June 11, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Lauren Sforza of the Hill: "Former Attorney General Bill Barr called arguments being made by Republicans attempting to compare former President Trump's handling of classified documents to previous presidents 'big lies.'... 'So, there are two big lies, I think, that are out there right now,' Barr said [on 'Fox News Sunday.'] 'One is all these other presidents took all these documents. Those were situations where they arranged with the archives to set up special space under the management, control, and security provided by the archivists to temporarily put documents until the libraries were ready. These were not people just putting them in their basement, OK.' The second lie, according to Barr, is the notion that a president has 'complete authority' to declare any document 'personal.'... Some of the documents ... clearly could not be marked as personal. The summary includes some of the nation's most sensitive information." At the end of Sunday's Comments, Nisky Guy writes an appropriate addendum to Barr's remarks, which Charming Billy should not have left unsaid.
Scotland. Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's former first minister and once one of Britain's most prominent politicians, was arrested on Sunday by police officers investigating the finances of the Scottish National Party, which dominates the country's politics and which she led until her unexpected resignation in February. The news deepens the crisis engulfing the Scottish National Party, or S.N.P., delivering a new blow to its campaign for Scottish independence after the arrests of Ms. Sturgeon's husband, Peter Murrell, the party's former chief executive, and then of Colin Beattie, its former treasurer, in April. Both men were released after questioning and without being charged with any offense. In a statement issued late Sunday afternoon, Police Scotland said that Ms. Sturgeon had also 'been released without charge pending further investigation' and, swiftly after that announcement, the former first minister proclaimed her innocence."
Russia. Travis Pennington, et al., of CNN: "The US State Department has confirmed the arrest of American citizen Travis Leake in Russia and said US embassy officials attended his arraignment Saturday. Moscow's courts of general jurisdiction earlier released a statement on the social media app Telegram saying a US citizen had been detained on drugs charges. Leake was detained on Saturday where 'the Khamovniki District Court of Moscow took a preventive measure against an American citizen,' it said.... 'The former paratrooper and musician is accused of engaging in the narcotics business through attracting young people,' the statement said."
Josh Dawsey & Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "The 37-count federal indictment of ... Donald Trump ... is based on information from a coterie of close aides, household staffers and lawyers hired to serve Trump in his post-presidency.... A secretary -- identified in the indictment as 'Trump Employee 2' -- told prosecutors that Trump himself had been packing and looking through boxes, contrary to assertions from his own lawyers. A young political aide, referred to as 'the PAC representative' in the indictment, told prosecutors that Trump showed him a classified map about a military operation in a foreign country and told him to stand back because it was a secret document. At a recent CNN town hall, Trump said he did not remember doing such a thing. Key parts of the indictment are based on one of his lawyer's detailed notes about Trump's wishing to obstruct justice by not responding to a subpoena -- contradicting the 45th president's claims that he was always cooperative with the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration.... Interviews [of dozens of staffers] gave [special counsel Jack] Smith a close-up look at how Trump had structured his unorthodox post-presidential life -- and made Trump and his advisers deeply angry and uncomfortable...."
Whataboutism for Dummies. Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "... the Trump indictment itself helps explain the difference between his case and other high-profile probes, like those of Hillary Clinton, President Biden and former vice president Mike Pence -- not for what it charges, but for what it doesn't.... Notably..., the indictment does not charge Trump with the illegal retention of any of the 197 [classified] documents he returned to the archives.... While [Clinton's] email chains discussed classified topics, they were not classified documents in the traditional sense, with extensive markings and acronyms.... It has long been standard practice in the federal government for officials to review their own correspondence in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and decide which of their emails are personal and therefore not turned over. In Clinton's case, her lawyers did that for her.... Robert Kelner, a veteran D.C. attorney[, said,]. 'The key difference is that in the Hillary Clinton case, as we learned from the Department of Justice inspector general report, there was no evidence that Hillary Clinton sought to obstruct justice.'... The indictment offers anecdote after alleged anecdote charging that the former president sought to hide and keep some of the classified papers....
Biden's lawyers say they have cooperated at every step of the investigation and readily returned all classified materials found in the office and the Wilmington house.... The Pence case also points to the key distinction in the national security probes involving presidents, former top officials or presidential candidates -- that it is not so much what is taken, but what is kept." A similar AP analysis is here and is worth reading. ~~~
~~~ Daniel Dale of CNN: "In the weeks before Donald Trump was indicted over his alleged mishandling of classified defense documents..., the former president kept arguing that it would be unfair to prosecute him given that President Joe Biden took '1,850 boxes' of documents to the University of Delaware.... But Trump's vague insinuations that there is something improper about the existence of the Biden collection at the University of Delaware are baseless. The collection of donated documents is from Biden's 36-year tenure as a US senator for Delaware. Unlike presidents, who are subject to the Presidential Records Act, senators own their offices' documents and can do whatever they want with them.... Trump has also made false specific claims about the boxes of Biden's Senate documents. It is not true that 'nobody even knows where they are.'... It is also not true that Biden 'has been totally uncooperative' and 'won't show the documents under any circumstances.' Biden consented to two FBI searches at the university -- searches that did not initially appear to turn up any documents with classified markings, a source ... [said] in February, though they were still being analyzed at the time." Emphasis added.
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Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump on Saturday cast both his indictments by prosecutors and his bid for the White House as part of a 'final battle' with 'corrupt' forces that he maintained are destroying the country.... 'Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,' the former president said in [Columbus,] Georgia, seeming to refer to Democrats. He made similar remarks about the 'Deep State,' using the pejorative term he uses for U.S. intelligence agencies and more broadly for any federal government bureaucrat he perceives as a political opponent.... And he attacked by name Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., who is weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump, calling her 'a lunatic Marxist.'... Mr. Trump's speech at the Georgia state G.O.P. convention [-- held at a building that was once an ironworks that made mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army --] and another later in the evening at the state party convention in North Carolina were planned before he was indicted on Thursday for his role in mishandling classified documents....
"Mr. Trump, who was already said to be angry on Thursday night in the first hours after he was told of the indictment, was enraged when the charges were unsealed and shared with him on Friday, according to a person who spoke with him.... The indictment was filled with information from people who work with him, and Mr. Trump had already been suspicious of several aides who might have revealed certain details to the special counsel...." An NBC News story is here. A related CBS News story is here.
Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.... Trump is not legally prohibited from running for president from prison or as a convicted felon.... Trump predicted he would not be convicted and said he did not anticipate taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so 'where they pay me some damages.'" MB: Ha! Good luck with that.
** Bad News. Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The criminal case against ... Donald J. Trump over his hoarding of classified documents was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a court official for the Southern District of Florida said on Saturday. The chief clerk of the federal court system there, Angela E. Noble, also confirmed that Judge Cannon would continue to oversee the case unless she recused herself. The news of Judge Cannon's assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.'s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Since Aileen will be staying on the case, let's pretend -- for argument's sake -- that a jury convicts him on all counts. Then it would be up to Aileen to sentence him: What? A $500 fine? Or probation?
... these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand. -- Deepthroat
Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Republican leaders, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), are staying quiet about former President Trump's indictment on 37 criminal charges, letting him twist in the wind and breaking with House Republican leaders who have rushed to Trump's defense. McConnell, who is careful not to comment on Trump or even repeat his name in public, has said to his GOP colleagues that he wants his party to turn the page on the former president, whom he sees as a flawed general election candidate and a drag on Senate Republican candidates. The Senate GOP leader's top deputies -- Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) -- have also indicated they don't want Trump to win the party's 2024 presidential nomination. They along with McConnell are letting Trump's legal troubles play out without coming to the former president's defense, in contrast to Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who both issued statements Thursday criticizing the Justice Department before the indictment was unsealed to the public."
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who is now running for president, called the facts in the indictment against his former ally Donald J. Trump 'devastating,' and said that the small group of Republicans now critical of the former president's conduct would grow. Mr. Christie, appearing on CNN Friday evening, refuted point-by-point the claim by Mr. Trump and many of his fellow Republicans that the indictment represented selective, partisan prosecution that would unnecessarily divide the country. The indictment would divide the nation, he said, but Mr. Trump had brought that on himself with poor conduct that 'was completely self-inflicted.'... Mr. Christie said a man of Mr. Trump's stature and ambitions should be held to a higher standard."
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "By laying out Donald Trump's own admissions and incriminating eyewitness accounts from his employees, the indictment unsealed on Friday provided compelling evidence that could be exceedingly difficult for the former president to overcome and avoid a conviction.... The sheer strength and volume of evidence presented in the indictment about Trump's knowledge and intent leaves few defenses at his disposal.... For violations of the Espionage Act, Trump was charged under section 793e of title 18 of the criminal code, which references the retention of 'national defense information' -- defined as materials that could damage the national security of the United States. The documents Trump retained appeared to exceed that threshold. In multiple instances in the indictment, some of the documents that Trump is said to have retained were so sensitive that prosecutors were forced to redact even the classification markings that described the secret programs.... The indictment laid out two instances showing Trump knew he was in unauthorized possession of national defense information months after he left the White House, as well as an extended account showing Trump knew he was obligated to return the material but took steps to illegally retain them.... Prosecutors also presented detailed evidence that Trump moved to obstruct the criminal investigation by concealing classified documents from an attorney identified as his then-lawyer Evan Corcoran after the justice department issued a subpoena last May demanding their return."
Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "In some ways, the historic moment where Trump finds himself now was predictable, say former officials who worked for him and experts that observed his behavior. As president, Trump chafed against procedures designed to protect secrets that he saw as restraints on his authority, enforced by an intelligence bureaucracy that he held in deep suspicion.... Several former aides said that Trump tried to intimidate anyone who attempted to retrieve secret documents after a meeting or keep them out of his hands.... The 37 counts against Trump ... describe a man who seemed not to recognize or care about the bright legal line that separates the presidency from life after it.... 'In his own mind, Trump has never left the presidency,' said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and national security expert who ran the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library.... '... It's a threat to the republic to have former presidents who believe their power is a lifetime privilege.'"
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has some thoughts about the federal indictment of Donald Trump: "The indictment -- charging Trump with violating the Espionage Act and other laws -- offered devastating photos of America's secrets stacked up like something on 'Hoarders,' spilling out under the dry cleaning, a guitar case and other items.... During the 2016 campaign, Trump was always boasting about his devotion to protecting classified information, to mock Hillary. The prosecutors thoughtfully included some of his old comments, like this one: 'In my administration I';m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.'... What an utter phony." (Also linked yesterday.)
Scott Lemieux of LG&$: Reality "Winner spent five years in jail for taking one document for a legitimate whistleblowing purpose. [She leaked a top-secret report on Russian hacking.] The idea that an ordinary person wouldn't be prosecuted for what Trump did is an intelligence-insulting lie even by the standards of Trump boot polishers.... Trump had the opportunity to avoid prosecution that an ordinary citizen like Winner would never have been afforded. He chose not to take them because he believes he is entirely above the law, and his fascist supporters agree." Winner pleaded guilty & was sentenced during the Trump administration*.
Sideshow. Rania Aniftos of Billboard: "'In August or September 2021, at The Bedminster Club, Trump showed a representative of his political action committee who did not possess a security clearance a classified map related to a military operation,' the indictment reads, as Twitter users began speculating and connecting the statement to a 2022 interview Kid Rock had with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. 'We're looking at maps and s--, and I'm like, "Am I supposed to be in on this s--?"' Kid Rock -- a longtime and outspoken supporter of Trump -- told the Fox News anchor, who broke out into laughter." ~~~
~~~ digby: "But the [Kid Rock] event happened in 2017 so it was when Trump was president and has nothing to do with this indictment. He does show just how cavalier [Trump] always was with government secrets." MB: Kid Rock is probably as dumb as a rock, but I am struck that he is more intelligent than Trump: Trump has no compunction about showing some dude national security maps, but even the dude realizes he is not "supposed to be in on this shit."
Michael Schmidt, et al., of the New York Times: "The federal indictment of ... Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday. In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump -- including a member of Congress -- have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election. The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him. Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity....
"In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor...., [said,] 'I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden -- and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you... If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I'm going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.... That's not a threat, that's a public service announcement.'" Read on.
Zack Beauchamp of Vox: "The Russia investigation set a pattern that would endure for the entire Trump presidency. Again and again, when faced with credible allegations of wrongdoing, Republicans indulged Trump's wildest fantasies out of either fear or genuine belief. [This worldview], once the province of cranks, evolved into the official narrative of the Republican Party -- an evolution cemented when Trump attempted to overthrow the 2020 election and the party elite permitted him to do so. In the Biden years, with Republicans out of power, the narrative of an entire government arranged against them only became more credible in the eyes of the base.... The result is a party that has, in the past several years, grown increasingly radicalized against the core institutions of America. They believe that everything in America is turning against them: not just the traditional enemies like the media and Hollywood, but also the military, big business, and even the US Olympic team.... Democracy depends on both sides respecting the rules of the game. But one side has decided, without any real evidence, that the rules are rigged against them -- and have demonstrated a willingness to disregard them...."
Tess Bridgeman & Brianna Rosen of Just Security: "Because of the remarkably sensitive nature of the documents the former president retained, and the shockingly insecure locations where they were held and transported..., there are ... potentially grave implications for U.S. national security. It is those national security implications, as evidenced in particular by the 31 counts lodged under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)), which we briefly lay out here.... Compromising ... intelligence streams could lead to an irreplaceable loss of technical or human access that took years and significant resources to develop. And that also entails a corresponding loss of insight into sensitive programs, leadership dynamics, and intent on the part of foreign governments (including adversarial ones) and their leaders.... The security breach [also] is significant because of its potentially damaging impact on intelligence liaison relationships and information sharing with other countries.... There is nothing in the indictment or otherwise indicating that the U.S. government is now sure it has recovered all of the classified information."
Beyond the Beltway
North Carolina. Hannah Schoenbaum of the AP: "Republican delegates in North Carolina voted Saturday at their annual convention to censure Thom Tillis, the state's senior U.S. senator, for backing LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and gun violence policies.... A two-thirds majority of the state party's 1,801 voting delegates was needed for the resolution to pass...." MB: Oh, they're still Tar Heels.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his military commanders are in a 'positive mood' as a long-anticipated counteroffensive gets underway. Official details on the counteroffensive are scant.... Analysts said Ukraine appears to be attacking on several fronts, including Velyka Novosilka in the Donetsk region and Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region.... French President Emmanuel Macron has called on his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, to put an end to drone deliveries that are supporting Russia's war in Ukraine. Macron made the plea in a 90-minute phone call Saturday, Reuters reported.... The last reactor still operating at Europe's largest nuclear plant in Ukraine has been put into a 'cold shutdown' as a precaution after the collapse last week of the Kakhovka dam, Ukrainian energy officials said.... Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced about $375 million in new military aid during a surprise visit on Saturday to the Ukrainian capital, along with about $7.5 million to help with the humanitarian response to the collapse of the Kakhovka dam."~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
News Ledes
Texas. New York Times: "Tens of thousands of fish washed ashore along the gulf coast of Texas starting on Friday after being starved of oxygen in warm water, officials said. Park officials for Brazoria County said that a cleanup effort was underway but thousands more fish were expected to wash ashore.... The cause was a 'perfect storm' of bad conditions, said Bryan Frazier, the director of the Brazoria County Parks Department. Warm water holds much less oxygen than cold water, he said, and calm seas and cloudy skies in the area had stymied the ways oxygen is usually infused into ocean water. Waves add oxygen to water, and cloudy skies reduce the ability of microscopic organisms to produce oxygen through photosynthesis."
Colombia. New York Times: "Four Colombian children who survived in the Colombian jungle for 40 days after their plane crashed were eager to play and asked for books to read, officials said on Saturday, one day after the group was rescued. The siblings, aged 1 to 13, were recuperating at a military hospital in Bogotá, the capital, and were said to be in good health and spirits on Saturday, when they were visited by President Gustavo Petro and other officials.... Carlos Rincón, the military doctor who evaluated the children, said they had survived with only mild cuts and scrapes. In photos released by the government on Friday, the children appeared gaunt and the doctor said they were not yet receiving solid food."
Pennsylvania. AP: "An elevated section of Interstate 95 collapsed early Sunday in Philadelphia after a vehicle caught fire, closing the main north-south highway on the East Coast and threatening to upend travel in parts of the densely populated Northeast, authorities said. Transportation officials warned of extensive delays and street closures and urged drivers to avoid the area in the northeast corner of the city. Early reports indicated that the vehicle may have been a tanker truck, but officials could not immediately confirm that. The fire was reported to be under control. Video from the scene showed a massive concrete slab had fallen from I-95 onto the road below. There were no reports of injuries."
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