grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one,' [Trump's] suit claims, the federal courts must prohibit the banks from complying with the subpoenas." However, only the House has the capacity to impeach, so no court would accept the argument that subpoenaes issued in furtherance of that unique Constitutional responsibility were frivolous or harassing or excessive. ...

... Glenn Thrush & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "... Democrats see Mr. Trump's latest string of provocations -- starting with his blanket declaration last week that he would defy all subpoenas requested by Democratic committees and culminating in this week's legal action -- as a dangerous abuse of executive authority that they must address forcefully. Allies of Ms. Pelosi are publicly floating possible countermeasures, including even pursuing a narrow path to impeachment based on Mr. Trump's refusal to respect the oversight authority of Congress, a move modeled on the third article of impeachment drafted against President Richard M. Nixon in 1974.... Sentiment [favoring impeachment] appears to have shifted significantly over the past week."

Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has hired Patrick Fallon, former chief of the FBI's Financial Crimes Section, according to two sources familiar with the move. It's a significant hire that will bring expertise to the committee's efforts to scrutinize ... Donald Trump's financial dealings.... Schiff announced earlier this year that the committee will look at Trump's finances to see if his personal interests are influencing his decisions as president. 'That pertains to any credible allegations of leverage by the Russians or the Saudis or anyone else,' he said, according to CNN."

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. 'The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this,' Schiff said during a Washington Post Live event.... Schiff pointed to a meeting that took place nine days before Trump took office between Prince and a Russian financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands. Prince later told congressional officials examining Russia's interference in the presidential election that the meeting happened by chance and was not taken at the behest of the incoming administration.... Prince told special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigators a version of the Seychelles meeting that is at odds in several key respects with his sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017."

Ali Dukakis, et al., of ABC News: "Roger Stone, the longtime adviser to ... Donald Trump, appeared in a federal courthouse on Tuesday for the first time since a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report ... was made public.... Stone's legal team sought access to the Mueller report in its entirety, which Attorney General William Barr made public with redactions earlier this month. In court on Tuesday, U.S. Judge Amy Berman Jackson considered Stone's argument to see the report but did not rule from the bench.... Jonathan Kravis, an assistant U.S. attorney who has taken over the special counsel's case against Stone, said the government has no intention to willingly grant Stone and his legal team access to a less-redacted version of the Mueller report."

Jonathan O'Connell, et al., of the Washington Post: "Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their lawsuit against President Trump alleging that his private business violates the Constitution's ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. The decision in Washington from U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan adopted a broad definition of the anti-corruption law and could set the stage for Democratic lawmakers to begin seeking information from the Trump Organization. The Justice Department can try to delay or block the process by asking an appeals court to intervene. In a 48-page opinion, the judge refused the request of the president's legal team to dismiss the case and rejected Trump's narrow definition of emoluments, finding it 'unpersuasive and inconsistent.'"

Mar-a-Lago, Trump Cash Cow, Rips off Taxpayers. Derek Kravatz of ProPublica details how taxpayers pay Donald Trump top dollar for his staff's expenses at Mar-a-Lago, including a thousand-dollar bill for a one-night drinking party & $546/night for hotel rooms (when much cheaper rooms are available nearby AND Mar-a-Lago management rejected a less costly flat-fee arrangement). "Six government contracting experts said Mar-a-Lago may be violating rules requiring competitive bids. They argue that Mar-a-Lago's practice of invoicing meeting spaces, hotel stays and meals separately is a way to get around federal spending rules.... Several experts contend the State Department is exploiting loopholes in government spending rules to facilitate official gatherings at Mar-a-Lago.... 'It's a worst-case scenario when it comes to conflicts of interest, with the president and his children putting themselves and profits ahead of the public...,' said Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project On Government Oversight."

Donald Trump, Indentured Servant Master. Joshua Partlow & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... at Trump National Golf Club Westchester in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y...., undocumented employees said they were sometimes told to work extra hours without pay.... Allegations that workers were routinely shortchanged on their pay at President Trump's suburban country club are now the subject of an inquiry by the New York attorney general, whose investigators have interviewed more than two dozen former employees.... In interviews, six former Trump workers told The Washington Post that they felt systematically cheated because they were undocumented. Some told The Post about being denied promotions, vacation days and health insurance, which were offered to legal employees. The same pattern of unpaid labor was also described by a former manager. Others recounted practices that could violate labor laws. Two told The Post that they had been required to perform unpaid side work. Two others said managers made them work 60-hour weeks without paying them overtime."

Iliana Magra of the New York Times: "A British court sentenced Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, to 50 weeks in prison on Wednesday for jumping bail when he took refuge in Ecuador's Embassy in London seven years ago.... The United States is seeking Mr. Assange's extradition for prosecution there, and an initial hearing on that request is expected on Thursday. Officials in Sweden have left open the possibility that he could face criminal charges in that country, as well. Mr. Assange faces a charge of conspiracy to hack into a Pentagon computer network; a federal indictment accuses him of helping an Army private to illegally download classified information in 2010, much of it about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which WikiLeaks then made public. He has denied the charge."

Annie Karni, et al., of the New York Times: "Democratic congressional leaders emerged from a meeting at the White House on Tuesday and announced that President Trump had agreed to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan to upgrade the nation's highways, railroads, bridges and broadband. Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said that there had been 'good will' in the meeting and that it was 'different than some of the other meetings that we've had.' Standing alongside Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he said the group planned to meet again in three weeks, when Mr. Trump was expected to tell them how he planned to actually pay for the ambitious project." Mrs. McC: I'll believe it at the signing ceremony. ...

... Jim Newell of Slate looks at the political calculations behind the latest Infrastructure Week.

Emily Shugerman of the Daily Beast: "President Trump's latest rant about babies being executed after birth is riling up neonatal nurses, who say he's twisted the palliative care they provide for the sickest of infants into an anti-abortion rallying cry that could endanger health providers. Anna Schmidt, who has worked in a neonatal intensive care unit for five years, told the Daily Beast she was livid when she heard about Trump's comments at a political rally in Wisconsin on Saturday. 'The families that I've worked with, where I've handed them their babies for the first and last time, they don't deserve this kind of thing,' she told The Daily Beast.... Trump's remark was a continuation of his attacks on later abortions, which he describes as 'ripp[ing] babies from their mothers' wombs right up until the moment of birth.'... The nurses claim what they do is sensitive, personal, and has absolutely nothing to do with abortion." Mrs. McC: Trump is not attacking abortion rights; he is attacking grieving families & the neonates who never had a chance. See also Michelle Goldberg's column on Trump's remarks, linked below.

Emily Cochrane & Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "The conservative commentator Stephen Moore's chance at confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board teetered on Tuesday after one Republican senator said it was unlikely she would support him and multiple Republican senators began to publicly question whether the problematic favorite of President Trump would have enough votes if nominated. Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said on Tuesday that she had told the White House she was unlikely to support Mr. Moore, becoming the first senator in her party to be nearing an explicit disavowal of his nomination even before Mr. Trump makes it official.... Asked if she believed Mr. Moore could garner the necessary votes, Ms. Ernst said, 'at this point, no I don't.'... Several White House officials privately acknowledged on Tuesday that Mr. Moore would most likely not be nominated -- just over a week after Herman Cain, Mr. Trump's other top pick for the board's second open seat, withdrew from consideration after accusations of sexual harassment that had stopped his 2012 presidential campaign resurfaced." ...

... Stephen Moore Has Been a Women-Hater for at Least a Quarter Century. Paul LeBlanc & Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Stephen Moore ... once dismissed the Violence Against Women Act as the 'most objectionable pork' in the 1994 crime bill, saying the money would better spent if Americans were forced to write checks to 'radical feminist' groups. More recently, he's wondered aloud whether women would concern themselves about gender parity once they start out-earning men and suggested that women shouldn't curse in public. It's part of a 25-year track record of dismissing women and criticizing gender equality in print and in interviews with conservative outlets. Moore's commentary covers everything from single mothers to the limited earning power of black men relative to black women -- a problem, he's argued, because it made black families weaker. On Tuesday, Moore said the 'biggest problem' in the US economy is a relative decline in male earnings for both black and white men." ...

... Yes, BUT, Moore Also Thinks Racist Jokes Are Hilarious: "By the way, did you see, there's that great cartoon going along? A New York Times headline: 'First Thing Donald Trump Does As President Is Kick a Black Family Out of Public Housing,' and it has Obama leaving the White House. I mean, I just love that one. Just a great one." -- Stephen Moore, 2016

Lauren Aratani of the Guardian: "The US Navy has trained dolphins and sea lions since the Vietnam war, as part of its marine mammal program.... America's naval animals -- specifically about 70 bottlenose dolphins and 30 California sea lions at a naval base in San Diego, California -- search for objects and patrol restricted waters.... In addition to an ability to dive incredibly deep, dolphins have 'echolocation' capabilities, which allow them to detect mines that are buried underwater. Sea lions, the dolphins' comrades, have excellent eyesight, and have helped the military find lost equipment." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So it's the Dolphins & Sea Lions versus the Whales. John Ismay of the New York Times has more on naval employment (deployment?) of marine mammals to carry out military ops.

Presidential Race 2020

Jennifer Agiesta of CNN: "Former Vice President Joe Biden's announcement of a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination earned him an 11-point polling bounce, leaving him head and shoulders above the rest of the Democratic candidates. A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS after Biden's announcement on Thursday shows 39% of voters who are Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents saying he is their top choice for the nomination, up from 28% who said the same in March. That puts Biden more than 20 points ahead of his nearest competitor, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont -- who holds 15% support in the poll -- and roughly 30 points ahead of the next strongest candidate, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (8%). Warren ranks about evenly with South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (7%), former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke (6%) and Sen. Kamala Harris of California (5%), who round out the list of those earning 5% or more in the poll. The remaining 17 candidates tested all held the support of 2% or less."

Let's Go to ... Romania! Michael Birnbaum & Ioana Burtea of the Washington Post: "The day before special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his report to the Justice Department last month..., Brad Parscale, was ... delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites.... 'It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel's entanglement with foreign money,' said Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.... I didn't know much' about Romania before, Parscale told the country's Antena 3 broadcaster during the visit. 'Romania seems to be a very pro-Trump country and a pro-America country, and that's why it's a great honor to come visit,' Parscale said.... Romania ... has been criticized for attempts to weaken judicial independence and labeled by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.... Parscale [told the Washington Post its story was] '... yet another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump's orbit.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Parscale also said, "We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally," so he was making up for that by travelling now. Yeah, well, growing up, I didn't have much of an opportunity to travel internationally, either, and I can tell you that I did not choose Romania as one of the first foreign places to visit when at long last I decided to see more of the world.

Chris McGreal of the Guardian: "The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) said in a new report that about 13 million American children are living in homes with incomes below the poverty line, depriving many of a decent education and proper nutrition, and putting them at risk of homelessness and violence. Two-thirds of those living in poverty are children of colour." --s

NRA Cements Its Whitey-White Identity. Timothy Johnson of Media Matters: “Carolyn Meadows, who is succeeding Oliver North as president of the National Rifle Association, is also the chairperson of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, an organization that maintains the largest memorial to the Confederacy in the United States.... Stone Mountain, GA, features an enormous relief carving that depicts Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis on horseback. A 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine notes that 'the monument in question is carved 42 feet deep and 400 feet above ground into a granite mountain' and 'is a testament to the enduring legacy of white supremacy.'" Mrs. McC: AND of course all three are traitors to the United States. National Rifle Association? What nation is that, Carolyn dear?

Way Beyond the Beltway

Venezuela. Scott Smith & Christopher Torchia of the AP: "Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets with activist Leopoldo Lopez and a small contingent of heavily armed troops early Tuesday in a bold and risky call for the military to rise up and oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.... Lopez said he has been freed from house arrest by members of the security forces responding to an order by Guaidó, whom the U.S. and dozens of other governments recognize as Venezuela’s rightful leader. As he spoke on a highway overpass, troops loyal to Maduro sporadically fired tear gas from inside the adjacent Carlota air base as the crowd of a few hundred civilians, some of them brandishing Venezuelan flags, scurried for cover. The crowd swelled to a few thousand as people sensed what could be their strongest opportunity yet to overthrow the government after months of turmoil that has seen Maduro withstand an onslaught of protests and international pressure with the support of his top military command and allies such as Russia and Cuba." ...

     ... Update. Nicholas Casey of the New York Times: "... at the end of the day, Mr. Guaidó fell short of the prize he sought: the toppling of President Nicolás Maduro, who has relied on force, intimidation and widely discredited elections to remain in power. The events [of the day] also cast a harsh new light into the division within the armed forces, which puts Venezuela in a precarious position as the country's political crisis deepens. While the highest ranks of the military dig into their support for Mr. Maduro's government, many rank-and-file soldiers appear willing to defy their commanders and come to the aid of the opposition.... The Trump administration immediately came out in support of the opposition, with the president, vice president and others publicly stating their approval on Twitter." ...

     ... Update 2. Mariana Zuñiga, et al., of the Washington Post: "Violent clashes erupted across Venezuela on Tuesday after opposition leader Juan Guaidó launched what he described as a military-backed challenge to President Nicolás Maduro, summoning thousands of people to the streets to demonstrate against the socialist leader. A 25-year-old man died and dozens of people were injured by rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition in melees across Venezuela, according to local observers and hospital officials.... An armored vehicle ran into a cluster of Guaidó supporters. A group of hooded men in a pro-government militia -- the feared colectivos -- fired live ammunition into a crowd of protesters, witnesses said. And a colonel loyal to Maduro was shot in the neck, the defense minister said..... President Trump accused Cuban 'Troops and Militia' of conducting military operations in Venezuela to cause 'death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela.' If the alleged activities didn't immediately stop, Trump tweeted, his administration would impose a 'full and complete embargo, together with the highest-level sanctions,' on Cuba." ...

... Julian Borger & Joe Parkin Daniels of the Guardian: "The Venezuelan leader, Nicolás Maduro, 'had an airplane on the tarmac' and was ready to leave for exile in Cuba when he was persuaded not to step down by Moscow, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has claimed.... While Pompeo put the blame on Moscow for stalling the transfer of power, Donald Trump made no mention of Russia when he tweeted on Tuesday evening, threatening Cuba." --s ...

... The Guardian has a liveblog of developments in Venezuela. ...

... AP, 8:10 pm Tuesday: "The head of Venezuela's secret police is admonishing President Nicolas Maduro, in the biggest break so far by a senior member of the security forces. SEBIN leader Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera wrote a letter to the Venezuelan people Tuesday saying it is time to 'rebuild the country.' A senior U.S. official confirmed the authenticity of the note circulating on social media."

News Lede

WBTV Charlotte, NC: "Two people were killed and four others injured in a shooting on the University of North Carolina-Charlotte (UNCC) campus Tuesday evening. The suspected shooter was taken into custody, according to police sources. CMPD identified the suspected shooter as 22-year-old Trystan Terrell. The shooting happened around 5:40 p.m. An alert sent by UNCC Emergency Management said shots were reported near the Kennedy Hall building. The alert told students to 'Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately. Monitor email and emergency.uncc.edu.'"

The Commentariat -- April 30, 2019

Late Morning Update:

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that his panel would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department regarding potential false testimony by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of the private military contractor Blackwater and an ally of President Trump. 'The evidence is so weighty that the Justice Department needs to consider this,' Schiff said during a Washington Post Live event.... Schiff pointed to a meeting that took place nine days before Trump took office between Prince and a Russian financier close to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands. Prince later told congressional officials examining Russia's interference in the presidential election that the meeting happened by chance and was not taken at the behest of the incoming administration.... Prince told special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigators a version of the Seychelles meeting that is at odds in several key respects with his sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017."

Emily Shugrman of the Daily Beast: "President Trump's latest rant about babies being executed after birth is riling up neonatal nurses, who say he's twisted the palliative care they provide for the sickest of infants into an anti-abortion rallying cry that could endanger health providers. Anna Schmidt, who has worked in a neonatal intensive care unit for five years, told the Daily Beast she was livid when she heard about Trump's comments at a political rally in Wisconsin on Saturday. 'The families that I've worked with, where I've handed them their babies for the first and last time, they don't deserve this kind of thing,' she told The Daily Beast.... Trump's remark was a continuation of his attacks on later abortions, which he describes as 'ripp[ing] babies from their mothers' wombs right up until the moment of birth.'... The nurses claim what they do is sensitive, personal, and has absolutely nothing to do with abortion." Mrs. McC: Trump is not attacking abortion rights; he is attacking grieving families & the neonates who never had a chance. See also Michelle Goldberg's column on Trump's remarks, linked below.

Let's Go to ... Romania! Michael Birnbaum & Ioana Burtea of the Washington Post: "The day before special counsel Robert S. Mueller III submitted his report to the Justice Department last month..., Brad Parscale, was ... delivering a paid speech to a room full of Romanian politicians and policy elites.... 'It appears the Trump political organization has learned nothing from 2016 about the dangers of senior campaign personnel's entanglement with foreign money,' said Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.... I didn't know much' about Romania before, Parscale told the country's Antena 3 broadcaster during the visit. 'Romania seems to be a very pro-Trump country and a pro-America country, and that's why it's a great honor to come visit,' Parscale said.... Romania ... has been criticized for attempts to weaken judicial independence and labeled by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.... Parscale [told the Washington Post its story was ] '... yet another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump's orbit.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Parscale also said, "We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally," so he was making up for that by travelling now. Yeah, well, growing up, I didn't have much of an opportunity to travel internationally, either, and I can tell you that I did not choose Romania as one of the first foreign places to visit when at long last I decided to see more of the world.

Scott Smith & Christopher Torchia of the AP: "Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó took to the streets with activist Leopoldo Lopez and a small contingent of heavily armed troops early Tuesday in a bold and risky call for the military to rise up and oust socialist leader Nicolas Maduro.... Lopez said he has been freed from house arrest by members of the security forces responding to an order by Guaidó, whom the U.S. and dozens of other governments recognize as Venezuela's rightful leader. As he spoke on a highway overpass, troops loyal to Maduro sporadically fired tear gas from inside the adjacent Carlota air base as the crowd of a few hundred civilians, some of them brandishing Venezuelan flags, scurried for cover. The crowd swelled to a few thousand as people sensed what could be their strongest opportunity yet to overthrow the government after months of turmoil that has seen Maduro withstand an onslaught of protests and international pressure with the support of his top military command and allies such as Russia and Cuba."

~~~~~~~~~~

Jonathan Chait: "Last week, President Trump repeated his absurd claim that he had never called the Nazi protesters who descended on Charlottesville in 2017 'very fine people.' On Saturday, yet another white-supremacist attack, on a synagogue in California, demonstrated the point that Trump and his allies wish to obscure: Right-wing terrorism is a more extreme version of Trump's own political style. It draws inspiration from his ideas and some measure of protection from his political power.... Trump's rhetoric has excited and mobilized white supremacists because it teases the same theories that they make explicitly.... In contrast to his rhetoric about ISIS or other Islamist terrorism, which he insists must be labelled Islamic, Trump shrinks from placing white-supremacist terror in its ideological context. Just a handful of crazy nuts with big problems.... Republicans do not wish to defend white supremacists, but they feel enough kinship with them to treat them as political allies and to consider measures directed against them as a shared threat. The way you can tell Republicans are soft on white-supremacist terrorism is that white-supremacist terrorism is a partisan issue." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait writes, "Trump is not a white supremacist; if I showed you a block of text from one of his speeches side by side with a speech by David Duke, you would be able to tell the difference." Maybe so. But I disagree with the operative statement that Trump is not a white supremacist. As Andrew Gillum famously said of Ron DeSantis, "I'm not calling Mr. Desantis a racist. I&'m simply saying the racists believe he's a racist." Trump has called himself a "nationalist" & excused white supremacists as "very fine people," something he said last week was a "perfect answer" to a reporter's question about the, uh, history buffs marching on the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. It's true that Trump is not directly murdering people of color on Fifth Avenue, but few white supremacists are murderers.

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast: "Rod Rosenstein..., who has run the Justice Department's day-to-day operations for most of the Trump presidency, submitted his resignation to the White House on Monday. The letter said he will stay on until May 11. In the letter, Rosenstein thanked ... Donald Trump — who once retweeted a picture of him behind bars -- for 'the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.' Rosenstein also made what appears to be a vague allusion to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. 'Our nation is safer, our elections are more secure, and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyberattacks,' he wrote.... At the end of the letter, he discussed the importance of protecting the Department from political influence -- which Trump himself has often tried to exert, as the Mueller report detailed. '[T]he Department bears a special responsibility to avoid partisanship,' he wrote. 'Political considerations may influence policy choices, but neutral principles must drive decisions about individual cases.'" ...

     ... Here's Rosenstein's sycophantic letter of resignation. A team player! He's sure to get a very lucrative gig at a top Washington law firm!

Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump, his three eldest children and his private company filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against Deutsche Bank and Capital One, in a bid to prevent the banks from responding to congressional subpoenas. In the suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, the president and his family members argue that the Democratic House committee leaders who issued the subpoenas engaged in a broad overreach.... Representative Maxine Waters of California, the chairwoman of the Financial Services Committee, and Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called the lawsuit 'meritless' in a joint statement, and said it demonstrated 'the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress's constitutional oversight authority.'" Mrs. McC: The Trumps surely are afraid of something. We already learned from Michael Cohen & other reporting that Trump & Co. grossly inflated their assets in financial statements submitted to lending institutions. So what else?

Why Does Bill Barr Fear Congressional Lawyers? Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: “The House Judiciary Committee is moving forward with its plan for staff attorneys to question Attorney General William Barr at a Thursday hearing on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, even as the attorney general is threatening not to attend the hearing over the proposed format. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, scheduled a Wednesday committee vote to allow an additional hour of questioning at Thursday's hearing. The vote would allow members or staff to question Barr during the extra hour, which would be divided between Democrats and Republicans. But Barr has objected to a format that allows staff to ask questions." ...

... AP: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General William Barr will be 'obstructing Congress' if he chooses not to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.... Pelosi says the attorney general or any other witnesses can't 'tell the committee how to conduct its interviews.' She adds, 'The attorney general of the United States is not the president's personal lawyer, and he should act as the attorney general of the United States and honor his responsibilities.'"

Rachel Bade & Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Frustration among House Democratic investigators is intensifying after President Trump's refusal to cooperate with congressional inquiries, leading some to privately question whether they should try to pressure Speaker Nancy Pelosi into launching impeachment proceedings. The chairmen and members of the six panels investigating the president are increasingly angered by the White House's unwillingness to comply as they carry out their oversight role.... 'The Mueller report and this assault on the legislative branch made Nancy's call to avoid impeachment much more difficult for rank-and-file members,' said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a member of the Oversight Committee. 'We've moved from [Trump's] culpability laid out in the Mueller report to an assault on the institution and constitutional framework that is the legislative branch.' During a House leadership meeting Monday night, Pelosi (Calif.) argued Trump was 'making the case' for obstruction with his own actions but also urged Democrats to be prudent in focusing on the agenda."

Ben Wittes of Lawfare does a close reading of the Mueller report. He concludes: "The president committed crimes.... The president also committed impeachable offenses.... Trump was not complicit in the Russian social-media conspiracy.... Trump's complicity in the Russian hacking operation and his campaign's contacts with the Russians present a more complicated picture.... The counterintelligence dimensions of the entire affair remain a mystery."

Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker, on the eve of Michael Cohen's incarceration, recounts Cohen's part in the Trump scandals. "F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, about the fictional Buchanan family, that they 'smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.' For a decade, Michael Cohen cleaned up Donald Trump's messes. He embraced Trump so uncritically that he wound up committing crimes on his behalf. Thus far, Trump, like the Buchanans, has escaped the wreckage he leaves behind."

Darren Samuelsohn, et al., of Politico: "... Robert Mueller notched yet another legal victory on Monday even though his Russia investigation is over, as a federal appeals court rejected a bid to reexamine a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of his appointment. In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a request for a rehearing of a case it decided in February arguing that Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Separately, the D.C. Circuit on Monday also denied a petition for a rehearing before the full court."

Do Not Speak to Donald Trump. He Will Lie about What You Said. Ken Meyer of Mediaite: "Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano accused ... Donald Trump of mischaracterizing their conversations when the president took a torch to him over the weekend. On Saturday, Trump attacked the 'dumb legal argument' from Napolitano, accusing the Fox analyst of requesting a Supreme Court appointment and asking for a 'pardon for his friend.' The tweets were a retaliation to Napolitano's commentary on how Robert Mueller's report revealed 'unlawful, defenseless and condemnable' actions from Trump that amounted to obstruction of justice.... Napolitano said ... when [Trump] was president-elect..., Napolitano said that when he described how Neil Gorsuch had the judicial qualities Trump was looking for [in a Supreme Court justice], the president-elect supposedly turned to him and said: 'sounds like you're describing yourself.'... Napolitano said Trump once asked for his opinion about the conviction of a 'mutual friend' of theirs. Napolitano said he thought that the conviction was just, to which, Trump offered 'a very strong term' to express his disagreement."

Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Caitlin Dickerson of the New York Times: "President Trump on Monday ordered new restrictions on asylum seekers at the Mexican border -- including application fees and work permit restraints -- and directed that cases in the already clogged immigration courts be settled within 180 days. In a memo sent to Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, and Attorney General William P. Barr, the president took another step to reshape asylum law, which is determined by Congress, from the White House. The restrictions do not take effect immediately. Mr. Trump gave administration officials 90 days to draw up regulations that would carry out his orders.... The memo did not make clear how the plans would be carried out in immigration courts. More than 800,000 cases are pending, with an average wait time of almost two years. The Trump administration added to that backlog when it directed immigration authorities to reopen thousands of nonviolent removal cases.... After the memo's release on Monday night, Julián Castro, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and former Obama administration housing secretary, called the orders 'truly sickening.' 'Families are fleeing violence and turmoil to seek refuge at our borders and Donald Trump wants to charge them a fee to gain asylum,' he said on Twitter."

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm not convinced Trump can get away with this, since it's Congress, not the executive branch, that sets immigration policy. Adding "application" & work permit fees for asylum-seekers seem to be material changes to existing laws. Of course Bill Barr likely will jump in with some fake "justification" for Trump's "sickening" unilateral move. Also, do these asylum fees apply only to immigrants coming in via the Mexican border? What about asylum-seekers who apply at a Canadian border crossing or at airports or elsewhere? If Trump's order applies only to people coming in via the U.S.-Mexico border, this looks like a clear case of racial discrimination.

Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept: "[In] mid-June [2018, LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm] gathered information on more than 600 demonstrations across the country [protesting the supposed 'zero tolerance' policy of separating migrant children from their families], information that was then shared with DHS and state-level law enforcement agencies.... For immigration attorneys working with families directly impacted by the administration's 'zero tolerance' regime, news of protests being monitored makes an ugly situation even worse. 'The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration's shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,' Lee Gelernt..., lead [ACLU] attorney in a lawsuit challenging family separation, told The Intercept. 'They'll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.'" --s

The "Sickening" Liar. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "As his raucous crowd booed and screamed, Trump described a hideous scenario that he insists Democrats approve of. 'The baby is born,' said Trump. 'The mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully' -- at this, he seemed to mime rocking an infant -- 'and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.' He made a chopping motion with his hand.... It's tempting to ignore the president's mendacity, since, as with so much of Trump's malicious propaganda, it's hard to counter it without amplifying it.... Besides their potential to inspire violence, Trump's words are a cruel insult to parents who have to make agonizing decisions about end-of-life care for babies that are born extremely prematurely, or with serious anomalies.... It's hard, after all these months, to get worked up about Trump's fantasies, but there are still people in America unbalanced enough to believe their president tells the truth." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's worth noting that Trump, according his own statement, used to be "very pro-choice." Trump's lies about late-term abortion don't come from some fanatical but principled stand; they're nothing but incendiary political opportunism. And the cheering crowds? You can bet some among them had, or caused to be carried out, abortions.

Julian Borger & Patrick Wintour of the Guardian: "Egyptian and Emirati influence on Donald Trump has thrown US policy on Libya into turmoil at a moment when Tripoli is under attack and the country is on the brink of a full-scale war once again. The state department went from encouraging a UN security council resolution calling for a ceasefire ... to threatening to veto the same resolution a few days later. The sudden change of policy followed a Trump meeting with Egyptian leaderAbdel Fattah al-Sisi, and a phone conversation with the Abu Dhabi crown prince, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, [Libyan warlord, Khalifa] Haftar's principal backers. They persuaded him to call Haftar and to then issue a statement praising him, diplomats and a former official said. According to Bloomberg news, Trump and his national security adviser, John Bolton, expressed support for Haftar's offensive, directly contradicting a formal statement a few days earlier from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I've been wondering for a week why Trump capriciously upended U.S. policy on Libya. Now we know. Needless to say, "because some dictators wanted me to" is a horrible way to make international policy decisions. But that is exactly how it's happening. It's not clear to me that Trump consulted Bolton before he expressed his support for Haftar. Sorry, GOP, this is worse than Benghaaaazi! where a young diplomat made a mistake that led to his own death of that of three other Americans. This is the POTUS* -- with a vast intelligence & policy-making apparatus at his disposal -- ignoring (or unaware of) all that & instead taking the advice of regional dictators. ...

... AND that's not the only topic on which al-Sisi got Trump to try to change U.S. policy:

... Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is pushing to issue an order that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, bringing the weight of American sanctions against a storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the matter. The White House directed national security and diplomatic officials to find a way to place sanctions on the group after a White House visit on April 9 by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, for whom the Brotherhood represents a source of political opposition. In a private meeting without reporters and photographers, Mr. el-Sisi urged Mr. Trump to take that step and join Egypt in branding the movement a terrorist organization.... But the proposal has prompted fierce debate within the administration, including at a senior-level meeting of policymakers from various departments convened last week by the White House's National Security Council, the officials said."

D. Parvaz of ThinkProgress: "On Monday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked about the report that North Korea had billed the United States $2 million for the hospitalization of American student Otto Warmbier.... Pompeo ... neither confirmed that the bill was issued, nor denied that an agreement was made.... According to a Washington Post report last week..., Donald Trump had reportedly signed an agreement* ... to pay Pyongyang the money.... But on Friday..., Trump tweeted about it. 'No money was paid to North Korea for Otto Warmbier, not two Million Dollars, not anything else.'... But two days later...,John Bolton ... speaking on Fox News Sunday ... contradicted the president, saying that he was 'told' that an agreement was, in fact, made via a 'U.S. representative.'" --s ...

     ... * Mrs. McCrabbie: That's not quite true. According to the Post report, "... the main U.S. envoy sent to retrieve Warmbier signed an agreement to pay the medical bill on instructions passed down from President Trump [via then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson]."

Juan Cole: "On Monday Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted again that support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen is in the US interest.... While Washington plays political games, the situation has become the most grave humanitarian crisis in the world, outstripping even Syria and Afghanistan.... Meanwhile, a new United Nations Development Program report is apocalyptic, concluding that 233,000 people have died in the war, with 102,000 combat deaths and 131,000 indirect deaths owing to lack of food, exposure, etc. Over half the deaths consisted of children under 5. Mr. Pompeo, no 'national interest' is worth that." --s

Joni Is Not Enthused. Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "The White House is reviewing past writings by Stephen Moore, the conservative commentator whom President Trump plans to nominate to the Federal Reserve Board, amid criticism that many of his opinion columns denigrated women, and enthusiasm for his candidacy appeared to be waning among Republicans on Capitol Hill.... As they returned to the Capitol from a two-week recess, few Senate Republicans expressed outright support for Mr. Moore, who has suggested that he would bow out if a fight over his nomination posed a political problem for incumbents seeking re-election. 'I'm not enthused about supporting him,' said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, who is one of those seeking re-election in 2020. 'Look at his writings! I'm not enthused. I'm a woman.'&"

Paul Krugman: "What the right's positioning on inequality, climate and now Russian election interference have in common is that in each case the people pretending to be making a serious argument are actually apparatchiks operating in bad faith. What I mean by that is that in each case those making denialist arguments, while they may invoke evidence, don't actually care what the evidence says; at a fundamental level, they aren't interested in the truth. Their goal, instead, is to serve a predetermined agenda.... The public deserves to know that the big debates in modern U.S. politics aren't a conventional clash of rival ideas. They're a war in which one side's forces consist mainly of intellectual zombies."

Presidential Race 2020

Coalition of the Cautious. Joe Biden seems to be assembling a coalition combining 'People who'd just be more comfortable with an older white guy' and 'People who figure other people would just be more comfortable with an older white guy.' -- Paul Waldman, in a tweet ...

... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. used his first address as a presidential candidate Monday to sketch out his economic plans, vowing to rebuild the country's middle class in a state that helped hand President Trump the White House three years ago. Appearing in a Teamsters hall, Mr. Biden scorned corporate greed, pledged to revive unions and said the minimum wage should be lifted to $15 an hour nationwide. He also centered his message squarely in the state of his birth, telling a few hundred supporters who greeted him with 'We Want Joe' chants that Pennsylvania is key to Democrats' chances of reclaiming the White House."

Lachlan Markay, et al. of The Daily Beast: "A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse [Democratic presidential candidate Pete] Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent. The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg's momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.... The source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account.... But after The Daily Beast contacted [Wohl & Burkman] last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Read the whole post. The young man who appeared to have made the false claim against Buttigieg (a claim which it appears Burkman & Wohl wrote), has denied he knew anything about the charge & wrote a Facebook post saying that Buttigieg never assaulted him. P.S. to Stephen Moore: See, Stephen, you ignorant prick, this is what character assassination looks like.

Greg Bluestone of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Stacey Abrams said Tuesday that she won't run for the U.S. Senate in 2020 but left open the possibility she could launch a presidential campaign."

Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast: "The alleged killer at a Southern California synagogue this weekend worked alone, according to law enforcement, but behind him is a sprawling, digital network of white supremacists spurring each other on to murder.... The calls for violence also spread across fringe platforms like Gab, and messaging apps like Telegram. It's reminiscent of calls online for followers of ISIS and al Qaeda to strike out at the enemy, counter-terrorism experts said.... [O]ver the past six months..., at least three white supremacists announc[ed] attack plans on 8chan or Gab, before opening fire at Jewish or Muslim houses of worship. Three such attacks -- at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a Christchurch mosque, and at the Poway synagogue -- have killed a combined 62 people in the past six months." --s

"Capitalism is Awesome," Ctd.

Amy Harris & Shoshana Walter of Mother Jones: "A nationally renowned drug rehab program in Texas and Louisiana has sent patients struggling with addiction to work for free for some of the biggest companies in America, likely in violation of federal labor law. The Cenikor Foundation has dispatched tens of thousands of patients to work without pay at more than 300 for-profit companies over the years. In the name of rehabilitation, patients have moved boxes in a sweltering warehouse for Walmart, built an oil platform for Shell and worked at an Exxon refinery along the Mississippi River ... Cenikor's success is built on a simple idea: that work helps people recover from addiction. All participants have to do is surrender their pay to cover the costs of the two-year program. But the constant work leaves little time for counseling or treatment, transforming the rehab into little more than a cheap and expendable labor pool for private companies[.]" --s

Justin Elliott of ProPublica: "This week, we reported on how TurboTax uses deceptive design and misleading advertising to trick lower-income Americans into paying to file their taxes, even though they are eligible to do it for free. There's a new wrinkle: It turns out, Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, is deliberately hiding the truly free edition -- TurboTax Free File -- from Google Search.... 'It's deliberately saying: "Google, we don't want you here. Do not bring us traffic,"' said Jared Spool, a veteran web design and user experience expert." --s

Beyond the Beltway

California. CBS-LA/AP: "Federal investigators say a San Fernando Valley man was planning to detonate a bomb at a white nationalist rally in Long Beach. Mark Domingo of Reseda was arrested Friday on a charge of providing material support to terrorists. Domingo, a U.S. Army vet who served in Afghanistan, was arrested after he received what he thought was a bomb, but was actually an inert device supplied to him by an undercover law enforcement officer, federal officials said. In a news conference Monday, authorities with the U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, and LAPD said Domingo discussed several types of attacks with an informant that included targeting Jews, churches and police officers and that he 'wanted to kill Jews as they walked to synagogue ... or attack crowds at the Santa Monica Pier'. He is also accused of plotting to place improvised explosive devices on L.A.-area freeways.... He said he wanted revenge for attacks on mosques in New Zealand that killed 50 people last month."

Way Beyond

Japan. Simon Denyer of the Washington Post: "Japan's popular Emperor Akihito formally abdicated on Tuesday in a short ceremony at the Imperial Palace, giving way to his son after the weight of official duties became too much for the 85-year-old. Dressed in a morning coat with his wife, Empress Michiko, just behind him, Akihito gave a short televised speech in the Imperial Palace's Pine Chamber or throne room, encapsulating the humble and peaceful values that marked his rule." ...

... Motoko Rich of the New York Times has a multi-episode report on Akihito, beginning here.

The Commentariat -- April 29, 2019

A Milestone in Presidential* History. Glenn Kessler, et al., of the Washington Post: "It took President Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker's database, an average of eight claims a day. But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark -- an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel's report on Russian interference in the presidential election.... As of April 27, including the president's rally in Green Bay, Wis., the tally in our database stands at 10,111 claims in 828 days." Mrs. McC: Sadly, I couldn't figure out exactly what lie was the 10,000th. Trump's public lies, IMO, ought to be an article of impeachment.

The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Barr Dictates Terms of His Testimony. Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: “Attorney General William P. Barr and congressional Democrats clashed on Sunday over the terms of Mr. Barr's scheduled testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this week, with Mr. Barr threatening to skip the session and the panel's chairman threatening to subpoena him. The dispute, which spilled out into the public with dueling comments from each camp, revolves around Mr. Barr's objections to the Democrats' proposed format for questioning him about the special counsel's report. And it throws Thursday's hearing into doubt. 'The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct its hearing, period,' the committee chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, told CNN. If Mr. Barr does not show up, Mr. Nadler added, 'then we will have to subpoena him, and we will have to use whatever means we can to enforce the subpoena.'... A senior Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Sunday that the attorney general had agreed to appear before Congress, not its staff, and therefore should be questioned only by members of Congress. Mr. Nadler's plan also calls for the committee to go into closed session to discuss the redacted sections of the special counsel's report. But Mr. Barr and the Justice Department object to questioning behind closed doors." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Josh Marshall: "Attorney General Bill Barr ... is refusing to show up to testify this week before the House Judiciary Committee unless he is accorded a veto right over the questioning format.... It's been increasingly clear that the committees should either designate one or two committee members experienced in questioning o have a committee counsel do the questioning. Absent that approach, you get what we've seen in other recent hearings.... For really effective questioning you need a solid and knowledg[e]able questioner who has a sustained period of time to pursue lines of questioning. The other approach is fine for garden variety testimony where there's some degree of good faith give and take. It doesn't work here.... Barr's antics are part of President Trump's strategy of massive resistance to any congressional oversight whatsoever." (Also linked yesterday.)

I have been a prosecutor for nearly 30 years.... I have prosecuted obstruction cases on far, far less evidence than this. And yes, I believe if he were not the president of the United States, he would likely be indicted on obstruction. -- Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, on "Meet the Press" Sunday

Mimi Rocah & Renato Mariotti in the Daily Beast: "If Donald Trump were not now president he would have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction of justice. And that case would be as strong, if not stronger, than many we saw working in New York and Chicago, respectively. The Mueller Report even noted one reason to investigate the president was to preserve evidence for possible future use even though Trump can't be charged now. And Mueller collected a stunning array of evidence that clearly shows that from 2017 until 2019, Trump engaged in a persistent pattern to try to end, or at least limit the scope of, investigations surrounding him and his family." Rocah & Mariotti, both former federal prosecutors, lay out their case. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: One good reason not to indict a sitting president: unless his vice-president is elected president, that former hand-picked veep can't pardon him.

Natasha Bertrand of Politico outlines Jared Kushner's numerous contacts with Dmitri Simes, a Russian immigrant & U.S. citizen who heads a foreign policy think tank & maintains strong ties to Russia (he's currently co-hosting a Russian TV show).

Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who once argued that President Bill Clinton should be removed from office for the appearance of encouraging obstruction of justice, said Sunday that he does not care whether ... Donald Trump did the same. 'I'm done,' he told CBS News.... 'I think it's just all theater. It doesn't matter,' Graham said of the allegations. 'I don't care what he said to Don McGahn, it's what he did.'... Asked whether he, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, planned to invite McGahn to testify, Graham said he would not." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Uh, what he did, Lindsey, was order the White House counsel to fire the special counsel in an effort to end the investigation.

Robert Barnes & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post examine how Trump views the Supreme Court as part of his team of lackeys. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Rebecca Leber of Mother Jones: "The president ... called into Maria Bartiromo's Fox News show to complain ... that his administration can no longer separate children from their family.... 'The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families. It's like Disneyland now. You know, before you'd get separated so people would say, "Let's not go up." Now you don't get separated and, you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have -- literally you have 10 times more families coming up because they're not going to be separated from their children.'... Trump alluded that his problems stem from the laws that require processing and court dates for asylum seekers.... 'The problem is we have to register them, we have to bring them to court,' he told Fox. '... You have to have Perry Mason involved. I mean, you know, it's all legal." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It makes me sick to hear of Trump, as he sits comfortably in the White House, comparing a trip to Disneyland with the suffering these families endured at home & then on the trek from their home countries to the U.S. He is one sadistic SOB.

Andrienne Varkiani of ThinkProgress: "... Donald Trump's anti-abortion rhetoric is getting more extreme by the day. At a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday night, Trump described a violent scene, claiming that a doctor and mother together decide whether or not to execute a baby after it's born.... For extra emphasis, Trump repeated it again with hand motions -- including a guillotine for the execution.... And in February, he responded to the failure of [Ben] Sasse]s 'Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act' by claiming on Twitter that Democrats 'don]t mind executing babies AFTER birth.'" --s ...

... Chris Cameron of the New York Times: "President Trump revived on Saturday night what is fast becoming a standard, and inaccurate, refrain about doctors 'executing babies.' During a more than hourlong speech at a rally in Green Bay, Wis., Mr. Trump admonished the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, for vetoing a Republican bill that could send doctors to prison for life if they fail to give medical care to children born alive after a failed abortion attempt. The comments are the latest in a long string of incendiary statements from the president on abortion. The New York Times has previously fact-checked these claims, finding that late-term abortions are rare.... In another fact check, The Times found that infants are rarely born alive after abortion procedures[.]... Moreover, The Times reported, doctors do not kill the infants who survive, although families may choose not to take extreme measures to resuscitate them[.]... Bills like the one in Wisconsin and the one that Democrats blocked in Congress in February would force doctors to resuscitate the infant, even against the family's wishes."

Adam Bienkov of Business Insider: "Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has turned down an invitation from the Queen to attend a state banquet in Buckingham Palace with ... Donald Trump. In a statement published on Friday, Corbyn said..., 'Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honour a President who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric.'... Corbyn is the latest UK politician to reject the invitation for the event, set to be hosted by the Queen in June, after it was rejected by the Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable and the House of Commons speaker John Bercow." Mrs. McC: Frankly, I don't get why May invited that fat fuck in the first place. He has treated her shabbily. Subjecting Elizabeth to Dinner with an Ass seems cruel, too.

Heather Long of the Washington Post: "Stephen Moore, President Trump's likely nominee for an opening on the Federal Reserve Board, apologized Sunday for his past comments about women that caused a firestorm last week. Moore ... has come under scrutiny for columns he wrote in the National Review in the early 2000s denouncing coed sports, arguing that female athletes were seeking 'equal pay for inferior work' and saying that only good-looking women should be allowed to be referees or sports reporters. 'These articles you're talking about were 17, 18 years ago. They were humor columns, but some of them weren't funny, so I am apologetic,' Moore said on ABC's 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos.'... Moore was adamant that he didn't think his past statements about women should disqualify him from the Fed. He called articles about his past a 'character assassination,' likening it to what Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh went through during his confirmation process. Conservative firm CRC Public Relations is helping to promote Moore and craft his messaging, much as it did for Kavanaugh last year." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: See, Stephen, character assassination is a deliberate attempt to ruin a person's reputation by planting & spreading false stories & rumors about him or her. Writing & publishing articles about what you yourself said or did is called "reporting." You assassinated your own character. These were self-inflicted wounds, & you don't get to blame someone else for them. Call it character assassination by suicide.

Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "More than two years after she withdrew from consideration for a White House national security position amid plagiarism accusations, Fox News commentator Monica Crowley is reportedly set to take a job as chief spokeswoman for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.... In 2017, she registered as a lobbyist for Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire whose large payments (for speeches) to prominent Americans, including Donald Trump, and apparent promotion of pro-Russian interests drew scrutiny from special counsel Robert Mueller. Crowley's lobbying for Pinchuk could complicate her role as the top flack for an agency that is responsible for imposing and policing US sanctions on Russia and on a prominent Ukrainian leader tied to Pinchuk." --s

Dan Spinelli of Mother Jones: "Donald Trump['s] pledge to abandon the 'badly misguided' Arms Trade Treaty, which restricts the transfer of weapons to terrorists and other malicious actors outside of the country, drew a standing ovation at the annual National Rifle Association meeting in Indianapolis, where Trump was speaking. Quite a few people were unhappy with Trump's decision, which he announced less than three months after removing the United States from a Reagan-era arms control treaty with Russia. The Arms Trade Treaty was signed by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 with overwhelming support from the international community. Only three countries -- Iran, North Korea, and Syria -- opposed it.... Unshackling the United States from international agreements has long been a primary goal for John Bolton[.]" --s

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: "Donald Trump bucked decades of Republican orthodoxy by railing against free-trade agreements. To say I was skeptical of his plans to rip up or renegotiate nearly every major trade deal would be a polite understatement." Mrs. McC: The op-ed is of course firewalled, so I can't read it, but the headline writer characterizes Grassley's message as, "Trump's tariffs end or his trade deal dies." The op-ed is not entirely surprising, inasmuch as Grassley is a curmudgeon who has kept his seat by jealously upholding Iowa's special interests, often to the detriment of the rest of the country, but still it's good to see at least one GOP senator with the guts to knock Trump on one of his signature issues. The WSJ is a good spot for the op-ed, from Grassley's POV, as not many ass-scratching Trumpbots will be reading it.

John Feffer in Informed Comment: "[John] Bolton's broadsides against Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela [as the 'troika of tyranny'] hint at ambitions for much more dangerous geopolitical conflict -- and nothing short of a new Cold War.... None of these countries poses even the remotest threat to the United States. They have dismal human rights records, but that hasn't been a concern for the Trump administration anywhere else in the world.... With all eyes focused these days on Trump and his myriad crimes, John Bolton's speeches are a reminder that even worse options are waiting in the wings." --s

Carl Segerstrom of Mother Jones: "In the name of energy dominance, the federal government is looking to curtail state environmental reviews and promote fossil fuel exports. By doing so, it's wading into an ongoing fight between coastal and Interior West states over permit denials for export facilities on the West Coast. Where the administration stands on that battle -- and its apparent willingness to trample on some states' regulatory authority -- exposes the uniquely flexible nature of its support for states' rights: It appears interested in shifting power to states only when the goal is less environmental protection." --s

Neil Lewis of the New York Times: "Richard G. Lugar, who represented Indiana in the Senate for 36 years and whose mastery of foreign affairs made him one of only a handful of senators in modern history to exercise substantial influence on the nation's international relations, died on Sunday in Annandale, Va. He was 87." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Zack Budryk of the Hill: "Former President Obama paid tribute to ex-Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on Sunday, saying the late senator 'exhibited the truth that common courtesy can speak across cultures.' In a lengthy statement on the death of Lugar..., Obama noted his work with the former Hoosier in the Senate to expand Lugar's 1991 nuclear nonproliferation plan." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "In a popular Washington bookstore, at virtually the same time as the latest synagogue shooting occurred, a crowd of so-called 'white identitarians' with a bullhorn showed up to disrupt the author of a book on racial resentment called Dying of Whiteness, chanting 'this land is our land.'... Christopher Hasson, a 50-year-old Maryland man who was a high-ranking U.S. Coast Guard officer with a security clearance, may walk out of jail in a few days, maybe less.... The failure of AG Bill Barr's Justice Department to move heaven and earth to keep Hasson in custody or even issue a press release alerting the public is symbolic of a giant blind spot in our nation's capital when it comes to the deadly threat posed by white supremacy. And that giant buck stops at the desk of President Trump.... This president -- with his vainglorious refusal to admit that an immoral strain of white nationalism helped elect him in 2016 -- and his administration are making the problem much, much worse.... Trump has repeatedly made clear his opinion that violent white extremism is not a problem in his America.... Terror attacks by far-right extremists more than quadrupled in the year that Trump became president, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That dramatized the fact that after spending billions on a vast infrastructure that primarily targeted Islamic extremism, the much greater threat in this country has a white face." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

    ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Say, remember how horrified everyone was when Hillary Clinton said some of Trump's supporters were "deplorables"? Sounds fairly quaint now, doesn't it?

Joe Romm of ThinkProgress: "Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg keeps dashing any hope that the world's largest social media platform might be a positive force in the fight against catastrophic climate change. In its latest disastrous move to fight the online epidemic of fake news, Facebook's fact-checking effort announced last week that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com -- an arm of the conservative, anti-science media site The Daily Caller. The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch..., the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Kansas. What's the Matter with Football? Mitch Smith of the New York Times: Hours after the New York Giants drafted Washburn University cornerback Corey Ballentine, "he and a college teammate, Dwane Simmons, were shot a few blocks from Washburn's Topeka campus at a social gathering at which dozens of people were present. Ballentine was expected to make a full recovery, the university said. Simmons died.... The shooting in Topeka was one of several this year involving college football players away from the field." Mr. McC: Football is violent in more ways than one.

Way Beyond

Brazil. Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "A turf war has broken out at the pinnacle of Brazilian politics, pitting a presidential son [Carlos Bolsonaro] nicknamed 'pitbull' and a Steve Bannon-backed polemicist [Olavo de Carvalho] against a group of retired military chiefs led by Brazil's vice-president, Hamilton Mourão.... Mourão's reprimand came after the president's account shared an expletive-filled YouTube video in which Carvalho showed off his gun collection and skewered what he called the shameless, vain and boastful military regime which took power in the 1960s.... Bolsonaro's son Eduardo who is also the South American representative of Bannon's far-right group called 'The Movement' joined the offensive.... It ... revealed a ferocious ideological battle raging between the two factions -- with potentially momentous ramifications for Brazil and Bolsonaro's presidency." --s

Norway. Special-Ops Whale. Hannahs Ellis-Peterson of the Guardian: "Marine experts in Norway believe they have stumbled upon a white whale that was trained by the Russian navy as part of a programme to use underwater mammals as a special ops force. Fishermen in waters near the small Norwegian fishing village of Inga reported last week that a white beluga whale wearing a strange harness had begun to harass their fishing boats. The strange behaviour of the whale, which was actively seeking out the vessels and trying to pull straps and ropes from the sides of the boats, as well as the fact it was wearing a tight harness which seemed to be for a camera or weapon, raised suspicions among marine experts that the animal had been given military-grade training by neighbouring Russia. Inside the harness, which has now been removed from the whale, were the words 'Equipment of St. Petersburg'." --s

News Ledes

AP: "Director John Singleton, who made one of Hollywood's most memorable debuts with the Oscar-nominated 'Boyz N the Hood' and continued over the following decades to probe the lives of black communities in his native Los Angeles and beyond, has died. He was 51. Singleton's family said Monday that he died in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, after being taken off life support. Earlier this month, the director suffered a major stroke." ...

... Singleton's New York Times obituary is here.