The Commentariat -- April 15, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

The redacted Mueller report will be released to the public & the Congress Thursday morning, per MSNBC. This is the day before the Easter holiday, the day before Passover, and Congress will be adjourned. Just coincidental, I'm sure. ...

     ... Update. Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "The Justice Department expects to release on Thursday a redacted version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's report on President Trump, his associates and Russia's interference in the 2016 election, setting the stage for further battles in Congress over the politically explosive inquiry. Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the department, said Monday that officials plan to issue the report to Congress and the public on Thursday morning."

... Bill Barr Has Only One Songbook. Ryan Goodman in Just Security: "On Friday the thirteenth October 1989..., news leaked of a legal memo authored by William Barr. He was then serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). [The memo] ... concluded that the FBI could forcibly abduct people in other countries without the consent of the foreign state. The headline also noted the implication of the legal opinion at that moment in time. It appeared to pave the way for abducting Panama's leader, Gen. Manuel Noriega. Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that 'summarizes the principal conclusions.'... When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr's summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion's principal conclusions."

"I Alone." Manu Raju, et al., of CNN: "Republicans on Capitol Hill are raising alarms at the White House's resistance to congressional demands, fearing ... Donald Trump is bolstering the power of his office at the expense of Congress. The White House has stonewalled House Democrats on nearly all aspects of their sprawling investigations into the President, refusing to provide documents as requested by committee chairmen, preventing former White House officials from complying with Democratic demands and fighting subpoenas pertaining to the US Census and the administration's handling of the security clearance process.... In the past few months, Trump pushed for [Republicans] to return to the politically risky fight to replace the Affordable Care Act. He considered nominees key Republican senators don't want for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. And he pulled another -- Ron Vitiello to lead US Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- that Republicans actually liked.... The White House has also ignored the growing concerns from GOP senators over Trump's reliance on acting secretaries to run his Cabinet, a move that allows them to avoid the Senate confirmation process and his officials to temporarily escape nomination hearings intended to get their positions on the record and accountable to oversight." ...

... Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "... Donald Trump's attorneys are warning of potential legal action if an accounting firm turns over a decade of the president's financial records to the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Trump attorneys William S. Consovoy and Stefan Passantino are urging Mazars USA not to comply with a subpoena that Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) plans to issue on Monday for Trump's financial documents, calling it a politically motivated scheme to take down the president." ...

... Eric Levenson of CNN: "In attacking the fight to obtain Trump's tax returns, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders argued that members of Congress aren't smart enough to understand them anyway. But three Democratic members of Congress are trained as certified public accountants -- professionals licensed by their states to do just that. The Congressional Research Service said there are 10 accountants in this Congress, including two senators and eight House members.... [For instance,] Rep. Brad Sherman of California is a tax law specialist and a CPA, and he was an instructor at Harvard Law School's International Tax Program, according to his biography. He sits on the House Committee on Financial Services."

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Many Happy Returns of the Day

Democrats Are So Stupid. Michael Burke of the Hill: "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday that she doesn't think members of Congress are 'smart enough' to look through President Trump's tax returns. 'Frankly I don't think Congress -- particularly not this group of congressmen and women -- are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump's taxes will be,' she said on 'Fox News Sunday. My guess is that most of them don't do their own taxes and I certainly don't trust them to look through the decades of success that the president has and determine anything'..." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Apparently Democrats are so dumb they don't know to hire tax experts to review the returns. Maybe that's because they are so many Democratic members of Congress who are women & minorities, the "type" of people who throw their hands up when it comes to managing money. BTW, Sarah, you ignorant slut, freshman Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) wrote a textbook on"Modern Consumer Law," so I'll bet she, among some other members, can read & analyze a tax return -- even a complicated one. ...

... Chas Danner of New York: "It's not yet clear what purpose Sander's guessing game and lawmaker-intelligence assessment was intended to serve. She called the endeavor 'a dangerous, dangerous road' and championed the protection of Trump's privacy, yet also leaned back on his absurd ongoing claim that his tax returns remain in some perpetual state of audit, and that's why he continues to be the only president in decades to hide his taxes ... (but would totally share them if he could)." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: IOW, Trump would love to share his returns with the guy at the end of the bar, but Congressional Democrats are too dumb to read & interpret them.

Thomas Kaplan, et al., of the New York Times: "Senator Kamala Harris of California disclosed 15 years of tax returns on Sunday, providing a detailed picture of her finances. Several other Democratic presidential candidates have also released years of returns, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has pledged to release 10 years of returns by Monday." The reporters compare the 2018 returns of candidates Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand & Jay Inslee. "The returns showed that in recent years, they earned substantially more than a vast majority of American households."

Alexandre Tanzi of Bloomberg: "Newly available net worth data from the Federal Reserve suggests that the 'left-behind' contagion has spread to all Americans aside from the top 10 percent. While still wealthier overall than most other groups, even the upper-middle class is feeling the pinch of income stagnation. The growth rate of this group's incomes is lagging behind that of those both lower and higher on the socioeconomic ladder.... As of the end of 2018, net worth as a share of the U.S. total had shrunk considerably for the upper middle class." --s

Other Trump Scandals, Ctd.

John Bresnahan & Heather Caygle of Politico: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that the U.S. Capitol Police and the House sergeant-at-arms 'are conducting a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman [Ilhan] Omar, her family and her staff' after a tweet by ... Donald Trump. Trump on Friday shared an edited video of Omar superimposed over images of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 'We will never forget,' the president wrote on Twitter.... Pelosi's announcement highlighted what has become an extraordinary situation -- the speaker of the House is worried about the safety of one of her members after a statement by the president of the United States. An Omar aide said on Sunday that 'there has been an increase in threats' against the Minnesota Democrat after Trump's tweet." ...

... Ian Kulgren of Politico: "... Donald Trump has 'no moral authority' to talk about 9/11, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Sunday. 'He stole $150,000 from some small businessperson who could have used it to help rehabilitate himself. And that's why we appropriated it, why I got Congress to appropriate that money,' Nadler said on 'State of the Union' on CNN. 'To use it for his own small business of 40 Wall Street, he has no moral authority to be talking about 9/11 at all.' Nadler was referencing how Trump's company accepted post-9/11 funding for a building that had not sustained any damage. Trump said the building qualified because his company had suffered economic losses in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. The funding came from the Empire State Development Corp., New York's economic development agency, and was intended for small businesses. Trump targeted Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last week for comments she made about discrimination of Muslim Americans after 9/11. Conservative pundits latched on to one portion of Omar's comments -- in which she referred to the attacks by saying that 'somebody did something' -- to argue that Omar was minimizing tremendous human loss. Trump responded by tweeting a graphic video of the Twin Towers collapsing juxtaposed with Omar's comment, earning criticism from Democrats for targeting a Muslim woman." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "As long as President Trump has focused on what he said was the danger lurking at the southwestern border, he has also talked about the supposed threat from one specific group already in the country: Muslims.... Now..., Mr. Trump is seeking to rally his base by sounding that theme once again. And this time, he has a specific target: Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Mr. Trump and his team are trying to make Ms. Omar, one of a group of progressive women Democratic House members who is relatively unknown in national politics, a household name, to be seen as the most prominent voice of the Democratic Party, regardless of her actual position.... On Monday, Mr. Trump will visit Minnesota -- ... [his] decision to appear there is a calculated choice." ...

... it's a good thing that the president is calling her out for those comments. -- Sarah Sanders, on ABC News' "This Week," Sunday

... Chris Wallace Shares Pelosi's Concerns. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "Donald Trump's attack on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI) was so 'horrible' that Fox News' Chris Wallace did not feel 'comfortable' playing more than 5 seconds of it as he interviewed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. On this week's edition of Fox News Sunday, Wallace interviewed Sanders on a range of subjects, including the inflammatory video that Trump posted in order to attack Omar, which many have called an incitement to violence.... 'Why is the president comfortable putting out horrible images like that,' Wallace asked [Sanders], and added 'does he worry at all about inciting violence against Muslims in general, or Ilhan Omar in specific?' Sanders replied that 'nothing could be further from the truth,' but went on to call Rep. Omar's remark 'disgusting and abhorrent.'"

Bloviator-in-Chief Completely Exonerates Himself. Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "The case was closed for President Trump on March 24, the day Attorney General William P. Barr delivered to Congress his four-page summary of the special counsel's 300-plus page report. 'No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that day. And in the weeks that followed, the president's message of vindication and revenge on his political antagonists has only intensified, as he has expressed no interest in reading the full report and leveled charges of treason against Democratic lawmakers. Mr. Barr's letter effectively emboldened Mr. Trump, aides said, even as they prepare for new details to emerge from a redacted version of the report -- expected this week -- that could renew questions about the president's fitness for office, and even as some of them cringe at Mr. Trump's choice of the word 'exonerate.' (Privately, they admit, they would prefer he use the word 'vindicate.')" ...

Oh Noes! Will the villainous black guy jump out of the bushes & attack the nice old, fat, white supremacist guy?... Devlin Barrett & Rachel Bade of the Washington Post: "For two years, President Trump's most devoted allies have struggled to legitimize their accusations that the FBI conducted political spying on the Trump campaign in 2016 -- at times openly feuding with Republican leaders over their grievances with the investigation of Russia's election interference. But on Wednesday, those assertions received their biggest boost yet, and from an unlikely source: Attorney General William P. Barr, who told a Senate subcommittee, 'I think spying did occur, yes.'... Trump's allies in Congress have seized on Barr's testimony to once again demand an 'investigation of the investigator.' The president's reelection campaign, meanwhile, is selling T-shirts depicting former president Barack Obama lurking in thick green shrubbery with a set of spy glasses. An advertisement circulated Friday night read: 'AG Barr believes the Obama Admin illegally spied on Pres Trump. We Need Answers! Fight Back!'... For those who worked on the Russia probe and other high-profile political investigations, Barr's words were a below-the-belt attack. Current and former law enforcement officials have denied engaging in political spying, and they've said the investigation was conducted professionally based on available evidence." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: What more ideal Trump campaign ad than one with a scary black man lurking in the bushes?

David Corn, et al. of Mother Jones: "When Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested for allegedly sneaking into President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club on March 30, appeared in court on Monday, a portion of the proceedings focused on a mysterious Chinese businessman named Charles Lee, who has ties to the Communist Party and the Chinese government and who appears to be at the center of this episode. A Mother Jones investigation of Lee has uncovered more questions about his business ventures and background." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "President Trump tweeted on Saturday night that his administration has the legal right to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities and demanded it happen. 'Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities,' he wrote. 'We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... The Confederate Presidunce*. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump confirmed Friday he was considering 'placing' undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities as political retribution for Democrats opposing his immigration policies.... This isn't the first time Trump has tried to target blue districts.... [S]o far, acts that attempt to favor states and localities that backed him in 2016 and disfavor those that did not, have been a hallmark of his presidency.... In January 2017, he issued Executive Order 13768 which attempted to ensure that [so-called 'sanctuary cities'] 'are not eligible to receive Federal grants.' The order was deemed to be an illegal overreach in a 2 to 1 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Trump's 2017 tax bill...included provisions that favored Trump states over Clinton states.... Trump has frequently targeted California.... Earlier this year, amid massive forest fires, he tweeted that he was instructing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop providing assistance. (It's not clear whether he has actually done this, despite the threats.).... Trump attempted to block all emergency funding from going to Puerto Rico, according to a January 2019 article in The Washington Post, attempting to send their disaster relief money to Florida and Texas instead." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, isn't it lovely to reminded on Tax Day that Trump's tax "reform" bill also targeted Americans living in mostly-blue states by drastically reducing the deduction for local & state taxes. ...

... Chris Rodrigo of the Hill: "Homeland Security chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said Sunday that he sees no way for President Trump's idea to transfer detained migrants to 'sanctuary cities' to be legal.... 'More importantly, this is again his manufactured chaos that he has created over the last 2 years on the border.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: This New York Times story by Eileen Sullivan & Michael Shear is ostensibly about Donald Trump's "frustration" with his own appointees who aren't out there slapping around enough immigrant children. But clearly the reporters' sources have had it with white supremacist Stephen Miller,. His portrait, as drawn, is of a monster. ...

... Mike DeBonis, et al., of the Washington Post: "House Democrats are sharpening their focus on White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, with key lawmakers saying he should be brought before congressional committees to testify about his role in recent policy controversies.... 'Steve Miller, who seems to be the boss of everybody on immigration, ought to come before Congress and explain some of these policies,' [Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)] said in a CNN interview.... Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on border security, facilitation and operations, said in an interview that Miller needs to come before her panel to 'make his case for these terrible policies to the American people instead of being this shadow puppeteer.'"

Conor Finnegan of ABC News: “When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration would designate a branch of Iran's military as a foreign terrorist organization Monday, he said, 'The Trump administration is simply recognizing a basic reality.' But critics say they are concerned that it may also be part of an effort to bend reality enough to provide legal justification for armed conflict with Iran.... The foreign terrorist organization, or FTO, designation [may be] part of laying the groundwork for strikes on Iranian forces, especially in Iraq or Syria where they may encounter U.S. troops." Mrs. McC: You know Trump wants to be a war president*.

Alex Emmons of The Intercept: "President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that if the U.S. does not sell weapons to the Saudis, they will turn to U.S. adversaries to supply their arsenals.... But a highly classified document produced by the French Directorate of Military Intelligence shows that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are overwhelmingly dependent on Western-produced weapon systems to wage their devastating war in Yemen..., meaning that the Saudis and UAE would have to replace large portions of their arsenals to continue with Russian or Chinese weapons.... The catalogue of weapon systems is just one revelation in the classified report ... being published in full by The Intercept, Disclose, and four other French media organizations. The report also harshly criticizes Saudi military capabilities in Yemen.... And it suggests that U.S. assistance with Saudi targeting in Yemen may go beyond what has previously been acknowledged." --s

Trump's Swamp, Ctd. Ben Lefebvre & Annie Snider of Politico: "The National Archives and Records Administration gave the Interior Department until late April to address Democrats' allegations that newly confirmed Secretary David Bernhardt may have been destroying his official calendars, according to a letter Politico obtained Friday.... Bernhardt's existing daily schedule shows that the former fossil fuel and agriculture lobbyist has met with representatives of former clients who stood to gain from Interior's decisions, but the department has released few details about his activities during about one-third of his days in office. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) requested the NARA probe.... The Senate confirmed Bernhardt as Interior secretary by a 56-41 vote Thursday, overriding Democrats' questions about his ethics." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Trump's Swamp, Ctd. David Dayen of The Intercept: "Betsy Devos's Education Department quietly dropped requirements for risky for-profit colleges to set aside funds in case the schools closed, according to documents from a lawsuit filed last year. Two of the for-profit networks subsequently shut down without owing the Education Department any money; in one case, the department actually gave $10 million back to a for-profit on the brink of bankruptcy. Not only did this deprive taxpayers an offset to costs associated with refunding loans, but it also extended the life of the for-profit colleges, allowing them to enroll more students into a doomed enterprise that wasted time, money, and effort, and delivered them nothing of value." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Allyson Chiu of the Washington Post: "President Trump lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) Sunday night on Twitter following a CBS '60 Minutes' interview during which she recounted standing up to him and reiterated her opinion that he is unfit for office and knows it. 'There's nobody in the country who knows better that he should not be president of the United States than Donald Trump,' Pelosi told CBS's Lesley Stahl.... In the wide-ranging interview, Pelosi touted Democrats' achievements in their first 100 days in control of the House of Representatives while also discussing last December's heated Oval Office showdown over funding for Trump's border wall, her now-famous State of the Union clap and the power she holds in her current position.... 'Such a "puff piece" on Nancy Pelosi by @60minutes, yet her leadership has passed no meaningful Legislation,' he tweeted, accusing Democrats of only investigating 'crimes that they instigated & committed.' It is unclear exactly what 'crimes' Trump was referring to, but in the past he has suggested Hillary Clinton and Democrats be investigated for colluding with Russia. 'The Mueller No Collusion decision wasn't even discussed-and she was a disaster at W.H.,' Trump added, referencing last year's fiery border wall spat.... The scathing tweet is a departure from Trump's usual approach to Pelosi, one of his most vocal critics." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: "A puff piece"? I watched parts of the interview, & I thought Stahl was so aggressive that I didn't link or embed the video. Stahl repeatedly asked Pelosi why Democrats hadn't gotten anything done, pretending (I hope) that she (Stahl) had no idea that Mitch McConnell was sitting on stacks of legislation Pelosi passed in the House, & of course Trump wouldn't sign it even if McConnell pushed it through the Senate. Stahl's performance was embarrassingly harsh, IMO, bordering on stupid.

Presidential Race 2020

Zeke Miller of the AP: "... Donald Trump's reelection campaign is set to report that it raised more than $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, edging out his top two Democratic rivals combined, according to figures it provided to The Associated Press. The haul brings the campaign's cash on hand to $40.8 million, an unprecedented war chest for an incumbent president this early in a campaign." Mrs. McC: The better to produce more of those nice racist T-shirts.

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "Pete Buttigieg, the young Midwestern mayor whose presidential bid has been an unlikely early focus of attention from Democratic voters and donors, kicked off his campaign on Sunday and proclaimed his hometown's revival was the answer to skeptics who ask how he has the 'audacity' to see himself in the White House. At a rally inside a partly rebuilt factory, once owned by the automaker Studebaker and now being turned into glass-sheathed offices for tech and other businesses, Mr. Buttigieg said, 'I ran for mayor in 2011 knowing nothing like Studebaker would ever come back, but that we would, our city would, if we had the courage to reimagine our future.' If elected, Mr. Buttigieg, a 37-year-old Rhodes scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, would represent a series of historic firsts: the youngest president ever and the first who is openly gay."

Mark Townsend of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration.... During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon -- who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump's presidential campaign -- ... 'advised Salvini himself that the actual pope is a sort of enemy...,' said a senior League insider with knowledge of the meeting[.] ... After the meeting, Salvini became more outspoken against the pope.... Bannon has steadily been building opposition to Francis through his Dignitatis Humanae Institute, based in a 13th-century mountaintop monastery not far from Rome. In January 2017, Bannon became a patron of the institute, whose honorary president is Cardinal Raymond Burke, an ultra-conservative who believes organised networks of homosexuals are spreading a 'gay agenda' in the Vatican. The institute's chairman is former Italian MP Luca Volontè, on trial for corruption for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Italy. Rachel Donadio of The Atlantic: "I've seen this movie before, but not about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on President Donald Trump's ties to Russia. No, I saw the one that was set in Italy and starred Silvio Berlusconi. Like so many other American remakes, the one with Trump is bigger and louder, and the male lead wears rather ill-fitting suits. But the version I witnessed foreshadowed the current American predicament and offers some insights into what can happen to a democracy when image becomes disconnected from reality.... From the outset, Berlusconi faced judicial investigations.... While ordinary people didn't have the time or interest to follow Berlusconi's legal tangles, the press became obsessed with them. So much so that it lost track of -- or maybe never had any interest in -- covering the country's underlying problems.... What finally drove Berlusconi from office wasn't a political opposition ... or legal trials.... It was the European debt crisis." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

News Ledes

New York Times: "Notre-Dame cathedral, the iconic symbol of the beauty and history of Paris, was scarred by an extensive fire on Monday evening that caused its delicate spire to collapse, bruised the Parisian skies with smoke and further disheartened a city already back on its heels after weeks of violent protests.... Around 500 firefighters battled the blaze for nearly five hours. By 11 p.m. Paris time, the structure had been 'saved and preserved as a whole,' the fire chief, Jean-Claude Gallet, said. The two magnificent towers soaring above the skyline had been spared, he said, but two-thirds of the roof was destroyed." ...

... Guardian: "Notre Dame cathedral in Paris has been devastated by a ferocious blaze that has destroyed the spire of the centuries-old landmark. Firefighters were rushing to try to contain a fire that has broken out at the cathedral, which police said began accidentally and was linked to building work at the site. Flames burst through the roof of the cathedral -- one of France's most visited places -- and quickly engulfed the spire, which collapsed. Smoke could be seen billowing from the top of the medieval cathedral, considered one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in France and one of Paris's most-visited monuments. A huge plume of smoke wafted across the city and ash fell over a large area. Flames leapt into the air beside the two bell towers said a Reuters correspondent who witnessed the fire."

The Commentariat -- April 14, 2019

Late Morning Update:

Ian Kulgren of Politico: "... Donald Trump has 'no moral authority' to talk about 9/11, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Sunday. 'He stole $150,000 from some small businessperson who could have used it to help rehabilitate himself. And that's why we appropriated it, why I got Congress to appropriate that money,' Nadler said on 'State of the Union' on CNN. 'To use it for his own small business of 40 Wall Street he has no moral authority to be talking about 9/11 at all.' Nadler was referencing how Trump's company accepted post-9/11 funding for a building that had not sustained any damage. Trump said the building qualified because his company had suffered economic losses in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. The funding came from the Empire State Development Corp., New York's economic development agency, and was intended for small businesses. Trump targeted Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) last week for comments she made about discrimination of Muslim Americans after 9/11. Conservative pundits latched on to one portion of Omar's comments -- in which she referred to the attacks by saying that 'somebody did something' -- to argue that Omar was minimizing tremendous human loss. Trump responded by tweeting a graphic video of the Twin Towers collapsing juxtaposed with Omar's comment, earning criticism from Democrats for targeting a Muslim woman. Nadler said he didn't have a problem with Omar's remarks. 'She characterized it only in passing,' Nadler said. 'She was talking about discrimination against Muslim Americans. And she just said that, after that happened, it was used as an excuse for lots of discrimination and for withdrawal of civil liberties.'"

Democrats Are So Stupid. Michael Burke of the Hill: "White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday that she doesn't think members of Congress are 'smart enough' to look through President Trump's tax returns. 'Frankly I don't think Congress -- particularly not this group of congressmen and women -- are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump's taxes will be,' she said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'My guess is that most of them don't do their own taxes and I certainly don't trust them to look through the decades of success that the president has and determine anything,' Sanders continued." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Apparently Democrats are so dumb they don't know to hire tax experts to review the returns. Maybe that's because they are so many Democratic members of Congress who are women & minorities, the "type" of people who just throw their hands up when it comes to managing money.

Rachel Frazin of the Hill: "President Trump tweeted on Saturday night that his administration has the legal right to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities and demanded it happen. 'Just out: The USA has the absolute legal right to have apprehended illegal immigrants transferred to Sanctuary Cities,' he wrote. 'We hereby demand that they be taken care of at the highest level, especially by the State of California, which is well known or its poor management & high taxes!'" ...

... Chris Rodrigo of the Hill: "Homeland Security chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said Sunday that he sees no way for President Trump's idea to transfer detained migrants to 'sanctuary cities' to be legal.... 'More importantly, this is again his manufactured chaos that he has created over the last 2 years on the border.'"

David Corn, et al. of Mother Jones: "When Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested for allegedly sneaking into President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club on March 30, appeared in court on Monday, a portion of the proceedings focused on a mysterious Chinese businessman named Charles Lee, who has ties to the Communist Party and the Chinese government and who appears to be at the center of this episode. A Mother Jones investigation of Lee has uncovered more questions about his business ventures and background." --s

The Confederate Presidunce*. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "President Donald Trump confirmed Friday he was considering 'placing' undocumented immigrants in sanctuary cities as political retribution for Democrats opposing his immigration policies.... This isn't the first time Trump has tried to target blue districts.... [S]o far, acts that attempt to favor states and localities that backed him in 2016 and disfavor those that did not, have been a hallmark of his presidency.... In January 2017, he issued Executive Order 13768 which attempted to ensure that [so-called 'sanctuary cities'] 'are not eligible to receive Federal grants.' The order was deemed to be an illegal overreach in a 2 to 1 decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year. Trump's 2017 tax bill...included provisions that favored Trump states over Clinton states.... Trump has frequently targeted California.... Earlier this year, amid massive forest fires, he tweeted that he was instructing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stop providing assistance. (It's not clear whether he has actually done this, despite the threats.).... Trump attempted to block all emergency funding from going to Puerto Rico, according to a January 2019 article in The Washington Post, attempting to send their disaster relief money to Florida and Texas instead." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, isn't it lovely to reminded on Tax Day that Trump's tax "reform" bill also targeted Americans living in mostly-blue states by drastically reducing the deduction for local & state taxes.

Trump's Swamp, Ctd. Ben Lefebvre & Annie Snider of Politico: "The National Archives and Records Administration gave the Interior Department until late April to address Democrats' allegations that newly confirmed Secretary David Bernhardt may have been destroying his official calendars, according to a letter Politico obtained Friday.... Bernhardt's existing daily schedule shows that the former fossil fuel and agriculture lobbyist has met with representatives of former clients who stood to gain from Interior's decisions, but the department has released few details about his activities during about one-third of his days in office. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) requested the NARA probe.... The Senate confirmed Bernhardt as Interior secretary by a 56-41 vote Thursday, overriding Democrats' questions about his ethics." --s

Mark Townsend of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration.... During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon -- who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump's presidential campaign -- ... 'advised Salvini himself that the actual pope is a sort of enemy...,' said a senior League insider with knowledge of the meeting[.] ... After the meeting, Salvini became more outspoken against the pope.... Bannon has steadily been building opposition to Francis through his Dignitatis Humanae Institute, based in a 13th-century mountaintop monastery not far from Rome. In January 2017, Bannon became a patron of the institute, whose honorary president is Cardinal Raymond Burke, an ultra-conservative who believes organised networks of homosexuals are spreading a 'gay agenda' in the Vatican. The institute's chairman is former Italian MP Luca Volontè, on trial for corruption for accepting bribes from Azerbaijan." --s

Trump's Swamp, Ctd. David Dayen of The Intercept: "Betsy Devos's Education Department quietly dropped requirements for risky for-profit colleges to set aside funds in case the schools closed, according to documents from a lawsuit filed last year. Two of the for-profit networks subsequently shut down without owing the Education Department any money; in one case, the department actually gave $10 million back to a for-profit on the brink of bankruptcy. Not only did this deprive taxpayers an offset to costs associated with refunding loans, but it also extended the life of the for-profit colleges, allowing them to enroll more students into a doomed enterprise that wasted time, money, and effort, and delivered them nothing of value." --s

Rachel Donadio of The Atlantic: "I've seen this movie before, but not about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on President Donald Trump's ties to Russia. No, I saw the one that was set in Italy and starred Silvio Berlusconi. Like so many other American remakes, the one with Trump is bigger and louder, and the male lead wears rather ill-fitting suits. But the version I witnessed foreshadowed the current American predicament and offers some insights into what can happen to a democracy when image becomes disconnected from reality.... From the outset, Berlusconi faced judicial investigations.... While ordinary people didn't have the time or interest to follow Berlusconi's legal tangles, the press became obsessed with them. So much so that it lost track of — or maybe never had any interest in -- covering the country's underlying problems: the economy, unemployment, financial insecurity.... What finally drove Berlusconi from office wasn't a political opposition ... or legal trials.... It was the European debt crisis." --s

~~~~~~~~~~

Government by Sabotaging Ordinary People. Eric Levitz of New York: "On Friday..., Trump vouched for a Washington Post report that specifically suggested that the White House had repeatedly implored Immigration and Customs Enforcement to dump undocumented immigrants in Nancy Pelosi's congressional district -- as a means of coercing House Democrats into granting the administration concessions in budget negotiations. In other words, the president is ostensibly threatening to deliberately inflict harm on Americans who live in areas controlled by Democrats until a coequal branch starts taking his marching orders." The move fits a pattern. "Less than three months into his presidency, Trump threatened to deliberately sabotage America's individual insurance market until Democrats agreed to support repealing and replacing Obamacare[.]... A few months later, the Trump administration canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, thereby subjecting 700,000 Dreamers to the threat of deportation ... because he believed that he could ransom the Dreamers' security for concessions on immigration policy.... And, of course, the president recently shuttered the federal government for more than a month -- deliberately inflicting economic hardship and governmental dysfunction on ordinary Americans -- in a doomed attempt to force Nancy Pelosi to fund his border wall."

One More Way Trump Is Inviting Central American Refugees. Kirk Semple of the New York Times: "... [Central American] farmers, agricultural scientists and industry officials say a new threat has been ruining harvests, upending lives and adding to the surge of families migrating to the United States: climate change.... Gradually rising temperatures, more extreme weather events and increasingly unpredictable patterns -- like rain not falling when it should, or pouring when it shouldn't -- have disrupted growing cycles and promoted the relentless spread of pests. The obstacles have cut crop production or wiped out entire harvests, leaving already poor families destitute. Central America is among the regions most vulnerable to climate change, scientists say. And because agriculture employs much of the labor force -- about 28 percent in Honduras alone, according to the World Bank -- the livelihoods of millions of people are at stake.... The United States has allocated tens of millions of dollars in aid in recent years for farmers across Central America, including efforts to help them adapt to the changing climate. But President Trump has vowed to cut off all foreign aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador because of what he calls their failure to curb the flow of migrants north."

Laurence Tribe to Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post on Donald Trump's reported order to CBP commissioner (now acting DHS secretary) Kevin McAleenan to close the U.S.-Mexican border, & if McAleenan got in legal trouble for it, a promise of a presidential pardon: "If carried out, this offer to pardon high immigration officials if they will break the law on his behalf is the most obviously impeachable action President Trump has taken to date: It would mean this president has seized the power to put not just himself but all who do his bidding beyond the reach of law. That doing so is a high crime and misdemeanor is beyond dispute. Any president guilty of such conduct cannot be permitted to remain in office.... Therefore, the House Judiciary Committee needs to include this matter within its investigatory ambit, subpoenaing all those who may have relevant knowledge unless they appear voluntarily.... It seems unrealistic to expect the blatantly compromised Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to pursue the issue even if, as appears to be the case, the president has credibly been charged with promising a pardon as a bribe for illegal conduct."

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "A Democratic House chairman on Saturday castigated the Treasury Department for failing to meet his deadline to furnish President Trump's tax returns, arguing that the administration's apparent concerns over his use of powers outlined in the Internal Revenue Service's tax code 'lack merit.' The chairman, Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, set a new deadline for compliance, April 23, and warned that if the Trump administration did not reply by then, its 'failure will be interpreted as a denial of my request.' The tone of Mr. Neal's letter suggested Democrats are prepared to take their request -- made through a little-known provision in the federal tax code -- to court if necessary, initiating what could be a protracted legal fight over Congress's oversight powers. In it, he cited legal precedent that he argued clearly showed the law is on the committee's side, and said that the executive branch had no right to 'second guess' its motivations."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "House Democrats are crying foul over a plan by the Intelligence Committee's top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, to meet privately with Attorney General William Barr to push the Justice Department to pursue criminal charges against officials involved in the investigation of ... Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.... Nunes has in recent days foreshadowed plans to send eight 'criminal referrals' -- informal requests for the Justice Department to investigate -- directly to Barr.... Before seeing its contents, Nunes labeled Mueller's report a 'partisan document' and said 'we can just burn it up,' even as most of Trump's supporters were celebrating the news -- as described publicly by Barr -- that Mueller 'did not establish' a conspiracy between the campaign and the Russian government."

Kyle Cheney: "Roger Stone, the longtime political ally and confidant of ... Donald Trump, issued a series of Hail Mary legal arguments late Friday to dismiss the indictment against him from special counsel Robert Mueller that is pending before a federal judge in Washington D.C. The longshot arguments, some of which have already been considered and rejected by judges in the same courthouse, suggest that Mueller's appointment was unconstitutional because he wasn't commissioned directly by ... Donald Trump. Stone also argues that the Justice Department improperly funded Mueller's investigation because the pot of money supporting his probe wasn't explicitly authorized by Congress. He separately contends that he has been selectively targeted by Mueller because of his closeness to Trump." ...

... Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "... Roger Stone is connected to investigations Robert Mueller sent to other prosecutors and that continue despite the special counsel having finished his work, the Justice Department said Friday in a new court filing. The Justice Department told the federal court in Washington, DC, on Friday afternoon that it shouldn't allow the public release of search warrants being used in Stone's criminal case in DC federal court. The warrants 'concern investigations that remain ongoing,' the filing says. There's so much sensitive information still in the search warrants that they should not even be released with redactions, the Justice Department argues.... A media coalition, including CNN, had asked to unseal the Stone warrants."

Conservo-columnist Bret Stephens of the New York Times compares the role of shame in the American culture of the 1950s to its role today. Had [Charles] Van Doren come along a few decades later, there would have been no big scandal in fabricating reality and no great shame in participating in it. The lines between fame and infamy would have blurred, and both could be monetized.... In days bygone, the prescribed method for avoiding shame was behaving well. Or, if it couldn't be avoided, feeling deep remorse and performing some sort of penance. By contrast, the Trumpian method for avoiding shame is not giving a damn. Spurious bone-spur draft deferment? Shrug. Fraudulent business and charitable practices? Snigger. Outrageous personal invective? Sneer. Inhumane treatment of children at the border? Snarl. Hush-money payoffs to a porn-star and centerfold mistresses? Stud!... It was once the useful role of conservatives to resist these sorts of trends -- to stand athwart declining moral standards, yelling Stop. They lost whatever right they had to play that role when they got behind Trump, not only acquiescing in the culture of shamelessness but also savoring its fruits." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: For those of you too young to remember Van Doren, I can tell you that the quiz show scandals were front-page news all over the U.S. in the late 1950s. BTW, the film "Quiz Show" is quite good. It's available on Netflix with a subscription, on Amazon Prime & YouTube for $3 (and up) & elsewhere.

Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times highlights a former multimillionaire (and once a big Democratic donor) who "orchestrat[ed] a scheme that defrauded banks of nearly $300 million" & recently was released from prison under the new First Step Act, a prison reform bill that "offered prisoner rehabilitation programs and overhauled sentencing policies that supporters claimed had a disproportionate effect on poor defendants, especially minorities.... But [Hassan] Nemazee left prison under a less publicized part of the bill that allows certain offenders who are over 60 and not considered a threat to others to be released into home confinement if they have completed two-thirds of their sentence.... That Mr. Nemazee ... qualified for home confinement showed that programs that weigh a prisoner's risk to society give white-collar offenders a distinct advantage, said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor and sentencing expert at Ohio State University." So far, only 10 prisoners have been released under this home confinement provision. Mrs. McC: Call me a cynic, but whoever wrote this provision -- and I do think it's sensible -- had a particular prisoner in mind: some fatcat miscreant who was a friend of the provision's author.

Ann Jones of TomDispatch, in truthdig, reprises the works of Thorstein Veblen, who catalogued the lives of the predatory class of the Gilded Age. "America has once again been gripped by the heavy hands of the predators and of the legislators they buy. Veblen's leisure class is now eclipsed by those even richer than rich, the top 1% of the 1%, a celestial crew even more remote from the productive labor of working men and women than were those nineteenth-century robber barons." Thanks to PD Pepe & Whyte O. for the link.

Zack Whittaker of TechCrunch: "A hacker group has breached several FBI-affiliated websites and uploaded their contents to the web, including dozens of files containing the personal information of thousands of federal agents and law enforcement officers, TechCrunch has learned. The hackers breached three sites associated with the FBI National Academy Association, a coalition of different chapters across the U.S. promoting federal and law enforcement leadership and training located at the FBI training academy in Quantico, VA. The hackers exploited flaws on at least three of the organization's chapter websites -- which we're not naming -- and downloaded the contents of each web server. The hackers then put the data up for download on their own website, which we're also not naming nor linking to given the sensitivity of the data." Mrs. McC: You might think sites associated with the FBI would be pretty hack-proof. Apparently not.

News Ledes

New Your Times: “Paul Greengard, an American neuroscientist whose 15-year quest to understand how brain cells communicate provided new insights into psychological diseases and earned him a Nobel Prize, and who used his entire $400,000 award to create an academic prize in memory of the mother he never knew, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93."

New Your Times: "Bibi Andersson, the luminous Swedish actress who personified first purity and youth, then complexity and disillusionment, in 13 midcentury Ingmar Bergman films, died on Sunday in Stockholm. She was 83."

The Commentariat -- April 13, 2019

Mussolini at least made the trains run on time. Il Trumpo can't do anything right.Trump Tries on His Dictator Suit

Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump last week urged Kevin McAleenan, whom he was about to name as acting secretary of homeland security, to close the southwestern border despite having just said that he was delaying a decision on the step for a year, according to three people.... It was not clear what Mr. Trump meant by his request or his additional comment to Mr. McAleenan that he would pardon him if he encountered any legal problems as a result of taking the action.... Mr. Trump's desire to close the border, despite the legal impediments was a factor in the forced resignation of [DHS Secretary Kirstjen] Nielsen. [Trump's conversation with McAleenan] was one of a number of instances in which Ms. Nielsen believed she was being asked to engage in conduct that violated laws, according to several people with knowledge of those discussions." ...

Telling someone to commit a crime and promising a pardon if he does is an impeachable offense. -- Richard Painter, in a tweet ...

... digby: "Trump gets no benefit of the doubt for 'joking' about dangling pardons to people who break the law for him. There's just too much evidence that he's prepared to do it. Recall that on the same visit, Trump told border patrol agents that they should just tell judges that 'we're full' if they the give them any trouble. They took the president seriously enough that they asked their bosses if they should follow his orders and were told they shouldn't break the law. He's testing the boundaries to see how far he can go." ...

... Rafi Schwartz of Splinter: "... no matter how troubling it may be that Trump was reportedly directing government officials to break the law, the fact that he subsequently may have promised a pardon for at least one member of his administration takes things to a whole other level -- one in which the president is actively working to subvert existing laws in pursuit of his monomaniacal anti-immigration ends." ...

... Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that his administration was 'strongly' considering releasing migrants detained at the border into mostly Democratic 'sanctuary cities,'... tweeting, 'Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only.... ....The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy -- so this should make them very happy!' 'We are looking at the possibility, strongly looking at it to be honest with you,' he said on Friday in response to a question about the proposal.... The comments came a day after the administration said the policy proposal was never seriously considered. But after the president's Twitter posts on Friday, a White House spokesman said Democrats should work with the administration to welcome migrants into their districts." ...

... Courtney Kube & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "When some of ... Donald Trump's top national security advisers gathered at the White House Tuesday night to talk about the surge of immigrants across the southern border, they discussed increasing the U.S. military's involvement in the border mission, including whether the military could be used to build tent city detention camps for migrants, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the conversations. During the meeting, the officials also discussed whether the U.S. military could legally run the camps once the migrants are housed there, a move the three officials said was very unlikely since U.S. law prohibits the military from directly interacting with migrants. The law has been a major limitation for Trump, who wants to engage troops in his mission to get tougher on immigration. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan was at the White House meeting Tuesday night and was open to sending more U.S. troops to support the border mission, so long as their assigned mission is within the law...." ...

... Philip Bump of the Washington Post: “The subtext to [reports] that President Trump and his administration wanted to drop migrants entering the United States into 'sanctuary cities' isn’t subtle: The intent was punishment, a form of 'retaliation' against heavily Democratic areas like San Francisco. That idea fits with Trump's depiction of the groups of migrants entering the United States from Mexico being riddled with criminals, gang members and terrorists. But that would likely be at odds with how residents of those cities likely view immigrants -- since those cities tend to be more densely immigrant-heavy than the country on the whole.... A 'sanctuary city' isn't a place where immigrants living in the country illegally have carte blanche to do what they wish. Instead, they are generally jurisdictions where public officials are limited in their ability to inform immigration authorities about people who are in the country illegally. The intent is to encourage immigrants to work with authorities without fear of deportation in situations where that assistance is important, such as criminal investigations." ...

... Libby Watson of Splinter faults journalists for writing stories that implicitly accept the Trump/Miller premise that dumping migrants in large cities would lead to "crimey migrants [doing] a bunch of migranty crimes in those cities.... the framing [of the stories] is left as 'the presence of migrants in cities will be bad for those cities.' And in the end, that just does Stephen Miller's work for him."

Bill Barr Set to Help Trump Deport Immigrants. Tal Kopan of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Attorney General William Barr is ... on the verge of issuing rule changes that would make it easier for a handful of appellate immigration judges to declare their rulings binding on the entire immigration system.... The changes could also expand the use of single-judge, cursory decisions at the appellate level -- all at the same time as a hiring spree that could reshape the court.... Last week, the Justice Department revived a proposed regulation originally initiated during the George W. Bush administration to allow the 21-judge appeals court system that hears immigration cases more latitude to issue cursory opinions without explanation.... Advocates for immigrants and attorneys who work in the system fear the efficiency tools could be used to dramatically reshape immigration law to fit President Trump's political goals. Trump has repeatedly railed against the immigration court system and suggested doing away with it entirely.... 'All of these pieces add up to taking away due process and speeding people through to their deportation in some sort of assembly line substitute for justice,' said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and former senior legal adviser to the immigration appeals court." ...

... ** AND Another Thing. David Lurie in Slate: “As President Ronald Reagan's first attorney general, William French Smith, wrote in 1981, the DOJ has 'a duty to defend the constitutionality of an Act of Congress whenever a reasonable argument can be made in its support.'... Last month, the attorney general announced that the United States will cease defending any portion of the Affordable Care Act in the courts. Instead, the DOJ will join a number of state attorneys general in challenging the constitutionality of the entire ACA.... This comes after the DOJ stopped defending the constitutionality of the ACA's protection of insurance coverage for those with preexisting conditions last year. In taking the position that the entire ACA is constitutionally void, Barr abandoned a long-standing principle that the Department of Justice is duty-bound to defend the constitutionality of federal laws.... During testimony before Congress this week, Barr stated that he ... feels duty-bound to attack the ACA in the courts because Trump, after failing to convince a majority of the Senate to vote in favor of repealing the ACA, is now eager to see the act nullified by the courts instead. Barr's decision is at direct odds with a policy upheld for decades by attorneys general in Republican and Democratic administrations." ...

... ** Frank Rich: "When you invoke Roy Cohn, you have to specify which Roy Cohn. There's the New York Cohn of the 1970s and '80s, the Mob-connected fixer who enabled Trump's rise, of course. But there's also the earlier, Washington Cohn: the smear artist who abetted Joe McCarthy's witch hunt to expose supposed Commies in the United States Army during the 1950s. The brilliantly perverse achievement of Barr is that he combines both Roy Cohns in a single package. He's a fixer for Trump, as evidenced by his unsupported conclusion that the Mueller report lets the president off the legal hook for his manifold efforts to obstruct justice. But Barr is also the McCarthy-era Cohn, sliming a 'group of leaders there at the upper echelon' of government agencies for spying without offering any specifics or evidence." Read on. Rich also comments on Joe Biden & Pete Buttigieg.

... ** The Audacity of Tyranny. Rick Wilson in the Daily Beast (April 11): "Every great authoritarian enterprise comes to its apotheosis more from the soulless, mechanical efficiency of armies of bureaucrats and police than from the rantings of whatever Great Leader or revolutionary firebrand mounts the podium.... The gray, heavy-set man who sat before two congressional committees over the last two days embodies the triumph of the banality of Washington's bureaucratic class, a droning Kabuki performer leading the House and Senate committees through several hours of monotone testimony intended to disguise the explosive consequences of his appointment as attorney general.... Unlike Watergate, Barr's cover-up is happening in real time and on live television, as the chief law enforcer of the United States promised without a flicker of emotion that he will redact the Mueller report as he sees fit.... As usual, anyone counting on the Democrats not to blow it this week was disappointed."

Mihir Zaveri of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court said Friday that the Trump administration could temporarily continue to force migrants seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of a lower-court ruling four days earlier that blocked the administration's protocol. The appeals court will consider next week whether to extend that stay -- and allow the Trump administration policy to remain in effect for longer."

Other Trump Scandals, Ctd.

Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "An American political consultant whose guilty plea marked the first confirmation that illegal foreign money was used to help fund Donald Trump's inaugural committee was sentenced to probation Friday by a federal judge who cited his cooperation with U.S. prosecutors. W. Samuel Patten, 47, in August admitted steering $50,000 from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to Trump's committee in an investigation spun off from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Patten acknowledged he was helped by a Russian national who is a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the case was referred to prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in Washington and the Justice Department's national security division."

Andrew Desiderio of Politico: "House Oversight and Reform Committee Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is moving to issue a subpoena to obtain 10 years of ... Donald Trump's financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA, the chairman told members of the panel in a memo on Friday. Cummings plans to issue the subpoena on Monday after Mazars asked for a so-called friendly' subpoena, so that it could comply with the committee's document demands. In his memo, Cummings explained that the committee asked for the records as part of its efforts to corroborate allegations made by Trump's former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, who told lawmakers in February that Trump artificially inflated and deflated the value of his assets to his personal benefit.... The chairman also used his memo to criticize [ranking Republican Jim] Jordan [Rabid-Ohio] for his 'troubling actions,' accusing the Trump ally of urging Mazars not to comply with Cummings' request for documents."

When politicians attack courts as 'dangerous,' 'political,' and guilty of 'egregious overreach,' you can hear the Klan's lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South. When leaders chastise people for merely 'us[ing] the courts,' you can hear the Citizens Council, hammering up the names of black petitioners in Yazoo City, [Mississippi]. When the powerful accuse courts of 'open[ing] up our country to potential terrorists,' you can hear the Southern Manifesto's authors, smearing the judiciary for simply upholding the rights of black folk. When lawmakers say 'we should get rid of judges,' you can hear segregationist senators, writing bills to strip courts of their power. -- Federal Judge Carlton Reeves, in a speech Thursday ...

... Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: "In a highly unusual public rebuke against ... Donald Trump by a sitting member of the federal judiciary, US District Judge Carlton Reeves delivered a speech Thursday calling the Trump administration a 'great assault on our judiciary' and comparing the president's criticism of the judiciary to tactics used by the Ku Klux Klan and segregationists. According to a copy of the speech obtained by BuzzFeed News, Reeves, who is black and sits in Jackson, Mississippi, extensively quoted Trump's tweets and public comments about judges and the courts (the written version includes footnotes making clear who and what Reeves is referring to) and blasted the lack of diversity among Trump's judicial nominees. Reeves spoke at the University of Virginia School of Law, his alma mater, where he received the school's Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law."

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "President Trump on Friday targeted Representative Ilhan Omar for remarks she made during a speech on civil rights and Muslims in America with a graphic video featuring the burning World Trade Center towers and other images from Sept. 11, 2001, that he tweeted to millions of his followers. The Twitter post from the president stoked and amplified a controversy that has been a focus of conservative news outlets, which have sought to elevate Ms. Omar -- a Minnesota Democrat and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress -- as a political target, as Mr. Trump's re-election campaign begins in earnest." Mrs. McC: It's sometimes difficult to remember, but this is not the way a real president behaves.

All the Best People, Ctd.

Michael Brice-Saddler of the Washington Post: "A federal workplace investigation found rampant sexual harassment and retaliation at AccuWeather, a federal contractor, including groping, touching and kissing of subordinates without consent. AccuWeather's chief executive at the time of the allegations and investigation, Barry Myers, was tapped by President Trump to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.... The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs ... determined that AccuWeather, under Myers, fostered a culture ripe for sexual harassment, turned a blind eye to allegations of egregious conduct and retaliated against those who complained.... The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and obtained by The Washington Post. It determined that AccuWeather, under Myers, fostered a culture ripe for sexual harassment, turned a blind eye to allegations of egregious conduct and retaliated against those who complained.... NOAA oversees the National Weather Service, which compiles data used by AccuWeather. [The Post] reported that AccuWeather has previously supported measures to limit what the Weather Service can make public, granting private companies a chance to create their own value-added products using the same information." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: There's a reason Trump, allegedly a chronic sexual harasser, nominates people like Myers.

Andrew Kaczynski & Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "Stephen Moore, who ... Donald Trump announced last month as his nominee for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, has a history of advocating self-described 'radical' views.... In speeches and radio interviews reviewed by CNN's KFile, Moore advocated for eliminating the corporate and federal income taxes entirely, calling the 16th Amendment that created the income tax the 'most evil' law passed in the 20th century. Moore's economic worldview envisions a slimmed down government and a rolled back social safety net. He has called for eliminating the Departments of Labor, Energy and Commerce, along with the IRS and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. He has questioned the need for both the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education. He has said there's no need for a federal minimum wage, called for privatizing the 'Ponzi scheme' of Social Security and said those on government assistance lost their dignity and meaning. In other interviews and appearances, Moore repeatedly said he believed capitalism was more important than democracy.... Moore has been a fierce critic of the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell. In 2015, he called for abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to a gold standard (Moore told CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday he changed his mind on the gold standard. He told CNN's KFile on Friday he no longer believed in abolishing the Federal Reserve)."

Heidi Przybyla & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "Senate Democrats are demanding the Department of Justice disclose the full results of an investigation into whether U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is guilty of 'professional misconduct' in his handling of a sex crime prosecution against billionaire Jeffrey Epstein over a decade ago. In a letter obtained by NBC News, Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., are asking the DOJ to 'make public all findings' from its probe into Acosta's handling, as a former U.S. attorney, of a plea agreement in the Epstein case. The agreement allowed the wealthy financier and philanthropist to plead guilty to lesser charges in state court rather than face federal sex trafficking charges involving more than three dozen underage girls."

Catherine Garcia of the Week: "In just two years, Fox News host Sean Hannity went from inviting Julian Assange to fill in for him on his radio show to scrubbing all references to the WikiLeaks founder from his Twitter stream.... The Washington Post's Aaron Blake argues this could all just be a coincidence, saying Hannity's cleansing of all things pro-Assange and WikiLeaks 'appears to have taken place as part of a mass deletion -- not in response to Assange's arrest today.' Tweets about Assange and WikiLeaks may have gotten the boot, but Hannity did elect to keep about eight million references to Jussie Smollett, Hillary Clinton's emails, and 'collusion delusion.'"

Ben Collins of NBC News: "Katie Bouman, a researcher who helped create the first image of a black hole, quickly gained internet fame Thursday for her role in the project after a photo of her went viral.... Bouman, a postdoctoral fellow who will soon be an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, noted in a Facebook post Wednesday that 'no one algorithm or person made this image' and published a photo of the many people she worked alongside.... Bouman's public recognition -- much of it applauding an example of a woman at the forefront of a major scientific effort -- drew attention from misogynist communities on the internet. Some users congregated on Reddit and created videos questioning Bouman' contribution that were then uploaded to Instagram and YouTube. By Friday, falsehoods claiming it was not Bouman but a male colleague who deserved credit for the black hole image overtook legitimate coverage in search results on YouTube and Instagram." See also story linked under Infotainment. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's worth remembering that a lot of Trump's appeal is to pathetic troglodytes like this: men who can't handle successful women AND who can't handle sciency stuff.