Thursday, September 26, 2019

Lindsay Sez:


"Did he put a gun to their heads?  No?  Then it's not intimidation, is it?  Did he threaten to take out their families?  No?  Did he threaten to hit 'em so hard their grandchildren would feel it? Nothin' to see here!  No harm, no foul!  Badda-bing!  Trump wadn't even thuggish about it!  Badda-boom, bay-bee!"

 

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"Nor a single swallow summer..."

Ya mean steering 'em like this?

Not really so "uncharted" as simply too damned early to know.
You could have said the same thing about Nixon, right up until the Senators told him to give it up.  Like campaigns, hearings actually serve a purpose.

And we have so much to look forward to, like FoxNews in full meltdown!
Or this:
It's like Christmas is coming!
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Pulp Fiction


The Watergate hearings were long, tedious, and involved so many different witnesses, many of whom stone-walled the committee until Dean testified, some of whom stuck to their lies after he'd testified (G. Gordon Liddy always comes to mind here).  It was not a clear shining thread, even though the questioning was mostly conducted by lawyers, and it didn't do all that much to educate the public on the details of the malfeasance and illicit and illegal activities Nixon got up to.  Yes, the articles against him included "Obstruction of Justice," but what does that really mean?  What did he allegedly really do?

Most people watching then couldn't tell you.  Were they convinced Nixon should resign?  Yes.  Why?  Because they were convinced he was unfit for the office?  Why?  Because he was.  On what grounds, specifically?  Did it matter?

I mention this because the "Democrats screwed up another hearing" articles haven't yet begun (a patch of ice doth not a winter make), but will soon.  Yes, I still think the Democrats would be smarter to assign one committee the task of investigation, and to make it a rule of that committee that questions are asked first by lawyers for the committee, and then under controls, by members.  But Congressional hearings are not fora for Schoolhouse Rock or basic primers in law and democracy, and they will never be as "educational" as we could wish them to be.

Nor will the voters face a quiz at the end, or need to keep notes.

Besides, Trump is, as ever, determined to keep the spotlight on himself.


Which is a good way of reminding us all the IC IG found the whistleblower credible, as did the DNI this morning before the committee.  It also reminds us Trump has no defense, and keeps putting himself out there as the guy most likely to commit another crime without realizing what he's doing (and that is not a good look for the POTUS who supposedly runs the branch of government charged with enforcing our laws).

And his "supporters" aren't helping much, either:
Ah, if only reality were like pulp fiction, right Lindsay?  The jails would be empty but the streets would be full. (Besides, Trump had already held up the money.  The action and the threat don't have to be contemporaneous to be illegal.  Nor all that explicit, either.)

Can Trump never, ever talk about it?

What do you think?

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Grandpa got the cooking sherry again!


Honestly; parse that out and see if it makes sense.

What the Democrats are doing is a disgrace?  What, upholding the rule of law, carrying out their Constitutional duties of oversight and investigation for a possible impeachment vote?  

What, precisely, shouldn't be allowed?  A fair and open investigation conducted in public (Devin Nunes seemed to be against, that, too; at least in the hearing this morning)?

"There should be a law of stopping it."  What, like a stop sign?  Like a Presidential Get Out of Jail Free Card?  Like a "The President cannot be investigated" law?  Like a "If the President does it, then it's legal" law?  Can we call it the Richard M. Nixon Memorial Act?

"Maybe legally, through the courts."  Or maybe illegally, if that doesn't work out the way you want it to?  Who the hell has a leader who talks like this who isn't automatically described as a "dictator"?

"But they are gonna tie up the country."  Well, Pelosi says there'll be a vote on the replacement for NAFTA, and your Administration is now blaming the homeless for water pollution in California:

“The EPA is aware of the growing homelessness crisis developing in major California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the impact of this crisis on the environment,” Wheeler said in the letter to Newsom.

“Indeed, press reports indicate that ‘piles of human feces’ on sidewalks and streets in these cities are becoming all too common,” he added.

He said the EPA is worried about the environmental impact of what it said was untreated human waste being washed into the Pacific and San Francisco Bay.

Wheeler threatened federal intervention and gave the state 30 days to respond in writing to his complaints.

The EPA also said drinking water in several cities has been found to have levels of arsenic, lead or radioactive substances above established health limits.

Flint, Michigan, meanwhile, is just fine, right?  And what, homeless people are radioactive and shit toxic uranium and plutonium?

Yeah, you thought they'd forgotten about California's homeless in all this ruckus, didn't you? No such luck.  And if Trump can walk and chew gum at the same time (I need to see the video to believe that), then the House can, too.
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How Deep the Rot Goes


Saw this last night, but didn't take the time to read it.  Here's the nut:
The effort by President Trump to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son had its origins in an earlier endeavor to obtain information that might provide a pretext and political cover for the president to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to previously undisclosed records.

These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort’s and Trump’s legal teams, including Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
There's more to the article, including a timeline showing Giuliani went to Ukraine and came across this Biden story, but link that up to this:

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.” 
First, is this something about white men of NYC that we should be concerned about, or is Trump just a contagion all his own?  Second, didn't Giuliani just release himself from any claim of attorney-client privilege, a privilege which protects Trump far more than the lawyer?  Meanwhile busses are being lined up for people to be thrown under:

This morning, a former senior White House official told me this “entire thing,” referring to the Ukraine scandal, was “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head.” A senior House Republican aide bashed Giuliani, telling me he was a “moron.” Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid.

“They’re a bunch of cowards,” Giuliani told me in response. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The president knows they’re a bunch of cowards.”

Except we have Waas' report, and the "memorandum" (it's not a transcript) that the White House released:

Giuliani met with Andriy Yermak (a top aide to Zelensky) in Madrid in early August, and on Monday, Giuliani told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that the State Department wanted them to meet. But Rogin asserts that the “rough transcript” of the July 25 Trump/ Zelensky conversation “reveals Giuliani’s various attempts to characterize his activity as a State Department initiative to be extremely misleading at best and outright lies at worst.”

The “rough transcript,” according to Rogin, demonstrates that Giuliani met with Yermak not because of the State Department, but because Giuliani and Yermak were “simply following up on Trump’s request…. Yermak was following up on Trump’s suggestion, not responding to actions of the State Department.”

The rats in the barrel are going to start eating each other.
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If You Need an Object Lesson

...on why whistleblowers should not have to go through the DOJ or the OLC or have a report involving the President first submitted to the President, there it is.

Oh, and if you're still unclear on whether or not Trump is fit for office:

He isn't. QED.
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How DID the Office of Legal Counsel get involved in this?

Even more interestingly:


And:
Because President's need to be protected from whistleblowers?


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I've only skimmed it



But my conclusion is affirmed:  Trump really is that stupid.
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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Because, Again

Nothing can possibly change between now and 13 months from now. And besides, 6 voters is the exact number counted in all the most accurate polls.
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Not Exactly the Washington Post


Which sort of puts this in perspective:

And why did they know that was the condition?
I think we're going to find out just how stupid Donald Trump is.  And the Nixonian defense of "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" is not going to work as well for Trump.  He's defenestrated the White House staff, reduced it to a shadow of its former self.  Kind of hard to say gremlins in the basement of the West Wing (or Oliver North) were going rogue on some of this, or anything else that comes up, since Trump is the sole person in charge.

He's going to find out just how lonely it is at the top.


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The Wheels on the Bus are Coming off...




Maybe he does understand the problem:



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It's not that he thinks he's invisible and bulletproof


 
He's just that stupid.  Even if you explain to him this is criminal and impeachable conduct, he doesn't understand.

It's the textbook definition of "unfit for the office."  Gonna be fun to see how the GOP spins this.
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Collecting Shiny Bits


There seem to be a lot of them on the ground this morning.

Going down smooth.
And along the way we find out just what tipped Speaker Pelosi:
But back to the "transcript":
As the lawyers say:
And remember, this is not playing out in a court of law:
“Every tax dollar that is spent, every dollar that the American people send in to this government, the president wants to make sure that is spent properly. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars across the globe and the president looks at that all the time. What are we getting back for that?”
If we're not getting dirt on the President's political enemies, what's the point of all the foreign and military aid?

And this isn't, by any stretch, the only new story in town:
My Criminal Law professor (one of the few things I still remember from law school, which is now 30 years in the past) told us:  "They don't catch the smart ones."  Rudy Giuliani, ironically, said the same thing on FoxNews today:

“A lot of alleged criminals are not that smart,” Giuliani said. “That’s how we catch them.”

Well, it's true.  But the joke is on Rudy.  Neither he, nor Trump, are "smart."

It was after that call that Trump made the decision to release an "unredacted" version of the transcript of his July call -- against the advice of aides such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who warned him it would set a risky precedent. Trump wanted to undercut the argument from Democrats that he acted inappropriately, he said, and felt he had nothing to hide.

But when the announcement he would release the transcript did little to quell the growing calls for his impeachment, Trump was in disbelief.
The clients who think they are their own best lawyers, are the worst clients of all.   Besides, this is his "defense":



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Tuesday, September 24, 2019

This Is Not the President We Were Looking For


He loves it when people say what he says

In the past 4 hours, Trump has released 8 tweets about either some issue with one of the lawyers representing the whistleblower (apparently lawyers who represent Democrats are biased political players?), and a stream of tweets in that 8 referencing the following FoxNews shows:

Sean Hannity
Lou Dobbs
Tucker Carlson
Mark Levin

The image in my mind is Trump with his thumb in his mouth, wrapped in a blanket on the bed, the TV blaring and his phone in his other hand.

Can't quite figure out how he manages to type with one hand, but still.

Good to know he's ready to take that 3 a.m. phone call.  He'll probably take it on his iPhone, the one that's as secure as a billboard.  And at least when Nixon talked to the pictures, it was in private.
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This is not the clarity you were looking for


Meanwhile, back at the ranch:  
Yeah, the fat lady's not even warming up in the wings yet....
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This is not the sea change you are looking for


There's no case law for this, but what the hell, the Supreme Court will probably give it to 'em, right?
This argument really confuses me, because if a President can't be investigated, what about the Mueller investigation?  Or is this a wholly new assertion that the President IS above the law?  Or does this new argument only apply when the DOJ can't control the release of the information after the investigation, or the investigation itself?

I don't understand what federal governmental interest the DOJ has in this case, but I like even less that the Supremes could find there is one.  They did it in Bush v. Gore when there wasn't one, then tried to pull the ladder up by both releasing an unsigned per curium order, and by declaring it could not be precedent.  Nothing to keep them from trying that again.

That lawlessness thing is not going away any time soon.  That "Constitutional crisis" (which, oddly, no one is talking about just now) is still coming, and when it arrives, the press will be sure to explain both sides of it to us.  After all, I'm sure there's another "ambiguity in the law" somewhere in here.  I mean, the Constitution doesn't explicitly say the President is not above the law.
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This is not the deal you were looking for

The pertinent paragraphs, annotated:

White House and intelligence officials were working out a plan on Tuesday to release a redacted version of the whistle-blower complaint that helped ignite the impeachment drive against President Trump and to allow the whistle-blower to speak with congressional investigators, people briefed on the matter said. 

So, nobody from Congress, and a "redacted" version, which is not what the statute contemplates.  There is no security reason not to release the entire report as a classified document.  The entire report doesn't have to be released to the public.

I said this would be the Mueller report redux, didn't I?

The move toward disclosing more information demanded by Democrats was part of a broader effort by the administration to quell the growing calls for Mr. Trump’s impeachment, and became public after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the start of a formal impeachment inquiry. 
The people are revolting!  Throw them a cake!  Let 'em eat that!

Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats that in a private call that she had with the president on Tuesday, he said he was not responsible for the whistle-blower complaint being withheld from Congress, according to Democrats.
He's just the President, it's not like he's in charge!

This part is just cute:

The appearance that they were stonewalling Congress, in their view, could prove more damaging than the whistle-blower’s account. Mr. Trump also believes that the allegations about him are not nearly as damning as they have been portrayed and that disclosing them will undercut the impeachment drive, people close to the president said. 

Let's let Judge Andrew Napolitano address that issue:

“It is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government,” said Napolitano.

“So, that to which the president has admitted is in and of itself a crime?” Smith asked.

“Yes, it is the same crime for which the Trump Organization was investigated by Bob Mueller, who decided not to seek an indictment because there wasn’t enough evidence,” Napolitano agreed.

“Well, no, he said he didn’t seek an indictment because he wasn’t charged because of the DOJ rule that said, ‘you can lay it out, but you can’t charge,'” Smith corrected.

“That’s on the obstruction of justice, whether or not there was a conspiracy between the Russians and Trump campaign,” Napolitano explained. “He said there’s some evidence but not enough to indict. It’s the same crime: an agreement or solicitation for assistance for an American campaign regulated by the Federal Elections Commission where you are seeking assistance from a foreign government. That’s a crime.”
....

He went on to say that the Trump administration is “on very thin ice” for blocking the inspector general from turning over a complaint to Congress because the statues dictate that it must be.

“He didn’t do that. He got a cockamamie —- I’ll tell you why I say that in a minute — ruling from the Justice Department that he didn’t have to bring it. The ruling from the Justice Department says, ‘Well, wait a minute. The complaint was filed with the inspector general of the intelligence community. The president doesn’t work for the intelligence community, he works for the American public, and therefore that complaint is moot.'”

Napolitano exclaimed his shock that it would be moot, saying that the president of the United States was accused of bribery, “How can that be moot!?”

Under the statute, Congress has every right to the complaint, he explained. Meanwhile, the president

“Bribery absolutely it is an impeachable offense, there’s no equivocation,” he said. “And why do I say that? It’s stated in the Constitution. The basis for impeachment: Treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The president offered a bribe — if the president offered a bribe to the president of the Ukraine, that would be an impeachable offense.” 
Bribery is not just accepting the bribe, but offering it.  In Trump's mind. Biden committed bribery by withholding funds until Ukraine fired the corrupt former prosecutor.  But Biden did that on behalf of the U.S. government and its allies and the International Monetary Fund, trying to root out corruption in Ukraine and set that government on a firm footing.  He didn't do it to help his campaign against a GOP opponent.

If Trump doesn't understand that difference, he's going to be surprised that his ignorance is not a legal defense.

Of course, if the complaint is redacted, what the whistleblower can testify to is going to be similarly limited.  Which turns this deal into not much of a deal at all.
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Trump is so angry and defiant

...he's threatening to give Congress everything they want.
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No More F*'s to Give?

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"So Much Work and So Much Success!"



Shot No. 2:


No mention of the vote on the resolution in the Senate.

Yeah, we're kinda past that by now.
You know that's not gonna be a thing, right?  Like "fetch," it's never gonna happen.  And what about that Senate vote?  And what McConnell had to say?

I suppose this makes it worse:
He was in his "safe place" and all.  And there's even more on this "special day" when he read a death wish catalog to the United Nations and droned on like the teacher from "Ferris Bueller" ("so much work!  so much success!"):
Wait, that's not all!
Trump is so pissed he "unpinned" his Rasmussen approval ratings tweet to post a campaign ad blasting Democrats.

Pass the popcorn, somebody.

You know, as it comes in, it just gets better:
 I'm gonna need more popcorn.


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