11/30/17: We learn that over the summer, President Trump did his best
to convince GOP lawmakers to help him out. Senator Richard Burr, head of the
Intelligence Committee, tells reporters Trump spoke to him about how he’d like
Congress to conduct its business. “It was something along the lines, ‘I hope
you can conclude this [investigation] as quickly as possible.’”
Burr says he responded, “when we have
exhausted everybody we need to talk to, we will finish.”
Trump asked other senators, including
Milksop Mitch McConnell and Roy Blunt of Missouri, to end the investigation swiftly. Blunt says he was lobbied by
the president during an Air Force One flight they shared to Springfield,
Missouri. Trump told him “to wrap up the investigation.”
Yet another Republican senator said Trump
did not ask him to help end the investigation.
Finally, the president showed he understood
the rule of law…
Ha, ha, I’m joking. That senator said Trump urged him to begin
investigating Hillary Clinton.
4/9/18: The day starts badly (at least for President Trump), when F.B.I.
agents bearing search warrants raid the office, home and New York City
hotel suite of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
____________________
“All the
people who would know the worst about you.”
Mark Zaid, Washington D.C. lawyer
____________________
This is not a good look for the President of the United
States, or even a mafia don. The Chicago
Tribune and every reputable news outlet in America pick up the story. “This
search warrant,” former U.S. attorney Joyce White Vance tells a reporter, “is
like dropping a bomb on Trump’s front porch.”
The Tribune
elaborates:
Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer,
said the seizure of Cohen’s records “should be the most concerning for the
president.”
“You can’t get much worse than
this, other than arresting someone’s wife or putting pressure on a family
member,” he said. “This strikes at the inner sanctum: your lawyer, your CPA,
your barber, your therapist, your bartender. All the people who would know the
worst about you.”
Trump responds to news of the raid.
We already know there’s plenty of “the worst” to learn about
the man in the Oval Office. Trump deals with this fresh problem the same way he
deals with almost every problem he faces as Commander-in-Chief:
The president spent much of
Monday afternoon glued to the television. Aides said Trump watched cable news
coverage of surprise raids on Cohen’s Manhattan office, home and hotel room by
FBI agents, who took the lawyer’s computer, phone and personal financial
records after a referral from Mueller.
According to reporters, Trump puzzled over how to respond
much of the day. Finally, he realized what really mattered.
Trump “won’t like that Cohen is
in the crosshairs, but you have to remember: He’d prefer the heat be on Cohen
than on him,” said one of the president’s advisers, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to share a candid assessment. “His goal will be to figure out how
much vulnerability he has [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted].”
Trump wasn’t worried about damage to the country. He was only
worried about his orange ass.
First, he went after Jeff Sessions, the man he chose for his
post. Speaking to reporters, the president vented. “The Attorney General made a
terrible mistake when he did this and when he recused himself, or he should
have certainly let us know if he was going to recuse himself, and we would have
used a – put a different attorney general in,” Trump said. “So he made what I
consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country but you’ll figure
that out.”
Keep this in view. Trump believes the job of the Attorney General is to protect him from
investigation. If Trump gets in legal trouble, it’s somehow “a very terrible
mistake for the country.”
The
president calls Michael Cohen a “good man.”
Trump continued angrily:
So I just heard that they broke
into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man and it’s a
disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long
time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given I believe over a million pages
worth of documents to the special counsel. They continue to just go forward and
here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things
with the greatest fighting force ever and I have this witch-hunt constantly
going on for over 12 months now and actually much more than that. You could say
it was right after I won the nomination it started. And it’s a disgrace, it’s a
real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense.
Not really, Mr. President. First, they didn’t “break in” to
the office. They executed a warrant. Second, it’s not about the documents you
turned over, it’s a warrant aimed at gathering evidence authorities have
probable cause to believe your lawyer may hide or destroy. Third, it’s not “an
attack on our country,” in “a true sense” or any of the other senses.
This was a raid in pursuit
of evidence of possible crimes.
Still, Trump wasn’t finished ranting. “It’s an attack on what
we all stand for so when I saw this and when I heard it, I heard it like you
did,” he tells reporters, “I said that is really now in a whole new level of
unfairness.”
He kept babbling:
They found no collusion
whatsoever with Russia, the reason they found it is there was no collusion at
all. No collusion. This is the most biased group of people, these people have
the biggest conflicts of interest I’ve ever seen. Democrats all—or just about
all, either Democrats or a couple of Republicans that worked for president
Obama. They’re not looking at the other side. They’re not looking at the
Hillary Clinton horrible things that she did and all of the crimes that
were committed…. They only keep looking at us so they find no collusion and
then they go from there and they say well, let’s keep going and they raid an
office of a personal attorney early in the morning and I think it’s a disgrace.
Let’s stop for a moment to poke around in this reeking pile
of buffalo dung. This raid is not a “disgrace.” This raid is not about
Democrats. Robert Mueller, who referred the matter to authorities in New York,
has always been a Republican. The F.B.I., which conducted the raids, is
led by Christopher Wray, a Republican. Last, but not least, Geoffrey S.
Berman, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who signed
off on the search warrants, is a Republican.
He’s a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
Berman donated to Trump’s campaign! Trump personally interviewed him for and appointed him to his current
position.
This is not hard to grasp, even if all you do is click on Infowars to get your news. The rule of
law, first enshrined in the Magna Carta in 1215, back when kings believed they
had the power to rule with impunity, protects us all from abuse by government
officials. We need to guard against the subversion of the rule of law by this
president and any other president to come.
BLOGGER’S NOTE: Compare Trump’s “good man”
comment with comments made in July, once it becomes clear that Cohen is cooperating
with investigators. (See: 7/30/18.)
4/11/18: I think we can assume the
president spent another restless night in the West Wing. It turns out Trump is
fuming about “an attack on our country in a true sense,” and by that we
mean...North Korea?
Russia?
No…we mean the F.B.I. raid on Michael Cohen.
____________________
“It would be suicide
for the president to want to talk about firing Mueller.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, (R-Iowa)
____________________
What do we know about the gentleman in question? We know
Cohen has been referred to as Trump’s “pit bull.” We know Cohen likes to
compare himself to Tom Hagan, lawyer for the Corleone family in The Godfather. We know he has threatened
Trump’s enemies in the past. He has worked the boss out of legal jams related
to shady business deals and paid out of his own pocket (or so he claims) to
silence porn stars who might have dirt on Trump. We know in December 2015, with
Trump already running for president, that Mr. Cohen was excited to see a news story quoting Vladimir Putin, saying Trump was
“talented” and “very colorful.”
Cohen viewed that story through the same lens anyone who
works for Donald J. Trump would. Namely: green-colored glasses. This was a
chance to cash in! Cohen emailed a friend who had been talking extensively with
the Russians in an effort to close the deal and build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
“Now is the time,” Cohen told Felix Sater, that friend. “Call me.”
In those days, Sater(a
convicted felon) was working on drumming up Kremlin support. More emails and
phone calls flew back and forth. Negotiations progressed to a point where
Candidate Trump signed a letter of intent to build in the Russian capital.
Then the business deal stalled.
Cohen reached out to the Russians again in January 2016.
Now remember: His boss is running to become the President of
the United States. And what is the focus?
That January, he contacted Vladimir Putin’s private secretary
to ask about getting a tower built. According to Cohen nothing lucrative could
be arranged. “I decided to abandon the proposal less than two weeks later for
business reasons,” he said, “and do not recall any response to my email.”
Again, don’t miss the point. Trump and his personal lawyer
and his felonious friend would have
happily worked with Vladimir Putin, the kleptomaniacal leader of a
nation ranked first or second on a list of our implacable foes. The moral
questions didn’t matter. The money just wasn’t right.
$$$$$
In addition, we now learn that the president had to be talked
down from the White House roof Tuesday – not to mention last December, as well.
The raids aimed at his lawyer left Trump in a rage.
Trump spent the day glaring at the television and steaming
over how to respond to news of this raid. He might, for example, allow the
investigations to continue, potentially clearing his name. If the whole
investigation is really a “witch hunt” he has nothing to hide because witches
can’t fly. Or he could just fire everyone he can, and maybe a few people he
legally can’t.
In the wake of the Cohen raids, Trump was wallowing in
self-pity. He threatened to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He
would put some hack, maybe Fox News howler, Judge Jeanine Pirro, in his place. Then the hack
would fire Mueller. Trump would fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions and F.B.I.
Director Christopher Wray.
According to one White House source, behind the scenes the
president was acting like a madman. Asked by reporters on Monday if he intended
to fire Mueller, Trump responded, “We’ll see what happens. …Many people have
said ‘you should fire him,’” he claimed. Then he went with the clincher:
“Again, they [the investigators] found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a
big statement.”
Of course, if we’re being honest no one knows yet what the
F.B.I. has found, including the F.B.I.
What we do know is that to get a search warrant, agents would
have to prove to a judge that they had “probable cause” to suspect crimes were being or would soon be committed if
they did not quickly act. (See: 4/12/18; 4/25/18; 5/4-5/18; 5/7/18 and 7/2/18 for comparison):
*
TUESDAY, PINOCCHIO SANDERS tells reporters at the daily press
briefing that she hates her job lying for Trump and would rather work for the
D.C. Sewer Department than keep up the charade.
No, seriously, she says the president believes he has the
power to fire Mueller. If Trump told Sanders he had the power to levitate
the Pentagon, she would go out like a parrot and squawk agreement.
For once there were rumblings among Republicans, however
gingerly they decided to rumble. Sen. Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, was at the forceful end of the spectrum. “It would be suicide for the president to want to
talk about firing Mueller,” he warned.
Sen. Milksop Mitch McConnell was waiting to be enrolled in
the Witness Protection Program and could not be reached for comment.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan gave it all up and announced
he would retire at the end of his term.
Sen. Joni Ernst, of Iowa, a war veteran, and someone from
whom you might expect a little courage, punted when it came to upholding the
U.S. Constitution. “No,” she said, she didn’t see why the Senate should pass
legislation to protect Mueller from being fired, “because I don’t think the
president’s going to do it – and do you think the president would sign that
legislation?”
Other Republicans at least had something to offer. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana gave
the president the benefit of the doubt and said he thought Trump was “too smart” to get rid of Mueller. “I think
it would provoke some sort of reaction by Congress. I think he knows that,”
Kennedy said. Besides, “the president can’t just fire Mr. Mueller, Kennedy
added. “He’s got to direct Mr. Rosenstein to fire him, and I don’t think Mr.
Rosenstein would do it.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said firing Mueller wouldn’t
do the president any good. “The facts will come out one way or the other.”
Mueller and his team would be expected to compile a report, even if he were
fired, and that report would be made public, whether to exonerate Trump or not.
Finally, when I called my own Republican senator, Rob
Portman, and left a message, I got a lengthy email response. In a key
paragraph, Portman provided the kind of response that gave a shred of hope:
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is well qualifiedto
oversee this probe and I continue to support his efforts to fully
investigate this issue. Determining the extent of Russian efforts to influence
our democratic process is a matter of national security and is far more
important than partisan politics. Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation
should be allowed to run its full course, and he should remain in charge.
In the House of Representatives, however, abject cowardice has been more the rule of the day.
“I think
the president is very frustrated.”
These lawmakers have elections to win every other year, and
what matters most to them is 2018, not 1215, when, in the Magna Carta, the
English enshrined the rule of law. A bill to protect Mueller, sponsored by Rep.
Steve Cohen (D-TN.) has the backing of almost every Democratic member of the
House. One Republican, Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, is supporting the
bill.
In theory, this would be the chance for all members of the
House to prove we still have three coequal branches of government and that two
are working to protect fundamental principles.
Sadly, it’s not happening with these clowns and cowards. Rep.
Matt Gaetz (R-FL.), one of the head clowns on the House Judiciary Committee,
has been calling, instead, for a panel to bring in Attorney General Sessions,
Deputy A.G. Rosenstein, and Special Counsel Mueller to explain the thinking
behind their investigative efforts. “I think the president is very frustrated,”
Gaetz explains.
There it is in a terrifying nutshell. If the president is
frustrated, then the guiding principles laid down by the Founding Fathers in
1787, including the belief that no man is above the law, may be swept aside.
4/28/18: Edward Levi, appointed by
President Gerald Ford to lead the Department of Justice in the wake of the
Watergate scandals, once made clear his understanding of his role. “Our law is
not an instrument of partisan purpose.” It cannot become “anyone’s weapon.”
Unfortunately, President Trump has made it clear that the
rule of law is an impediment in his path. If he had his way, he said during his
campaign, he’d lock Hillary up as soon as he finished reciting the oath of
office. Earlier this month he warned that former F.B.I. Director James Comey
should be thrown in jail.
Trial first, anyone?
Nah. Not in Trumpistan.
____________________
“And I
have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”
President Trump
____________________
In an interview with The
New York Times last December, Trump made clear what he believed the main
job of the Department of Justice was. First, he whined about his Attorney
General Jeff Sessions and Sessions’ failure to protect him from
investigation. If only Sessions would do for him what he imagined – in an
obvious case of projection – Attorney General Eric Holder had done for
President Obama. “I don’t want to get into loyalty,” Trump responded to a
question about whether or not he had ever asked law enforcement officials for
loyalty, “but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President
Obama. Totally protected him. When you look at the things that they did, and
Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be
honest.”
In other words: forget the rule of law.
Trump would have great
respect for anyone in the Department of Justice if they “totally
protected him.”
Attorney General Eric Holder.
*
PERIODICALLY, USA TODAYchecks in with a group of voters who cast ballots for
Trump in 2016. Most still love him even though most believe the president is
lying about Stormy Daniels.
“I’m not in the man’s pants. I don’t know what he did when he
pulled them down,” says Monty Chandler, a disabled veteran from Church Point,
Louisiana. “The only evidence is her, the hush money. We’re human. We all sin.
And he tried to cover it up.”
Oddly enough, Chandler believes Trump when he says the
Russian investigation is a witch hunt.
August 1, 2018: The President of the United States walks up to the line where the rule
of law ends, and authoritarianism begins. He stomps across the line and waits
to see what reaction he stirs. In a series of tweets, Trump makes it clear.
He’s more than ready to trample the
U.S. Constitution.
____________________
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”
President Trump
____________________
You can
blow giant holes in Trump’s Twitter logic any time you please; but his most
avid supporters don’t care. Logic is for liberal wimps. And they don’t appear
to care about the Constitution, either. They believe in Orange Leader. What if
Orange Leader does break the law! They yowl. They salute. When Orange Leader
calls out Jim Acosta, a reporter for CNN at a rally, as he did Tuesday night,
they bay. “It felt like we weren’t in America, anymore,” Acosta says later. Trump, he tells conservative commentator S. E.
Cupp, “is
whipping these crowds up into a frenzy, to the point where they really want to
come after us.”
“I think it’s been dangerous for some time,” he adds, saying
he’s afraid somebody is “going to get hurt.”
It’s
fine if you don’t like CNN. I don’t like Fox News. The danger is this. We have
a president who is happy to rile the mob. Trump’s not Hitler yet; and I have
faith the American people – including 90% of the MAGA crowd – would wake in
time to stop him if need arose. Still, the president does achieve the level of
a Mussolini or a Mugabe if he can pull off his next move.
We can say this. We can say it again. The people in the red
MAGA hats won’t hear the message because they don’t want to hear.
Salem, Massachusetts, 1692.
So, Trump stomps his foot over the line in a tweet:
..This is a terrible situation
and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should
stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our
country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry
Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!
Stop and think about what the president has just tweeted. He
wants the Department of Justice to shut down an investigation into his
campaign. He doesn’t want Mueller to pursue evidence of Russian meddling in
our election. He doesn’t want investigators to discover whether American
citizens (“known and unknown,” as one indictment reads), broke the law. He
doesn’t want us to find out whether persons “known and unknown,” possibly
working for him, helped a hostile power undermine democratic norms.
Trump wasn’t done undermining the rule of law. All kinds of
goofy and/or dangerous tweets followed:
Paul Manafort worked for Ronald
Reagan, Bob Dole and many other highly prominent and respected political
leaders. He worked for me for a very short time. Why didn’t government tell me
that he was under investigation. These old charges have nothing to do with
Collusion - a Hoax!
(Good grief: You gave him
the job as your campaign manager. You should have done due diligence your
bloato orange self.)
Looking back on history, who was
treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and “Public Enemy
Number One,” or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling,
now serving solitary confinement - although convicted of nothing? Where is the
Russian Collusion?
(Capone was a tax
cheat. So is Manafort. Does this president know any history? He’s probably a
tax cheat, himself.)
We could explain again why this
is wrong. We could spell it out with blocks for Trump fans. It doesn’t matter
if Manafort worked for Reagan. He’s charged with a wide array of crimessince.
That includes witness tampering in 2018.
Trump defenders like to say
these are “process crimes.” In other words: No big deal.
And, of course, they like to say
Manafort hasn’t been convicted. Good god. Let’s try it with blocks: H-E…I-S… N-O-W…O-N…T-R-I-A-L.
I-F…C-O-N-V-I-C-T-E-D…H-E…C-O-U-L-D…S-P-E-N-D… T-H-E…R-E-S-T…
O-F…H-I-S…L-I-F-E… I-N…J-A-I-L.
In this free country, that’s how
the courts work. We shouldn’t shout, “Lock her/him up!” until evidence has been
gathered, juries seated, lawyers engaged, witnesses called, and verdicts
rendered.
*
REALIZING
HOW MUCH Trump’s call for the Attorney General to shut down the Mueller probe sounds
like obstruction of justice the president’s lawyers quickly walk back his
words.
Oh,
don’t worry, they say, the President of the United States isn’t really saying
he’s above the law.
“It’s
not a call to action,” Horndog Rudy explains. The most powerful man in the
world is merely venting. Mr. Trump really wants the legal process to play
out. “He’s expressing his opinion, but he’s not talking of his special powers
he has” as president, Mr. Giuliani says. Giuliani adds that the fact Trump made
his statements on Twitter, “a medium that he uses for opinions,” is proof what
he said should not be taken as an order.
Jay
Sekulow serves up the same dish in an interview on TV. The president “doesn’t
feel that he has to intervene in the process, nor is he intervening,” he
explains.
Finally,
Press Secretary Pinocchio comes to Trump’s defense. “The president is not obstructing,” she tells the
White House press corps.
“He’s fighting back.”
POSTSCRIPT: Alex Jones is sued by the parents of two children murdered at Sandy Hook
Elementary in 2012. Convinced Jones has no plans to leave them alone, they
accuse him, through his Infowars
website, of engaging in a campaign of “false, cruel, and dangerous assertions.”
If
you are a generally stable individual, you may never have listened to Jones’s
daily ravings. So you’d have missed all the hatred that spews from his lips.
Jones has called the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax and often questions the
“official story.” As far as Jones, who also pushed the idiotic Pizzagate story,
was concerned, the whole massacre could have been an inside job by the
government. The parents who said they lost loved ones, he claimed, were liars
and frauds who helped the cover-up.
Naturally,
hateful individuals tend to tune in to listen to Jones and spew out their own
hatred on others. For years now, followers of Jones have taunted and harassed
the families of the slain children.
Fed
up and convinced Jones wasn’t going to stop defaming them until they took legal
action, they are suing for at least $1 million in damages. Lawyers for the
parents filed suit in Travis County, Texas, where Jones lives.
“Defendants’
defamatory statements were knowingly false or made with reckless disregard for
the truth,” one lawsuit claims.
BLOGGER’S NOTE (October 1, 2021): Jones
will eventually refuse to turn over documents related to these two lawsuits and
one other. The judge in the three cases will cite him for “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard” of the
court orders and issue a rare default judgment against the defendant. That means Jones
could be liable for millions in damages.
8/23/18: The president sits down for a
softball chat with Human Bobble Head Doll, Ainsley Earhardt, of Fox News.
Trump
gets an A+ from Trump.
Apparently, he’s fixated on her shapely legs. When she asks
him how he thinks he’s doing as president, Trump is quick to reply. “I’d give
myself an A+.” Earhardt’s empty head wobbles on its spring.
It appears she agrees.
The job of a Fox News commentator when Trump talks:
Listen and grin.
Trump can’t see it because he’s a delusional nut job. But his
grades are getting worse by the hour. He says again that Paul Manafort is a guy
for whom he has “great respect.” Manafort worked for years for Ukrainian
politicians in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. He’s just been convicted on charges of hiding $30 million dollars in offshore bank accounts to avoid
paying taxes.
Trump again expresses anger with his Attorney General. Why
did Jeff Sessions recuse himself in the Russia investigation! Trump can’t
believe it! “What kind of man is this?” he fumes.
Bobble Head Ainsley wobbles her empty head.
Trump informs her that he only knew about payoffs to the porn
star and Playboy Bunny at a “later time.”
If the Bobble Head could actually think, she would have to
ask just when that would have been.
Or: she could have asked, “Mr. President, you said on Air
Force One, that you didn’t know anything about the payments? Why should all our
catatonic viewers at Fox News believe you now?”
Trump implies that the “Justice” Department is crooked and
rigged and unfair and run by members of the Deep State. Prosecutors, he
grumbles, just put people on the stands who are going to lie.
Ainsley flashes a vacuous smile.
You might expect her to ask, “Mr. President, Manafort was
convicted on eight felony counts. The jury heard the evidence and decided he
was a crook. Are you saying you have no faith in the U.S. justice system?”
She doesn’t ask. Her head bobbles again.
*
ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS fires back. Before heading to the
White House for an already-scheduled meeting, he releases the following
statement:
While I am Attorney General, the
actions of the Department of Justice will
not be improperly influenced by political considerations [emphasis added]. I demand the
highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no
nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement
investigators and prosecutors than the United States. I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in
successfully advancing the rule of law.
Allow me to explain to all those in red MAGA hats: Here you
have the Attorney General of the United States making it clear he believes the
president is trying to improperly influence current investigations. Sessions is
defending the integrity of his department and warning Trump.
11/21/18: Trump is running out of people
to insult. A target of opportunity suddenly presents itself when Chief Justice
John Roberts faults him for his attack on an “Obama-appointed judge” who
blocked his new policy on immigrants seeking asylum. (See: 11/20/18.)
____________________
“That
independent judiciary we should all be thankful for.”
Chief Justice John Roberts
____________________
Knowing that faith in the American system of justice is
critical, Chief Justice Roberts releases the following statement:
We do not have Obama judges or
Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary
group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those
appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be
thankful for.
Trump is not thankful. He believes he should get his way
every time he goes to court. “Sorry,” he tweets, “Chief Justice John Roberts,
but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges.’ “We need protection and security,” he
adds, and “these rulings are making our country unsafe! Very dangerous and
unwise!”
One could attempt to explain to Trump supporters why Trump is
dangerously wrong. One might note that the Founding Fathers created an
independent judiciary to serve as a check on the executive branch. One could
point out that “Obama-appointed judges” aren’t against safety, so much as they
are against presidents who would love
to ignore laws that they find inconvenient.
Trump supporters might not be able to see the forest for the
fat orange sloth in the Oval Office. But the president’s continued attacks on
the federal judiciary are increasingly alarming.
Robert Carlson, president of the American Bar Association,
releases a statement condemning Trump:
The American Bar Association is
committed to an independent, impartial judiciary that is free from political
influence. An independent, impartial judiciary is critical to upholding our democracy and our system of government
[emphasis added].
We agree with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’s observation that we do
not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges, and that
an independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.
Chief Justice Roberts was right, the ABA concludes, in his
defense of the judiciary in the face of Trump’s attacks. “As we celebrate this
Thanksgiving holiday,” the ABA concludes, “let us all count our blessings as
Americans–free speech; free press; an independent, impartial judiciary; and the
ability of every person in our country to stand up and speak out in favor of
the rule of law.”
(We’re still safe – for now.)
*
IN THE MEANTIME, President Trump hears weather forecasters
predicting the coldest Thanksgiving in nearly a century in the Northeast. The high for Boston is
expected to be 21°.
That means Trump has to do what Trump has to do. And that
means he puts out a stupid tweet: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter
ALL RECORDS. Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
(Sadly, when I check two days later this tweet has 103,760
“likes,” a damning indictment of the nation’s education system.)
“A
dangerous clown.”
Real scientists are appalled. Michael Mann, an expert on climate science
at Penn State, says in an email: “This demonstrates once again that Donald
Trump is not an individual to be taken seriously on any topic, let alone
matters as serious as climate change. He is a clown – a dangerous clown.”
Bill McKibben, the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at
Middlebury College, provides a map to help explain global trends vs. local
weather events. “I know you’re Mr.
America-is-all-that-matters,” McKibben tweets, “but climate is actually a
global phenomenon. Here’s today’s global weather map (oh, and red=hot.) As a
whole, Earth is about 1.2 degrees above preindustrial temps today.”
If you want evidence of the dangers of climate change, it’s not hard to
find.
The president could try not tweeting for a week, turn off the television, and
do a little reading himself. (See:
11/23/18.)
BLOGGER’S NOTE:The post below, for
1/15/19 is accurately reported, but it would appear I badly misjudged Mr. Barr.
For most of the following year, Barr seemed to be more an enabler for the
president than an Attorney General committed to the rule of law.
Save for A. Mitchell Palmer, who held the same post from
1919 to 1921, and John Mitchell, who served under President Nixon, Mr. Barr
might go down as the worst Attorney General in U.S. history.
Only later, in the period from November 3, 2020, to
January 20, 2021, did he redeem himself, to an extent, by refusing to go along
with President Trump’s absurd “stolen election” lie. His answers below, in that
context, at least, still ring true.
1/15/19: If you were unable to make
time to watch the confirmation hearings for William Barr, the president’s
nominee for Attorney General, the sound you heard was the repeated
bitch-slapping Barr was delivering the president.
We already knew Trump was having a hard week/month/year/first
(and only) term in office. It couldn’t have felt any better if he was listening
to Barr answer questions before a Senate panel.
Not a
witch hunt. Sorry.
Not all experts agree that Barr has managed to put to rest
the concerns of Democratic senators and voters. But only the greatest suck ups
(Hannity, Pirro) could be telling the president tonight that what Barr said
during the hearings offered validation of his basic position.
Barr was asked if he believed Robert Mueller was engaged in a
“witch hunt.” Trump has ranted about a “witch hunt” a thousand times since
taking office and, one could assume, talks about the “witch hunt” in his sleep.
Barr replied that he didn’t believe Mueller was the type who
“would be involved in a witch hunt [emphasis added unless otherwise
noted].”
Slap!!
Barr admitted that he met with Trump in the summer of 2017 to
discuss a role with the president’s legal defense team. He said the meeting was
brief. He declined to join. Trump asked what Mueller was like. “I said,” Barr
told the senators, “Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as
such.” He and Mueller were “good friends,” he assured the panel. He and his
wife “would be good friends” with Mueller and his wife long after the Russia
probe ended.
Slap!
Slap!
If Trump’s orange cheeks weren’t already stinging, Barr was
asked about former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself.
Trump had howled about that for a year, until the day after the midterm
elections, he fired Sessions. Barr offered the opinion that Sessions “probably
did the right thing.”
SLAP!!
Well, then, senators wondered, did the nominee think Trump’s
current lawyer, Horndog Rudy, was correct that any report from Mueller should be handed over to the White House
“for correction” before it was submitted to Congress?
“That’s not going to happen,” Barr responded.
SLAP!!!
The smacks kept coming. Barr said it was “vitally
important” that Mueller be allowed to complete his work. Would it be a
problem, a Democratic senator inquired, if the president offered a pardon in return for silence
from a witness in this investigation? Barr said that would constitute “obstruction
of justice.”
Would he ever carry out an order to fire Mueller without good
cause?
“If any president attempts to intervene in a matter he has a
stake in to protect himself that should first be looked at as a breach of
his constitutional duties,” Barr replied.
He posed what he described as an “easy” hypothetical. If a
president ever intervened to halt an investigation into his family or business,
“That would be a breach of his obligation under the Constitution to
faithfully execute the law.”
Finally, what would Barr do if ordered to remove Mueller to
shut down a legitimate investigation?
Barr said without hesitation, he would resign.
Slap!
SLAP! SLAP! SLAPPITY SLAP!!
We can’t know for sure, but I suspect, if Trump was still
listening at that point, that he fainted dead away. For the next twenty hours,
not a creature was heard stirring in the White House.
Trump’s Twitter feed went silent.
A real witch hunt: Salem, Massachusetts, 1692.
*
“What
it’s like to work for a madman.”
IN RELATED NEWS, Special Counsel Mueller filed a fresh set of
court documents. Rick Gates, former Trump campaign adviser, is still cooperating in “several investigations.”
Finally, the Wall
Street Journal reports that former Trump confidant Michael Cohen plans to
testify in front of Congress and air all the dirty laundry he helped wash, dry and fold over the past
decade. Sources say he will relate “the story of what it’s like to work for a
madman.” “He’s going to say things,” a person close to Cohen says, “that will
give you chills.”
Or, as one liberal pundit put it, there are now two parallel
stories playing out related to the president.
