by Tom Sullivan

The vote itself was anticlimactic. After a full day of House speeches Wednesday for and against the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, even a few Democrats were shouting theirs. In the end, both sides were dug in. “Almost entirely along party lines,” the House of Representatives’ Democratic majority voted to impeach Trump for abuse of his office and obstruction of Congress. The only real surprise was Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) showing off her presidential mettle by voting “Present” on each article.

What happens next with those articles of impeachment immediately became the subject of reporters’ questions to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. When will she transmit them to the Senate? Rumors had flown that Pelosi might bide her time, let Trump stew, and apply pressure to Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to hold more than a sham Senate trial:

“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” she said, referring to the House “managers” who present the case for removal to the Senate. “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

That’s winning negotiating tactic No. 5 from Trump’s “The Art of the Deal”: Use your leverage.

And that pause leaves us time to process what America just witnessed.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews observed after the vote that not one Republican defended Trump’s character. None said Trump is not the kind of person to violate his oath of office. None argued Trump is a good person. It was damning by omission.

The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb tweeted, “Of all my naive presumptions that have been shot down in the past few years the idea that conservatives really believe in American sovereignty remains the most surprising. Among other things yesterday’s vote shows how ok they are with foreign powers subverting American autonomy.”

Their professions of American faith are as authentic as a TV preacher’s tears. Not for all, but for many.

Several patterns manifest themselves in the course of the House hearings and in Wednesday’s floor debate.

In their non-defense of Trump, Republicans repeatedly cited as exculpatory statements by Ukrainian officials. Ukrainians felt no pressure to investigate Trump’s domestic political rivals and a Russian-born conspiracy theory about 2016 election interference, they argued. Republicans accepted press comments from officials from “the third most corrupt nation on earth” (Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky) over the sworn testimony before Congress of dedicated, career U.S. public servants.

Recall how in Helsinki Trump sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the collective assessment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Congressman Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) argued against impeachment, saying, “No president in history has ever been impeached 10 months before an election.”

McConnell made the same argument for refusing confirmation hearings for President Obama’s last nominee to the Supreme Court. Is this now a deeply held conservative principle like originalism? In what section of the Constitution do they find it? Or is it simply what it looks like?

Hannity: "I was shocked that former President Obama left so many [judicial] vacancies and didn't try to fill those positions."

Mitch McConnell: "I'll tell you why. I was in charge of what we did the last two years of the Obama administration. [Creepy evil laugh]" pic.twitter.com/revbToN8aZ

— Jason S. Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) December 13, 2019

Something else commentators observed. Over the 11 hours of debate, the country got to observe a lot of otherwise anonymous Republican back-benchers. What their brief speeches made clear is just how deep the Trump contagion has gone. It was Ukrainians who interfered. Black ledger. Chalupa. Steele dossier. Radical socialists. They were all there. From the mouths of the most obscure members of the Republican caucus.

As the vote commenced, Donald J. Trump himself was at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan bragging again about the Pentagon’s invisible airplanes as America’s international influence sinks slowly in the East.

For many Chinese elites (even advocates of “reform & opening up”) the central lesson of the 😡 regime is that the PRC must lessen its dependence on an erratic United States. Nothing future US policymakers do will make the Chinese “unsee” that lesson. https://t.co/W22hXnH0O1

— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) December 19, 2019

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

On the eve of the House impeachment vote, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page whose text messages became fodder for years of personal attacks by the president of the United States gave her first television interview on the “Rachel Maddow Show.” In hundreds of cities from coast to coast, in fair weather and in single digits, thousands of protesters called on Congress to defend the Constitution and to impeach and remove Donald Trump from said presidency. Trump himself began Festivus early with a 6-page airing of grievances addressed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Trump called the impeachment vote scheduled for this morning a “perversion of justice” and an “attempted coup.”

I’m only 2 1/2 paragraphs in to Trump’s letter and it’s clear to me that our President is unwell, unfit and very uninformed about our government & our legal system. And that fills me with a profound sadness that we’re at this point. It’s time to fix this. Past time.— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) December 17, 2019

“Typically a president’s words are weighed very carefully, especially at a moment of constitutional significance,” said Michael Waldman, a White House policy aide and speechwriter during the Bill Clinton impeachment. In this case, White House counsel Pat Cipollone was not involved. Instead, Eric Ueland, director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, helped draft the letter with input from top Trump policy adviser, Stephen Miller, and Michael Williams, an adviser to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

“Angry white mail,” late-night host Stephen Colbert called it.

The Washington Post’s fact checker describes it as a “written version of a Trump rally.”

Former Republican congressman David Jolly warned that Trump’s lie-filled screed is suggesting “Congress’ ability to provide oversight to the president has someway eroded to the point where it’s no longer valid … We are in a dangerous spot.” He is “tearing at the fabric of Article 1.”

New York Times conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin writes:

On the eve of his impeachment, a stain that obviously torments him more than his enablers have let on, President Trump issued a rambling, unhinged and lie-filled letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). It is difficult to capture how bizarre and frightening the letter is simply by counting the utter falsehoods…or by quoting from the invective dripping from his pen.

What is most striking is the spectacle of the letter itself — a president so unhinged as to issue such an harangue; a White House entirely unable to stop him; a party so subservient to him that it would not trigger a search for a new nominee; a right-wing media bubble that will herald Trump for being Trump and excoriate Democrats for driving the president to this point; and a mainstream media not quite able to address a public temper-tantrum…in which one major party has bound itself to the mast of a raging, dangerous narcissist while the other cannot uphold the norms and institutions on which our democracy depends.

Former Obama White House staffer and Pod Save the World co-host Ben Rhodes tweeted, “The fact that the Trump letter is not seen as an insane, alarming, authoritarian warning about the decay of our political system is a signal of how far norms and expectations have moved in politics and media the last three years.”

As confirmation, New York radio host Mark Simone, a longtime Trump friend, appeared on Fox Business’ “Lou Dobbs Tonight” to liken Trump’s primal scream to the Gettysburg Address. He urged everyone to read it.

Here’s Lou Dobbs guest Mark Simone comparing Trump’s unhinged impeachment screed to the Gettysburg Address pic.twitter.com/SfaGLQA4ts

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 18, 2019

Naturally, Trump’s red-hatted fans will not.

Have Trump supporters read the Ukraine call transcript? @jordanklepper finds out: https://t.co/N9I4xStMx4 pic.twitter.com/HmOjbuBG9s

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 17, 2019

And here we are. On the cusp of we know not what. An emotionally stunted, ignorant man — an alpha-coward — has seduced a large minority of “freedom-loving” Americans into surrendering their volition to his vanity. Many risked their lives to defend this republic. Now they risk their republic to defend a fool who would be their king.

We are in grave danger.

(h/t D.B.)

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

The pending impeachment of Donald Trump raises anxiety levels to 11 on the left side of the philosophical aisle. But let’s take a moment to share those feelings with the wrong side. What Republicans need to ask themselves is who besides Trump cultists will still vote for them by November 2020.

The recent Fox News poll found support for Trump’s impeachment and removal has ticked up a point since October. FiveThirtyEight‘s polling average this morning shows 47.1 percent for impeachment and 46.6 percent against. Fox polling tends to reflect poorly on the president. But other polls, The Atlantic’s David Graham reports, also lean slightly towards impeachment. It is worth adding that those polls measure people, not necessarily states where it’s winner-take-all on electoral votes.

Graham asks readers to consider that roughly half the country not only supports impeaching Trump but removing him from office. “And that support comes at a time of (mostly) peace, with the economy (mostly) strong,” Graham explains. “There’s more support for impeaching Trump now than there was at the equivalent stage in the Watergate scandal—right after articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee.” Half the country supports enforcing an unprecedented sanction against Trump.

A clear plurality of Americans want Donald Trump to be impeached, but the Senate is biased toward rural Republican-leaning voters, so impeachment falls short in a majority of states.

My analyses of 18,000+ respondents to YouGov’s polling using MRP ⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/dXLGa2lXq8 pic.twitter.com/Nh4AV6n7se— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) December 16, 2019

Graham continues:

Thus the paradox of impeachment politics: Supporting impeachment is anathema for Republicans. Supporting impeachment seems to be hurting vulnerable Democratic politicians, at least marginally. But support for impeachment remains remarkably strong, and also, Trump’s approval remains as stable as ever.

Even though Trump almost certainly won’t be removed, the breadth of support for impeachment, especially when compared with his approval ratings, could have important repercussions in the 2020 election. For roughly the entire Trump presidency, a small majority of Americans has disapproved of Trump, while a substantial minority has approved of his tenure. Yet despite this disapproval, most members of that majority did not support removing the president.

That has changed since the Ukraine scandal broke open in September, despite House Judiciary Republicans throwing a jumbo pack of smoke bombs to obscure the facts. More damaging evidence may yet surface before the prospective Senate trial (since it seems certain the House will pass articles this week). For now, it appears most Republicans “have abdicated their responsibility” on impeachment.

On the Democratic side, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew opposes impeachment and announced plans over the weekend to switch parties. Running as a DCCC-selected moderate in 2018 allowed Van Drew to win flip a Republican district. Voting against impeachment will gain him nothing except a primary challenge he is unlikely to survive. Nor will his change of parties (assuming he joins Republicans) earn him anything more than side-eye from the G.O.P. His staff is already abandoning ship. As Graham reports, Van Drew “endorsed Senator Cory Booker for president, voted with Pelosi on most issues, and has been a Democratic elected official for decades.” Trump’s Republican base will not vote for a warmed-over Democrat.

Graham continues:

The intensity of anti-Trump feeling could remain influential long after the Senate trial ends, because once a voter decides that she not only dislikes the president but feels he ought to be removed from office, it’s tougher to imagine that future events, from a booming economy to a trade deal, will persuade her to change her mind and support him.

This may be why, despite Trump’s repeated insistence that impeachment is good for him, he is not mad, and actually he finds this funny, he is apoplectic about the process. The president has a keen intuitive grasp of politics and understands the challenge facing him. While it may be true, as his campaign says, that impeachment has motivated his base to support him more strongly, it has also motivated his opposition—and that opposition remains significantly larger.

The future of the republic is at stake and Republicans are failing to meet the challenge.

“The party of the rule of law is dead, writes Jonathan Capehart at the New York Times. He cites a recent interview with Democrat Stacey Abrams of Georgia who believes Republicans have nothing left but a thirst for power:

“They had a moment basically between George W. Bush and today to change course, they knew it, they couldn’t do it,” Abrams said, referring to a brief window in 2013, following Barack Obama’s reelection, when senior Republicans recognized that broadening their appeal was a matter of political longevity. “And now they are left with holding on to power through manipulation, theft and immorality, and that immorality is the acceptance of things they know to be wrong.”

If he is not patient zero, Sen. Lindsey Graham is the most visible carrier of the rot. He will do anything, make any obeisance, any debasement of principle, to hold onto his position. “Lindsey Graham has no other definition to his life,” Abrams said.

Slowly, ever slowly, that reality is seeping into the minds of moderates and suburban Republicans — perhaps even red-hats, too — that obsequiousness is not a good look for kings-in-waiting, nor is complicity in putting party over country and monarchy over democracy. Trump and his party have made a sick joke of the founders’ vision. Trump has not unmasked them, he has simply revealed them. How will 2020 voters respond?

Republicans in both houses of Congress and in the several states soon face the infamous Dirty Harry question: Do you feel lucky?

Well, do ya, punks?

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

It’s Impeachment Week here in the home of untruth, injustice, and the Un-American way. Superman is on leave somewhere and Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s Lex Luthor, is running the show trial. Making a complete mockery of democracy has been a cottage industry for his cohort since at least 2011. Impeachment Week promises more of the same.

Volunteers need to get their minds right when interacting with fellow citizens. Voters tend to a keen radar for condescension. Yes, stoking grievances and finding wedge issues to inflame them is a cottage industry on the right, especially for one major media outlet. But despite having gun-smithed hair triggers, even the most uninformed citizens just want to be listened to and taken seriously.

The political right makes double-sure to play up instances when lefties look down their noses at Donald Trump’s MAGA legions. But too often the right gets a pass on its own low expectations for its base’s intelligence. The stumbling sideshow on the right side of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings proved that once again. Channel surfers might be forgiven for thinking the committee was impeaching Hunter Biden.

Republicans parsed the details of Ukrainegate and tried to shift the focus from Trump. Who was a fact witness? When did the Ukrainians know the military aid had been held up? What about Alexandra Chalupa (and what the hell did she have to do with the president’s extortion scheme)? Etc. Somehow, they believe they are being clever. Compared to Sean Hannity? Maybe.

The bottom line is how credible are Donald Trump’s claims of innocence about his “request” for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to “get to the bottom of what happened” with Crowdstrike, the Bidens, etc.

How credible is Trump given that two career officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget – experienced public servants who care and know something about how aid is legally dispensed – resigned in part to avoid participating in the holdup of Ukraine aid?

How credible is Trump given that at least two experienced National Security Council officials were concerned about the legality of Trump insisting on investigations as a condition for a White House meeting for Zelensky? So concerned that they advised lead NSC attorney John Eisenberg of their concerns? Fiona Hill did so at the direction of National Security Advisor John Bolton.

How credible is Trump given that the intelligence community’s inspector general reviewed the whistleblower complaint “as well as other information gathered and determined that the complaint was both urgent and that it appeared credible.” Contrary to Trump’s claims otherwise.

How credible is Trump given that after the House intelligence committee received notice of the complaint, Bolton resigned (or was fired), Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, resigned, and Trump’s energy secretary, Rick Perry announced his resignation?

How credible is Trump given that he admitted to reporters Oct. 3 his intent was Ukraine would “start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer: They should investigate the Bidens”?

But bottom line, this is the Donald J. Trump Republicans ask their credulous base to give the benefit of the doubt.

Trump, who publicly cheated on his 1st wife with his 2nd and, allegedly, on his 3rd wife with a porn star and a Playboy model.

Trump, whose lawyer Roy Cohn was disbarred, whose last personal lawyer sits, disbarred, in jail for, among other things, campaign finance violations in covering up Trump’s hush payments to the porn star, and whose current personal lawyer is reportedly under federal investigation.

Trump, of the $2 million settlement over his fraudulent charity.

Trump, of the $25 million settlement over his sham university.

Trump, of the “grab ‘em by the” you-know and over a dozen allegations of sexual assault.

Trump, of the 15,000+ false or misleading claims.

Trump, of the New York Times expose documenting a decades-long pattern of shell companies and phony investments fueling family tax evasion and tax fraud – after which his sister, the federal appeals court judge, abruptly retired to stop an ethics investigation into her participation in the alleged, decades-long, multimillion-dollar tax fraud.

Donald John Trump, known to golf writers as a notorious golf cheat, who boasts a handicap better than Jack Nicklaus and who, who after loudly complaining about Barack Obama’s golfing for years and insisting “I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go golfing, believe me. Believe me. Believe me, folks,” has visited golf properties nearly 200 times since taking office at a cost of well over $300 million to taxpayers.

That Donald Trump wants us to believe – no, demands we believe – when he asked Zelensky for “a favor” in investigating Joe Biden he was sincerely interested in being a good steward of American tax dollars and in stopping corruption in general. He just happened to mention the Bidens in passing.

How stupid do Trump and Republicans think we are? How stupid do they think their voters are? Pretty stupid.

It’s Impeachment Week.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

Update: Fixed golf resort visit count.

by Tom Sullivan

The Trump era is like an episode of Drew Carey’s old improv game show. Except this is “Whose Government Is It Anyway?” — the shit show where everything’s made up and the facts don’t matter.

Garrett Graff describes at Wired just how much of one Foxification has made of America:

We, as a democratic society, cannot survive such consequences-be-damned, winner-take-all, facts-don’t-matter politics. Fox News has upended Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous proclamation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Its daily programming seems driven by the idea that everyone might be entitled to their own facts, but that there is only one correct opinion: President Trump’s.

Kurt Bardella at NBC reinforces how Foxified Republican members of Congress have become:

The conservative approach during these hearings has been to treat every member’s time like it is a segment on Fox News. The members are playing the part of Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. Their script is built on misdirection and moving the goal posts as their paltry strategy shifts to incorporate various conspiracy theories and outlandish claims.

Donald Trump has done plenty worth condemnation. But Trump didn’t corrupt his party. He simply unmasked it. “Forget about impeachment. As a parent, as a person, I wonder: Where is Matt Gaetz’s humanity?” asks Dana Milbank about the Florida Republican’s gratuitous smears of Hunter Biden Thursday.

It was as if Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee were running on a loop Thursday. Reps. Guy Reschenthaler of Texas, Gaetz and others repeated the same lines every few hours to make sure late tuners-in did not miss their juiciest bits. Democrats did some of that themselves, just not as loudly. (I looked for a “Jim Jordan” setting on the TV remote that might automatically reduce the volume whenever the Ohio Republican resumed shouting.) The GOTV defense began sounding like those ubiquitous, K-Tel’s greatest-hits commercials of old, only less tuneful.

Like a lot of observers, I got 2016 wrong. Decades of a steady diet of right-wing radio and Fox News had made many Americans somewhat crazy, sure. But even given the weaknesses of the Clinton campaign, I didn’t think the country was crazy enough to elect president a celebrity grifter as obvious as Donald Trump. They claimed to love America too much for that. Obviously not. As former president George W. Bush realized after Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration speech, the country would be in for “some weird shit.”

“Do you feel confident in that?” the reporter asked.

“My .357 Magnum is comfortable with that!” he said. “End of story!” https://t.co/iBecicYvay

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) December 11, 2019

As the gentleman in the clip above demonstrates, firearms have replaced patriotism as “the last refuge” among some Trump supporters. Threats of violence in the event of electoral or legislative failure are common on the right. The president has become a kind of “Thousand Hills Free Radio and Television” at his rallies and in his tweets. He himself has bragged he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not face consequences. His lawyers support that proposition in court. The attorney general acts as Trump’s Minister of Propaganda. His defenders in Congress see no evil, nor hear any, and excuse what they hear from their Guinness World’s-record-eligible tweeter.

Another Moynihan contribution to the lexicon is “defining deviancy down.” It captures “the way standards and expectations, as they fall, become accepted at each new, lower level as somehow ‘normal.’“

Throughout the Trump presidency, his opponents have argued the press ought not normalize his behavior. In many ways, press coverage has. Yet, there is still some memory of normal left to provoke a flurry of editorial boards to call for Trump’s removal. Just not yet in swing states, nor in the numbers that did so during the Clinton impeachment, Politico reports.

Nerves are on edge and tempers flaring. Late Thursday night, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler abruptly gavelled his committee’s markup hearing to a close without calling for a vote on two articles of impeachment. Without consulting ranking member Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), Nadler announced the hearing would resume this morning at 10 a.m. EST.

It had been a 14-hour day and members clearly tired. Blindsided Republicans were livid:

Republicans erupted in anger at the move, accusing the New York Democrat of wanting to put the vote on television and going back on an agreement for the committee to stop considering amendments.

Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, called the move the “the most bush league stunt I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

“Words cannot describe how inappropriate this was,” Collins said.

But Democrats blamed Republicans for the schedule switch. They were furious at Republicans for what they believed was a blatant effort to drag out Thursday’s proceedings and delay final votes until the middle of the night. Earlier Thursday, it was widely believed that Republicans would be through offering amendments by around 5 p.m. EST.

As the evening wore on, Democrats came to believe the GOP was simply trying to bury the votes in the news cycle. So the decision was made to hold the final two votes Friday morning to ensure more people would be able to witness the historic move — even though it enraged the GOP.

Mistrust runs deep. With good reason. So, the Chicago Tribune’s Rex Hubke offers this advice and admonishment:

“Disinformation is intended to wear critics down, to make them feel that resistance is futile, that combating nonsense with facts is a waste of time.

“You can’t let that happen. You need to keep your mind right.”

This presidency is an endurance contest to see which side of the aisle will break first, or whether the republic will. This feels like the point in an action movie when someone wonders aloud if they’ll get out of this alive.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

Was Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) really suggesting what he seemed to be suggesting?

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz figgeted during Graham’s 40-minute rant to open the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on his findings on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Graham was on a roll, one he continued as the hearing unfolded.

Graham, the committee chair, read emails from FBI staff critical of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and asked repeatedly whether FBI members up and down the investigative team had political bias “that reeked” influencing their decisions.

Horowitz said he found none. Graham was unfazed:

You did a great job. The old adage is if you wake up and the lawn is wet, you can assume it rained. If you’ve got a guy who hates Trump’s guts from day one, thinks Pence is stupid and everybody who voted for Trump’s a idiot, and you give him power over Trump, maybe you’re making a mistake. Or again, maybe all these people who had these biases did nothing about it. Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t really matter. We know what they did.

Graham’s bias-hunt implied people with strong political opinions (like him) cannot do their jobs in an honest, dispassionate, and professional fashion. He all but suggested there should be political litmus tests for federal officials or that only the politically neutered find employment. A lot of people in America believe Trump is an idiot and they are entitled to, Graham acknowledged, “but you shouldn’t be in the journalism business. You shouldn’t be at the FBI.”

We’ve been down that road before. Or at least, another Republican administration has. It was another another inspector general that found political bias in Department of Justice hiring under the Bush administration in July 2008. Bush appointees had violated federal law and department policy by screening applicants for their political affiliations:

The two offices focused on the activities of Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison at DOJ under ex-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as well as Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, and Jan Williams, Goodling’s predecessor as White House liaison.

Goodling admitted during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that her hiring decisions for some career positions at DOJ may have been influenced in part based on political consideration,” including Assistant U.S. Attorneys, immigration judges and other senior career posts at Justice, but the OPR-OIG laid out in much greater detail what actually occurred.

“Our investigation found that Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions, in violation of federal law and Department policy,” the 140-page report states. “The evidence also showed that Goodling considered political or ideological affiliations when recommending and selecting candidates for other permanent career positions, including a career SES [Senior Executive Service] position in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) and AUSA [Assistant U.S. Attorney] positions. These actions violated federal law and Department policy, and also constituted misconduct.”

With his repeated inquiries about bias driving investigative decisions, complaints echoing Trump’s “Deep State” conspiracy, Graham was arguing for kind of political screening last found illegal under the George W. Bush administration. Two 2018 reports from the Office of the Inspector General found wrongdoing in both DOJ’s hiring practices and in the political firings of nine U.S. attorneys (September 2008).

Goodling resigned in April 2007 after pleading the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify on the attorney firings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, then chaired by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. She testified in May about the firings before the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity. Gonzales resigned in August.

Attacks on career government officials and the appointment of less-qualified candidates with preferred political views is an extension of practices that took down Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Trump administration is simply a restart of the “to the victor go the spoils” approach of the Bush ideologues, only more overt and with Bill Barr unlikely to resign if similar malfeasance comes to light. Clearly, political litmus tests are Graham’s preference and in line with Trump’s desire to root out the “Deep State” of his paranoid imaginings. Trump doesn’t want competence. He wants loyalists.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

The acting president of the United States damned sure doesn’t want anyone examining his tax records. He’s fought tooth-and-nail in court to keep investigators from seeing what he promised repeatedly during his 2016 campaign he would share with the public.

But secure his telephone conversations? Nah! From the Washington Post:

President Trump has routinely communicated with his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and other individuals speaking on cellphones vulnerable to monitoring by Russian and other foreign intelligence services, current and former U.S. officials said.

Phone records released this week by the House Intelligence Committee revealed extensive communications between Giuliani, unidentified people at the White House and others involved in the campaign to pressure Ukraine, with no indication that those calls were encrypted or otherwise shielded from foreign surveillance.

The revelations raise the possibility that Moscow was able to learn about aspects of Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to investigate a political rival months before that effort was exposed by a whistleblower report and the impeachment inquiry, officials said.

But, hey, it’s not like the Deep State is listening in, right?

Trump is not identified by name in the House phone records, but investigators said they suspect he may be a person with a blocked number listed as “-1” in the files. And administration officials said separately that Trump has communicated regularly with Giuliani on unsecured lines.

“It happened all the time,” said one former senior aide, who noted that Giuliani had a range of foreign clients.

The disclosures provide fresh evidence suggesting that the president continues to defy the security guidance urged by his aides and followed by previous incumbents — a stance that is particularly remarkable given Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign for her use of a private email account while serving as secretary of state.

Weakness is a cardinal sin for conservatives, as it was for Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn. Attack, counterattack and never apologize. A consistent criticism Republicans level against Democrats is they are weak. Weak on crime. Weak on defense, etc. Donald Trump fixates on projecting strongliness. It’s one of his many tells.

Thus, it is stunning that Trump-the-paranoid is so slack about his communications. Fellow trust-fund baby, Jared Kushner, proposed using a secure room at the Russian embassy to shield his communications from prying ears. Of course, those were American prying ears.

An indelible childhood memory from my first visit to Washington, D.C. was seeing the top of the Soviet embassy bristling with antennae (similar to above). The Russian embassy’s new digs on Wisconsin Avenue are more discreet about their communications gear.

Seeing as prominent GOP leaders now parrot Russian talking points, perhaps, as David Rothkopf told Greg Sargent, “Trump, his administration and the GOP have made a conscious choice to align themselves with Putinism … It is not unwitting.”

“Putinism,” Sargent writes, is a worldwide movement “that allies various ethno-nationalist and illiberal authoritarian leaders against Western liberal democracy, the rule of law, international institutions and the commitment to empiricism in the face of disinformation.”

When I first set eyes on the Soviet embassy, Pete Seeger was singing “Which Side Are You On?” about unions and G.O.P. hawks were warning us about Russian propaganda. Now they’re trafficking in it, and it’s less clear which side they are on.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

Wednesday’s national news, of course, was the House Judiciary Committee’s first hearing on the impeachment of President Donald Trump. But is news yesterday from far outside the Beltway evidence the president’s welcome is wearing thin with his own party?

Stanford Law School professor Pamela S. Karlan came in scorching with her opening statement during Wednesday’s House Judiciary hearing on the Trump impeachment. She quickly made what might have been an academic discussion a polemical one:

Karlan emerged Wednesday as a new hero for liberal law professors across the country for her ability to joust with House members all the while ticking off why she believes Donald Trump should be impeached, making complicated legal philosophies understandable, and raising the ire of supporters of the President. Her testimony also evoked a rare tweet from first lady Melania Trump castigating her for a comment she made that invoked the Trumps’ 13-year-old son, for which Karlan later apologized.

Karlan clearly made a splash in her opening statement, first among many noteworthy moments. Democrats hammered away at Trump’s perfidies while Republicans, lacking any defense for them, attacked the process or tried to change the subject.

Republicans whined about the lack of “fact witnesses” with direct knowledge of Trump’s actions, then demanded to hear from Ukraine-connected witnesses with no direct knowledge of Trump’s actions. No Republicans asked the president to allow over a dozen executive branch officials with direct involvement to testify. (Image at top.)

Comments in the last hour of the nine-hour hearing are worth attention for the broader picture they paint of the Trump presidency. Broader, that is, than Trump pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations of potential 2020 rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) pointed out that during the Clinton impeachment, members of that White House testified before Congress and Clinton provided answers to 81 written interrogatories. Conversely, Trump has refused. He has intimidated witnesses and issued a blanket order that none of his subpoenaed executive branch officials testify. Trump praised others for refusing to cooperate with the House inquiry. He has refused to produce subpoenaed documents. Both Nixon and Clinton allowed the White House counsel and chief of staff to testify, Neguse observed. Trump has not.

Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) offered that Trump has not only refused to cooperate with normal congressional oversight, but with its constitutional obligation to oversee impeachment.

Noah Feldman, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, responded:

For the president to refuse to participate in any way in the House’s constitutional obligation of supervising him to impeach him breaks the Constitution. It basically says, nobody can oversee me. Nobody can impeach me. First, I’ll block witnesses from appearing. Then, I’ll refuse to participate in any way. And then I’ll say you don’t have enough evidence to impeach me. And ultimately, the effect of that is to guarantee that the president is above the law and can’t be checked. And since we know the framers put impeachment in the constitution to check the president, if the president can’t be checked he is no longer subject to the law.

Stanton asked Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina’s law school about the president’s refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas. Isn’t that the framers’ worst nightmare?

Gerhardt replied:

One way in which to understand that is to put all of his arguments together and then see what the ramifications are. He says he’s entitled not to comply with all subpoenas. He says he’s not subject to any kind of criminal investigation while he’s President of the United States. He’s immune to that. He’s entitled to keep all information confidential from Congress. Doesn’t even have to give a reason. Well, when you put all those things together, he’s blocked off every way in which to hold himself accountable except for elections. And the critical thing to understand here is that is precisely what he was trying to undermine in the Ukraine situation.

Trump holds himself above any legal constraints on his actions. That is clear from his history both in business and in public office. He refuses to recognize the legislative branch’s constitutionally defined oversight authority. He refuses to comply with legal subpoenas. Those actions themselves, aside from the Ukraine affair, demonstrate the need to end his presidency and his efforts to undermine the rule of law.

At the end of the day, this item from the heart of Rep. Mark Meadows’ NC-11 (home to your truly) came over the transom: Three County Commissioners Leave GOP – Transylvania County, NC:

“This is not an action we do happily, and it is not a choice we take lightly,” the announcement said. “It comes after much prayer, reflection and discussion among us and with our loved ones. In leaving, we are ending a long association that is deeply personal. Between us, we have won 20 different elections as Republicans in Transylvania County.”

The announcement noted three “broad areas” for their decision to leave the party: “First, we have clear notions of conservatism. To be conservative is to honor and preserve the fundamental institutions, processes, structures and rule of law, which have enabled the United States to be history’s greatest success story. To be conservative is to be financially prudent while also investing in common ground works that support individual success for all citizens. To be conservative is to be welcoming and inclusive, understanding that all of us share the same human aspirations; conservative tenets of self-determination cannot be exclusive. To be conservative is to have a strong moral compass and the willingness to challenge wrong regardless of its source. We believe all of these are not merely conservative principles but American principles.

Their statement does not mention Donald Trump by name. But the trio must find it difficult to square those principles with the actions of their leaders in Washington, D.C. and in Raleigh. Their leaving the Republican Party was obviously a long time coming. They left in a coordinated fashion for cover. (New state and federal district lines won’t affect officials at this level in this county.)

It is far too early to know if these officials abandoning the Party of Trump as a group is an isolated event or a sea change. But it won’t reflect well on Meadows who faces reelection in a district more like the one Heath Shuler won from a Republican in 2006 before the post-2011 gerrymander pushed it to R+14. What may make this announcement from a rural red county disquieting for national Republicans is the template it sets for Republicans elsewhere to follow.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

At 10 a.m. EST (7 PST) this morning the House Judiciary Committee begins its first impeachment hearing. The session bears a title: The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment. (The link goes to the live-stream site.)

Democrats will be serious and sober. Lacking any real defense, Republicans will put on a circus.

Democrats hope to convince us all why the man in the video clip below, Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States, should be removed from office.

Trump on Adam Schiff: "I think he's a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he's a very sick man." pic.twitter.com/Ta591vESgj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2019

It’s a wonder Trump did not project those words out his eyes in beams of light onto a nearby wall.

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday night invited psychiatrist Lance Dodes, a former assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to assess Trump’s mental/emotional state in light of those comments.

Yes, it’s projection, says Dodes. Trump “tells other people that they are what he is.” Dodes believes (as this blogging amateur has said before) that Trump is emotionally and developmentally stunted.

Dodes calls Trump’s level of development “primitive.” Trump is a sociopath who runs a “very simple program” and is “limited by the capacity of a person with early emotional development.”

Asked about the developmental path that produced someone like Trump, Dodes responded, “It’s very early. Almost all people don’t have this problem … The early capacity to have empathy for other people, to identify them as being worthwhile and caring about them, happens in all human beings at a very early point. He doesn’t have that.”

It’s not all Trump doesn’t have.

Former Deputy Director of Intelligence Susan Gordon told an audience Trump is the first in her experience with “no foundation or framework to understand the limits of intelligence,” its purpose, or how the intelligence community discusses it.

Trump’s lens for viewing the world is economic rather than military or political, Gordon said. Officials had to retool briefings to present them framed for a person “who is interested in making trades and deals.”

Trump was interactive, though, Gordon said, and had two typical responses:

“One, ‘I don’t think that’s true,'” Gordon told the Women’s Foreign Policy Group.

“The one is ‘I’m not sure I believe that,'” Gordon continued, “and the other is the second order and third order effects. ‘Why is that true? Why are we there? Why is this what you believe? Why do we do that?’ Those sorts of things.”

Basically, coming he views policy solely from an economic perspective: What’s in it for me?

USA Today adds:

Gordon, who was in line for the top intelligence job following the departure of Dan Coats, resigned in August after learning that the president sought to bypass her elevation.

While the House ponders whether Trump is fit to remain in office, Trump, the man who swore that with him occupying the Oval Office, the world would no longer laugh at us (meaning at him), is attending the NATO summit in London.

Will aides be able to keep Mr. Insecurity from seeing this?

This is quite the video from the CBC showing Trudeau, Macron, and Johnson discussing what appears to be Trump. pic.twitter.com/QDgIXwEwlk

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 4, 2019

Stand by for more projection.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.

by Tom Sullivan

An overwhelming amount of news broke Monday night.

Attorney General Bill Barr reprises his pre-release distortions of the Muller report, this time with the Justice Department’s inspector general findings about FBI’s Russia investigation. Barr reportedly disputes the conclusion that the FBI’s investigation was “adequately predicated” on Trump campaign aid George Papadopoulos’s besotted blabbing to an Australian diplomat that Moscow had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.

Democrats are considering broadening the scope of possible articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to include obstruction of justice offenses chronicled in the Mueller report. The House Judiciary Committee begins its impeachment hearings on Wednesday. With Republicans falling in line behind the president, some Democrats want to move beyond a narrow focus on Trump’s abuses of power with Ukraine.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) believes demonstrating a pattern of abuse is in order. “If you show that this is not only real in what’s happening with Ukraine, but it’s the exact same pattern that Mueller documented … to me, that just strengthens the case.”

Regarding patterns of abuse, BuzzFeed News received another tranche of FOIA documents from the Mueller probe Monday evening. Jason Leopold dumped them online and invited crowd-sourcing of news from nearly 300 pages of FBI interview summaries (“302 documents”).

One of the first items to surface is from an interview with former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (now serving a prison sentence for lying to Congress, tax fraud, and campaign finance violations). From page 37 of the PDF, BuzzFeed’s team reports:

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, told FBI agents about negotiations to build a gleaming Trump Tower in the heart of Moscow, about how much Trump, who was then in the midst of a presidential campaign, knew about the negotiations, and about the false statement that Cohen later made to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees about it all.

Cohen said that during the presidential campaign, he informed Trump that he had a discussion with a “woman from the Kremlin” about the plan to build the tower, according to a Nov. 20, 2018, summary of his interview with FBI agents and prosecutors from Mueller’s team. “Cohen told Trump he spoke with a woman from the Kremlin who had asked specific and great questions about Trump Tower Moscow, and that he wished Trump Organization had assistants that were that good and competent,” the FBI summary says. He also said that in his letter to Congress about the development, he initially wrote that he had “limited contact with Russian officials.” But that line was struck from the letter. Cohen said he did not know who specifically struck it.

Trump attorney Jay Sekulow told Cohen not to elaborate on details of the Moscow project so as not to “muddy the water.” Sekulow told the Associated Press Monday night (NYT story) Cohen never told him anything about any call with a woman from Russia. He did not respond to BuzzFeed’s request for comment. That is: Nothing to see here, Congress; move along.

Now might be a good time to remind readers that members of Team Trump feel “no obligation to be honest with the media.”

Josh Gerstein, legal affairs contributor for Politico, believes many of the redactions in the FOIA documents relate to conversations with the president. Marcy Wheeler guesses that’s right:

This is right: DOJ responding to Mueller FOIAs by calling them deliberative privilege. My GUESS is they think once Mueller decided stuff was too sensitive, it would always be b5. But it'll be an epic lawsuit. https://t.co/KGxYGQ7I4Q

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) December 3, 2019

Wheeler also responds to the Republicans’ prebuttal of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report in a tweet thread here. That report is scheduled for public release today.

Finally, Natasha Bertrand reports for Politico that the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated the Ukraine conspiracy allegations and, “according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiry, and found no evidence that Ukraine waged a top-down interference campaign akin to the Kremlin’s efforts to help Trump win in 2016.” Not that that will stop Republicans from publicly claiming (for Trump’s benefit) that this Moscow-inspired conspiracy theory is not a dead issue.

Republican chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina told Frank Thorp of NBC, “I don’t think there’s any question that elected officials in Ukraine had a favorite in the election.” Asked whether having a preference amounted to election interference, Burr challenged the news media to look into it and refused to answer if he had.

Even if Ukrainian officials preferred Clinton over Trump in 2016 and publicly said so, disliking Trump does not an election interference conspiracy make, as Burr well knows. But he’s got a liege lord to serve.

Cross-posted from Hullabaloo.