The Commentariat -- May 4, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Senate Race 2020. Emily Cochrane of the New York Times: "Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming, said on Saturday that he would not seek re-election at the end of his term, the third Republican senator to do so ahead of the 2020 campaign. Mr. Enzi, 75, who leads the Senate Budget Committee, has held his seat since 1997, making him the longest-serving Wyoming senator in modern times.... It is unclear if Representative Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican who once challenged Mr. Enzi in a primary race, will take another shot at the seat -- a decision that would reshape Republican leadership in the House. Mr. Enzi, in his remarks, said he could see Ms. Cheney becoming speaker one day."

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The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Max Boot in the Washington Post: "While conferring legal immunity upon himself, Trump is eager to weaponize the legal system against his opponents. The Mueller report documents three separate occasions when Trump demanded a Justice Department investigation of Hillary Clinton. Now, the New York Times reports, Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, are attempting to instigate a criminal probe of his leading 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, on what appear to be trumped-up charges of corruption. In one of the more chilling exchanges during his Senate testimony, Barr would not say whether 'the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested' that he open an investigation. If the answer were 'no,' he would have said so. It is hard to think of any president in the past 230 years, including Nixon, who has ever sabotaged the rule of law so flagrantly or so successfully to protect his own hide. And, sadly, it is hard to imagine that anything can be done about it before Nov. 3, 2020.... So for the next 18 months, at a minimum, this nation is at the mercy of a criminal administration."

Invitation to a 2020 Russian Election Intervention. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he discussed the 'Russian Hoax' with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in their first conversation since the release of the special counsel's report, which found that 'the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.' In a pair of midday tweets, Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Putin had a 'long and very good conversation' in a phone call that lasted over an hour and covered a wide range of issues.... He made no mention of the growing tensions between the United States and Russia over Venezuela, where other senior American officials have accused the Kremlin of intervening to prop up President Nicolás Maduro, whom the Trump administration is working to remove from power. Mr. Trump also gave no indication that he warned Mr. Putin against Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election, a prospect that has unnerved some of his own top aides, including the recently departed secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen. To the extent that the findings of the Mueller report figured at all in their conversation, Mr. Trump suggested that he dismissed the intense focus on Russian interference as a politically motivated effort by Democrats to discredit his victory in 2016." ...

We discussed it [Mueller's investigation]. He actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and it ended up being a mouse. But he knew that, because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever. -- Donald Trump, at a press availability Friday

Reality Chek. It was a telephone call. It was not a video call. Trump could not see Putin. Presumably, Trump was listening to a translator, not to Putin, when he heard the mountain-mouse remark. There was no way for Trump to know or even infer Putin "actually sort of smiled." Trump imagines stuff & he says what he has imagined as if his imaginings accurately reflect reality. It's not clear to me he can tell the difference between fantasy & fact. Weird. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie ...

... Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during a lengthy phone call on Friday, the White House said. The two talked on the phone for more than an hour, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The leaders also discussed trade and a potential nuclear agreement including China, Sanders said. Regarding the investigation by ... Robert Mueller, which concluded in March, Sanders said 'both leaders knew there was no collusion.' The discussion on the matter was brief, she said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) According to MSNBC, Sanders released information about the phone call only after TASS had reported it. ...

... David Graham of the Atlantic: "Two weeks after Mueller's report laid out even more detail about the dimensions of Russian interference in the election, Trump didn't bother to condemn Putin or complain about the interference. He didn't even bring it up. But don't expect this reprise to elicit the same reaction as Helsinki. Whereas Trump's refusal to defend U.S. elections against foreign interference was once shocking, it's now become expected.... No one in government other than Trump denies the Russian attack.... One reason Trump can't bring up the hacks is that he is a terrible negotiator. Because he is bad at one-on-one discussions and eager for Putin's approval, he is unable to discuss other issues with Putin while also holding a firm line on election interference.... Trump's failure to bring up the interference is also terribly hypocritical. During an interview with Fox News on Thursday, he criticized former President Barack Obama for not doing more to push back on Russia during the election." ...

... Li Zhou of Vox: "Trump's resistance to directly press Putin about Russia's role in election interference is an issue that's come up again and again.... In refusing to openly address this threat, however, Trump raises an alarming concern: He' avoiding the question of how he'd effectively be able to prevent it from happening again." Mrs. McC Note to Zhou: Trump definitely does not want "to prevent it from happening again." Reports & opinion pieces about Russia's interference in 2016 spout as a given the theory that the reason Trump resists preventing foreign interference in U.S. elections is that he is too vain to admit Russia's interference may have given him the edge to win in 2016. But the real reason, IMO, is that Trump is tacitly soliciting the same kind of help again. ...

... Update. Mimi Rocah, former chief of the organized crime and racketeering unit at SDNY, backed me up -- and then some -- in remarks she made yesterday on MSNBC: "This phone call between Trump and Putin today reminded me of what we would call -- when we were on wires of criminals and listening to their conversations and they didn't know it — the 'get your story straight call. They would do something..., they robbed a bank or whatever, then they're on the phone, sort of talking, kind of sort of in code, but it's a yeah, 'when we went to the store earlier and I bought the milk,' you know, they're making their cover story, congratulating each other, patting each other on the back, saying 'it's all good, we made it, we didn't get caught.'... If you look at the obstruction that Trump, I think, clearly committed, it was obstruction of the investigation into Russia, not just Trump, but into Russia's actions." ...

... Also, Julián Castro. Katie Galiato of Politico: "Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro on Friday said he thinks ... Donald Trump wants Russia to interfere on his behalf again in 2020, after special counsel Robert Mueller reported that Moscow sought to boost him in 2016. 'I bet he's hoping they're going to do it again in 2020,' Castro said of Trump in an interview on MSNBC. 'It's incumbent upon Congress to help ensure that we do everything that we can to get to the truth that the Mueller report tried to lay out and also hold this administration accountable to make sure that we do take steps to secure our 2020 election.'" ...

... Justin Sink of Bloomberg News: "Donald Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't seeking to 'get involved' in the crisis in Venezuela, despite assertions by the American president's top national security advisers that the Kremlin is offering critical support to Nicolas Maduro's regime. 'He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he'd like to see something positive happen for Venezuela,' Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, following a call with the Russian leader earlier in the day.... The conversation, which Trump went on to describe as 'very positive,' appeared to be yet another example of Trump taking Putin's claims at face value despite contrary evidence from his own government. The White House national security adviser, John Bolton, and U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo both said earlier this week that the Kremlin talked Maduro out of leaving Venezuela after U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido attempted to end his regime on Tuesday by calling for a military uprising." ...

... Anne Gearan, et al., of the Washington Post: "Trump appeared to take Putin at his word that Russia wants to help ease a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. 'And I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid,' Trump told reporters at the White House. 'Right now, people are starving. They have no water. They have no food.' In a statement issued late Wednesday, the White House had said that Russia 'must leave' Venezuela and 'renounce their support of the Maduro regime.' Russia has significant investments in Venezuela and has been a strong backer of Maduro."

We Saw This Coming. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "The White House on Friday seized on revelations that the FBI during the 2016 campaign sent an undercover investigator to meet with an aide to then-candidate Donald Trump, with the president calling the news 'bigger than Watergate.' Trump praised one of his most frequent media foes, The New York Times, for its reporting, while his reelection campaign lit into investigators and Vice President Mike Pence called the bureau's actions' very troubling.'" See yesterday's Commentariat for context. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Lindsey Has a Change of Heart.* Marianne Levine of Politico: “Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Friday asked Robert Mueller if he'd like to testify about any 'misrepresentation' by Attorney General William Barr concerning a phone call they had about the special counsel's report. 'Please inform the Committee if you would like to provide testimony regarding any misrepresentation by the Attorney General of the substance of the phone call,' Graham wrote to Mueller in a letter dated Friday." Mrs. McC: On Wednesday, Graham told reports he would not call Mueller to testify: "'I'm not going to do any more. Enough already. It's over,' Graham told reporters, asked why he wasn't calling Mueller to appear before his committee." Graham's invitation to Mueller to call Barr a liar seems like a set-up. Mueller would have to really want to testify, and very few people, least of all those who have done so before, really want to testify before Congressional committees. ...

     ... *Update: Actually, after Barr refused to provide copies of contemporaneous notes on the phone call he had with Robert Mueller about the way Barr characterized the special counsel's report, Graham did cut into the Q&A to say that he would write to Mueller that if there was anything Barr said about the conversation that Mueller disagreed with, "he can come in & tell us." So not a change of heart. Graham was just following up on a commitment he made during the hearing.

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offer [to] Attorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in ... Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was 'willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production.' But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "On some of the weightiest questions about obstruction of justice, Barr has made pro-Trump arguments that are at odds with what Robert S. Mueller III wrote in his report.... The first is his emphasis on the supposed lack of an underlying crime.... The Mueller report itself seems to rebut Barr's point -- rather directly.... '... the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.... The second strange claim Barr keeps revisiting is Mueller's private comments about whether he found a crime. Mueller in his report said he was not making a 'traditional prosecutorial judgment'..., but he said it was because of Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) policy against indicting a sitting president -- not the evidence. Barr said in his news conference before the release of the Mueller report: 'We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion. And he made it very clear several times that that was not his position....' Barr echoed this twice in his Wednesday testimony...." Emphasis Blake's.

Mrs. McCrabbie: Yesterday I wrote that Bill Barr's remarks have undermined the work the Mueller team has done. But I am reminded today that Barr is creating a clear & present danger in the 14 ongoing Mueller-related cases, cases that are of course being investigated or brought to trial by men & women who work for Barr. Here's one instance:

... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Federal prosecutors argued Friday that special counsel Robert Mueller did not need to prove conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign to show that longtime Trump ally Roger Stone obstructed Congress' investigation of the matter. 'To establish the defendant's guilt of the crimes with which he is charged, the government is not required to prove the existence of a conspiracy with the Russian government to interfere in the U.S. presidential election,' Mueller's team, along with the U.S. attorney in Washington D.C., wrote in response to filings Stone submitted on March 28. That argument has been the subject of controversy in recent weeks, following Attorney General Bill Barr's suggestion that evidence collected by Mueller implicating ... Donald Trump for multiple efforts to thwart his probe fell short, in part because Mueller didn't establish the existence of a criminal conspiracy. 'The evidence now suggests that the accusations against him were false and he knew they were false,' Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.... Stone had pointed to these arguments to undercut Mueller's prosecution against him.... In support of his argument to dismiss the case against him, Stone pointed to a 19-page memo Barr wrote and forwarded to Justice Department leaders when he was outside of government." ...

... Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) in a Washington Post op-ed: "In the furor around Attorney General William P. Barr's testimony on the Mueller report before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, one issue has flown under the radar: the potential for Barr to undermine more than a dozen ongoing criminal matters that sprang from the special counsel's investigation.... Given Barr's own statements and actions with respect to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation, his credibility and his independence are in doubt. For that reason, he must recuse himself from any ongoing investigations involving evidence referred by the special counsel's office. Barr has made clear that he believes it is appropriate for an attorney general to protect the president's political interests.... The more we learn about Barr's handling of the Mueller investigation, the more cause there is for concern." ...

... Ana Radelat of the Connecticut Mirror (May 1): At the Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. Richard "Blumenthal [D-Ct.] ... asked Barr if he would recuse himself from [ongoing] investigations. 'No,' was Barr's terse response. Barr told Blumenthal he was finished with the Mueller report. 'The job of the Justice Department is now over ... we're out of it,' Barr said. 'We've got to stop using the political process as a weapon.'"

Marianne Levine: "Sen. Kamala Harris called on the Justice Department inspector general to look into whether Attorney General William Barr had received or complied with any requests from the White House to investigate ... Donald Trump's 'perceived enemies.' In a letter sent Friday to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, the California Democrat, who is also running for president, wrote she had 'grave concern about the independence of the Department of Justice under the leadership of Attorney General William Barr.' Harris cited her exchange with the attorney general at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week, in which Barr did not explicitly answer her question about whether Trump or anyone in he White House asked to or suggested the DOJ investigate someone. 'I'm trying to grapple with the word "suggest,"' Barr said at the hearing. 'I mean there have been discussions of, of matters out there that uh ... they have not asked me to open an investigation.'... In her letter, Harris described Barr's response as 'alarming' and noted that 'such inappropriate requests by the President have been well documented.'"

Diss Barr. Kyle Cheney: “Two House Democrats on Friday urged the bar associations in Washington and Virginia to launch an ethics investigation into Attorney General William Barr's public comments on ... Robert Mueller's report. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) -- both former prosecutors -- say they believe Barr 'at best misled Congress' and 'at worst perjured himself' when he told lawmakers this week he was unsure why some members Mueller's team were reportedly dissatisfied with his public portrayal of Mueller's report.... 'By deceiving Congress and the American people, who vested their trust in both the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice at large, Attorney General Barr must be subject to a professional review for the sake of the legal profession and the public,' Lieu and Rice wrote in a letter to the bar associations. The two Democrats say the rules of the Virginia and D.C. bars require 'candor' toward official tribunals and that engaging in 'dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation ... reflects adversely on the lawyer's fitness to practice law.'"

Cap'n. Rod "Lands the Plane." Marcy Wheeler finds some clues that suggest to her that at early as last August Rod Rosenstein was pressuring Bob Mueller to wrap up his investigation before Mueller was ready to do so. "If he was, that would change the import of Trump's tactic to avoid testifying -- first stalling through the election, and then refusing any real cooperation -- significantly."

Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "The scribe keeping track of the president's actions was Annie Donaldson, [Don] McGahn's chief of staff, a loyal and low-profile conservative lawyer who figures in the Mueller report as one of the most important narrators of internal White House turmoil. Her daily habit of documenting conversations and meetings provided the special counsel's office with its version of the Nixon White House tapes: a running account of the president's actions, albeit in sentence fragments and concise descriptions. Among the episodes memorialized in Donaldson's notes and memos: the president's outrage when FBI Director James B. Comey confirmed the existence of the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump's efforts to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing the probe and his push to get Mueller disqualified and removed as the special counsel.... House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has already signaled that he intends to subpoena Donaldson as a critical witness.... She left the White House in December...."

Camp Cohen. Michael Sisak & Jim Mustian of the AP: Michael Cohen is due to report Monday to "a federal prison 70 miles (113 kilometers) from New York City where white-collar and D-list scoundrels can do time while playing bocce ball and noshing on rugelach.... Tucked in the lush countryside south of the Catskill Mountains, [the Federal Correctional Institution,] Otisville is actually two federal facilities with a total of about 800 inmates: a medium-security prison where former NFL star Darren Sharper is serving a 20-year rape sentence, and a satellite camp for non-violent offenders like Cohen.... About 115 inmates sleep in bunks lined up in barrack-style halls, instead of individual or two-man cells.... There are lockers to store personal belongings, washers and dryers for laundry, microwaves to heat up food and ice machines to keep cool.... Otisville is also known as a favorite among prison-bound Jews for its Kosher meals and Shabbat services. Add in recreational amenities like tennis courts, horseshoes and cardio equipment, and it sounds like the closest thing the federal prison system has to sleepaway camp."

Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump tweeted Friday that his administration is' looking into' the banning of right-wing media personalities from prominent social media platforms -- following a purge by Facebook of accounts belonging to several controversial political figures. The president lamented the apparent suspension of actor and Trump supporter James Woods' Twitter account, as well as the shuttering of Infowars contributor Paul Joseph Watson's Facebook profile this week.... Infowars chief Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and activist Laura Loomer were among the other incendiary characters booted Thursday from Facebook and its subsidiary, Instagram."

Jesse Eisinger & Paul Kiel of ProPublica in the New York Times: "The hot policy in Democratic circles these days is raising taxes on the rich.... But before this country raises taxes, it should grapple with something much more prosaic but equally important for tackling inequality: saving the Internal Revenue Service. Already, wealthy people and corporations easily get around today's rules. However tough any new laws might seem, they'd soon be undercut. Slowly and quietly over the past eight years, the I.R.S. has been eviscerated. It's lost tens of thousands of employees. It has fewer auditors now than at any time since 1953.... Fixing the problem will require more than increasing the I.R.S.'s budget (though that would certainly help). It's about having the right personnel with the right skills.... The top 0.5 percent of highest-earning Americans account for about a fifth of the income that's hidden from the I.R.S., according to a University of Michigan study, or more than $50 billion a year in today's dollars.... It's much easier to enforce the tax laws for the bottom 90 percent of earners. Wages are reported straight to the I.R.S., and computers can easily check that tax returns accurately report that income. This means that inadequate enforcement of the tax laws necessarily has a regressive effect...."

Step 1. Get government job. Step 2. Help design & enforce hard-line policies that increase need for housing immigrants. Step 3. Get fired. Step 4. Get high-paying, low-work job with private company providing housing for immigrants. ...

... Send These, the Homeless, Tempest-tost to Me ... and I'll Make a Buck off Them. Graham Kates of CBS News: "... Friday, Caliburn International confirmed to CBS News that [former DHS secretary & White House chief-of-staff John] Kelly had joined its board of directors. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates Homestead and three other shelters for unaccompanied migrant children in Texas. Prior to joining the Trump administration in January 2017, Kelly had been on the board of advisors of DC Capital Partners, an investment firm that now owns Caliburn.... In the past year, Comprehensive Health Services, the only private company operating shelters, became one of the most dominant players in the industry. Last August, it secured three licenses for facilities in Texas, totaling 500 beds, and in December, the Homestead facility began expanding from a capacity of 1,250 beds to 3,200. Located on several acres of federal land adjacent to an Air Reserve Base, the facility is the nation's only site not subject to routine inspections by state child welfare experts.... Government officials are barred from benefiting from their involvement in matters that involve specific parties, meaning that while serving at the White House, Kelly could not directly influence any decision to award a contract to a DC Capital company."

Erik Prince Is Always up to No Good. Daily Beast: "Blackwater founder Erik Prince arranged for political activist James O'Keefe's conservative group Project Veritas to receive more than one round of 'training in intelligence and elicitation techniques,' The Intercept reports. In 2016, the self-styled 'guerrilla journalist' group reportedly got lessons from a retired military intelligence operative. The training lasted several weeks and ended with the operative, Euripides Rubio Jr., reportedly quitting because the group 'wasn't capable of learning.' In 2017, Prince next set Project Veritas up with a former British MI6 officer in hopes of turning the organization into 'domestic spies,' according to report." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: The Intercept report, by Matthew Cole, is a long look at Erik Prince's comeback in the Age of Trump. Based on my spotty scan, I would say the article is quite readable. I'm just not going to read it.

Presidential Race 2020

Matt Dixon of Politico: "In an early show of force, more than a third of Florida's Democratic state legislators endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid for president. The endorsements, from 23 of the Legislature's 64 Democrats, were gathered over the past month by state Rep. Joseph Geller, a Broward County Democrat and longtime Biden supporter. Geller said Biden has the best shot at bridging a growing divide between progressive Democrats and those representing the party's more moderate, traditional wing." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Florida to Impose Steep Poll Tax. Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "In November, Florida voters approved a groundbreaking ballot measure that would restore voting rights for up to 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-led Legislature voted on Friday to impose a series of sharp restrictions that could prevent tens of thousands of them from ever reaching the ballot box. In a move that critics say undermines the spirit of what voters intended, thousands of people with serious criminal histories will be required to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they could vote. The new limits would require potential new voters to settle what may be tens of thousands of dollars in financial obligations to the courts, effectively pricing some people out of the ballot box.... The vast majority of criminal defendants are poor when they are arrested and even poorer after they are released from prison.... the legislation goes next to Gov. Ron DeSantis [R], who had called on the Legislature to set additional standards for registering ex-felons to vote....."

Ohio. Trip Gabriel & Michael Wines of the New York Times: "A federal court on Friday tossed out Ohio's congressional map, ruling that Republican state lawmakers had carved up the state to give themselves an illegal partisan advantage and to dilute Democrats' votes in a way that predetermined the outcome of elections. The ruling, by a three-judge panel from the Federal District Court in Cincinnati, ordered new maps to be drawn by June 14 to be used for the 2020 election, when Democrats will fight to preserve their House majority. The ruling will go directly to the United States Supreme Court for review. The ruling follows decisions by four other federal courts striking down partisan gerrymanders in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Maryland and, last week, in Michigan. All but Maryland were gerrymandered by Republicans."

Way Beyond

England. Palko Karasz of the New York Times: "Researchers seeking evidence of chemical 'micropollution' in five rural English rivers have found pesticides in many of the freshwater shrimp they tested. And cocaine in all of them. The presence of the illegal drug was unexpected because the sites where the researchers gathered their samples, in the eastern coastal county of Suffolk, were miles away from any large city, said the study's lead author, Thomas Miller, a researcher at King's College London."

North Korea. Choe Sang-Hun of the New York Times: "North Korea fired several short-range projectiles off its east coast on Saturday, in a move likely to raise tensions as denuclearization talks with the United States remain stalled. The South Korean military said in a statement that the North had fired several short-range projectiles between 9:06 a.m. and 9:27 a.m. from near Wonsan, a coastal town east of Pyongyang, the capital. The projectiles flew 70 to 200 kilometers before they landed in the sea between North Korea and Japan, it said."

News Lede

USA Today: "All passengers and crew aboard a Boeing 737 traveling from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are safe after the plane crashed into a river at the end of a runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, authorities reported late Friday. At least 136 people were on board the charter plane at the time of the 9:40 p.m. crash, sending Navy security and emergency response teams to the scene. Photos show the plane landed in a shallow dredge of water with minimal damage." Mrs. McC: CNN reported that animals traveling in the hold probably did not survive.

The Commentariat -- May 3, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb of CNN: "House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Friday sent his latest offer [to] Attorney General William Barr to try to reach an agreement in his effort to obtain the unredacted special counsel report and the underlying evidence before Nadler moves forward with holding the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Nadler sent Barr a new letter proposing that the committee could work with the Justice Department to prioritize which investigative materials it turns over to Congress, specifically citing witness interviews and the contemporaneous notes provided by witnesses that were cited in the special counsel Robert Mueller's report. Nadler wrote that he was 'willing to prioritize a specific, defined set of underlying investigative and evidentiary materials for immediate production.' But Nadler's letter does not budge on Democrats' insistence that the Justice Department allow Congress to view grand jury material that's redacted in the report, which Barr has argued he's not allowed by law to provide. Nadler set a deadline of 9 a.m. ET Monday for Barr to respond and said he would move to contempt proceedings if the attorney general does not comply."

Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "... Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the Mueller report, Venezuela and North Korea during a lengthy phone call on Friday, the White House said. The two talked on the phone for more than an hour, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The leaders also discussed trade and a potential nuclear agreement including China, Sanders said. Regarding the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which concluded in March, Sanders said 'both leaders knew there was no collusion.' The discussion on the matter was brief, she said."

We Saw This Coming. Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: "The White House on Friday seized on revelations that the FBI during the 2016 campaign sent an undercover investigator to meet with an aide to then-candidate Donald Trump, with the president calling the news 'bigger than Watergate.' Trump praised one of his most frequent media foes, The New York Times, for its reporting, while his reelection campaign lit into investigators and Vice President Mike Pence called the bureau's actions' very troubling.'"

Matt Dixon of Politico: "In an early show of force, more than a third of Florida's Democratic state legislators endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in his bid for president. The endorsements, from 23 of the Legislature's 64 Democrats, were gathered over the past month by state Rep. Joseph Geller, a Broward County Democrat and longtime Biden supporter. Geller said Biden has the best shot at bridging a growing divide between progressive Democrats and those representing the party's more moderate, traditional wing."

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The Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "... Robert Mueller's team is in direct talks with the House Judiciary Committee about whether he will testify before Congress, according to multiple reports. NBC News and ABC News reported that the committee is now speaking with Mueller's team when it was previously dealing with the Justice Department. NBC reports that a hearing has not been finalized and a date was not set."

Rebecca Morin of USA Today: "President Trump said Thursday that he won't allow former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify before Congress. 'I don't think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can because especially him because he was the counsel,' Trump said during a clip of a 20-minute interview aired on Fox News. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, last week issued a subpoena to McGahn to testify before the committee.... Trump maintained that there is no need to investigate further now after Mueller's report. 'I would say it's done,' the president said Thursday in the Fox News sit-down. 'Nobody has ever done what I've done, I've given total transparency. It's never happened before like this.'" Mrs. McC: Right.

Pamela Brown & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The White House has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month and released Thursday afternoon. In the five-page letter, a top White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller's report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted. Flood slammed Mueller's approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to 'either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.... The (special counsel) instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper,' Flood wrote.... The letter is dated April 19, one day after the Justice Department released the redacted report to the public." The same day, Trump published one of his "No Collusion - No Obstruction!" tweets. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ed Krassenstein of the Hill Reporter: "Senator and 2020 presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar, has just sent a letter to Robert Mueller requesting information related to Trump's personal tax returns and Trump Organization financial details. The letter ... outlines the fact that Attorney General William Barr suggested that she ask Mueller directly about Trump's tax returns, after Barr himself said on Wednesday that he did not know if Mueller had obtained or reviewed any of Trump's returns. Klobuchar makes it clear that since Senator Lindsey Graham has no plans on interviewing Mueller, that Mueller should provide her with any tax returns or Trump Organization financial records that he was able to obtain." Mrs. McC: Whoever drafted Klobuchar's letter must have been smiling as she worked. ...

     ... Krassenstein has a copy of the text Klobuchar's letter at the end of his report, but as of Thursday night, it contains writeovers. Klobuchar has a readable copy on her own Senate site.

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats, decrying what they called an erosion of American democracy, threatened on Thursday to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and ignored a subpoena deadline to hand over Robert S. Mueller III's full report and evidence.... 'What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to a House hearing in which he said he was unaware that the special counsel had protested his portrayal of his conclusions. 'That's a crime.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Mikhaila Fogel & Quinta Jurecic of Lawfare explain why Barr's misleading answer to Rep. Charlie Crist in an April hearing do not constitute perjury. However, the authors do note a super-slip-up Barr made in his self-defensive testimony before the Senate this week: "Barr's response suggests his defense: He understood Crist to be asking if he knew anything about concerns raised by members of Mueller's team, not by Mueller himself. And Barr had only heard directly from Mueller. The attorney general's comment later in the May 1 hearing that he thought the Mueller letter 'was probably written by one of his staff people' complicates the explanation he provided...."

President* Free to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue. Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Stunning among other stunning statements Attorney General William Barr made Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was his blithe declaration that the president is above the law. Responding to questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Barr claimed repeatedly Donald Trump had been 'falsely accused' of coordinating with Russia. Deploying the 'no underlying crime' red herring, Barr asserted that the president as head of government and the Department of Justice was entitled to close down an investigation into himself if he felt it was off the rails: 'The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow [an investigation] to run its course,' Barr said. 'That's important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here ... do involve the exercise of the president's constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.'... Bill Barr declared Trump king." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "Whether out of sycophantic loyalty or a deep-seated belief in executive impunity, Barr has used his position to insulate the president from legal scrutiny. He has done everything in his power to downplay the impact of the special counsel's investigation.... You don't have to dive deep into Barr's history to see that he is an apparatchik, less committed to the rule of law than he is to his political party and its leadership.... Helping Republican presidents act with impunity is William Barr's stock-in-trade.... His theory of presidential immunity did not extend to Bill Clinton, for example, whose impeachment Barr defended."

Right-wing columnist Quin Hillyer of the Washington Examiner: "Attorney General William Barr three times now has tread on the dangerous ground of asserting that the president can assess his own guilt or innocence and, by extension, of the culpability of underlings as well.... Barr's prepared [April 18] press conference remarks ascribed 'non-corrupt motives' to President Trump's consideration of impeding Mueller's probe, on the theory that Trump 'was frustrated and angered by a sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency, propelled by his political opponents, and fueled by illegal leaks,' even though 'there was in fact no collusion.'... In his May 1 testimony, Barr was more specific on two separate occasions. 'If the president is being falsely accused..., and he felt this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for [exercising constitutional authority] for replacing an independent counsel.' In later testimony, Barr said: 'With the president, who has a constitutional authority to supervise proceedings ... was based on false allegations, the president does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course. The president could terminate that proceeding and it would not be corrupt intent because he was being falsely accused, and he would be worried about the impact on his administration.'... There can be no innocent motive for, or innocent effect from, an attempt to halt a duly constituted investigation operating under proper constitutional safeguards. This is so even if a president's political opponents are misusing ... the investigation for their own illegitimate purposes."

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare in the Atlantic, Is So Disillusioned: "Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject.... Barr has consistently sought to spin his department's work in a highly political fashion, and he has done so to cast the president's conduct in the most favorable possible light.... Barr's public statements [about the Mueller report] are simply indefensible." Wittes goes on to catalogue all the ways Barr has misrepresented Mueller's findings. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker points out what a low opinion Bill Barr holds of federal "staff." He doesn't think much of low-life U.S. senators, either. Nor the press, who apparently were at fault in reading & reporting his summary that's not a summary as a near-vindication of Trump....

     ... Mrs. McC: Oddly enough, Barr didn't fault Trump for the victory lap he took after some lowly staffer read parts of Barr's not-summary to him. And he didn't fault himself for testifying that the Mueller report found that Trump was "falsely accused." But Barr is a shady lawyer & therefore not a person who is troubled by logical fallacies. I should add here that "staff" are not ditzy recent high-school grads who got jobs in the typing pool because they couldn't get real, private-sector jobs. For instance, the House "staff" whom Barr is too high-and-mighty to allow to question him would be experienced lawyers; the DOJ "staff" who memorialized the Barr-Mueller phone call also would likely be top department lawyers. Very often, "staff" are far more competent than the elected & appointed officials for whom they work. They have years of specialized experience. Effective officials know their staffs are indispensable & appreciate their expertise.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it's true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man? So after today, if we didn't before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It's 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction. This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we've never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he's the victim of a 'coup.' What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eager help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them." (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Goldman, et al., of the New York Times: A U.S. government investigator posing as a research assistant set up a meeting in a London bar in September 2016 with George Papadopoulos. "The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer to better understand the Trump campaign's links to Russia.... Ms. Turk ... work[ed] alongside a longtime informant, the Cambridge professor Stefan A. Halper.... The American government's affiliation with the woman, who said her name was Azra Turk, is one previously unreported detail of an operation that has become a political flash point in the face of accusations by President Trump and his allies that American law enforcement and intelligence officials spied on his campaign to undermine his electoral chances.... The decision to use Ms. Turk ... shows the level of alarm inside the F.B.I. during a frantic period when the bureau was trying to determine the scope of Russia's attempts to disrupt the 2016 election, but could also give ammunition to Mr. Trump and his allies for their spying claims." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the second New York Times "original reporting" story in two days that is helpful to Donald Trump. The first -- about Joe's Biden's son Hunter's business ops in Ukraine & linked yesterday -- was clearly a Rudy Giuliani plant; the report more-or-less said so. And, surprise, surprise, Bill Barr makes more than a cameo appearance in both matters. P.S. As you may recall, the NYT was the prime mover of the Clinton e-mails! story, and we should expect the Times again to be the paper of record exaggeration on stories "exposing" purported wrongdoing by whoever the Democratic presidential nominee is. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Barr Has Protected Trump. His Next Step Is to Smear His Opponents.... One direction the loyal AG is obviously heading is yet another investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. At Barr's hearing, Republican senators devoted most of their time to repeating wild allegations about the Russia investigation as deep state coup.... A second direction for Barr's investigatory powers is now coming into view. As Hillary Clinton's value as a foil has receded, Trump has taken aim at the candidate he sees as his most likely and formidable threat: Joe Biden. The ... Times story describes both the connections between Biden and Ukraine, and Trumpworld’s efforts to criminalize them.... Hunter Biden has legally but somewhat sleazily traded on his father's name through various investment and consulting arrangements.... The far greater evidence of misconduct lies in the ... Trump administration['s] ... pressuring Ukraine to advance the case specifically in order to smear Biden.... The context for this revelation is another story the Times broke last year that ... revealed that Ukraine had ceased all cooperation with the Mueller probe [in its investigation of Paul Manafort].... Having first helped Trump by shutting down its probe of Manafort, now Ukraine is helping him find some mud on a likely opponent."

Greg Farrell of Bloomberg News: "... at least one group has peered into the carefully guarded trove [of Donald Trump's tax returns] ... -- a team from Deutsche Bank AG. The bankers got a look before agreeing to lend to the Trump Organization in 2012 -- access that was described by two people familiar with the interaction. It was all part of a fresh start on a banking relationship that had soured after the financial crisis, descending into litigation over a Chicago project.... Deutsche Bank sent a team to the office of Trump Organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, the two people said. Weisselberg allowed the bankers to see relevant parts of Trump's tax returns and take notes, the people said. They weren't allowed to make copies of the documents, they said."

Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.... Such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say.... Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been 'stonewalled' in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump's businesses. 'This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses' potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,' Cummings said in a statement to Reuters." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mark Stern of Slate: "On Wednesday afternoon, after Attorney General William Barr finished his truculent and mendacious testimony before the Senate, the Department of Justice filed perhaps the most embarrassing, illogical, and nakedly political brief in the history of the agency. With Barr's assent, the DOJ argued that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because Congress zeroed out the individual mandate's penalty in 2017. The timing couldn't be worse. After obliterating his own credibility at the Senate hearing, Barr scorched the Justice Department's legitimacy, deploying fatuous pseudo-legal arguments to further the Trump administration's partisan goals." Stern explains some of the DOJ's "zany" arguments. The DOJ's brief is here.

They Really Don't Care, Do They? Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. '[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.'... The gaps in the system for tracking separations would result in a months-long effort to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that continues." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A Very Sudden Decision to Withdraw. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans. 'Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,' Trump tweeted.... The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still 'all in' on his potential nomination." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Trump Administration Is Whitewashing White Supremacy. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "A group of Democratic senators ... on Thursday called for the FBI to rescind a recent change to the way it classifies domestic terrorist incidents, arguing that the move plays down the threat of white supremacy. The letter to Attorney General William P. Barr and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was signed by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), all 2020 [presidential] candidates, as well as Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). All are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the letter, the senators said the FBI has created a new category -- 'racially-motivated violent extremism' -- that 'inappropriately' combines white-supremacist incidents with those involving 'Black identity extremists.' By doing so, the FBI has 'shifted its approach to tracking domestic terrorism incidents to obfuscate the white supremacist threat,' the senators said.... The senators said the Justice Department and FBI revealed the change in a briefing last week with Judiciary Committee staffers that took place 'nearly six months after the briefing was requested.'"

Presidential Race 2020

Adam Beam of the AP: "The state Senate voted 27-10 on Thursday to require anyone appearing on the state's presidential primary ballot to publicly release five years' worth of income tax returns. The proposal is in response to Trump, who bucked 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns prior to his election in 2016.... The Legislature passed a nearly identical bill in 2017, only to have it vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, telling lawmakers he was concerned the law was unconstitutional. Brown, a Democrat, refused to release his tax returns while in office.... [Now-Gov.] Gavin Newsom, who has released his tax returns and embraced his role as a national 'resistance' leader to Trump and his policies. Newsom's office didn't say whether he'd sign it.... All 10 Republicans in the state Senate voted against the bill, arguing it is unconstitutional."

Paul Krugman: "The trouble with both Biden and Sanders is that each, in his own way, seems to believe that he has unique powers of persuasion that will let him defy the harsh reality of today's tribal politics. And this lack of realism could set either of them up for failure.... The big concern about a Biden presidency is that he would repeat all of Obama's early mistakes, squandering any momentum from electoral victory in pursuit of a bipartisan dream that should have died long ago. Sanders, by contrast, doesn't do bipartisanship.... Biden appears stuck in the past, when real bipartisanship sometimes happened. Sanders appears to live in an imaginary future, where a popular tidal wave washes away all political obstacles."

Mike Isaac & Kevin Roose of the New York Times: "After years of wavering about how to handle the extreme voices populating its platform, Facebook on Thursday evicted seven of its most controversial users -- many of whom are conservatives -- immediately inflaming the debate about the power and accountability of large technology companies. The social network said it had barred Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, from its platform, along with a handful of other extremists. Louis Farrakhan, the outspoken black nationalist minister who has frequently been criticized for his anti-Semitic remarks, was also banned. The Silicon Valley company said these users were disallowed from using Facebook and Instagram under its policies against 'dangerous individuals and organizations.'"

Gabrielle Emanuel & Katie Thomas of the New York Times: "A federal jury on Thursday found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics, a company that sold a fentanyl-based painkiller, guilty of racketeering charges in a rare criminal prosecution that blamed corporate officials for contributing to the nation's opioid epidemic. The jury, after deliberating for 15 days, issued guilty verdicts against the company's founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to fuel sales of its highly potent drug, Subsys, by not only bribing doctors to prescribe their product but also by misleading insurers about patients' need for the drug."

Beyond the Beltway

Maryland. Paul Schwarzman & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: Baltimore "Mayor Catherine E. Pugh, who is under state and federal investigation over lucrative sales of her self-published children's books, resigned Thursday, plunging thia already rattled city into another political crisis. Pugh (D), a former state lawmaker, has been under public scrutiny since at least March, following news reports about the book deals with companies that do business with the city and state. Her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, announced her resignation at his downtown law office..., reading a statement from Pugh, who was believed to be at her home elsewhere in the city." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

West Virginia. Roni Rabin of the New York Times: "The state of West Virginia on Wednesday settled a lawsuit against the nation's largest drug distributor, which had been accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of addictive opioids to residents over a six-year period. The state's suit accused McKesson Corporation of putting profits ahead of residents' welfare by failing to investigate, report or stop suspicious drug orders as required by law, and fueling a widespread drug epidemic. McKesson, the sixth-largest American company in terms of revenue, reported over $208 billion in the last fiscal year. The giant distributor funneled enough hydrocodone and oxycodone to supply every legitimate patient with nearly 3,000 doses, state officials said."

Way Beyond

Russian Spy Whale Defects to Norway. Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "An alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave a Norwegian port city, in what appears to be a high-profile defection after a week of global attention on the unnamed beluga. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig told The Washington Post that the beluga 'was the first thing I saw outside of the window' of his patrolling ship in the morning. Speaking from the city of Hammerfest, he said the whale had moved only about 25 nautical miles within the last week and appeared to enjoy the proximity to humans, which he noted was 'strange' for a beluga. Contrary to the species' normal behavior, the beluga had allowed residents to pet its nose over the last few days."

News Lede

CNBC: "The U.S. jobs machine kept humming along in April, adding a robust 263,000 new hires while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%, the lowest in a generation, according to a Labor Department report Friday. Nonfarm payroll growth easily beat Wall Street expectations of 190,000 and a 3.8% jobless rate."

The Commentariat -- May 2, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Paul Schwarzman & Peter Hermann of the Washington Post: Baltimore “Mayor Catherine E. Pugh, who is under state and federal investigation over lucrative sales of her self-published children's books, resigned Thursday, plunging this already rattled city into another political crisis. Pugh (D), a former state lawmaker, has been under public scrutiny since at least March, following news reports about the book deals with companies that do business with the city and state. Her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, announced her resignation at his downtown law office..., reading a statement from Pugh, who was believed to be at her home elsewhere in the city."

They Really Don't Care, Do They? Jacob Soboroff of NBC News: "On the same day the Trump administration said it would reunite thousands of migrant families it had separated at the border with the help of a 'central database,' an official was admitting privately the government only had enough information to reconnect 60 parents with their kids, according to emails obtained by NBC News. '[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,' a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. 'We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.'... The gaps in the system for tracking separations would result in a months-long effort to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that continues."

A Very Sudden Decision to Withdraw. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump said Thursday that conservative commentator Stephen Moore has decided to withdraw from consideration for the Federal Reserve Board amid staunch opposition from Senate Republicans. 'Steve Moore, a great pro-growth economist and a truly fine person, has decided to withdraw from the Fed process,' Trump tweeted.... The announcement came just hours after Moore said the White House was still 'all in' on his potential nomination."

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats, decrying what they called an erosion of American democracy, threatened on Thursday to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after he failed to appear at a hearing of the Judiciary Committee and ignored a subpoena deadline to hand over Robert S. Mueller III's full report and evidence.... 'What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,' Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday, referring to a House hearing in which he said he was unaware that the special counsel had protested his portrayal of his conclusions. 'That's a crime.'" See Jerry Nadler's speech, video embedded below.

Pamela Brown & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The White House has accused special counsel Robert Mueller's team of playing politics with the investigation and wildly straying from their mission in a letter sent to Attorney General William Barr last month and released Thursday afternoon. In the five-page letter, a top White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, raised several concerns with the substance and format of Mueller's report, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump's campaign and the Russians but did unearth substantial evidence of obstruction by Trump, but without saying if the President should be prosecuted. Flood slammed Mueller's approach to the obstruction investigation. Even though current Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president cannot be charged, Flood wrote that Mueller needed to 'either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case.... The (special counsel) instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper,' Flood wrote.... The letter is dated April 19, one day after the Justice Department released the redacted report to the public." The same day, Trump published one of his "No Collusion - No Obstruction!" tweets.

President* Free to Shoot Someone on Fifth Avenue. Tom Sullivan of Hullabaloo: "Stunning among other stunning statements Attorney General William Barr made Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee was his blithe declaration that the president is above the law. Responding to questioning by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Barr claimed repeatedly Donald Trump had been 'falsely accused' of coordinating with Russia. Deploying the 'no underlying crime' red herring, Barr asserted that the president as head of government and the Department of Justice was entitled to close down an investigation into himself if he felt it was off the rails: 'The president does not have to sit there, constitutionally, and allow [an investigation] to run its course,' Barr said. 'That's important because most of the obstruction claims that are being made here ... do involve the exercise of the president's constitutional authority, and we now know that he was being falsely accused.'... Bill Barr declared Trump king."

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare in the Atlantic, Is So Disillusioned: "Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject.... Barr has consistently sought to spin his department's work in a highly political fashion, and he has done so to cast the president's conduct in the most favorable possible light.... Barr's public statements [about the Mueller report] are simply indefensible." Wittes catalogues all the ways Barr has misrepresented Mueller's findings.

Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast: "Trump is a uniquely diseased man, it's true. But what kind of political party nominates, celebrates, venerates, and takes political bullets for a uniquely diseased man? So after today, if we didn't before, we see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity where this is headed. It's 18 months until Election Day. They may well be the most consequential and frightening stretch in the history of the country, or at least since Reconstruction. This racket known as a political party will try to pervert the law in ways we've never seen. Reverse the meaning of every word we know. Trump is screaming that he's the victim of a 'coup.' What he is doing, of course, is perpetrating a coup, against the Constitution, with the eage help of Barr and Graham and all the rest of them."

Julia Harte of Reuters: "The U.S. State Department allowed at least seven foreign governments to rent luxury condominiums in New York's Trump World Tower in 2017 without approval from Congress, according to documents and people familiar with the leases, a potential violation of the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause.... Such transactions must pass muster with federal lawmakers, some legal experts say.... Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said his committee has been 'stonewalled' in its efforts to obtain detailed information about foreign government payments to Trump's businesses. 'This new information raises serious questions about the President and his businesses' potential receipt of payments from foreign governments,' Cummings said in a statement...."

Russian Spy Whale Defects to Norway. Rick Noack of the Washington Post: "An alleged Russian spy whale is refusing to leave a Norwegian port city, in what appears to be a high-profile defection after a week of global attention on the unnamed beluga. Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries official Jorgen Ree Wiig told The Washington Post that the beluga 'was the first thing I saw outside of the window' of his patrolling ship in the morning. Speaking from the city of Hammerfest, he said the whale had moved only about 25 nautical miles within the last week and appeared to enjoy the proximity to humans, which he noted was 'strange' for a beluga. Contrary to the species'; normal behavior, the beluga had allowed residents to pet its nose over the last few days."

~~~~~~~~~~

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I know you have a real life & you're busy, but it's worth carving out some time to try to get a handle on what's happening in Washington, D.C. these days. Of course every moment is "a moment in history," but this one seems to be more significant than many. To learn nothing of it except the evening news gloss is like driving to a national park & refusing to leave the parking lot.

The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- Low Barr Edition

Alicia Cohn of the Hill: "An empty chair for Attorney General William Barr sits in a committee room on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Barr had informed the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he would not testify.... Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) also brought Kentucky Fried Chicken, as well as a fake chicken, into the hearing room...." ...

Rachel Bade, et al., of the Washington Post: "Attorney General William P. Barr told a House panel on Wednesday that he will not testify about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report, raising the prospect that Democrats will hold the nation's top law enforcement official in contempt of Congress. Barr, who also missed a deadline for subpoenaed information on Wednesday, had been scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday about his handling of Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. But Barr balked at the committee's plan to have a committee counsel question him alongside lawmakers, a snub that angered Democrats.... [Chairman Jerry] Nadler [D-NY] said that he would give Barr a 'day or two' to turn over the full, unredacted Mueller report in accordance with the committee's subpoena, information that was due Wednesday morning. But the chairman warned that 'if good faith negotiations don't result in a pledge of compliance ... the next step is seeking a contempt citation against the attorney general.'"

** Katie Benner & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Attorney General William P. Barr on Wednesday answered questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Robert S. Mueller III's report, appearing on Capitol Hill for the first time since he made the report public.... Here are the highlights of his testimony." ...

     ... The New York Times liveblog of the hearing is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

** Marcy Wheeler: “Among the opinions the Attorney General espoused [at Wednesday's hearing] are that: You only need to call the FBI when being offered campaign assistance by a foreign intelligence service, not a foreigner[.] It's okay to lie about the many dangles hostile foreign countries make to a political campaign, including if you accepted those dangles[.] Because Trump was being falsely accused (it's not clear of what...), it's okay that he sought to undermine it through illegal means[.] It's okay for the President to order the White House Counsel to lie, even about an ongoing investigation[.] It's okay to fire the FBI Director for refusing to confirm or deny an ongoing investigation, which is DOJ policy not to do[.] It's okay for the Attorney General to call lawfully predicated DOJ investigative techniques 'spying' because Fox News does[.] Public statements -- including threatening someone's family -- cannot be subornation of perjury[.]... The most amazing thing is that, when Cory Booker asked Barr if he thought it was right to share polling data with Russians ... Barr appeared to have no clue that Paul Manafort had done so.... That's remarkable, because he basically agreed with Ben Sasse [R-Neb.] that [Oleg] Deripaska -- with whom Manafort was sharing this campaign data -- was a 'bottom-feeding scum-sucker.' So the Attorney General absolved the President of obstruction without having the faintest clue what actions the investigation of which Trump successfully obstructed by floating a pardon to Manafort.... He also admitted that he and Rod Rosenstein started making the decision on obstruction before they read the report. Indeed, several times during the hearing, it seemed he still has not read the report, as he was unfamiliar with allegations in it."

... 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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Rachel Maddow had a good rundown, but I can't get a video of it. For now, you can view her opening segment (and others) on the show's main page here.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: I found the most remarkable opinion Barr shared to be this: that it's legal for a president to end an investigation of his own conduct if he feels the matter under investigation is not true. Update: Hillary Clinton agrees: on Rachel Maddow's show, Clinton called Barr's position on this "the road to tyranny."

Washington Post Editors: "... Mr. Barr has lit his reputation on fire, and he just added more fuel during his Wednesday testimony before a Senate panel. Much of the hearing centered on the attorney general's decision to release a highly misleading representation of the findings of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation.... It is long past time the public stopped hearing Mr. Barr's views on how Mr. Mueller feels, and heard from the special counsel himself. The Justice Department should enable Mr. Mueller to speak publicly and under oath at the earliest opportunity. The special counsel should address not only his substantive findings on the president's misbehavior but also the attorney general's manipulation of his work. Not just Mr. Trump should be held accountable for his actions. So should his attorney general."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Barr has stepped forward as the seemingly objective face of the case Trump has been making since May 2017: that Trump did nothing wrong. But Barr's ability to play that role effectively has eroded over time, both with the revelation that Mueller took issue with his March 24 letter and, Wednesday, under questioning about the report by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Over the course of that questioning, Barr admitted he hadn't reviewed the evidence underlying Mueller's findings on obstruction, he hadn't looked at the evidence undergirding the origination of the probe into possible coordination and, at one point even made a comment raising questions about his familiarity with one of the key issues at the heart of the probe. It was Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) who drew the most significant blood.... A short while later, that lack of familiarity with the underlying evidence became important during questioning by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.)." When Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) questioned Barr, Barr seemed to have no knowledge whatsoever about Paul Manafort's turning over proprietary polling data to Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, what a prosecutor had characterized in court as "very much to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating."

John Cassidy of the New Yorker hits more lowlights. "Before the hearing wrapped up, the Attorney General again portrayed Trump as a wronged man. 'How did we get to the point here, where the evidence is now that the President was falsely accused of colluding with the Russians, accused of being treasonous, accused of being a Russian agent?' he said to the Republican senator Marsha Blackburn. 'Two years of his Administration have been dominated by allegations that have now been proven false. To listen to some of the rhetoric, you would think that the Mueller report had found the opposite.'" Mrs. McC: The "rhetoric" is of course correct. Barr can be forgiven, I suppose, for not grasping that, inasmuch as he has not read Mueller's report.

Stephen Colbert enjoyed Barr's performance, too:

** 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 for redactions of material to be withheld from public view. 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. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... 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. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The story has been substantially revised & extended. ...

     ... New Lede: "When Attorney General William P. Barr summarized the special counsel's conclusions in a March letter, prompting President Trump to crow that he had been exonerated, the special counsel's prosecutors knew immediately what the public would learn weeks later: The letter was a sparse and occasionally misleading representation of their exhaustive findings. What followed was a dayslong, behind-the-scenes tussle over the first public presentation of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: “... it should come as no surprise that [Barr] misled about and spun Mueller's letter, too. The difference this time was that he accidentally gave away his game. From the start of the hearing, Barr emphasized two talking points about the letter: 1. That Mueller later told him nothing was inaccurate in Barr's summary of the Mueller report's principal conclusions[.] 2. That Mueller was concerned about news coverage[.]... But Mueller's letter paints a very different picture. It places the onus for misperceptions of his report squarely on Barr.... It took awhile, but Barr eventually seemed to acknowledge that Mueller had, in fact, rebuked him.... He said he told Mueller: 'Bob, what's with the letter? Why don't you just pick up the phone and call me if there's an issue?' Barr then added: 'The letter's a bit snitty, and I think it was written by one of his staff people.'" ...

... New York Times Editors: "For an institutionalist like Mr. Mueller, who never once spoke up to defend himself or his work from relentless attacks from the president and his Republican allies, the letter [to William Barr] is an unusual (and welcome) breach of protocol. It is rare for a senior Department of Justice official to so sharply criticize the attorney general in a written communication that would soon be made public. Clearly, Mr. Mueller deemed it necessary."

** 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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Jack Crosbie of Splinter Is Not Convinced: "The whole thing reads like the manifesto of a 58-year-old high school history teacher who has a shrine to Alan Alda's noble Republican West Wing character in his basement, but Comey does eventually come to a point: It was TRUMP who turned these otherwise respectable white lawyer dudes into unethical liars.... The whole op-ed is reminiscent of Comey buddy Ben Wittes' weird denouncement of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, where one Good Ol' Boy Who Respects the Law expressed shock and horror that one of his peers turned out to be a piece of shit. This is far from new information to anyone who's been following along, and the last thing we needed was another self-righteous op-ed from a guy who didn't even have the guts to leave the administration on his own terms." ...

... Eliana Johnson of Politico claims that what eventually brought Barr, against his own better judgment, into the Trump administration was that he & his GOP lawyer chums "are united by a firm belief in a theory of robust presidential power dusted off by Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese. Known among legal scholars as the theory of the 'unitary executive,' they argue that the Constitution grants presidents broad control of the executive branch, including -- to take a salient Trump-era example -- the power to fire an FBI director for any reason at all." ...

... BUT Martin Longman, in the Washington Monthly, has a more prosaic explanation: "... he's just another example of an American whose brain has been rotted by consuming too much right-wing media. He's defending Trump for the same reason that Fox News says he should be defended. Trump is a victim of a witch hunt -- a plot to destroy him hatched by liberals and Obama holdovers in the FBI and Justice Department. I think he actually believes this, which would explain his behavior better than the theory that Trump corrupted his morals or that he's just putting up with Trump in order to defend the power of the presidency.... He sat in his living room watching Sean Hannity and it destroyed his brain, his moral compass, and his potential worth as a public servant." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: There's something to this. I recall hearing Antonin Scalia, who was supposed to have had a brilliant legal mind, parroting some dumb arguments popularized on Fox "News." Scalia himself admitted that he didn't read MSM & usually followed only right-wing media outlets. Fox & Friends made hash of the brilliant legal mind. Barr's responses to Democrats' questions in yesterday's hearing looked exactly like what you would expect from a guy who, after months or years of reading & watching winger media, was suddenly & brutally plopped down in the middle of reality.

Schlemiel's Remorse. Burgess Everett of Politico: "Three Senate Democrats voted for William Barr to be attorney general. And now at least two of them say they might have made a mistake.... Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), who is the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection next year, said he is 'greatly, greatly disappointed in what I am seeing in the attorney general.'... 'I also thought he would bring this institutional stability to the Department of Justice. And not be the president's personal lawyer...,' Jones said in an interview.... Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) ... said if Mueller's issues with Barr 'proves out, absolutely I have buyer's remorse. I would have made a big mistake.'... The third Senate Democrat who supported Barr, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has requested a meeting with Barr about the discrepancies between his view of the special counsel's report and Mueller's, an aide said."

Andrew Cohen in Rolling Stone: "Lapdog Lindsey ... made it clear through the course of the day, as did virtually every other Republican member, that the Judiciary Committee doesn't want to look further into the evidence Mueller compiled of Trump's misconduct.... Instead, the same folks who gave us Kenneth Starr and endless Benghazi hearings now say they will spend their time trying to dig up more dirt about Hillary Clinton and trying to bash the FBI. Great news for the Russians."

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 presidential son-in-law 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." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ariane de Vogue of CNN: "The Trump administration offered its first full argument Wednesday for its reversal on the Affordable Care Act, arguing in new court filings that the entire law 'should not be allowed to remain in effect.' The government argues in the filings that the so-called 'individual mandate' requiring Americans to have coverage is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law should therefore also be struck down, even if the government 'might support some individual provisions as a policy matter.'" Mrs. McC: Normally, the government argues in support of U.S. laws. A notable exception was when "President Obama, in a striking legal and political shift..., determined that the Defense of Marriage Act -- the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages -- is unconstitutional, and ... directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court.... Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during Mr. Obama's first two years in the White House."

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." (Also linked yesterday.)

Presidential Race 2020

Emily Tillett of CBS News: "Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet is the latest Democratic contender to enter the packed field of 2020 [presidential] hopefuls, announcing on 'CBS This Morning' on Thursday that he's running for president."

Ken Vogel & Iuliia Mendel of the New York Times write a complicated story about how Rudy Giuliani & Donald Trump are trying to get Ukrainian prosecutors & that nice Bill Barr to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden, Joe's son, in an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. "Mr. Giuliani said he got involved because he was seeking to counter the Mueller investigation with evidence that Democrats conspired with sympathetic Ukrainians to help initiate what became the special counsel's inquiry." Mrs. McC: Right. If Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee, we'll be hearing chants of "Lock Him Up." IMO, all of these "investments" & "interests" in developing countries that the politically-connected undertake are shady sinecures to which an honorable person would say no thanks. As for Barr, who couldn't figure out what the word "suggested" means when Kamala Harris asked him if Trump or any White House staff had suggested lines of criminal inquiries he might initiate, we know the true answer.

Senate Race 2020. Bill Lambrecht of the Houston Chronicle: "U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro has decided not to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. John Cornyn, choosing instead to continue pursuing a fast-rising career in Congress focusing on security and border issues. Castro's decision could pave the way for a contest in 2020 between Cornyn and Mary Jennings 'MJ' Hegar, an Afghanistan war veteran who ran a strong but losing race for Congress last year and who declared her candidacy last week."