Sunday
Mar242019
The Commentariat -- March 25, 2019
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Marc Tracy of the New York Times: "Michael Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, was arrested Monday as federal prosecutors filed charges accusing him of attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike by threatening negative publicity right before an earnings call and the N.C.A.A. men's basketball tournament. In court documents filed Monday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said that Mr. Avenatti and a client, a former A.A.U. basketball coach, told Nike that they had evidence Nike employees had funneled money to recruits. The prosecutors said the men threatened to release the evidence in order to damage Nike's reputation and market capitalization unless the company paid them at least $22.5 million.... The court documents were filed around the same time Mr. Avenatti, in a post on his Twitter account, had announced that he would hold a news conference on Tuesday to accuse Nike of 'a major high school/college basketball scandal.'" Mrs. McC: Trump couldn't have a better day if he found out he was as rich as he claims to be.
Laura Jarrett of CNN: "Roughly three weeks ago the special counsel's team told Attorney General Bill Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that Robert Mueller would not be reaching a conclusion on obstruction of justice, according to a source familiar with the meeting. The source said that conclusion was 'unexpected' and not what Barr had anticipated."
From a report by Josh Dawsey & others of the Washington Post: "Within an hour of learning the findings, Trump called for an investigation of his critics and cast himself as a victim. Aides say Trump plans to highlight the cost of the probe and call for organizations to fire members of the media and former government officials who he believes made false accusations about him, while aggressively mocking his critics and one of his favored enemies, the news media. 'Hopefully somebody is going to be looking at the other side,' Trump said, describing the Mueller investigation as 'an illegal takedown that failed.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Reminds me of O.J. going after the "real killers." We've just experienced a "Barr nullification," and now Trump plans to go after the "real criminals." ...
... ** Brian Beutler of Crooked: "Notwithstanding Barr's heroic, lawyerly effort to create a sense that Mueller has exonerated Trump, the letter he delivered to Congress on Sunday is nearly silent on all of these questions, and actually suggests that the report's contents are deeply damaging to the president. On close reading, Barr's putative summary of the Mueller report clears Trump of only the most narrowly drawn accusations, which nobody was making.... The entire letter is drafted to suggest practically the opposite of what it actually says.... [Barr's] omissions help explain why, despite his gloating today, Trump behaved until the very end like a guilty man and endeavored ceaselessly to terminate and compromise the investigation.... I anticipate that Trump will go to great, telling lengths to conceal [the Mueller report] -- in ways that sit uncomfortably alongside today's credulous headlines, and Republican insistence that he has been vindicated. But that's exactly why we need to see it in full, and quickly." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Beutler calls out "today's irresponsible headlines and chyrons," and we should do the same. Peter Baker & his headline writer at the NYT should be demoted to covering the local police blotter; the headline on the Times' online front page: "Special Counsel's Conclusions Lift a Cloud over Trump's Presidency."
... Lydia Wheeler of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from a mystery company over a grand jury subpoena tied to ... Robert Mueller's now completed Russia probe. The justices gave no explanation for denying the request that was submitted by the company, and there were no notable dissents from the nine-member court. It takes four justices to agree to hear a case."
~~~~~~~~~~
The Trump Scandals, Ctd. -- The Fix Is In
** Mark Mazzetti & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III found that neither President Trump nor any of his aides conspired or coordinated with the Russian government's 2016 election interference, according to a summary of the special counsel's findings made public on Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr. Mr. Barr also said that Mr. Mueller's team drew no conclusions about whether Mr. Trump illegally obstructed justice. Mr. Barr and the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, concluded that the special counsel's investigators lacked sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trump committed that offense, but added that Mr. Mueller's team stopped short of exonerating Mr. Trump." ...
... Barr's supposed summary is here, via Voxx. ...
... Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Mueller 'ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment,' Barr wrote, leaving it up to the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to decide whether the president had committed obstruction. Rosenstein and Barr 'concluded that the evidence developed during the special counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president,' Barr wrote." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: You can see here why Barr asked Rosenstein -- who had intended to leave the DOJ last week or so -- to stay on a little longer: just as Rosenstein was the original fall-guy in the firing of Jim Comey -- until Trump admitted to Lester Holt that he fired Comey because of "this Rusher thing" -- so now Rosenstein is providing cover for Trump's appointed fixer at Justice. ...
... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump took to Twitter early Monday as his surrogates prepared to fan out on television a day after a summary released from ... Robert S. Mueller III's report cleared Trump of coordinating with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. While Trump and his allies claimed he been exonerated by the two-year investigation, Democrats pushed for full disclosure of the report and what led to conclusions contained in the four-page summary released Sunday by Attorney General William P. Barr. Russian officials, meanwhile, continued to insist their country had not interfered in the election despite findings by Mueller to the contrary." Wagner is updating reactions & developments.
... Neal Katyal said on MSNBC, "It looks like a whitewash here." He said, "We should be very concerned about 'even-handedness.'" ...
... Kevin Drum: "... you should consider Barr's summary to be the rosiest possible interpretation of the Mueller report.... It's possible, of course, that Mueller concluded in his report that none of [the Trump campaign's suspicious contacts] amounted to collusion in any criminal sense, but surely he at least addressed this stuff? So why doesn't Barr mention it?... 'While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime,' [Barr's letter] says, 'it also does not exonerate him.' Needless to say, this did not stop Trump from tweeting his take on 'does not exonerate: 'No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!' [Trump tweeted.]... If even Barr's summary was forced to tiptoe so conspicuously around Mueller's conclusions, I think we can assume that the Mueller report itself is at least moderately damning. Let's see it." ...
... Dara Lind of Vox: "Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein have concluded that 'the evidence is not sufficient' to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. But as a letter written by Barr to the House Judiciary Committee Sunday (summarizing the still-confidential Mueller report submitted to Barr and the Department of Justice on Friday) makes clear, that was Barr and Rosenstein's decision -- not Mueller's.... Because Barr's views on presidential prosecution are well known -- and because Barr was appointed by Trump while the Mueller investigation was ongoing, and resisted Democratic calls to recuse himself from overseeing the investigation -- Democrats and other Trump critics are likely to reject Barr's conclusions as biased at best and corrupt at worst." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So answer me this: how is it that Bill Barr decided Trump didn't obstruct justice? Bob Mueller has had a long career in which he's had to make countless decisions on "difficult issues." After all these decades of deciding, did Mueller suddenly choke? Or was the fix in from the git-go? -- did Rosenstein tell Mueller he could investigate -- but not charge or find fault with -- Trump? And why would Mueller -- whose job it was to be an impartial actor -- casually leave the charging decision to a recent political appointee who wrote a 19-page memo in which he argued that Mueller's theory of obstruction was nonsense; that is, Barr wrote a position paper stating that the person who nominated him, the same person whom Mueller was investigating for obstruction, could not be charged with obstruction. Further, there's no information, available publicly, that Barr gets to decide whether Mueller's findings about obstruction -- whatever they are (and we don't know) -- constitute criminality. If Mueller really did choke (doubtful), Barr could have left it at that; Barr did not have to be the "decider." That would be Congress's job. Whatever good reputation Mueller may have enjoyed, he'll have to go on a Comey-style excuse tour to try to get it back. ...
... Kevin White of the Atlantic: "... crucially, Mueller reported that his investigation 'did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,' whether expressly or tacitly, [according to Barr].... Trump's triumphant supporters notwithstanding, we don't yet know what that means. When prosecutors say that an investigation 'did not establish' something, that doesn't mean that they concluded it didn't happen, or even that they don't believe it happened. It means that the investigation didn't produce enough information to prove that it happened. Without seeing Mueller's full report, we don't know whether this is a firm conclusion about lack of coordination or a frank admission of insufficient evidence.... Crucially, we don't know whether Barr concluded that the president didn't obstruct justice or that he couldn't obstruct justice, [as he argued in his infamous 19-page memo]." ...
Can't think of a more important occasion for close reading, but almost nobody is doing it. Barr's letter asserts only that Trump associates did not participate in the specific crimes charged in the IRA and GRU indictments. Not that they didn't /work w/Russia.' -- Brian Beutler, in a tweet ...
... William Saletan of Slate does do a close reading, & finds a host of "weasel words" in Barr's letter. For instance, "The letter quotes a sentence from Mueller's report...: Mueller says his investigation didn't prove that members of the Trump ' campaign 'conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' The sentence specifies Russia's government. It says nothing about coordination with other Russians."
... Marcy Wheeler has a great post titled, "How William Barr Did Old Man Back-Flips to Avoid Arresting Donald Trump." Its pretty readable! Here's one piece: "... at least given what [Barr & Rosenstein] lay out here, they only considered whether Trump was covering up his involvement in the hack-and-leak operation. doesn't consider whether Trump was covering up a quid pro quo, which is what there is abundant evidence of. They didn't consider whether Trump obstructed the crime that he appears to have obstructed. They considered whether he obstructed a different crime. And having considered whether Trump obstructed the crime he didn't commit, rather than considering whether he obstructed the crime he did commit, they decided not to charge him with a crime." ...
... Wheeler elaborates in a New Republic piece: "The hack-and-leak is not the crime Trump may have committed. It is, instead, a quid pro quo deal by which Russia would help Trump win and Trump would relieve Russia of the sanctions imposed for engaging in human rights violations, annexing Crimea, and hacking the election to help Trump win.... In Barr's confirmation hearing in January, Senator Amy Klobuchar asked him whether a president 'persuading a person to commit perjury [or] convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction.' He said yes, both would. And yet he just decided that a president who has apparently done both of those things did not commit obstruction of justice.... The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee now has abundant reason to get all the underlying materials from the Mueller inquiry, because the attorney general just cleared the president of something he agreed constituted a crime just a few months ago." ...
... ** David Corn of Mother Jones: "... the hyper-focus on [a direct, organized conspiracy] -- as if Trump instructed Russian hackers on how to penetrate the computer network of the Democratic National Committee -- has always diverted attention from a basic and important element of the scandal that was proven long before Mueller drafted his final report: Trump and his lieutenants interacted with Russia while Putin was attacking the 2016 election and provided encouraging signals to the Kremlin as it sought to subvert American democracy. They aided and abetted Moscow's attempt to cover up its assault on the United States (which aimed to help Trump win the White House). And they lied about all this.... Trump and his gang betrayed the United States in the greatest scandal in American history." ...
... Bob Bauer in a New York Times op-ed: "... the Mueller report marked a low point for more substantive norms of presidential conduct. It shows that a demagogic president like Donald Trump can devalue or even depart radically from key norms, just short of committing chargeable crimes, so long as he operates mostly and brazenly in full public view. For a demagogue, shamelessness is its own reward." Mrs. McC: The WashPo's newish tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness" does not apply. In Trump's USA, democracy dies in plain sight. And that, apparently, is okay with Trump's subordinates & enablers. ...
... Neal Katyal in a New York Times op-ed: "The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done. It is impossible for the public to reach that determination without knowing two things. First, what did the Mueller report conclude, and what was the evidence on obstruction of justice? And second, how could Mr. Barr have reached his conclusion so quickly? Mr. Barr's letter raises far more questions than it answers, both on the facts and the law.... Mr. Barr says that the government would need to prove that Mr. Trump acted with 'corrupt intent' and there were no such actions. But how would Mr. Barr know?" ...
... Yay! Trump Is Just a Dimwitted Stooge! David Frum of the Atlantic: "Good news, America. Russia helped install your president. But although he owes his job in large part to that help, the president did not conspire or collude with his helpers. He was the beneficiary of a foreign intelligence operation, but not an active participant in that operation. He received the stolen goods, but he did not conspire with the thieves in advance. This is what Donald Trump's administration and its enablers in Congress and the media are already calling exoneration. But it offers no reassurance to Americans who cherish the independence and integrity of their political process.... In this hyper-legalistic society, those vital inquiries got diverted early into a law-enforcement matter. That was always a mistake.... Now the job returns to the place it has always belonged and never should have left: Congress." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So what we have here is a gang too disorganized & stupid to effectively coordinate with a foreign entity but not too disorganized & stupid (1) to welcome foreign assistance, and (2) to mount an effective cover-up of its wrongdoing. We should know by now this has been Trump's modus operandi for decades: first, skirt or break the law; then loudly & ruthlessly defend himself; third, keep on keepin' on.
... Rick Hasen, writing in Slate, sees Mueller's failure to charge Don Junior & Paul Manafort for soliciting foreign contributions to the Trump campaign -- which is illegal -- as a danger to future U.S. elections: "... we need to know [Mueller's reasoning], because it means that Department of Justice officials will not see the need to stop foreign governments from sharing information -- even information obtained from illegal hacking -- with campaigns, for the purposes of influencing the 2020 elections." ...
... Fox/Russia/Trump Messaging. Julia Davis of The Daily Beast: "When news broke [about] Special Counsel Robert Mueller's [findings]..., Russian officials and the state media reacted with fiendish delight.... Citing Fox News, Russian state news agency TASS reported that the findings represent a complete victory for President Trump.... Russian state news outlet RIA Novosti predicts that the Russian election interference will soon be replaced by 'Ukrainegate,' based on the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the U.S. elections on the side of Hillary Clinton. Trump recently tweeted the link to an article, widely promoted by the Russians, stating: 'As Russia Collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.' The same narrative of Ukrainian -- not Russian -- election interference was promoted by Fox News host Sean Hannity in 2017. Right on cue, Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. jumped on the Ukraine bandwagon by tweeting a[ related] article.... The Kremlin's scribes predict that the grand finale of such an investigation would be perfectly timed to unfold immediately prior to the 2020 election." --s
Dylan Matthews of Vox: "Ending the Trump presidency will not fix, or even substantially ameliorate, most of the problems plaguing the American political system. They were mounting for years before he took office -- indeed, they made him possible -- and will continue to plague us for years after he leaves.... And more importantly, as this week clarifies, there will be no dramatic end for Trump.... The glib answer is that if you don't want Trump to be president, you should make sure he loses the 2020 election.... Absent a revolutionary shock to create a radically new political order, the best we can do is just muddle along." --s
Presidential Race 2020. Steve M.: "[T]he GOP is not 'a political party reduced to know-nothing cultists' -- it's 'a political party reduced to know-nothing cultists' plus people with such intense negative partisanship that they'd vote for a Charles Manson/John Wayne Gacy ticket if the ticket promised to lock up Hillary Clinton.... A large subset of the GOP voter base is supposed to care about character and traditional morality, but these people are Trump's most unswerving loyalists, because, to them, character and traditional morality mean hating Muslims and Mexicans.... Trump has an excellent chance of winning next year, especially in a three-way race, which seems inevitable." --s
Quint Forgey of Politico: "Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will join George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School as a distinguished visiting professor, the university confirmed Saturday. Kavanaugh will co-teach a two-credit summer course in England from July through August.... Justice Neil Gorsuch ... will also co-teach a summer class in Padua, Italy.... The news of Kavanaugh's role at George Mason ... comes five months after Harvard Law School announced that he would not return to campus in Spring 2019 to teach his previously scheduled course.... [During his confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh whined,] 'I love teaching law, but thanks to what some of you on this side [Democratic] of the committee have unleashed, I may never be able to teach again.'" Mrs. McC: Okay, so not Harvard, but a right-wing lawyer mill. Good enough.
Martin Ferrer of the Guardian: "Shares in Asia Pacific have slumped after a key market indicator flashed an 'amber warning' that the United States could be heading for a recession. Bond yields also continued to fall across the world with Australian 10-year treasury yields falling to a record low on Monday of 1.756% in what analysts see as a strong indicator of a downturn hitting the resource-rich country.... The market action on Monday was a response to the biggest losses in US shares since the beginning of January on Friday when the Dow Jones sank 1.8%, the S&P 500 was off 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq dropped 2.5%." --s
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Reader Comments (10)
The Barr report claims that no US persons conspired or coordinated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), though it mentions the IRA pushed the hacked info through Wikileaks. So what to make of Roger Stone? If he conspired/coordinated with Wikileaks dumps, then he de facto coordinated with the IRA, as they were the ultimate source of the material being dumped. Moreover, it's been established that Stone had directly contact with GRU officers discussing these same issues. What gives?
More importantly, I'm trying to understand the new precedent that's being set by the DOJ here. From now on, it's no longer considered out of bounds to rant and rail and threaten investigators investigating you in a case. Attack, decry it publicly, scream and yell on teevee: all totally acceptable.
From now on, establishing a quid pro quo is with foreign election assistance is impossible without bags of money exchanging hands hamburgler style. An announced foreign government approaches a candidate explicitly offering help in exchange for favors? "I'd love it!!! Drop it in the summer to better effect!" High five dude, the favor will come under the table later, wink wink, nod nod: All totally legal here, nothing to see here.
And the recusal issue itself within the DOJ? The current AG gets his job by trashing the investigation itself, and then refuses to recuse and deep-sixes the investigation? All that's totally cool now. Recuse? Fuck off, I'm staying. What are you going to do about it? Nothing.
Agree: total whitewash AND coverup. The AG was hired to do just what he has done. And Mueller has refused to do what he was hired to do. In the end, it is republicans hiring whomever they can to get power, and the country be damned. Adding to safari's litany of things that are now okay: money laundering, lying, arresting innocents and immigrants, caging babies, hating women and children, the elderly and handicapped, sexual crimes, looting the treasury, more lying, approving the murder of journalists, making nonprofits illegal, race-baiting if not outright approval of bigots, wrecking public education, approving homelessness and meal insecurity, approving war weapons,and dumbing down an already stupid populace. I'm sure there are many I have missed, but it scratches the surface...
Oh, Happy Day sings Der Gropenfuher along with others who follow the fella that is fucking us up. I say, enjoy the ride while you can cuz that thing called Congress and the SDNY ain't through yet.
"In giving Trump the all-clear on obstruction charges, Barr appears not to have considered whether Trump obstructed the actual crime in question. He instead considered whether the president obstructed a different crime. This is the legal sleight of hand that has allowed Barr to proclaim that Trump will not be charged...
"The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee now has abundant reason to get all the underlying materials from the Mueller inquiry, because the attorney general just cleared the president of something he agreed constituted a crime just a few months ago."
–––Marcy Wheeler
My husband just sent this to me:
The market is going nowhere but up if a person ignores global slowing, inverted yield curve, spike in trade deficit, manufacturing off, car sale defaults, record personal debt, exploding deficit, ARMs index off, stock overvalued P/E 10, baby boomers starting to retire 10 million more every 2 years now, lower wage millennials behind on saving/investing, global warming impacts on economy/costs, tariffs still in place and head negotiator just resigns.....just exactly what are the good signs that aren't lagging indicators.
The whole report will probably be released right after the tax
returns are released to the public. Never.
Now let's get back on that Hillary thing going into 2020, says
the Republicans.
Barr declaring "no obstruction", even when it's supposed to be the House that decides, is an overtly political move. He just effectively gave a bullet-proof jacket to every GOP House Rep. to strap on every time Democrats bring the subject up.
Barr just effectively insulated Drumpf from any House move on obstruction of justice. Barr is a veteran GOP operative: he knew exactly what he was doing here.
And as Marie notes above Rosenstein, wittingly or unwittingly, tied himself to the political protection racket too.
Thoughts on Trumpensleeze's golf buddy: We all have remarked on Lindsey's slide from sensible moderate (maybe he never was--)to trumplover... Can it be, that with his former best friend dying of cancer, he decided to latch on to the Trump Crime Syndicate® so he has someone to love? Or maybe he shares the same dementia gene with his object of affection-- I dunno, but he ain't no better than the other snakes like Mark Meadows and other tea party believers.
Not quite random thoughts:
We've been told all along that there is no crime that goes by the name of "collusion," and since, as I understand it, Mueller was instructed to find criminal conduct, "collusion" was never likely to be a realistic target.
"Conspiracy" of some kind with a foreign power, maybe--I don't know the law but I'm thinking that John Adams wouldn't have much liked what went on here---could have been the closest Mueller could come to cobbling up a criminal charge in this area, and for a reason we don't know and may never know, chose not to. When there were more than one hundred documented contacts between Russians, some of them recognized as agents, and members of the Pretender team, it would seem that something was going on, other than the kind of random human dance Erik Prince once claimed to explain his "chance" meeting in the Seychelles.
So why not a conspiracy? As Bea says there is the defense of incompetence. To this observer much of what we call collusion that undoubtedly occurred during the campaign seemed as if the entire enterprise was being carried out by bumblers who happened to have too much money, but the comic element in itself should be not excuse what seems more of a vaudeville skit than an international conspiracy. As events proved, there has been little about the administration itself in the last two years that would relieve that impression of terminal amateurishnes. From the beginning the Pretender operation, to distinguish the operation from the definite harm it wreaks, has been hard to take seriously.
As for the obstruction element, I'm thinking that the ease with which that charge may be proved might have devolved along the same path as has its related corruption element. What used to be obvious bribery, like a gold Rolex watch or hefty campaign contributions delivered in a flour sack is much harder to prove today, when it seems the quid has to be tied to the pro with a notarized video recording or it doesn't exist in a court of law.
(Just working my way through this, trying to make some sense of it I can live with.)
I agree the entire issue of the Pretender administration, how it "won" and what it's done since is ultimately a political problem, and now that Mr. Barr has decided the stink at the top is not a matter for the courts, I'm hoping the House Dems don't make it their political problem by expending all their ammunition on outrage, and get entirely distracted and bogged down in a investigatory swamp. Enough investigation to keep the 2016 election issues alive, yes, but with a primary legislative focus on popular legislation that would make the country better, not worse.
That's the contrast the Dems have to present the public as 2020 approaches. That's the effective political answer to the unsavory dish the Mueller/Barr report has so far turned out to be.
So far today the market is not overly thrilled at the whitewash.
Something to keep our eyes on as we lurch into the cloudy future.
https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/
After the past weekend, I really do believe that (the person I cannot name without gagging) could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and escape all consequences. Sadly, I also believe that no matter what the election outcome, he will refuse to leave office.