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Midterm fury fuels Trump’s assault on constitutional norms
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 9:15 AM EST, Mon November 12, 2018
(CNN) President Donald Trump is intensifying his challenge to constitutional constraints and governing norms that are already facing their gravest test since Watergate in the 1970s.
Trump has reacted to the coming Democratic majority in the House by upping the assault on the Washington system he was elected to upend, but in a way that could be taking the nation into perilous political territory.
In the days since the fracturing of the Republican majority on power in Washington, Trump has challenged political order across a broad front.
The President has installed Matthew Whitaker, an acolyte who shares his skepticism of the Mueller probe as acting attorney general. In addition, he has stoked conspiracy theories about stolen elections in the wake of Florida’s latest vote counting controversy and has threatened to use the mechanisms of government to investigate Democrats if they investigate him.
And he has stepped up his assault on the press, including by confiscating the White House pass of CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta, who asked multiple, challenging questions of Trump during a White House news conference.
All of this came days after Trump used his power as commander-in-chief to dispatch troops to the border to meet what he said was an imminent criminal invasion from a migrant caravan that is yet to materialize.
The President’s moves, with the prospect of more to come, have precipitated a surreal moment in politics, with Washington veterans debating whether a constitutional crisis is looming — or whether it is already here.
Does the acting AG threaten the rule of law?
The current epicenter of the debate concerns Whitaker, the former chief of staff to fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions who took his boss’s job.
“He should never have been appointed and … it does violence to the Constitution and the vision of our founders to appoint such a person in such a manner to be the chief legal officer in our country,” the likely next House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
Growing questions over Whitaker’s position will hike pressure on the President to swiftly nominate a permanent attorney general. But that nominee will face an inquisition from the Republican-led Senate over their positions on the Russia probe.
Whitaker’s critics fear he will refuse to sign off on subpoenas Mueller might request, narrow the mandate of his investigation or suppress the special counsel’s final report.
His appointment has raised fears that the President intends to use him to derail the Russia investigation. That is a realistic possibility since Trump already admitted in an NBC interview last year that he fired FBI Director James Comey because of the investigation – a move that critics say in itself amounts to an abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
Whitaker appears unlikely to heed calls to recuse himself from the probe given a decision by Sessions to do so sparked Trump’s fury and poisoned his tenure.
It may fall to the new Democratic House majority, therefore, to act as a check on any attempts by Trump to use Whitaker to interfere with Mueller, despite the President’s challenge to legal norms represented by his appointment.
Florida, Florida, Florida
The President has frequently made claims of massive voter fraud in the United States, despite the fact that all available evidence suggests that it is not a significant problem.
So it is no surprise that he has leapt into action to proclaim that Florida’s latest vote controversy is a flagrant example of Democratic larceny at the polls.
“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump tweeted Monday morning after having spent the weekend in Paris.
An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!
No one is disputing the Sunshine’s State’s unfortunate tendency to trigger election controversy. And answers are overdue about the stewardship of elections in Broward and Palm Beach counties for instance.
‘It’s impossible’ to finish recount by deadline, Palm Beach county election supervisor says
Lawyers for Democratic and Republican candidates are now launching dueling campaigns. Each side has every right to make their case after the state’s Republican secretary of state ordered recounts to begin given thin margins.
“Every vote should be counted, but, by gosh, not let fraudulent or anti-Constitutional behavior prevail,” Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who ran the Republican Senate midterm campaign, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
But Trump seems to be reacting not to evidence of fraud, but to vote counts that are narrowing the gap between Democratic Senate and gubernatorial candidates Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum and the presumed Republican victors.
Thus the Florida controversy marks the latest occasion when he is prioritizing his personal interests over a President’s duty to protect the nation’s democracy.
But by intervening personally in the race, the President is casting doubt on the integrity of the election and potentially risking long-term damage to America’s political system itself, which relies on public consent.
His furious intervention contrasts with the reaction of President Bill Clinton during an even higher-stakes confrontation in Florida, the bitterly contested recount in the 2000 presidential election, eventually handed to George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore by the Supreme Court.
Clinton took steps to avoid politicizing the process, reasoning that America’s system depended on him staying out of it.
“I don’t think I should be involved in that,” Clinton said soon after the disputed election.
Trump’s intervention 18 years later is one reason why his critics fear he is oblivious or disdainful of traditional norms governing presidential behavior.
Lashing out at scrutiny
The Democratic capture of the House guarantees an uncomfortable period of investigation and oversight for the White House that the Republican majority deemed unnecessary during his first two years in office.
“They can play that game, but we can play it better, because we have a thing called the United States Senate,” Trump said during a Wednesday news conference.
In the latest worrying sign for the President, top Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler told Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that Democrats would examine hush payments to women who allege past affairs with Trump that may infringe campaign finance laws.
“That might very well be an impeachable offense,” Nadler said.
Trump has denied the alleged affairs.
The President already reacted with fury to the notion of a new era of scrutiny from Democrats, promising a “warlike” posture if it took place, and hinted he could use the mechanisms of government to investigate them during a news conference last week.
The President also acted in a way many observers fear raises First Amendment questions by taking the unprecedented step of confiscating Acosta’s permanent White House press pass after he questioned the President on the migrant caravan.
How deep is the crisis?
Events of the last few days point clearly to an escalating challenge by the White House to political conventions and guardrails, one that could further sharpen if Trump’s reshuffle of top officials rids him of remaining restraining influences.
It is more difficult to assess whether the President’s actions have already tipped the nation into a constitutional crisis or whether the system of checks and balances has kept him on the right side of that line.
After all, two years after he was elected, voters did decide to introduce new accountability in Washington with a Democratic House after Republicans gave no sign they were willing to rein in the President’s excesses.
The courts have tempered some of Trump’s most radical ideas, watering down a Muslim travel ban he authored early in his presidency. Trump’s new use of executive power to limit asylum claims, in an apparent contravention of international law, will soon get its own day in court.
But political systems need to be nurtured constantly if they are to remain healthy. And the President’s rhetoric on the Florida controversy especially seems to edge close to the danger zone.
One veteran observer, Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff for Clinton and defense secretary under President Barack Obama, believes the nation’s institutions are standing firm.
“I think ultimately the institutions that our forefathers put in place are strong enough to be able to survive any administration,” Panetta said Thursday on “The Situation Room.”
But the fact that the question is even relevant is testimony to the darkening mood in Washington.
© 2018 Cable News Network.
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Washington Post
Politics
Democrats signal aggressive investigations of Trump while resisting impeachment calls
By Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz
November 11, 2018 at 7:20 PM
Top Democrats increased pressure on acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker to recuse himself from special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s Russia investigation. (Reuters)
Fresh off a resounding midterm elections victory, House Democrats on Sunday began detailing plans to wield their newfound oversight power in the next Congress, setting their sights on acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker while rebuffing calls from some liberals to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who is poised to take control of the House Judiciary Committee, said he will call Whitaker as a first witness to testify about his “expressed hostility” to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Nadler said he is prepared to subpoena Whitaker if necessary.
Another incoming chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) of the House Intelligence Committee, raised the possibility of investigating whether Trump used “instruments of state power” in an effort to punish companies associated with news outlets that have reported critically on him, including CNN and The Washington Post.
And Democrats on the House Oversight Committee plan to expand their efforts to investigate Trump’s involvement in payments to women who alleged affairs with him before the 2016 election, a committee aide said Sunday night, potentially opening up the president’s finances to further scrutiny.
The moves signal that House Democrats, while wary of the risks of alienating voters who backed the president, are fully embracing their midterm victory last week as a mandate to dig deep into the actions of the executive branch.
“The key lesson that we’ve learned from this last election is that the American people are sick and tired of the Trump administration, and they are looking for a Congress that is going to put a check on the executive branch,” said Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, a former senior aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.
“Some talk about a backlash against the Democrats, but it was a backlash that brought them into power,” he added. “So, I don’t think they will easily be able to be seen as overreaching by the American people.”
Democrats have a long list of legislative items on their agenda for the next Congress. They include long-sought legislation on gun control, as well as a potential overhaul of the federal Higher Education Act and a vote on protecting health coverage for people with preexisting conditions — an issue that many Democrats successfully wielded against their Republican opponents in last week’s midterms.
But investigations are likely to capture the greatest attention on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
At a news conference last Wednesday, Trump laid down a marker for congressional Democrats, warning them that any investigations into his administration would lead to a “warlike posture” that would threaten the prospects of any bipartisan cooperation.
Democrats have previously said they plan to launch investigations into matters ranging from Trump’s tax returns to his administration’s policies on health care, education and immigration.
On Sunday, Schiff added a new possibility to the mix. The incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman pointed to Trump’s effort to block AT&T; from purchasing Time Warner, the parent company of CNN, and his desire to get the U.S. Post Office to increase shipping costs on Amazon.com as potential retaliation against two news outlets the president often complains treats him unfairly. Amazon founder and CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Post.
“The president is not only castigating the press, but might be secretly using instruments of state power to punish them. That’s a great threat to press freedom,” Schiff said in an interview with The Post. He first brought up the potential investigation during an interview with Axios.
President Trump warned on Nov. 7 that if House Democrats launch investigations into him, he will not cooperate with them on bipartisan issues. (Reuters)
Such a probe would not go through Schiff’s committee, but probably the Oversight or Judiciary panels. Schiff said Democrats are convening when they return to Washington this week and he intends to raise it as a priority with his colleagues.
In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dismissed Democratic plans to investigate the administration.
“Well, I don’t think the Democrats are going to be able to stop this agenda, because look at how much we have been able to grow,” McCarthy said. “I know what the Democrats want to do, just investigations and impeachment. But as I have said before, America’s too great for a vision so small.”
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), who is set to become chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter last month to the White House and the Trump Organization requesting documents related to the hush payments. The documents were not provided at the time, but “this should change now that we are in the majority,” a Democratic committee aide said Sunday night. News of the panel’s plans was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The pressure among the Democratic base to move against Trump remains strong: A Washington Post-Schar School poll released last week showed that among voters who supported Democratic House candidates in battleground districts, 64 percent believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against the president.
But party leaders have urged calm, emphasizing that before any serious talk of impeachment, a host of investigations — including Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign — must first be allowed to bear fruit. They also note that a vote to convict requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, which will remain in Republican hands.
“We are not doing any investigation for a political purpose, but to seek the truth,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.
Pelosi, who is seeking to reclaim the speaker’s gavel in the new Congress, described House Democrats as “very strategic” and “not scattershot” and said that her party will be pursuing “a more open Congress with accountability to the public.” Lawmakers will be “seeking bipartisanship where we can find it” and will “stand our ground where we can’t,” she added.
Democrats appear to be focusing their energy on protecting Mueller’s investigation, which some hope may eventually reveal enough about the president to help sway public opinion in their favor and give them enough fodder to launch proceedings against him.
Trump has repeatedly sought to discredit the Mueller probe, denouncing it as a “witch hunt” and arguing that it should have concluded long ago. His ouster of Jeff Sessions as attorney general last week and appointment of Whitaker over Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to supervise the investigation triggered an outcry among Democrats and other critics, who viewed it as a first step toward the possible scuttling of the probe.
Those fears were exacerbated in recent days amid revelations that Whitaker has been openly critical of the Mueller investigation, including in an appearance on CNN in which he floated the notion of a successor to Sessions who “just reduces [Mueller’s] budget to so low that his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”
“The Republicans in Congress have refused to have any checks to perform our constitutional duty, being a check and balance on the president,” Nadler said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We will do that. And this is the first step in doing that. The president may think that he is above the law. He may think that he will not be held accountable, but he will be.”
Nadler echoed other top Democrats who say they should hold their fire on the question of impeachment until they know what Mueller has uncovered. His test, he said, is whether there’s enough evidence to convince even Trump supporters that such a step is necessary.
“Is the evidence so strong . . . [that] when all this is laid out publicly, a very large fraction of the people who voted for the president will grudgingly acknowledge to themselves and to others that you had no choice but to impeach the president?” Nadler said.
Democrats in the Senate will also be pushing for legislation to prevent Whitaker from interfering with the Mueller investigation and will seek to attach it to a must-pass spending bill, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t add this and avoid a constitutional crisis,” Schumer said on CNN. But he demurred when asked if Democrats would shut down the government over it, and said House Democrats should await the Mueller report before considering impeachment.
Trump will probably nominate a permanent attorney general “early next year,” one of his top congressional allies, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
That means that the battle over Whitaker’s role in the Mueller investigation could be largely finished by the time Democrats assume control of the House in January, said Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of Southern California. The greatest tool at Democrats’ disposal will then be their fact-finding ability, he said.
“The key question is, what can we learn about what the executive branch has been doing?” Kerr said. “That matters more than impeachment, given that we won’t get removal from the Senate Republicans.”
Stephen Spaulding, director of strategy at the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause, said that there is a “real pent-up need for oversight” and that Democrats now have an obligation to do the work that outside organizations have largely been doing over the past two years through actions such as Freedom of Information Act requests.
“It’s about following the evidence, asking tough questions,” Spaulding said. “It truly is about accountability. We’ve had two years with one party controlling both houses of Congress and, in some cases, actively undermining investigations. There’s a backlog of answers; at the same time, there has to be a smart and strategic approach.”
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Felicia Sonmez is a national political reporter covering breaking news from the White House, Congress and the campaign trail. She was previously based in Beijing, where she worked for Agence France-Presse and The Wall Street Journal.
Colby Itkowitz currently covers politics and Congress for The Washington Post. She previously covered health policy, anchored the ‘Inspired Life’ blog and co-wrote the ‘In the Loop’ column. She joined the Post in March 2014.
and the following :
“I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.”
Is this at.the bottom of what makes liberals click?
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ABCNews
Special counsel witness says he expects to be charged in Mueller probe
By Ali Dukakis
Nov 12, 2018, 7:52 PM ET
WATCH: President Trump says he doesn’t know Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker after previously saying he had, and some midterm elections are still too close to call.
The former Infowars Washington bureau chief, who recently testified before a federal grand jury in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, tells ABC News that after two months of closed-door talks with investigators, the special counsel has now indicated he will be charged within a matter of days.
“I don’t know what they’re going to charge me with,” said Jerome Corsi in an interview with ABC News on Monday. “I think my only crime was that I support Donald Trump. That’s my crime, and now I’m going to go to prison for the rest of my life for cooperating with them,” he later added.
Corsi is one of more than a dozen individuals associated with political operative Roger Stone – a longtime and close ally of President Donald Trump – who have been contacted by the special counsel. The witnesses, many of whom have appeared before the grand jury impaneled by Mueller’s team, have told ABC News they were asked about Stone’s dealings during the 2016 election and what if any contact he may have had with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange through an intermediary, which Stone denies.
Much remains unknown about Mueller’s interest in Stone. But Corsi has emerged as a central figure of interest to Mueller as he builds his case, sources confirm to ABC News. Corsi, who Stone told ABC News he has known for years, has frequently appeared with Stone on-air for Infowars, where Stone currently serves as a contributor.
Corsi described his experience with the investigation as “a horror show” and “a nightmare,” telling ABC News the special counsel’s probe, “Is an inquisition worthy of the KGB or the Gestapo. I feel like I’ve been through an interrogation session in North Korea in the Korean war.”
Roger Stone, a longtime political adviser and friend to President Donald Trump, speaks during a visit to the Women’s Republican Club of Miami, May 22, 2017, in Coral Gables, Florida.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment on Corsi’s remarks to ABC News.
In recent weeks, ABC News reported that Corsi returned to Washington, D.C., again for more closed-door meetings with special counsel investigators, and was scheduled to make a second appearance before the federal grand jury in the probe. However, Corsi’s second grand jury testimony was ultimately canceled, and Corsi says prosecutors with the special counsel’s office told his attorney to expect forthcoming charges.
Reached by ABC News on Monday, Corsi’s lawyer, David Gray, declined to comment on the matter.
Shortly after his interview with ABC News, Corsi hosted a live stream on his YouTube page in which he reiterated his expectation to be indicted, telling supporters; “I fully anticipate in the next few days to be indicted by Mueller.”
Mueller’s interest in Corsi is believed to stem from his alleged early discussions about efforts to unearth then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails. The special counsel has evidence that suggests Corsi may have had advance knowledge that the email account of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, had been hacked and that WikiLeaks had obtained a trove of damning emails from it, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told ABC News.
Corsi’s account to ABC News of his time spent with investigators also identifies Wikileaks’ release of Podesta’s hacked emails as key to the special counsel’s inquiry of him.
In response to ABC News’ interview with Corsi, Stone defended Corsi as “a man who has been squeezed hard but refuses to do anything but tell the truth,” and called into question both his and Corsi’s alleged connections to Wikileaks.
“Where is the Russian collusion? Where is the Wikileaks collaboration? Where is proof that I knew about the theft or content of John Podesta’s emails or the content or the source of any of the allegedly hacked or stolen e-mails published by Wikileaks?” Stone asked, rhetorically.
“They seem to think you know that I knew in advance what Assange was going to do; I’m not going to go into details at this point, but that was the basis of it,” said Corsi. “And as far as I can recall, I had no contact with Assange. And that didn’t seem to satisfy them.”
In response to ABC News’ interview with Corsi, Stone defended Corsi as “a man who has been squeezed hard but refuses to do anything but tell the truth,” and called into question both his and Corsi’s alleged connections to Wikileaks.
Corsi said he was first approached in late August by FBI agents at his home in New Jersey, who presented him with a subpoena to testify before Mueller’s grand jury. Corsi added that over the last two months, he’s spent 40 hours with investigators over the course of six meetings, which he says have included special counsel prosecutors and an FBI agent.
After the subpoena was served, Corsi said that he decided to cooperate with the special counsel’s office.
“I had two computers that I used, I handed them both over, a time machine that recorded all the emails in my computer in a contemporaneous state 2016 – completely unaltered,” he said. “I worked with the FBI at Quantico so that they could easily recover all my tweets and my Google account. My Google account they could see every place I’ve been, every click I’ve made, everything Google records.”
After the FBI’s visit, Corsi said, he and his attorney agreed to cooperate with the special counsel’s office and proffered to meet with special counsel investigators to answer their questions. “They have everything: Electronic surveillance – everything electronic probably that I ever did in my life if they wanted – every credit card, every phone call, every email, and I turned it all over to them as well,” he added.
Declining to give specific details on the matter until Corsi learns what he’s potentially charged with, he said the special counsel initially wanted him as a witness and told him he had not committed any crimes.
“And then it blows apart…at the end of two months…this deteriorates, and after a while, my mind became mush,” he said. “And every time I’m scared to death.”
Corsi said that from there, after two months of questioning, things deteriorated between him and investigators.
“They make it sound like it all fell apart and they were constantly pressing me on did I have a contact with Assange, and – to the best of my knowledge – I never had a contact with Assange,” Corsi said to ABC News. “And they just couldn’t believe that because they said I seemed to know too much about what Assange was going to do. And I said you know that’s what I do in my business: I try to connect the dots.”
While Corsi is not a widely-recognized figure, his handiwork in the political arena has at times become very well known. He has served as the pioneer of several enduring political smear campaigns during national campaigns throughout the 2000s.
Corsi’s most penetrating smear campaign is the same one that helped forge his bond with Trump. He is widely considered one of the early promoters of the so-called “birther” movement, which pursued the idea that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in America. The theory was debunked and widely denounced as baseless, racist vitriol. Corsi and Trump have long been blasted for not walking back their claims even after Obama produced his long-form birth certificate. In fact, it was only in the final stretch of his successful 2016 presidential bid that Trump finally acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S.
Corsi has also been cited as one of the architects of a 2004 effort to bring then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry’s war record into question through a 527 political organization called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The group attempted to cast doubt on Kerry’s Vietnam War record and question the injuries he sustained when he earned decorations that include a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts.
Corsi claims that his work is part of the reason he believes investigators are probing him.
“My conclusion was as much as they say they want only the truth, I believe that they have a narrative and they’re looking for fast facts to fit their narrative,” he said. “I’ve written 20 books since 2004 and I have reason to believe…that this is payback for those books.”
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, when Corsi joined the controversial conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ right-wing outlet, Infowars, Jones reportedly boasted that Corsi “had a history” with Trump, and that the two had been acquainted for “40-plus years.”
When ABC News asked if he would be open to making a plea deal with the special counsel’s office should they charge him in coming days, Corsi replied, “What’s there to be a plea deal with?” and expressed his suspicions about the possible charges investigators may claim against him.
“They said I didn’t commit any crimes. I can’t remember all my emails I can’t remember all my phone calls, [and] I tell them that. It’s impossible; it’s a perjury trap from the moment you get going,” Corsi said.
“My crime is that I didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear. They won’t believe it, but this is the most frightening experience of my lifetime. I’m being punished for trying to cooperate with them in a game that I was set to lose,” he added. “I couldn’t win this game…it wasn’t a game; I was trying to tell them the truth. But you forget that somebody was in a meeting and you lied to them.”
© 2018 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.
During the visit to France, the French President scolded Trump for taking a too narrow nationalistic view , reminding him of the world wars being fought in the narrow spectrum of such enclosed boundaries of identification.
Perhaps it is a misaligned policy, not yet drastically experienced by current generational motives, which may appear as a less caring of the U.S. for European security and interests.
Is su h nothing but am over reaction by a Europe more sensitive to such problems?
Is Nixon’s futuristic warning coming to be ascertained? And is it not ironic , that Trump is on a kind of watch for similar trespasses as Nixon was?
Is a kind of National Democracy a sheep of a different type here, but under lying the same perceptions?
This test is ongoing currently and difficult to gage.