Trump enters the stage

Opinion
Mitch McConnell is destroying the Senate – and American government
Robert Reich
The majority leader cares only for winning, not rules or democracy itself. He is doing more damage than Trump

The Hill to Die On: Trump and a Republican dumpster fire
Sat 6 Apr 2019 07.22 EDT Last modified on Sat 6 Apr 2019 09.39 EDT
No person has done more in living memory to undermine the functioning of the US government than the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

‘Our mantra is chaos’: Republican researchers target 2020 Democrats

Yes, Donald Trump has debased and defiled the presidency. He has launched blistering attacks on Democrats, on judges he disagrees with, journalists who criticize him and the intelligence community.

But McConnell is actively and willfully destroying the Senate.

Last Wednesday he used his Republican majority to cut the time for debating Trump’s court appointees from 30 hours to two – thereby enabling Republicans to ram through even more Trump judges.

McConnell doesn’t give a fig about the Senate, or about democracy. He cares only about winning. On the eve of the 2010 midterm elections he famously declared that his top priority was for Barack Obama “to be a one-term president”.

Between 2009 and 2013, McConnell’s Senate Republicans blocked 79 Obama nominees. In the entire history of the United States until that point, only 68 presidential nominees had been blocked.

McConnell’s long game is destroying what was once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body

This unprecedented use of the filibuster finally led Senate Democrats in 2013 to change the rules on some presidential nominees (but not the supreme court), to require simple majorities.

In response, McConnell fumed that “breaking the rules to change the rules is un-American”. If so, McConnell is about as un-American as they come. Once back in control of the Senate he buried Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the supreme court by refusing even to hold hearings.

Then, in 2017, McConnell and his Republicans changed the rules again, ending the use of the filibuster even for supreme court nominees and clearing the way for Senate confirmation of Trump’s Neil Gorsuch.

Step by step, McConnell has sacrificed the Senate as an institution to partisan political victories.

There is a vast difference between winning at politics by playing according to the norms of our democracy, and winning by subverting those norms.

To Abraham Lincoln, democracy was a covenant linking past and future. Political institutions, in his view, were “the legacy bequeathed to us”.

On the eve of the Senate’s final vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act in July 2017, the late John McCain returned to Washington from his home in Arizona, where he was being treated for brain cancer, to cast the deciding vote against repeal.

In a small town where people don’t lock their doors or windows, the first thief can effortlessly get into anyone’s house

Knowing he would be criticized by other Republicans, McCain noted that over his career he had known senators who seriously disagreed with each other but nonetheless knew “they had an obligation to work collaboratively to ensure the Senate discharged its constitutional responsibilities effectively”.

In words that have even greater relevance today, McCain added that “it is our responsibility to preserve that, even when it requires us to do something less satisfying than ‘winning’.”

Political success should never be measured solely by partisan victories. It must also be judged by the institutional legacy passed onward. The purpose of political leadership is not merely to win. It is to serve.

In any social or political system it’s always possible to extract benefits by being among the first to break widely accepted norms. In a small town where people don’t lock their doors or windows, the first thief can effortlessly get into anyone’s house. But once broken, the system is never the same. Everyone has to buy locks. Trust deteriorates.

Those, like Mitch McConnell, who break institutional norms for selfish or partisan gains are bequeathing future generations a weakened democracy.

Officials forced way in to Stephen Moore home after failure to pay ex-wife debts

The difference between winning at politics by playing according to the norms and rules of our democracy, and winning by subverting them, could not be greater. Political victories that undermine the integrity of our system are net losses for society.

Great athletes play by the rules because the rules make the game. Unprincipled athletes cheat or change the rules in order to win. Their victories ultimately destroy the game.

In terms of shaping the federal courts, McConnell has played “the long game”, which, incidentally, is the title of his 2016 memoir. Decades from now, McConnell will still be shaping the nation through judges he rammed through the Senate.

But McConnell’s long game is destroying what was once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body.

He is longest-serving leader of Senate Republicans in history but Mitch McConnell is no leader. He is the epitome of unprincipled power. History will not treat him kindly.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US

© 2019 Guardian News & Media Limp

POLITICS
Trump, Who Bragged About Grabbing Women’s Genitals, Mocks Joe Biden Over Inappropriate Behavior — and Biden Claps Back

ADAM CARLSONPosted on April 04, 2019 9:15PM

In a surreal tweet on Thursday, President Donald Trump mocked former Vice President Joe Biden after several women came forward to say that Biden had behaved inappropriately around them over the years, invading their personal space and touching them in ways that left them feeling uncomfortable.

For Trump — who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct and assault by more than a dozen other women, all of which he denied — it was fodder for his favorite political tactic: trolling. In the coming weeks, Biden is widely expected to launch a bid against Trump for the presidency.

The president on Thursday released a short clip from a longer video that Biden had posted on Wednesday in response to the controversy over his behavior.

In the clip tweeted by Trump, a picture of Biden crudely stalks up behind the real Biden as he speaks to the camera before rising behind Biden’s back, hands on his shoulders. The punchline, such as it is, is clear: Biden can’t resist even creeping himself out.

Trump captioned the post, “WELCOME BACK JOE!”

“I see that you are on the job and presidential, as always,” Biden later replied to him on Twitter.

RELATED: Joe Biden Vows to Respect Personal Space Following Accusations of Inappropriate Behavior

Approximately a half-dozen women have come forward in the media in recent days to say that Biden’s past interactions with them have been uncomfortable and boundary-crossing, with behavior that included back caresses and surprising forehead touches.

Speaking with the Washington Post, one woman said, “I do not consider my experience to have been sexual assault or harassment.” Still, she said, “It was the kind of inappropriate behavior that makes many women feel uncomfortable and unequal in the workplace.”

The first woman to speak out, a Nevada lawmaker named Lucy Flores, said last week that Biden touched her shoulders and kissed the back of her head without consent during an event in 2014.

On Wednesday Biden released a video acknowledging the discomfort he caused. (Biden’s reps have not responded to PEOPLE’s request for comment; a spokesman declined to comment to the Post on specific women’s stories, instead referring to his video.)

“Today, I want to talk about gestures of support and encouragement I’ve made to women and some men that have made them uncomfortable,” he said.

“In my career, I’ve always tried to make a human connection — that’s my responsibility, I think,” Biden continued, explaining that he often will “shake hands, hug people, or grab men and women by the shoulders and say, ‘You can do this.’ ”

“I worked my whole life to empower women,” he said. “So the idea that I can’t adjust to the fact that personal space is important, more important than it’s ever been, is just not thinkable. I will.”

Biden also tweeted: “Social norms are changing. I understand that, and I’ve heard what these women are saying. Politics to me has always been about making connections, but I will be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future. That’s my responsibility and I will meet it.”

RELATED: Joe Biden Says ‘Expressions of Affection’ ‘Not Once — Never’ Came from Inappropriate Intentions

Trump’s mockery of Biden brings into relief the differences between the allegations against them: Former PEOPLE reporter Natasha Stoynoff said Trump forcibly kissed her during a 2005 interview. “Within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” she recalled in 2016.

Summer Zervos, who is suing Trump for defamation, said he kissed and groped her without consent in 2007. Alva Johnson, a former Trump campaign staffer, said he forcibly kissed her in 2016. Various other women have accused Trump of groping them.

Trump has vigorously denied the sexual misconduct allegations.

He notoriously bragged about touching women without permission during a 2005 segment on Access Hollywood, audio of which was leaked to the Post before the 2016 election.

The president said then: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. … When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p—-. You can do anything.”

Trump Bashes Mueller, Democrats and New York Times in Latest Round of Tweets

Ibn Safir
Today 10:04am
Filed to:DONALD TRUMP
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Image: Getty Images
Trump took to Twitter to bash Robert Mueller and his 400-page report.

labeling the investigation a “witch hunt” that found “no collusion,” Trump told followers that “the Democrats, no matter what we give them, will NEVER be satisfied.”

His tweets come as reports that members of the special counsel team have been frustrated by attorney general William Barr’s 4-page summary of their findings. In response, the House Judiciary Intelligence and Oversight committees have all redoubled their efforts to probe different aspects of Trump’s financial dealings before and during his campaign, including a formal request from the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal for his tax returns dating back to 2013.

Trump’s tweets do not mention his taxes.

“Why should I be defending a fraudulent Russian Witch Hunt,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “It’s about time the perpetrators of this fraud on me and the American People start defending their dishonest and treasonous acts. How and why did this terrible event begin? Never Forget!”

Claiming the Mueller investigation was helmed by “13 angry hating dems” who found no evidence of collusion after spending $30 million on a 672-day investigation.

While Barr’s self-imposed deadline to release a redacted Mueller report is coming within the coming days, Trump claimed he had yet to see the document, while asserting his right to do so at his discretion.

“I have not read the Mueller Report yet, even though I have every right to do so,” Trump tweeted. “Only know the conclusions, and on the big one, No Collusion.”

His latest tweet storm came a day after he slammed a New York Times report that said the Mueller probe was more damaging than Barr made it out to be. Falling back on his “fake news” kabuki, Trump said the Times has “no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report.”

“In fact, they probably had no sources at all!”

© 2018 Gizmodo Media Group


Biden calls Trump a ‘tragedy in two acts’ who is ‘locked in the past’
LEDYARD KING AND MAUREEN GROPPE | USA TODAY | 2:55 pm EDT April 5, 2019

Former Vice President Joe Biden promised to be respectful of people’s personal space after allegations of unwanted and inappropriate behavior.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday called President Donald Trump a “tragedy in two acts” for the way he characterizes people and is consumed with personal grievances.

“This country can’t afford more years of a president looking to settle personal scores,” Biden said in a speech to union workers. “This country can’t afford four more years of a president locked in the past.”

Biden, who is expected by many to announce his entry into the 2020 presidential race in the coming weeks, spoke to a packed, and friendly crowd of electrical workers at a Washington hotel.

His remarks came the day after Trump poked fun at Biden’s recent explanation that his propensity for touching other people was about making a “human connection.”

“People got a kick out of it,” Trump said Friday of the doctored video of Biden he’d tweeted. “He’s going through a situation. You’ve got to sort of smile a little bit.”

After Biden’s speech, Trump tweeted that he has the support of members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

“I’ve employed thousands of Electrical Workers,” Trump said. “They will be voting for me!”

But Kraig Lee, a 49-year-old Republican from Vicksburg, Michigan, who attended the speech, said Trump’s “pockets of support are shrinking" in his state.

“Hate can only carry you so far and he’s very divisive,” Lee said.

Biden was more than halfway through his 40-minute speech before he mentioned Trump directly. He said Trump opposes the core values and beliefs of the nation in the way he treats people.

“What in the hell is happening?" Biden asked. "Our children are listening.”

Biden had invited four children up on stage, joking as he draped his arm around a boy that “he gave me permission to touch him.”

He’d made a similar comment at the beginning of his appearance after he hugged IBEW international president Lonnie Stephenson.

Biden’s speech was his first following allegations of unwanted touching by several women.

Besides acknowledging with humor the recent controversy about his affectionate style, Biden also addressed what he called criticism from some on the far left for his willingness to work with Republicans.

Biden was forced to backtrack last month after being lambasted by progressives and LGBTQ activists for calling Vice President Mike Pence a decent guy this month.

The longtime politician made the case for Democrats and Republicans forging personal connections so the two parties can find ways to compromise instead of attacking each other.

“Hard to get to yes in a compromise when you can’t even talk to one another,” he said. “Democrats and Republicans can do better.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, Biden defended himself against criticism that the Democratic Party has become more liberal than he is. Biden said that while the definition of “progressive” seems to have changed into whether someone calls themselves a socialist, most members of the party are still basically liberal-to-moderate Democrats “in the traditional sense.”

“We’ll find out whether I can win in a primary,” he said.

Biden also said his intention has been to be the last Democrat to announce if he decides to enter the 2020 campaign.

“Give everybody else their day, then I get a shot, then off to the races,” he said.

Joe Biden apology tour?: Don’t expect former veep to dwell on allegations in Friday speech

Trump’s tweet: Mocking Biden, Trump tweets bizarre doctored video appearing to show former VP sniffing own hair

The IBEW members Biden spoke to are the kind of blue-collar workers who helped propel Trump to the White House in 2016.

"It’s good to be home,” Biden said after walking on stage. “You guys brung me to the dance”

Biden served 36 years representing Delaware in the U.S. Senate before his time as vice president.

Most polls have him leading the race for the Democratic nomination, according to RealClearPolitics.

The timing of that decision has been complicated by allegations of improper conduct that began when Lucy Flores, a former member of the Nevada Legislature, accused Biden in a March 29 New York Magazine article of “demeaning and disrespectful” behavior for an alleged 2014 incident.

Stacey Abrams on Biden: ‘We cannot have perfection as a litmus test’

Steve King:Iowa congressman calls Biden ‘an affectionate guy’ as allegations swirl

Since then, at least six other women have come forward with similar stories of Biden’s unwanted conduct.

Biden, known for his hugging and hands-on politicking style, promised to be more “mindful and respectful” in a video released Wednesday.

Former Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Construction and Maintenance Conference at the Washington Hilton in Washington D.C. With Joe Biden making headlines for an apparent inappropriate interaction with Lucy Flores, a photo has resurfaced of Biden with Stephanie Carter.
JACK GRUBER, USA TODAY
“Social norms are changing. I understand that, and I’ve heard what these women are saying,” he said in a tweet accompanying the video. “Politics to me has always been about making connections, but I will be more mindful about respecting personal space in the future. That’s my responsibility and I will meet it.”

Opinion:Joe Biden’s physicality is a mark of old-school politicians, not a creepy old man

‘More mindful’: Joe Biden says he’ll be ‘more mindful’ of people’s personal space

The allegations against Biden come amid #MeToo, a movement of mostly women speaking out against inappropriate behavior. It has led to the resignation and downfall of more than 100 entertainers, executives and politicians, including Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and Kevin Spacey.

Former Minnesota Democrat Sen. Al Franken announced his resignation in 2017 following accusations of sexual misconduct. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., also stepped down, along with Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who resigned amid reports he discussed with female staffers the possibility they could be surrogates for his and his wife’s baby.

Trump has been accused of having affairs with multiple women and making unwanted advances at others. In an “Access Hollywood” tape that surfaced during the final weeks of the presidential campaign in 2016, Trump was heard making lewd comments and bragging about groping women’s genitals. Trump has denied the allegations.

Contributing: David Jackson, USA TODAY.

Originally Published 10:39 am EDT April 5, 201

© Copyright Gannett 2019

His retroactive romanticism has touched too many dreamers, and disillusioned ones, whose escape from reality has actually have absolutely no recourse into any other viable point of view , no less a tangible political basis for even an abstract version of pragmatic governance.

Is this the beginning of a germ of disillusionment, growing into a barren tree of acknowledgement of failure, whereupon the disparity may only be overcome by less subtle means?

Will the technical centre for ideological hunger, be successful, in transcending these differences?

Will a new meaningful architecture be revealed thereof the moment of reckoning, be passed over by proper equivalency between the judicially aware? This last possibility may already be in full bloom, and the harvest may reveal surprising things in this regard.


What we know about Mueller’s case against Trump on obstruction of justice
Recent leaks suggest tension between Attorney General Barr and members of Mueller’s team.
By Andrew Prokop on April 8, 2019 8:00 am

Attorney General William Barr departs the White House on February 15, 2019. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Serious tensions appear to be emerging between members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and Attorney General William Barr on obstruction of justice.

Mueller team members have told associates their evidence against Trump on obstruction is “alarming and significant,” per the Washington Post. Some of them feel Barr’s letter to Congress didn’t properly describe “derogatory information,” according to CNN. And one official told NBC News the report includes new material that’s not publicly known.

Yet Mueller’s report did not say whether or not Trump’s conduct qualified as criminal, and Barr then declared that, per his review of the evidence, it did not.

But the recent leaks suggest Mueller team members think Barr’s assessment was too benign — and that there’s more to the story.

One possibility of what’s going on is that Mueller’s team outlined an extensive pattern of troubling behavior from Trump that raised obstruction concerns, but that Barr concluded there was no one incident that qualified as slam dunk” obstruction of justice. And in fact, since the obstruction debate began legal experts have disagreed on the strength of the publicly known evidence — some told Vox the case was already damning, while others said it wasn’t quite there.

There could be other reasons for the disagreement; for instance, Barr could be taking an extremely generous view of Trump’s intent. We won’t know for sure until Mueller’s fuller report is released.

But to understand the increasingly contentious debate over whether the president obstructed justice, it’s worth reviewing what we already know Mueller investigated. From that, it’s easy to see how some prosecutors may have concluded there was an extremely obvious pattern of obstruction of justice from Trump — while others may have thought there was no one example strong enough to justify a charge.

  1. Trump’s interactions with James Comey regarding “loyalty,” Michael Flynn, and the Russia probe
    In the months before Trump fired James Comey, the then-FBI director documented a series of interactions with the new president that he found troubling.

On January 27, 2017, Trump had Comey over for dinner at the White House. According to Comey’s memos, Trump asked for his “loyalty” and told him “I need loyalty.”
On February 14, 2017, the day after National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned, Comey attended a briefing at the White House. When it was over, Trump made clear he wanted everyone but Comey to leave. According to Comey’s memos, Trump said he wanted to “talk about Mike Flynn,” and said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” Comey interpreted Trump to be referring to an FBI investigation into whether Flynn made false statements about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
On March 30, 2017, Trump called Comey. According to Comey’s memos, Trump complained about the FBI’s Russia investigation, calling it a cloud over his presidency, asking what could be done to lift the cloud. Trump also inquired whether Comey could publicly state that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation (which was, to be fair, something Comey had told Trump in private).
On April 11, 2017, Trump called Comey. According to Comey’s memos, Trump complained about the Russia investigation and the “cloud” again, and again asked whether Comey could publicly state that Trump wasn’t personally under investigation.
All of these seem to be efforts from Trump to get the FBI director to do his bidding. The most legally problematic of them may be Trump’s request that Comey drop the Flynn investigation.

But some legal experts have argued that this could be characterized in a more defensible way: as a recommendation of prosecutorial discretion, from the head of the executive branch. Barr himself took this view in a memo he wrote last year, before his appointment as attorney general. Yes, recent norms dictate that a president shouldn’t get involved in investigations, but does that mean such a thing is illegal?

  1. Trump’s decision to fire Comey, and whether it was an attempt to obstruct the Russia probe
    The act that prompted Mueller’s appointment in the first place was Trump’s decision to fire Comey.

Although the White House claimed Comey was fired due to his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, questions immediately arose about whether Trump’s true motivation was to try to obstruct the Russia investigation.

The weekend before Trump fired Comey, the president had White House senior adviser Stephen Miller draft a letter to Comey blasting the Russia probe as “fabricated and politically motivated,” per the New York Times. The letter was never sent.
On May 8, 2017, Trump called Sessions and Rosenstein to the White House to discuss firing Comey. Trump gave Rosenstein Miller’s letter, and Rosenstein said he would write his own memo.
Later that day, Trump tweeted, “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
The next day, May 9, the White House announced Comey’s firing. In doing so, they released a memo from Rosenstein criticizing Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case, a letter from Sessions recommending Comey’s removal. They also released a letter from Trump making public that Comey had told him, “on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”
On May 10, 2017, Trump had a private meeting with Russia’s ambassador and foreign minister in the Oval Office. “I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy a real nut job,” Trump said, according to a document obtained by the Times. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” he added.
On May 11, 2017, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein’s recommendation. “And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’” he said. The statement appeared to directly tie the Russia investigation to Comey’s firing.
The evidence seems clear that displeasure with the Russia investigation was at least part of Trump’s motivation in firing Comey. The potential defense from the president’s team, though, is that this doesn’t necessarily show Trump had corrupt intent aimed at covering up wrongdoing. Rather, Trump could have fired Comey because he sincerely believed the Russia investigation was an unfair witch hunt. Beyond that, Barr’s 2018 memo also argued that the president has the power to fire the FBI director, so that this can’t be an obstructive action.

  1. Trump’s pressures on Jeff Sessions and other officials
    Beyond just Comey, Trump’s contacts with Justice Department and intelligence officials regarding the Russia probe also came under scrutiny. For instance, the special counsel wanted to ask Trump many questions about his treatment of Jeff Sessions.

On March 1, 2017, the Washington Post reported that Sessions had a meeting with the Russian ambassador that he didn’t disclose during his Senate confirmation hearing. Public pressure on Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia investigation ensued.
Around this time, Trump instructed White House counsel Don McGahn to stop Sessions from recusing himself, per the Times. But it didn’t work — on March 2, 2017, Sessions announced his recusal.
Two days later, Trump told Sessions that he should reverse his decision during a private conversation at Mar-a-Lago, per the Times. (Sessions did not do so.)
On May 17, 2017, when Trump got the news that Mueller had been appointed as special counsel, he called Sessions an “idiot” and said he should resign, per the Times.
Sessions then submitted a resignation letter. Trump held onto it until May 31, 2017, but then returned it to Sessions — rejecting the resignation.
But in late July 2017, Trump turned his attention to Sessions again. The president began mocking and berating his own attorney general in tweets and interviews, calling his recusal “unfair to the president” and complaining that Sessions wasn’t looking into “Hillary Clinton or Comey crimes.”
Around the same time, Trump reportedly told White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to get him Sessions’s resignation. Priebus apparently failed to do so, and Trump ended up firing Priebus shortly afterward.
The special counsel may have been probing whether Trump was trying to force Sessions out so he could appoint a replacement who would fire Mueller. Of course, Trump eventually did fire Sessions — but much later, on November 7, 2018, and his replacement did not fire Mueller.

Mueller’s team also interviewed Trump’s top three intelligence officials about their interactions with him.

In March 2017, after Comey confirmed that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign’s Russia ties in congressional testimony, Trump reached out to CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and NSA Director Mike Rogers.
Trump reportedly asked them for help supporting his public narrative of “no collusion” with Russia.
Per one report, Trump also asked Coats to try to get Comey to stop investigating Flynn.
Finally, Mueller even investigated an attempt by Trump to fire … Mueller himself.

In June 2017, just weeks after Mueller’s appointment, Trump told McGahn that he wanted Mueller fired, according to the New York Times. However, McGahn did not carry out the order.
Again we have a pattern of behavior in which Trump expresses great displeasure about the Russia investigation to key officials, and in which he seems to be trying to get officials to bend to his will. But do these complaints and occasional (aborted) actions rise to the level of criminal obstruction of justice?

  1. Trump’s interactions with Russia probe witnesses and defendants
    Mueller has also dug into Trump’s interactions with potential Russia probe witnesses. He’s explored whether Trump dangled pardons to keep associates loyal, Trump’s involvement in crafting false or misleading statements issued by key figures, and Trump’s attacks on hostile witnesses.

In April 2017, two months after Michael Flynn’s ouster as national security adviser, Flynn told associates that he had gotten “a message from the president to stay strong,” according to a report by Michael Isikoff.
At some point in 2017, before Flynn and Paul Manafort had been charged by Mueller, Trump lawyer John Dowd was in contact with lawyers for both men — and “broached the idea” that they could be pardoned, per the New York Times.
On July 8, 2017, Trump’s team strategized over how to respond to questions from the New York Times about a meeting Donald Trump Jr. had had with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in 2016. President Trump then “dictated” a statement for his son to release — but the statement was highly misleading, claiming the meeting was about Russian adoptions. In truth, Don Jr. agreed to the meeting in hopes of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton said to be coming from the Russian government.
The next morning, White House communications director Hope Hicks had a call with the president and Mark Corallo, a spokesperson for Trump’s outside legal team. On the call, Hicks said that Don Jr.’s emails revealing the true purpose of the Trump Tower meeting “will never get out,” per Corallo. (They got out two days later.)
In August 2017, Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen sent a letter to congressional committees several multiple false statements about talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow that had taken place during the campaign. Cohen has since testified about how Trump’s legal team reviewed his testimony in advance, and said he interpreted some statements by Trump as suggestions he should lie.
Trump has also repeatedly attacked witnesses that could be hostile to him in the investigation, such as James Comey and Comey’s deputy Andrew McCabe. He has, for instance, demanded that the Justice Department investigate Comey.
Much depends on the facts here. It’s not clear, for instance, why Trump telling Don Jr. to give a false public statement would necessarily be considered obstruction — lying to law enforcement officials is a crime, but lying to the public isn’t.

We won’t know more until we see what Mueller found, but the debate may not go away even then
As you can tell, there’s … a lot of potential evidence here. But does it add up to criminal obstruction of justice? Barr evidently maintains that it didn’t, and Mueller didn’t say one way or the other.

This may reflect a divide among legal experts that’s been evident for some time. Some have long viewed the public evidence against Trump as quite strong. “If Trump exercises his power — even his lawful power — with a corrupt motive of interfering with an investigation, that’s obstruction,” Lisa Kern Griffin, an expert on criminal law at Duke University, told my colleague Zack Beauchamp in January 2018. “The attempt is sufficient, and it seems to be a matter of public record already.”

But other experts disagreed. Some pointed to the president’s unique role (as Barr did in his memo). Others maintained that Trump’s known acts simply weren’t as clear-cut examples of obstruction as, say, urging witnesses to lie under oath or destroying evidence. “This is not yet the type of case we’d ordinarily see an [obstruction of justice] indictment come out of,” Laurie Levenson, a former prosecutor and law professor at Loyola University, told me last year.

Another potential clue in Barr’s letter is what he writes about the president’s intent. “Corrupt intent” is one of the three requirements Barr says must be proven for an obstruction offense — and, Barr says that in his view, the failure to establish an underlying crime from Trump related to Russian interference suggests Trump’s intent with the many above actions may not have been corrupt. It’s not clear whether Mueller shares this assessment, though recent reports suggest some on his team don’t have such a rosy view.

There’s much we still don’t know about what Mueller found and how both he and Barr reached their respective conclusions. But with Barr saying he expects to release a redacted version of Mueller’s report by mid-April, we’ll know more soon enough — and the American people will get to make up their own minds about whether the president is an obstructive crook.

© 2019 Vox Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Trump removes Secret Service director after ousting Kirstjen Nielsen – live
Trump ordered firing of Randolph Alles, White House confirms, a day after forcing out Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

And Inn the same day, April 8, 2019 the following: >>>>>>>>>

DONALD TRUMP<<<<<<<<<
N.Y. Democratic lawmakers ready new front to obtain Trump’s tax returns
A bill was introduced in the state Legislature that would allow Congress to request the president’s state filings.

April 8, 2019, 8:44 AM ET
By Allan Smith
As congressional Democrats begin what could be a tumultuous battle to obtain President Donald Trump’s tax returns, New York lawmakers are trying to make it easier for them to get their hands on the president’s state filings.

Legislators introduced a bill Monday that would amend the state law to permit the N.Y. Department of Taxation and Finance commissioner to release any state tax return requested by the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation for any “specific and legitimate legislative purpose.” The bill seeks to amend state laws which generally prohibit the release of such tax information.

If passed, the congressional committees will have to file a request with the state after other efforts to gain access to federal tax filings through the Treasury Department have failed.

The New York Times reported on the legislation earlier Monday.

Democratic state Sen. Brad Hoylman, who is sponsoring the legislation, told NBC News on Monday that he believes it is “imperative” for the New York Legislature to assist Congress with the issue of Trump’s tax filings.

“Donald Trump has broken 40 years of political tradition by not releasing his returns,” Hoylman said. “His representatives say they will block all congressional efforts to obtain those returns through existing procedures. Well, it turns out that New York state has those returns and can do its part to assist the Congress in their oversight responsibility by releasing them to a relevant committee that requests them.”

Though the bill would only apply to the president’s state returns and not the federal ones currently at the center of a Washington battle, tax filings from the president’s home state that additionally serves as the headquarters of his business are likely to contain much of the same information congressional lawmakers are seeking from his federal returns.

And, with the New York Legislature and the governor’s mansion being under Democratic control, there is a path to the bill’s passage, though similar measures did not take off in the state Assembly during the prior legislative session when Republicans held a majority in the state Senate.

Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-New York, speaks to members of the New York State Senate in 2017.Hans Pennink / AP file
This latest effort is not the first made by New York Democrats to reveal Trump’s tax filings. Another bill known as the NY Truth Act, first introduced in 2017, would require the Department of Taxation and Finance to release five years of tax returns from a series of top federal and statewide officials if they earn income in the state. And a bill sponsored by Hoylman would require presidential and vice presidential candidates to reveal their taxes in order to appear on statewide ballots. As the Times reported, similar efforts are under consideration in states such as California and New Jersey.

Hoylman told NBC News that he is hopeful the legislation introduced Monday can pass because it is “narrowly tailored to be responsive to an investigative committee of Congress, and I believe does not result in a broad request for the tax returns of elected officials.”

“This is a very specific bill responding to a very specific request,” he said, adding, “The public rightfully is concerned that their tax information remain private, and this bill only authorizes the state to provide the tax returns to investigative committee upon written request.”

But Ed Cox, chairman of the New York Republican Party, told NBC News the legislation was simply the result of “Trump derangement syndrome.”

“No matter how they dress it up for legal purposes … and they’re trying different wordings to do it, this is aimed at one individual, the president of the United States, with the purpose of re-litigating the 2016 campaign in which the people of the United States knew that he had not released his tax returns and they still elected him president of the United States,” he said. “They want to re-litigate an issue that’s already been decided by the people of this country.”

The bill is “aimed just at” Trump and seeks to remove “rights and privileges that he has as a citizen of the state of New York to keep his tax returns here private,” Cox said.

If the bill passes in the state Legislature, Cox said he believes Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo will sign it into law because it “conforms to his political ambitions to run for president of the United States.”

“He will be a presidential candidate, and he will sign it,” Cox said.

Cuomo ruled out a 2020 presidential bid last year, but later seemed to suggest he could enter the race if former Vice President Joe Biden opts against running.

The governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. The White House declined comment.

The introduction of the bill Monday comes days after House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., formally requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax filings from the IRS under a statute that allows him to demand an individual’s tax returns. If the Treasury Department denies his request, that could set off a legal battle to obtain them.

Responding to that news, Trump told reporters he was “under audit” and would not be releasing the returns.

“I’m always under audit, it seems,” he said. “Until such time as I’m not under audit, I would not be inclined to do that.”

Trump has said he has been under audit since the 2016 election cycle, using that explanation as his rationale for not releasing his returns. Although the IRS has regularly audited presidents and vice presidents since the 1970s, being under audit does not preclude Trump from making his tax information public, nor did it stop past presidents from doing so.

Trump is the only major presidential candidate of either party since the early 1970s not to release his tax returns, and Democrats have pushed for him to release his taxes since the 2016 election.

In a letter Friday to the Treasury Department, Trump’s attorney, William Consovoy, called on the IRS to reject Neal’s request, saying it “would be a gross abuse of power” that could lead to a political tit-for-tat. On Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats will “never” be able to obtain Trump’s tax filings.

“Keep in mind, that was an issue that was already litigated during the election,” he added. “Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns, they knew he didn’t, and they elected him anyway, which is of course what drives the Democrats crazy.”

Another Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, accused Democrats in an interview with ABC"s “This Week” of using the IRS as a “political weapon” to obtain the returns and promised to fight the move if needed.

Democrats, meanwhile, insisted they need to see the returns to know how Trump’s personal holdings and interests may be affecting his decision-making.

Allan Smith
Allan Smith is a political reporter for NBC News
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL

david miliband

David Miliband: the most vulnerable pay for Trump’s ‘manufactured crisis’
Exclusive: IRC chief says US government ‘failing in its most basic responsibilities’ in its handling of border issues

Ed Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Tue 9 Apr 2019 01.00 EDT

Donald Trump is manufacturing a crisis at the US-Mexico border to justify his hardline immigration plans while failing to tackle the real crisis in Central America that is the root of the problem, the head of one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid groups has said.

David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who now leads the International Rescue Committee (IRC), issued a scathing critique of the Trump administration’s handling of border issues. “The US government is failing in its most basic responsibilities, never mind as a global leader but as a local example of how a civilized country should behave,” he said.

In an interview with the Guardian from IRC’s headquarters in New York, Miliband said that Trump’s approach to immigration amounted to “disorder by design”. “The administration needs to create the evidence to justify its immigration policies – it is using the concept of crisis to create the justification for government by executive fiat.”

The national emergency declared by the US president in February to bolster his plans for a border wall were denounced by Miliband as “manufactured crisis”. He said: “By no standards of national or international precedent would you describe it as a crisis, even in the communities affected in the southern US.”

Meanwhile, thousands of vulnerable people are suffering because of the removal of US protections, slow processing of their asylum claims and cuts in federal aid, he said. “The people who pay the price for government policy failure are the most vulnerable and least able to cope, whether Americans who are on the edge or Central Americans who are over the edge. That is a great danger.”

Trump shutting Mexico border would ‘cripple’ El Paso, Republican mayor says
Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, IRC today operates in more than 40 countries, including many war zones. Its global emergency team is currently working to control the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet this week, a member of that same global emergency team was relocated to Arizona to help set up shelters dealing with the fallout of the Trump administration’s treatment of asylum seekers at the southern border. Since February, IRC has been assisting hundreds of migrants dropped by federal agents at Phoenix bus stations, where they are often abandoned with no information, accommodation or onward travel accommodations.

Miliband said that Americans should take that as a wake-up call. “It should be shocking that a global humanitarian charity has to deploy an emergency response worker to the US to help with a situation that is being created by the policy approaches of its own government.”

Miliband’s intervention comes at a time when Trump’s already volatile stance on immigration has taken a dive further into chaos. Last week he sowed panic on both sides of the border when he threatened to close the frontier entirely.

Border crisis: US failure to respond to migration surge has created chaos
The US president has indicated that he wants an even more extreme anti-immigrant posture. He recently withdrew his nominee for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in favor of a “tougher” leader.

Then on Sunday, he orchestrated the resignation of the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. A purge of the leadership of US immigration and security agencies is continuing.

Miliband said he was fearful that the turbulence in the Trump administration could create a vicious circle. “Bad policy already runs the risk of bad outcomes, and the fear then is that bad outcomes induce even worse policy.”

In its new report Disorder by Design: A Manufactured US Crisis, IRC sets out the ways in which Trump policies designed to reduce the numbers of immigrants entering the US illegally have backfired, contributing to the surge in Central American asylum seekers:

In 2017, Trump terminated the Central American Minors (CAM) program that helped parents in the US legally reunite with their children.

In 2018,he scrapped the Temporary Protected Status (TPS), in effect ordering the removal of almost 200,000 El Salvadorans who have been living legally in the US for more than a decade. The move has been blocked by a federal court.

The US government has introduced “metering” at the southern border that limits the number of asylum seekers who can be processed each day.

It has imposed a policy named “Remain in Mexico” that forces the return of asylum seekers across the border while they await immigration hearings. A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday halted the policy as a legal challenge makes its way through the courts.

All these policies, Miliband said, “have no justification by themselves and are deepening the problem that the government says it’s trying to tackle”.

Removing US protections also ran the danger of exacerbating violence and unrest back in the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, which are the source of most immigrants currently presenting at the southern border. El Salvador, with a population of 6 million, is estimated to have more than half a million people either in gangs or associated with them, resulting in one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

The booming business for smuggling people to the US: ‘Everyone wins’
Escalating violence is so severe in El Salvador that IRC recently resumed its aid operations in the country for the first time since the end of the country’s civil war in 1992. By contrast, the US government has pulled the plug – last month Trump ordered the US state department to stop all foreign assistance to the three Central American countries.

“This is a textbook example of a perverse policy response,” Miliband said. “The government has no strategy at all for dealing with the real crisis in Central America.”

He added that there were tried and tested ways of helping Salvadorans stabilize their lives and stay in their own country. “We know what works in El Salvador – there are some very good examples of how to divert people from fleeing to the US.
© 2019 Guardian

USA Today

Alec Baldwin: It ‘would be so easy’ to beat Trump in a presidential election

Alec Baldwin appears in the opening sketch of ‘SNL’ as President Trump.
USA TODAY

Is impersonating a president no longer enough for Alec Baldwin?

The “Saturday Night Live” version of President Donald Trump tweeted about putting himself in the running to be our nation’s leader Monday, via the Twitter handle @ABFalecbaldwin, the official account for the Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation.

“If I ran for President, would you vote for me?” the 61-year-old inquired. “I won’t ask you for any $. And I promise I will win.”

How can he be so sure? Because as he sees it: “Beating Trump would be so easy. So easy. So easy.”

Baldwin added a little bit later: “These tweets save me millions in polling.”

Baldwin’s rep declined to comment on whether he is seriously contemplating entering the presidential race.

Reception of Baldwin’s tweets were mixed.

“Not in a million years, not if my life depended on it, not if you gave me green eggs and ham,” tweeted a user.

“I’m sure Hilary thought so too!!!” another fired back.

“Lol… please run. President Trump would be so happy to defeat such a pompous (expletive) like you!!” wrote a user in a NSFW post.

Others were more positive.

“You got my vote,” a person encouraged.

“Hell yaaaaas!!! Do it!! PLEASE!!!” a user requested. “#Baldwin2020 #TrumpIsAMoron #TrumpIsACriminal

Trump has yet to respond to Baldwin’s tweets on the social media site as of early Tuesday morning.

Alec Baldwin and President Donald Trump
JAMIE MCCARTHY/GETTY IMAGES AND ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
In February, the two sparred after “SNL” mocked Trump’s news conference where he defended his decision to declare a national emergency to help build his border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The president weighed in Sunday morning on Twitter writing: “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? … This is the real Collusion!”

“THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Trump added.

“Trump whines. The parade moves on. #resignalready,” Baldwin replied.

Later Sunday night, he followed-up, questioning if Trump’s tweet had constituted a threat: “I wonder if a sitting President exhorting his followers that my role in a TV comedy qualifies me as an enemy of the people constitutes a threat to my safety and that of my family?”

Contributing: John Fritze, Michael Collins and Kim Willis

More: Alec Baldwin, Donald Trump Jr. exchange Twitter jabs over ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit

More: Hilaria Baldwin fires back at critic who called her ‘annoying’ for sharing miscarriage news

© Copyright Gannett 2019

POLITICO

Donald Trump
A newly released transcript of James Baker’s testimony suggests there were widespread concerns inside the FBI that President Donald Trump had attempted to obstruct the bureau’s investigation into his campaign’s links to Russians. | Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP Images

WHITE HOUSE

Newly released testimony: Former top FBI lawyer says agency concerned Trump obstructed justice
By KYLE CHENEY 04/09/2019 03:17 PM EDT
James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, told lawmakers last fall that there were widespread concerns inside the FBI that President Donald Trump had attempted to obstruct the bureau’s investigation into his campaign’s links to Russians, according to a newly released transcript of Baker’s testimony.

Under questioning in 2018 from a Democratic committee lawyer, Baker described numerous officials who were distressed that the president may have obstructed justice when he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Baker said he had personal concerns and that they were shared by not just top FBI brass but within other divisions and at the Justice Department as well.

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“The leadership of the FBI, so the acting director … The heads of the national security apparatus, the national security folks within the FBI, the people that were aware of the underlying investigation and who had been focused on it,” Baker said, running through a list of officials he said were worried that the president may have fired Comey to hinder the Russia investigation.

Baker said other FBI executives informed him that Justice Department officials raised concerns about obstruction by Trump as well.

His comments, some of which have been revealed in press reports in recent months, were included in a 152-page transcript of Baker’s testimony to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in October 2018, when Republicans led an investigation into the handling of the FBI’s Russia probe. The transcript was released Tuesday by the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), who has been incrementally entering testimony from last year’s investigation into the congressional record.

Attorney General Barr lays out timeline and redaction categories for Mueller report
CONGRESS

Barr: Mueller turned down offer to review Russia probe findings
By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO
Baker’s comments take on added significance in light of the impending release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Mueller inherited the FBI’s Russia probe and the obstruction probe that began after Comey’s firing. In a four-page memo, Attorney General William Barr indicated that Mueller reached no traditional conclusion on the obstruction probe, prompting an outcry from congressional Democrats who demanded more details.

Barr said Tuesday he intends to release a redacted version of Mueller’s findings within a week.

In the transcript of his testimony, Baker added that he was briefed on conversations between former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — who assumed leadership of the FBI after Comey’s firing — and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about whether Rosenstein could wear a wire to gather evidence in an obstruction probe. Though officials close to Rosenstein have called his suggestion a joke, Baker told lawmakers that he had a far different impression.

“This was not a joking sort of time. This was pretty dark,” Baker said.

Baker, who said he didn’t personally meet with Rosenstein but had been informed of his comments by McCabe, described an environment in which Rosenstein was upset that Trump had used his memo criticizing Comey’s leadership of the FBI as a pretense for firing him.

“In the context of those conversations at some point in time I thought it was — my understanding was it was the deputy attorney general who came up with the idea of wearing a wire into a conversation with the president and that my understanding from my conversations with at least with Andy and/or Lisa was that they took it as a serious statement, that it was a serious thing to think about," Baker said.

Baker also recounted, from a discussion he was briefed on by McCabe, that Rosenstein told McCabe two members of Trump’s cabinet had endorsed the notion of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

“[M]y understanding was that there was a conversation in which it was said, I believe by the [deputy Attorney General], that there were — that there were two members of the cabinet who were willing to go down this road already,” Baker told lawmakers.

Other news

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Legality of Trump move to replace Nielsen questioned
The Forgotten Reason Congress Needs to See the Mueller Report
Barr: Mueller turned down offer to review Russia probe findings
Republicans press Trump to drop Herman Cain’s Fed nomination
Trump’s Fed threats meet a firewall: GOP lawmakers
Trump rehashes 1980s real estate feud with Nadler
Poll: Biden tops Democratic field after rough week
Judge denies request for speedy release of Mueller report

© 2019 POLITICO LLC

WHITE HOUSE

Mnuchin: White House lawyers spoke with Treasury Dept. about request for Trump tax returns

The Treasury secretary told a House subcommittee that he had not personally spoken to Trump or to anyone at the White House about the request.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee during a hearing on President Trump’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2020, on April 9, 2019.Patrick Semansky / AP

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April 9, 2019, 12:23 PM ET

By Adam Edelman

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin acknowledged Tuesday that the agency’s lawyers have been in contact with the White House about an official congressional request for six years of President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Mnuchin, however, said that he had not personally spoken to Trump or to anyone at the White House about the request.

During testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Mnuchin revealed that his agency’s legal department had held “informational” discussions with the White House Office of General Counsel about the congressional request for the president’s tax returns, even before the demand was submitted.

“Our legal department has had conversations prior to receiving the letter with the White House General Counsel,” he said.

“They have not briefed me as to the contents of that communication, I believe that was purely informational,” he added.

Last week, House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., formally requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax filings from the IRS under a statute that allows him to demand an individual’s tax returns.

Mnuchin said Tuesday that his department had received the request and that “it is our intent to follow the law.”

Later Tuesday, during a second round of testimony before the Financial Services Committee, he was asked by the panel’s chair, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., if he’d comply with congressional requests for the Trump returns even if it meant he could be fired by the president for doing so.

“As I said before, we will follow the law," he said. “I’m not afraid of being fired at all.”

If the Treasury Department denies Neal’s request, that could set off a legal battle to obtain them.

Trump and other White House officials have indicated that the request is likely to be denied.

Trump told reporters last week that he was “under audit” and would not be releasing the returns — an explanation he has used repeatedly since the 2016 election cycle. Being under audit does not preclude Trump from making his tax information public.

And in a letter Friday to the Treasury Department, Trump’s attorney, William Consovoy, called on the IRS to reject Neal’s request, saying it “would be a gross abuse of power” that could lead to a political tit-for-tat.

Then, on Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday” that Democrats will “never” be able to obtain Trump’s tax filings.

Trump is the only major presidential candidate of either party since the early 1970s not to release his tax returns, and Democrats have pushed for him to release his tax documents since the 2016 campaign.

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WHITE HOUSE

Trump’s Incompetence Is Creating a Stephen Miller Hail Mary

The president put Kirstjen Nielsen in an impossible position, then fired her when she failed to break the law. Can Miller, who orchestrated her downfall, survive his rise to power?

T.A. FRANK

APRIL 9, 2019 5:39 PM

By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Leaving the Trump White House on happy terms is like dying a peaceful death in the wild—possible but exceptional. Lingering torment is the norm. Erstwhile Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who has been dismissed, was already out of favor a year ago, and Donald Trumphad for months been signaling his intention to replace her. He was angry Nielsen didn’t seem to be coming up with inventive work-arounds for the law (like breaking it), and last October he spent about half an hour berating her during a Cabinet meeting.

It’s all very Trumpy. If a job on the farm calls for a border collie, you don’t buy a dachshund. If the church needs a priest, you don’t hire an atheist. But Trump does. He hires people who don’t share his agenda and then gets furious at them for being what they are. Kirstjen Nielsen had minimal management experience didn’t share his worldview. Nor was she prepared to block every border violator from claiming asylum, a response that would have meant ordering an entire bureaucracy to ignore the law. Her executive-branch work had been for the administration of George W. Bush, and any hawkishness on the border was dutiful rather than heartfelt. This wasn’t her fault.

Trump likes to blame others for his incompetence. One can read claims that he was angry to discover that an omnibus spending bill he had signed included minimal wall funding, as if Trump didn’t know that when he signed it. When Trump proposed impossible or impractical policies for addressing a wave of asylum-seeking migrants, like shutting down the border altogether, Nielsen had the unhappy job of explaining the law to him. To be sure, a more dynamic and hard-line leader than Nielsen might have thought of creative alternative ways to stem the flow, but it took someone as bumbling as Trump to pass the buck to D.H.S., like a team that provides no defense and then yells at the goalie when the other side scores.

The border crossings are a genuine mess that Congress has helped to create. They involve arcane laws and regulations such as the “Flores settlement” and the “credible fear” test. But the bottom line is that if you cross the U.S. border with a child in tow and request asylum, you get to enter the country and stay indefinitely. (That’s provided you’re not Canadian or Mexican, because of aforementioned arcane laws.) This has caused a rate of influx that, if D.H.S. is to be believed, is approaching a million people per year. It has also incentivized people to bring children on dangerous journeys overseen by organized crime in Mexico.

If Trump really cared about this problem, he could have prioritized plugging the loopholes and hiring enough immigration judges to process the asylum claims in weeks rather than years. He did, after all, have Republican majorities in the House and Senate for two years. When it came to pushing Congress for legislation, though, Trump synced up with the establishment Republicans and pushed for tax cuts and the torpedoing of Obamacare, either in order to be protected from Democrats as investigations were brewing or else to make things easy for himself with the home team. Nothing on the border got fixed.

To be sure, Trump wouldn’t be the first president who didn’t care about policy details or hated studying up on anything. But being ignorant of specifics means that you must hire very, very well, because you are putting yourself at the mercy of advisers and personnel when it comes to making decisions and trusting them to share your aims. Trump can’t be bothered to look for those people, either.

Today, with Congress in Democratic hands and Trump in a dangerous spot with his base, Trump seems to have decided D.H.S. needs a full-scale purge, and Nielsen is just the start. But the likeliest result is greater disorder. It is reported that White House adviser Stephen Miller is pushing for the ouster of the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, Lee Cissna,whom immigration hawks consider to be a champion of the cause. Since Miller, unlike his boss, understands policy, this is surprising, but Miller may just be playing the role of henchman, spooked by the all the ghosts of colleagues once at his side. There seems to be minimal strategy at work.

There’s also talk of bringing in an “immigration czar,” and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a hard-liner on border enforcement, is said to be under consideration for the post. But policy isn’t always personnel. The law is still the law. That’s why the job of czar or D.H.S. chief is designed to make a failure of anyone who takes it, no matter what they think about immigration. Asylum law is one thing, and what Donald Trump wants is another. You’ll be flayed either for failing to apply the rules or for failing to break them. It’s amazing Nielsen lasted a year.

None of this is great for 2020. Much of the middle is put off by Trump’s erratic behavior and feckless ranting. He has also vowed once more to repeal the Affordable Care Act, handing Democrats the issue of health care, where they have the upper hand. (He must be grateful to Democrats for their willingness to self-combust in identitarian war, scaring off undecided voters.) So he needs his base, much of it is already disaffected over his handling of the border, with close to zero wall construction, and he can’t afford to let it down further.

Being a developer in a big city makes you understand how unimportant rules are for anyone but the little guy, but Trump overestimates the transferability of the rule. Just last week, according to CNN, Trump was telling border agents in Calexico, California, that they should ignore judicial orders on migrants. “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it,” Trump suggested as a message to the court. “We don’t have the room.” But the people in charge told the agents to ignore the president, not the law. Crafty politicians subvert institutions; they don’t nuke them. Once again, Trump’s very crassness is a barrier to his desires. It’s not the best consolation, but it’s not the worst, either.

DONALD TRUMP

GOP worried over Trump’s shakeup at Homeland Security

Some Republican lawmakers are concerned about a “void” in leadership at the agency, while the president denied he’s “cleaning house.”

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in the Oval Office on April 9, 2019.Evan Vucci / AP

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April 9, 2019, 3:43 PM ET / Updated April 9, 2019, 8:10 PM ET

By Dareh Gregorian and Frank Thorp V

President Donald Trump is getting hit with blowback from his own party for his shake-up of the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security.

After the departures of the heads of Homeland Security and the Secret Service, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, urged Trump not to dump Lee Francis Cissna, the head of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who is also rumored to be on the chopping block.

And Grassley criticized the influence of White House adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller, noting that Miller’s controversial reforms have not been effective. “I don’t see a lot of accomplishments,” Grassley said Tuesday.

The powerful senior Republican said he spoke to acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney but would only know if Trump heard the message if Cissna and others “don’t get fired.”

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., expressed sympathy for ousted Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen, who was pressured to resign Sunday. He said she and Trump agreed to go their separate ways, and “then her colleagues on the White House staff, or at least some colleagues named ‘anonymous source,’ they cut her to pieces.”

“They opened her up like a soft peanut,” Kennedy said. “Secretary Nielsen deserved better from her colleagues, when her colleagues for whatever reason decided to gut her like a fish that was a disservice to Secretary Nielsen, to the people of America, and to the President.”

He added that he thinks the backstabbing — Trump adviser Stephen Miller reportedly told Trump Nielsen was too weak for the job — “makes it doubly difficult to try and find somebody to replace her.”

“Secretary Nielsen is not responsible for the wall not being built, she can’t build the wall by herself. It’s not Secretary Nielsen’s fault that we haven’t fixed the asylum laws,” he said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, noted she was involved in the creation of the DHS more than a decade ago and knows “these are vital positions.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., told reporters at the Capitol that the White House should be focusing on working with Congress to fix immigration laws, and should send over the legislative changes they’re looking for.

“It doesn’t matter who he puts in. There’s only so much they can do,” Graham said.

The White House announced Monday that Secret Service Director Randolph Alles was leaving. Trump also withdrew the nomination of Ronald Vitiello to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week.

Acting deputy Homeland Secretary Claire Grady was in line to become acting Homeland Secretary, but offered her resignation Tuesday night, Nielsen said in a tweet. Trump had said he wanted Kevin McAleenan, who was commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, to be acting DHS head.

The Secret Service, ICE and CBP are a part of Homeland Security, and Trump is reportedly considering more changes as well.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told NBC News on Monday he’s concerned about the “void” at DHS.

“We are dealing with a humanitarian and security crisis at the border because Congress has failed to act,” Johnson said. “In addition to congressional dysfunction, I am concerned with a growing leadership void within the department tasked with addressing some of the most significant problems facing the nation.”

VIEW THIS GRAPHIC ON NBCNEWS.COM

Grassley told The Washington Post on Monday he was “very, very concerned” over the possible purge that is set to happen at DHS. But when asked about his worry on camera, Grassley was more reserved saying he was just concerned over former staffers of his who have been dismissed.

The senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said Trump is to blame for the problems at the border.

The president “cannot keep changing personnel, changing strategy, tweeting your way through a problem as serious” as immigration, Schumer said.

“What he’s done by these constant firings, the constant change of policy, is simply created chaos at the border. Nobody knows what the policy will be from day to day and week to week and month to month,” Schumer said. “This erratic, nasty style of governing is not solving any problems.”

The president on Tuesday denied that he was “cleaning house” at DHS and blamed Democrats for the immigration problems.

“I never said I’m cleaning house. I don’t know who came up with that expression,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’re fighting the bad laws, the bad things coming out of Congress” and an asylum situation that’s “ridiculous.”


Warner Bros. Taking Legal Action After Trump Campaign Video Uses ‘Dark Knight Rises’ Score
Erin Nyren
April 9, 2019 8:23PM PDT

Warner Brothers Pictures will file a copyright infringement suit against the White House, the studio has confirmed, after President Donald Trump used music from “The Dark Knight Rises’” score for his latest 2020 campaign video.

“The use of Warner Bros.’ score from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ in the campaign video was unauthorized,” a Warner Brothers spokesperson said in a statement. “We are working through the appropriate legal channels to have it removed.”

The suit will petition for Trump to remove the video from Twitter, where he shared it in a tweet Tuesday. The two-minute video not only utilizes Hans Zimmer’s “Why Do We Fall?” from the 2012 threequel, but also shares the font used for the film’s title cards.

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they call you a racist. Donald J. Trump. Your vote. Proved them all wrong. Trump: The Great Victory. 2020,” declares the video, using the “Dark Knight Rises” font.

The video also attempts to compare Trump’s rise to power with the apparent poor performances of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, as well as Hollywood personalities who have been critical of the president like Amy Schumer and Rosie O’Donnell.

Trump has used pop culture references to promote himself in the past, such as his “Game of Thrones”-style poster bearing the legend “Sanctions Are Coming” — a play on the series’ “Winter Is Coming” catchphrase.

“We were not aware of this messaging and would prefer our trademark not be misappropriated for political purposes,” HBO said in a statement at the time, as well as tweeting “How do you say trademark misuse in Dothraki?” from its official Twitter account.

The White House also used a blockbuster-style during Trump’s first meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

© 2019 PMC. All rights reserved.

William Barr claims Trump campaign was ‘spied’ on under Obama – live
Attorney general tells Senate subcommittee he intends to release reacted version of Mueller’s Trump-Russia report itsel

Erin Durkin in New York

Wed 10 Apr 2019 11.02 EDT
1h ago Trump on Mueller investigation: ‘Everything about it was crooked’
31m ago Barr says he believes there was ‘spying’ on Trump’s campaign
Live feed
7m ago 11:02

Lauren Gambino Lauren Gambino
Bernie Sanders on Wednesday re-introduced his Medicare for all healthcare plan, the Vermont senator’s signature domestic policy proposal that has moved from a fringe, leftwing idea to a progressive litmus test.

The new bill has support from Sanders’ fellow rivals for the 2020 Democratic nomination, including Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren. They had all previously endorsed an earlier version of the bill.

Medicare for all has reshaped the debate over healthcare among Demcorats, pushing the center of gravity on the issue far to the left of what was under consideration when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have accused the Democrats of trying to bring socialism to the US.
Sanders envisions a complete transformation of the US healthcare system. Under Medicare for all, the US would transition to a single payer system run entirely by the federal government.

The bill is largely the same as the one he introduced in 2017. The transition would take place over a four year period, with the age of eligibility for Medicare dropping by 10 years until it reaches age 35 in year three. This differs from a House version of this bill, introduced earlier this year that calls for a two-year transition period.

The plan would cover all medically necessary care including vision and dental. There is, however, one notable change: the newer vision of the bill expands coverage to include home-and community based long-term care services. Private insurers could stay in business only to provide for care that is not covered by Medicare for all, such as elective surgery.

While Sanders likes to proudly point to polling that shows public support for universal healthcare has spiked since his 2016 run, the major barrier for would-be supporters is the price tag.

In an accompanying fact sheet, Sanders says the plan “does not represent any new spending at all. Instead, it represents a rebalance of how our current dollars are spent.” The fact sheet includes several proposals to offset the costs, including several ideas based on raising taxes on the wealthy individuals.


Attorney General William Barr declined to say whether he believes, as Donald Trump does, that the Mueller investigation was illegal or a witch hunt.

“I’m not going to characterize. It is what it is,” he said.

Warren had already released ten prior years of her taxes, according to the Post. Other Democratic presidential candidates including Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Jay Inslee have already released their taxes.
Robert Mueller did not indicate whether he wanted Attorney General William Barr to make a judgment about Donald Trump’s culpability for obstruction of justice.

Mueller’s report did not make a conclusion on whether Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice, instead laying out evidence on both sides. Barr, in his own summary, said he believes Trump did not commit obstruction.

Senator Patrick Leahy asked Barr whether Mueller told him that he wanted to let Congress decide about obstruction. “He didn’t say that to me, no,” Barr said. Leahy then asked if Mueller said that Barr should decide. “He didn’t say that either. But that’s generally how the Department of Justice works,” he said.

Barr said he would explain his conclusion that Trump was not guilty of obstruction, but not yet. “I don’t feel I can do it until the report is out. I think the report contains a lot of the information that would give meaning and content to the decision,” he said.

Attorney General William Barr is defending the Justice Department’s decision to argue in court that Obamacare should be thrown out in its entirety.

Reversing course, the Justice Department backed a judge’s ruling that the healthcare rule is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court had previously upheld it.

“It is a defensible and reasonable legal position,” Barr said.

Barr says he believes there was ‘spying’ on Trump’s campaign
Attorney General William Barr elaborated on his statement yesterday that he is putting together a team to review the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s campaign.

He said he believes there was “spying” on Trump’s campaign, a claim the president has frequently made, and he wants to determine whether that surveillance was justified.

Ken Dilanian
(@KenDilanianNBC)
Barr on why he wants to investigate the origins of the Mueller probe: “I think spying did occur” on the Trump campaign, but “the question is whether it was adequately predicated. I’m not saying it wasn’t.”

April 10, 2019
Michael McAuliff
(@mmcauliff)
Barr says “I think spying did occur” in the Obama administration during the 2016 election. The question is whether it was “predicated.” “I have an obligation to make sure government power is not abused.”

April 10, 2019
Updated at 10.47am EDT
37m ago 10:32

Attorney General William Barr said he would not redact information from the Mueller report to protect Donald Trump’s reputation.

One of the categories of redactions he plans to make is to protect the privacy and reputational interest of third parties not charged with a crime. But when asked in Senate testimony, he said those parties do not include Trump.

“I’m talking about people in private life, not public office holders,” Barr said.

41m ago 10:28

Attorney General William Barr tells the Senate he intends to release a redacted version of the Mueller report itself, as oppose to his own summary of the report.

He plans to make redactions in four categories, the most controversial of which may be protecting the privacy of people who have not been charged with crimes.

52m ago 10:17

On the day of the deadline House Democrats gave the IRS to turn over Donald Trump’s taxes, Trump again refused to release them.

“I would love to give them, but I’m not going to do it while I’m under audit. It’s very simple,” Trump said outside the White House.

The House Ways and Means committee has requested the returns from the IRS under a law that allows them to obtain the taxes of any citizen.

Trump noted he won the election despite breaking with the practice of all nominees in recent history and refusing to release them. “Frankly the people don’t care,” he said.

Peter Baker
(@peterbakernyt)
Every president’s taxes are audited automatically under IRS policy and yet every president over the last four decades has released their returns anyway. t.co/ypgC3afchx

April 10, 2019
Updated at 10.33am EDT

US politics live
William Barr

Trump administration

Trump-Russia investigation
© 2019 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.


ABCNews
As Democrats’ deadline for Trump’s tax returns looms, he doubles down: ‘I won’t do it’
By Lucien Bruggeman
Apr 10, 2019, 11:17 AM ET

WATCH: Congressional Democrats have requested President Donald Trump’s taxes, but both sides are digging in for what could be a long fight.
On the day House Democrats marked as a deadline for the IRS to respond to their request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, the president on Wednesday doubled down on his position that he won’t be making them public – at least for now.

In doing so, the president reiterated his oft-cited rationale for withholding his tax information: claiming they were under audit – although that has never been confirmed.

“I would love to give them, but I’m not going to do it while I’m under audit. It’s very simple,” Trump told reporters gathered at the White House South Lawn as he left for a trip to Texas.

President Donald Trump speaks to the press prior to departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, April 10, 2019.
But less than 24 hours earlier, the president’s own IRS commissioner, Charles Rettig, told lawmakers there are no rules prohibiting a taxpayer under audit from releasing their tax information, when asked at a congressional hearing.

"I think I’ve answered that question,” Rettig told the House Appropriations Committee during a budget hearing on Wednesday. “No,” he said.

Rettig faces a Wednesday deadline to respond to a letter from the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who last week formally requested Trump’s business and personal tax information dating back to 2013.

In a hearing Wednesday morning before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rettig declined to say whether he would comply with Democrats’ request.

“We received the letter, we’re working on the letter with counsel, and we anticipate responding,” Rettig told the panel.

© 2019 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.


Annulment Clause:::

Two attorneys general from the District of Columbia and Maryland have filed lawsuits arguing the Trump International Hotel in Washington.

Trump hotels exempted from ban on foreign payments under new stance
A narrow justice department interpretation of the emoluments clause gives countries leeway to curry favor with the president via commercial deals

Peter Stone in Washington

Tue 9 Apr 2019 02.00 EDT Last modified on Wed 10 Apr 2019 07.42 EDT
The Department of Justice has adopted a narrow interpretation of a law meant to bar foreign interests from corrupting federal officials, giving Saudi Arabia, China and other countries leeway to curry favor with Donald Trump via deals with his hotels, condos, trademarks and golf courses, legal and national security experts say.

The so-called foreign emoluments clause was intended to curb presidents and other government officials from accepting gifts and benefits from foreign governments unless Congress consents.

But in a forthcoming article in the Indiana Law Journal, the Washington University Law professor Kathleen Clark reveals justice department filings have recently changed tack. The new interpretation, Clark says, is contained in justice filings responding to recent lawsuits lodged by attorneys generals and members of Congress.

Clark’s article notes that in more than 50 legal opinions over some 150 years justice department lawyers have interpreted the clause in a way that barred any foreign payments or gifts except for ones Congress approved. But filings by the department since June 2017 reveal a new interpretation that “… would permit the president – and all federal officials – to accept unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as the money comes through commercial transactions with an entity owned by the federal official,” the professor writes.

The justice department stance now closely parallels arguments made in a January 2017 position paper by Trump Organization lawyer Sheri Dillon and several of her law partners. On 11 January 2017, just days before he was sworn in, Dillon said Trump isn’t accepting any payments in his “official capacity” as president, as the income is only related to his private business. “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office,” Dillon said.

That goes against what many experts believe.

“For over a hundred years, the justice department has strictly interpreted the constitution’s anti-corruption emoluments clause to prohibit federal officials from accepting anything of value from foreign governments, absent congressional consent,” Clark told the Guardian.

‘Instead of defending the republic against foreign influence, the department is defending Trump’s ability to receive money from foreign governments.’ Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty
“In 2017, the department reversed course, adopting arguments nearly identical to those put forward by Trump’s private sector lawyers. Instead of defending the republic against foreign influence, the department is defending Trump’s ability to receive money from foreign governments,” Clark added.

A justice department spokesperson declined to comment, but pointed to its filings in the emoluments lawsuits which Clark has noted contain five arguments similar to those used by Trump’s business lawyers. Among the key justice arguments is that the foreign emoluments clause only was intended to prohibit the president accepting gifts and employment compensation from a foreign government, but allows him to benefit from what it calls “commercial transactions”.

Other legal scholars also voice strong qualms about the justice department’s current position on emoluments and criticize the administration’s lax attitude about conflicts involving Trump and his business empire.

“The heart of the matter is that these are clauses meant to guard against undue foreign influence and conflicts of interest,” John Mikhail, a professor at Georgetown Law Center, said.

There’s a perception among lobbyists for foreign governments that the White House is for sale

Robert Baer, CIA veteran
Two attorneys general from the District of Columbia and Maryland have filed lawsuits arguing the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where numerous foreign and state delegations have stayed or hosted events, has violated the anti corruption clauses. Some 200 members of Congress have also filed a lawsuit alleging that Trump has conflicts of interest in at least 25 countries.

The inspector general at the General Services Administration, which oversees the government-owned Old Post Office building leased by the Trump International Hotel, has faulted the agency for “improperly ignoring (the) emoluments clauses” and for conflicts of interest involving the hotel while Trump is in office.

Former intelligence officials also expressed concerns. “There’s a perception among lobbyists for foreign governments that the White House is for sale,” said Robert Baer, a 21 year CIA veteran with a Middle East background. “It’s a counter intelligence nightmare.”

The Trump Organization did pledge that while Trump was president it would donate any profits from foreign entities to the treasury. To that end it has written checks for $342,000 to the government covering the years 2017 and 2018. But some ethics watchdogs have questioned the methodology for calculating these payments, arguing it doesn’t account for foreign revenues to Trump businesses which overall have had yearly losses.

Further critics note that while Trump opted to let his two sons run his real estate businesses, and pledged he would not be involved with it as long as he was president, he has not been shy about publicly touting his properties including his Scottish golf course.

A chief focus of critics and the emolument lawsuits has been the Trump International Hotel which has become a mini mecca for numerous foreign delegations – including ones from Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey and the Philippines – who have used it for overnight stays and various meetings.

When foreign powers patronize the president’s businesses it creates an enormous national security risk

Mike Carpenter
The hotel is leased from the GSA for 60 years and located on Pennsylvania Avenue just a few blocks from the White House. The IG’s report this January said the lease should have been reviewed again with Trump’s election to determine if it was in violation of the emoluments clause.

Critics of Trump’s ongoing ties to the Trump International and his business empire also note that some countries with major political and business problems in Washington have frequented his properties. “It appears that President Trump may be benefiting from foreign use of his properties designed to influence his decisions,” said the former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards.

For instance, a 60-person Malaysian government delegation stayed at Trump International in the fall of 2017 at a time when the justice department was conducting a major corruption investigation of Malaysian officials including the then prime minister, Najib Razak, who had a White House meeting with Trump during their stay, as first reported by radio station WAMU and Reveal.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for Saudi Arabia, which has aggressively courted Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, spent at least $270,000 at his DC hotel after Trump won the election, booking 500 rooms over an estimated three-month period, according to a Washington Post report.

Last March, a Saudi delegation traveling with the country’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seemed to enjoy a lavish stay at Trump’s New York hotel, which helped to reverse a two-year revenue decline at the property, according to the Washington Post.

These foreign dealings with Trump hotels are exhibit A for many critics of the weak kneed enforcement of the emoluments clause in the Trump era.

“This administration gives off every appearance of turning the White House into a giant cash register,” said Mikhail. “ Rather than drawing bright lines between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration they seem intent on blurring those lines.”

The lawsuits have to wend their way through the courts – which could see tough battles given mixed court rulings thus far. But critics in Congress and outside are raising more questions about emoluments and Trump’s business conflicts as new issues keep arising.

“Congress now must conduct independent oversight so the American people can determine for themselves whether the President is acting in our nation’s best interests or his own,” said congressman Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House committee on oversight and reform.

Mike Carpenter, who served on the National Security Council in the Obama years, added: “When foreign powers patronize the president’s businesses it creates an enormous national security risk.”

• This article was amended on 10 April 2019. An earlier version said that the Trump Organization had written checks for $342m to the government covering the years 2017 and 2018, when it should have been $342,000.

© 2019 Guardian News & Media

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
Barr says he thinks the government spied on the Trump campaign
Ahead of the attorney general’s Senate testimony Wednesday, the president praised him for “getting started on going back to the origins of exactly where [the Russia probe] all started.”

“There is a basis for my concern [that the Trump campaign had experienced “spying”], but I’m not going to discuss the basis,” Barr told lawmakers Wednesday.Mark Wilson / Getty Images

By Rebecca Shabad
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr, defending his decision to order a review of the Trump-Russia probe’s origins, told a Senate panel Wednesday that he thinks “spying did occur” by the government on President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“For the same reason we’re worried about foreign influence in elections…I think spying on a political campaign — it’s a big deal, it’s a big deal,” Barr said in response to a question from the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee, Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who had asked why Barr is looking into the origins of the investigation.

Barr said that he grew up during the Vietnam War when there was spying on anti-war advocates by the U.S. government and there were rules put in place to ensure there’s an adequate basis for it.

“I’m not suggesting that those rules were violated [now], but I think it’s important to look at that. I’m not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly,” he said.

Shaheen then asked, “You’re not suggesting that spying occurred?”

Barr paused for several seconds and replied, “I think spying did occur,” though he didn’t elaborate further.

He said that he’s not launching an investigation of the FBI and is not suggesting there is a problem that’s “endemic” to the FBI, but “I think there was a failure among a group of leaders at the upper echelons.” He added, “I feel I have an obligation to make sure that government power isn’t abused.”

Later in the hearing, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said that Barr’s “spying” comment was “unnecessarily inflammatory” and offered the attorney general the chance to rephrase his remarks because Schatz said “the word spying could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out.”

“I’m not sure of all the connotations of that word,” Barr replied, adding that he could also describe it as “unauthorized surveillance.” “I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance.”

Barr declined to elaborate further when Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., chairman of the panel, asked what the basis was for Barr’s remarks.

“There is a basis for my concern, but I’m not going to discuss the basis,” Barr said.

“I’m not saying if improper surveillance occurred,” he added later, when asked to clarify — saying only that he was “concerned about it” and looking into the situation.

At a hearing Tuesday before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Barr revealed that he is “reviewing the conduct” of the FBI’s Russia probe during the summer of 2016, and that the Department of Justice inspector general will release a report on the FBI’s use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process and other matters in the Russia case in May or June.

President Trump praised Barr’s revelation of the probe into the investigation of his campaign Wednesday morning. “What I’m most interested in is getting started, hopefully the attorney general, he mentioned it yesterday, he is doing a great job. Getting started on going back to the origins of exactly where this all started,” he told reporters at the White House. “Because this was an illegal witch hunt and everybody knew it.”

The Senate hearing intended to focus on the 2020 budget request comes a day after House Democrats pressed the attorney general on the forthcoming release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Barr said Tuesday that his original timeline still stands, and that he planned to release the redacted document by mid-April, specifying that he expects it would come out “within a week” and that it will be released to the public.

On Wednesday, however, Barr implied it may not be released until next week.

“I’m landing the plane right now and I’ve been willing to discuss my letters and the process going forward and the report is going to be out next week and I’m not going to go into the details until the plane is on the ground,” he said when asked by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., whether the White House or the president has already viewed the report or was briefed on the report.

He would not respond to questions from Lowey about whether he had shared any additional information from the report with the White House, or whether administration officials had seen the full document.

Barr later clarified during the hearing that before his summary was sent out, “we did advise the White House counsel’s office that the letters were being sent” and while they weren’t give the document in advance, “it may have been read to them.”

Barr reiterated Wednesday before the Senate that after the redacted version of the Mueller report is released to the public, he said he’s “willing to work with the committees.”

“I intend to take up with the House and Senate Judiciary Committees what other areas they feel they have a need to have access to the information and see if I can work to accommodate that,” said Barr, who said that the most “inflexible” area under the law would be the grand jury material, suggesting he would not seek to disclose those parts to lawmakers.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-Ala., asked during the hearing whether “there is material risk that the grand jury material would leak” if such information is provided to Congress.

“I think so,” Barr said, adding that that could also be the case with other redacted material.

Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., whether Barr had a conversation with Mueller about why he didn’t make a recommendation on the issue of obstruction of justice, Barr said, “Yes, I did,” and added that there would be a fuller explanation of that conversation in the report.

Barr added, while being questioned by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., that he didn’t know “whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion” on obstruction.

The attorney general also declined to say whether he views Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt,” or illegal, as President Trump has characterized it.

“It really depends on where you’re sitting,” Barr said, adding that if someone is falsely accused of something, it could be viewed as a witch hunt. “It is what it is.”

Asked Tuesday whether Mueller or anyone on his team reviewed Barr’s summary of the report in advance, Barr told the House panel that Mueller’s team “did not play a role” in drafting that document and that he did give Mueller an opportunity an opportunity to review it, but he “declined.”

House Democrats had given Barr until April 2 to submit the full report to Congress, a deadline that was not met. In response, the House Judiciary Committee last week passed a resolution that authorizes Nadler to issue a subpoena for the full, unredacted report. It has not yet been issued.

Rebecca Shabad is a congressional reporter for NBC News, based in Washington
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL

TRUMP EFFECT
Trump pushes the bounds of his power
Analysis: As a newly emboldened president takes action, the left and the right both see the president they’ve always thought was there.

The right and the left are now seeing the president they always thought was there.

April 10, 2019, 5:52 PM ET
By Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON — In a newly emboldened President Donald Trump, liberals sense the rise of a tyrant pushing all the boundaries of power at once and daring Congress, the courts and political critics to stand in his way at their own peril.

For the Trump faithful, he has finally been freed to be a truly forceful leader.

In short, the right and the left are seeing the president they always thought was there.

In recent weeks, Trump has thumbed his nose at Congress to try to build a border wall, purged the Department of Homeland Security to get a harder-line position on immigration, withdrawn legal objections to gutting Obamacare benefits, moved to dismantle a major federal agency and successfully pressured the Department of Justice to investigate perceived political enemies he said Wednesday are guilty of “treason” for having pursued a probe of his campaign’s ties to Russia.

It’s as if someone hit the play button on a domineering presidency that had been paused by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a five-week government shutdown and the various distractions created by the president himself.

There’s nothing wrong with Trump using the powers granted to him by the Constitution or Congress’ cession of authority to the executive, Rachel Bovard, policy director at the Conservative Policy Institute, said.

“We’re seeing the logical conclusion of Congress giving the executive branch a lot of power,” she said in a phone conversation with NBC News during a break from training to get her concealed-carry permit in the District of Columbia. “Congress has plenty of authority to take their authority back and they haven’t. … They stomp their feet and scream about a tyrant.”

Conservatives thought President Barack Obama abused his powers, including when he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected certain immigrants who were brought to the country as children from deportation. And they believed, as many liberals do now, that the president’s party in Congress was far too willing to let the executive run roughshod over the legislative branch.

In 2016, Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, promised to use executive authority to address a series of hot-button issues, including her proposal to end the so-called gun-show loophole, which cheered liberals who were frustrated by Congress’ ability to thwart parts of Obama’s agenda.

That’s not to say every action is equal in moral value or proportion. But the move of party taking precedence over institutional prerogative is part of a long-term trend that activists on the right and the left have seen as a means of enacting their favored policies.

That trend has combined with Trump’s penchant for dramatic demonstrations of power to leave little question that he’s testing the limits of what a president can do unilaterally.

Several states have sued him over his decision to take money appropriated for military construction projects — and from other accounts — and use it to build a wall that Congress denied funding for before voting to block his plan. Trump vetoed the latter bill and will force the courts to decide whether he’s within his constitutional rights.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Trump has used powers from three different baskets that should be viewed in separate terms.

“There’s legitimate use of legitimate power. There’s abuse of legitimate power. And then, there’s creating illegitimate powers than no one ever intended to give you,” he said, pointing to Trump’s decision to use funds appropriated for other purposes to build a border wall as illegitimate, and his decision to withdraw the government’s objection to a lawsuit against Obamacare as a legitimate, but misguided, use of power.

“What I think progressives think about is ‘what is a legitimate use of legitimate power?’” he said. “Things like environmental protection and civil rights protection and busting up anti-competitive monopolies are powers that go unused. Those were legitimate powers that have gone unused by the Bush and the Trump administrations and that progressives would want to utilize if we take back the White House.”

But there’s a different kind of fight over what Trump depicts as an effort to use the power of the government to correct for what he sees as an abuse of federal authority against him.

Rather than a question of policy, it’s a matter of politics and law that leaves no room for the possibility that it was legitimate both to investigate the Trump operation’s ties to Russia and questions about the obstruction of justice, and for Mueller to find no evidence of a conspiracy with Russia.

From the South Lawn of the White House, the seat of executive power, Trump told reporters Wednesday that former government officials involved in starting and pursuing the investigation into his campaign were guilty of “treason” — a crime punishable by death — at nearly the same time Attorney General William Barr was telling Congress he believes the Obama administration spied on Trump’s campaign.

Barr provided no evidence. No one has been charged with a crime. No jury has rendered a verdict. But the president and the nation’s top law enforcement officer, speaking separately and yet in conjunction with each other, began to lay out a public case that American citizens are guilty.

“It was an illegal investigation,” Trump said. “Everything about it was crooked. … There were dirty cops. These were bad people. … And this was a — an attempted coup. This was an attempted takedown of a president. And we beat them.”

A few moments later, Trump dropped the “T” word.

“What they did was treason,” he said. “What they did was against our Constitution and everything we stand for.”

Under federal law, a person has to wage war against the United States or provide aid or comfort to the nation’s enemies to be found guilty of treason.

“While there is a debate about how effective he is or whether its bold versus tyrannical, his rhetoric should be a cause for concern,” Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said in an email. “His ongoing accusations about top law enforcement officials and his claims that they are guilty of things like treason goes beyond what any liberal or conservative should accept.”

Zelizer noted that Trump’s allegations are made without producing evidence and that he uses the standing of his office to put them into the public discussion.

“This is dangerous stuff and a fundamental misuse of the office,” Zelizer said. “Not only can they harm individuals, but they undercut trust for major institutions. It should be treated as seriously as other forms of abusive executive power. It is difficult for Congress to know what to do about it, since it is rhetorical, so much of the weight for pushing back falls on his own party taking tough steps when he says things like this. Until now, they have only supported him.”

It remains to be seen what comes of the Barr investigation into the investigators.

Trump has often declared that the Obama-era officials should not have used the power of the government to look into him; it was, he has said, an abuse of their authority for political gain.

For that reason alone, his fans and his critics may come to similar conclusions about whether he is now using the Justice Department to pursue the truth, or abusing his powers to punish perceived political enemies.

Whichever interpretation they embrace, there’s clearly a commonality in the way the left and the right view Trump, Zelizer said: “Both sides agree this is a very imperial president — at least, he tries to be.”

Jonathan Allen
Jonathan Allen is a Washington-based national political reporter for NBC News
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL


Assange

ABCNews
Assange fears being beaten up in US prison, called Trump crowd ‘clowns’: Visitor
By James Gordon Meek,Chris Vlasto,Matthew Mosk
Apr 11, 2019, 7:02 PM ET

WATCH: Assange was arrested on a 7-year-old warrant at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, and is currently being held in a police station.
After nearly seven years holed up inside the cramped Ecuadorian Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is dreading the prospect of violent attacks on him in an American prison, one of his regular visitors told ABC News’ The Investigation podcast on Thursday.

In an interview for ABC News’ “The Investigation” podcast conducted one day after Assange’s long-anticipated arrest by London police and court appearance on a 2012 bail jumping warrant and U.S. extradition request, one of his most frequent visitors described Assange’s fears of being sent to a US prison and subjected to violence inside.

"He did say he was worried that, if he was in a normal American prison, being beaten up,” war documentary filmmaker and former Taliban hostage Sean Langan, who has spent more than 50 hours with Assange in the past year, told ABC News. Langan’s last visit to Assange at the embassy was on March 22, he said.

Film maker and former hostage Sean Langan sits in the audience during a WikiLeaks discussion at The Front Line Club in London, Dec. 1, 2010.
“And then I said, 'Well, the chances are you’re most likely’ – slightly gallows humor, it didn’t make him feel better – ‘you’re most likely going to be put into one of those federal Supermax prisons where you won’t see a soul," said Langan, an ABC News contributor.

Perhaps most surprising to many who saw his leaks of embarrassing Democratic party emails during the 2016 campaign – which Special Counsel Robert Mueller has alleged were hacked by Russian spies in an effort to hurt rival Hillary Clinton’s chances – Assange was often sharply critical of Trump in casual conversation with a handful of visitors.

Langan says Assange described longtime Trump friend and political adviser Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. as intellectually incapable of a conspiracy, much less one that included WikiLeaks or him, and he rejoiced when Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently closed his investigation without indicting him for conspiring with Russian military intelligence to tilt the U.S. election.

“‘Those bunch of clowns’ – that was the exact quote – ‘those bunch of clowns couldn’t conspire and organize this kind of thing’,” Langan recalled Assange telling him. “He certainly did not hold [President Trump] in high regard. He was quite dismissive.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures as he leaves the Westminster Magistrates Court in the police van, after he was arrested in London, April 11, 2019.
Langan and Vaughan Smith, an Assange confidant and owner of London’s Frontline Club, began making “social visits” – as the Ecuadorian Embassy called them – with Assange in early November. The pair was among the first people summoned by the controversial publisher of sensitive secrets after Ecuador lifted a ban on his visitors and most of his communications, a loosening of restrictions on Assange that lasted six months in 2018.

Inside, they didn’t find an apartment littered with cat dropping or feces on the wall – as alleged by his Ecuadorian hosts who over time turned against their notorious asylee – but instead the “claustrophobic” quarters of a man in poor health toughing out intense surveillance of the tiny rooms he has occupied since entering the embassy in August, 2012.

That year, fearing he would extradited to the United States, Assange skipped out on his bail during a rape inquiry in Sweden. The rape inquiry was dropped two years ago but reopened today in the wake of Assange’s removal from the embassy in London, Swedish prosecutors said. Assange has denied the rape allegation.

Assange shared his recollections with Langan in five-hour rolling conversations at a table between two speakers meant to deter electronic surveillance by Ecuador or other countries. One speaker blared symphony music and the other David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” Langan told ABC News.

Asked about a controversial November, 2018 report in the Guardian newspaper that Assange had met with Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort – since convicted on financial crimes related to lobbying in Virginia and in Washington – he was adamant it never happened. “He said, ‘That’s [bull]. Never met him.’ So he strongly denied that,” Langan said.

President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks speaks to the press during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, April 11, 2019.
The Guardian report has not been matched by any other major news organization or corroborated since it was published.

Langan said that Assange seemed to acknowledge that he had communicated with Guccifer2.0, an online persona Mueller has said in a U.S. indictment was really an amalgam of Russian spies who stole the Democratic party emails and coordinated with WikiLeaks to leak them, but said that he believes Assange was unaware of Guccifer 2.0’s true identity.

Langan said that Assange complained to him that other news outlets were communicating with Guccifer2.0 too but the U.S. government was unfairly picking on him.

“I took it to be a non-denial denial,” Langan said.

With his arrest and the prospect of a trial in the U.S. for computer intrusion relating to WikiLeaks document dumps of military and intelligence secrets almost a decade ago, Langan said Assange now realizes “that he could face the rest of his life in isolation.”

The idea of further confinement weighs on Assange, he said.

"You can see the toll it is taking on him,” Langan added. “It’s an unpleasant thing to see in any man.”

He is no doubt glad to be out of the embassy, however, Langan added.

“It’s like a gilded cage. But a cage is a cage is a cage,” said Langan.

Smith always brought lunch from the club and Assange would fetch plates to serve the food on, then step back into his tidy galley to wash each plate after they dined.

Langan said Assange expressed frustration with what he described as false news reports that claimed Assange wore smelly socks and did not care for the cat his kids gave to him as a gift.

“That really hurt him,” Langan recounted.

© 2019 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.

And yet for all the bad news, the Mueller report helped:

President Trump’s job approval rating has rebounded since the release of a summary of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings related to Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a new poll.

A Gallup survey released Friday finds that 45 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, up from 39 percent in March.

Trump’s latest 2020 campaign video was removed from Twitter Tuesday night after Warner Brothers Entertainment requested it be taken down due to the use of music from “The Dark Knight Rises’” score in the clip.

youtu.be/w1B3Mgklfd0

youtu.be/aHxa9YqmVI0

Illinois bill would require President Trump release tax returns to gain 2020 ballot access
KRISTIN LAM | USA TODAY | 3 hours ago

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has a strong message for the Democrats about President Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Illinois lawmakers moved forward a bill that would require presidential candidates — including Donald Trump — release their tax returns to appear on the state’s 2020 ballot.

The state senate passed legislation on Thursday requiring people running for president or vice president release five years of their most recent tax returns to the Illinois secretary of state.

While the governor has not indicated his support for the bill, Chicago radio station WBEZ reported, it now moves to the House.

If the bill is enacted, candidates’ tax returns would be viewable on the secretary of state’s website. Personal information would be removed.

“If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t worry about anything,” said Democratic state Sen. Tony Munoz on the floor, Capitol News Illinois reported.

Washington: Treasury Department says it won’t hand over Trump’s tax returns on time, asks for extension

Taxpayers: Another tax headache ahead: IRS is changing paycheck withholdings, and it’ll be a doozy

The measure would not require candidates for Congress or statewide elected officials release their returns. Munoz, who sponsored the bill, said he is open to including other candidates as the House debates the bill, according to Capitol News.

Besides Illinois, 17 other states by 2017 had introduced bills aiming to require presidential candidates release tax returns, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Republican state Sen. Dale Righter opposed the measure, Capitol News reported, citing two Supreme Court cases ruling states cannot alter ballot qualifications described in the U.S. Constitution. The court in 1983’s Anderson v. Celebrezze decision said Ohio’s early filing deadline for president was unconstitutional. In 1968, Ohio state presidential ballot laws also violated the Fourteenth Amendment, according to the Williams v. Rhodes decision.

“This is, quite frankly, with all due respect to the sponsor, an embarrassing waste of the Senate’s time,” said Righter, according to WBEZ.

Trump has repeatedly refused to make his tax returns public, most recently refusing a request from congressional Democrats on Wednesday.

© Copyright Gannett 2019

I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I’ve been seeing what’s happened with Assange," Trump told reporters while meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, referring to the arrest ofWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange was arrested Thursday morning in London after Ecuador revoked his diplomatic asylum claim. He has been charged with helping the former Army intelligence specialist Chelsea Manning access Defense Department computers in 2010 in an effort to disclose secret government documents, the US Justice Department announced Thursday morning, hours after Assange was forcibly removed by authorities from the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

Julian Assange indicted in US for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in 2010

Trump on Thursday repeatedly denied knowledge about WikiLeaks and Assange. But, in fact, Trump has a history of supporting WikiLeaks, saying at one rally in 2016: “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.”

During the campaign, Trump routinely applauded WikiLeaks for its role in disseminating the contents of internal communications stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. He even publicly encouraged the Russians"to find the 30,000 emails (from Hillary Clinton’s server) that are missing."

Still, Trump said Thursday he knows “nothing” about Assange or WikiLeaks.

“I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing and I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange,” he said. “I’ve been seeing what’s happened with Assange, and that will be a determination. I would imagine mostly by the attorney general, who is doing an excellent job. So he’ll be making a determination. I know nothing really about him. That’s not my deal in life.”

“I don’t really have an opinion,” Trump asked when reporters continued to ask questions.

Note: the contradictions lead to the tranascendant objectivism that is Trump’s saving grace. But ultimately, whistleblowers, Snowden, Ellsberg and now Assange have peculiar modes of relevance and cover. What gives that Assange is projected as a political contradiction? Probably politics as usual. Secondary is the matter of nuclear politics, since the U.S. military presumes another showdown ilikely n line with the Cuban crisis. But the deep state? A heavily infused military in the political machine.
Eisenhower was prophetic in the pronouncement of the danger of the military industrial complex.
International corporations hedging on national security, is certainly a loaded gun, with military exports raising the bar, where the most recently developed products developed through taxpayer sources, added to mostly Chinese improper acquisition of intellectual property and simulated weapon production crossing lines bottle theatrics , as well as infusion of capitalistic ideology into a socialist fabric.
These are very difficult and paradoxical times, where a soxial ideology crosses personal fortunes of those, as for example Putin, an ex-KGB guy possessing billionaire levels of capital accumulation. He is a member of the world wide billionaire club, and most of the ex politburo as well. So it’s nothing like anything here is great news in that regard.

Meanwhile, Trump’s ambiguity probably rests on counter intelligence production purpusively to alley the very idea that Trump is collusive with it.

Does his camp not know that movie scores are copyrighted? Who doesn’t know! How can they not…?

Has the reason for revoking Assange’s diplomatic asylum been made public? and after how many years too…so many that he’s gone white rather than grey. :open_mouth: and who doesn’t know about Assange and his plight… apart from Trump, it seems.

GLOBAL
Berlusconi Was Trump Before Trump
The Berlusconi era—full of flashy parties, legal misdeeds, and too much news for the Italian public to keep track of—foreshadowed America’s current predicament.

RACHEL DONADIO
1:00 AM ET

FREEDOMPIC / CRUSH RUSH / SHUTTERSTOCK / THE ATLANTIC
ROME—A press corps obsessed with a complicated judicial investigation. A millionaire television personality turned politician who casts himself as under attack by the courts. A party beholden to that leader, and a base that will stand by him—aware of his deep flaws and his penchant for stretching the truth. A political opposition so divided, it can’t easily form a coherent argument for what it stands for, only for what it stands against.

I’ve seen this movie before, but not about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. No, I saw the one that was set in Italy and starred Silvio Berlusconi. Like so many other American remakes, the one with Trump is bigger and louder, and the male lead wears rather ill-fitting suits. But the version I witnessed foreshadowed the current American predicament and offers some insights into what can happen to a democracy when image becomes disconnected from reality.

Before the “bunga bunga” came the “bling bling.” In the last two decades of the 20th century, before social media became the vortex it is today and the primary means of channeling emotions, Berlusconi rose to power in an era of television. He was at once Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump—a real-estate magnate who invested in television stations and then used his political connections to help him expand his broadcast empire.

Read: The problem with calling Trump a “reality-TV president”

When those political connections dissolved in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Italian Socialist Party and the entire postwar political order in a bribery scandal, Berlusconi made the leap into politics. Even his supporters saw this move as motivated less by love of country and more by love of self: a desire to protect his personal business interests and to evade prosecution with parliamentary immunity


Berlusconi was an opportunist more than an ideologue in a highly complex country where different networks of power have long transcended the traditional divide between right and left. But his initial success and then his staying power were tied to one basic strategy: He created a viewership that became an electorate, and that electorate helped bring him to power and keep him in power. Control television, and you control reality. In his three tours as prime minister (from 1994 to 1995, then from 2001 to 2006, and again from 2008 to 2011), he dominated the airwaves.

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In power, Berlusconi had a strong hand in shaping coverage on the state broadcaster, especially the RAI1 television channel, which has always been a government mouthpiece. The channels of his private Mediaset network offered game shows and scantily clad women, cooking shows and song-and-dance numbers. They were particularly popular with women of a certain age who didn’t work and had time to watch daytime TV, and these women became a pillar of his electorate. Berlusconi helped create a “bling bling” sensibility before bling was a thing. (For more on this, I recommend the 2009 documentary Videocracy and two feature films by Paolo Sorrentino, The Great Beauty and Loro.)

Read: Why is Silvio Berlusconi back (again)?

From the outset, Berlusconi faced judicial investigations—into his business dealings, then later over accusations of bribing judges, tax fraud, and paying underage women for sex. In 2013, two years after leaving office, he was convicted of tax fraud and performed community service at an old-age home as penance. In 2014, he was acquitted on separate charges of paying an underage woman for sex, but he’s now facing trial on charges of bribing witnesses in the earlier trial, which brought to life the “bunga bunga” sex parties that were the hallmark of late-Berlusconi-era decline. That story has now gone from tawdry to grim: Italian prosecutors are investigating the mysterious death of a 34-year-old former model who was one of the witnesses Berlusconi is charged with bribing in the earlier trial.

But who could keep track of all these trials? Certainly not most Italians, who often have had their own bad experiences with the slow wheels of the Italian justice system. The cases were impossible to follow, but what was impossible to avoid was Berlusconi railing for years on television against “communist” judges who were on a witch hunt against him. He once called himself “the most persecuted person in the history of the entire history of the world and the history of man.” Always prone to this kind of exaggeration, he came to believe his own words, however outrageous. Or maybe he assumed no one believed him. It was never clear.

Still, there was a grain of truth in his rants. Berlusconi faced a stronger opposition in the form of the judiciary than in the Italian Parliament. And that just reinforced his sense that politicized judges were out to get him. The result of this dynamic was simple: It reinforced people’s own prejudices. No matter how many showgirls came to light, no matter how many accusations of fraud and dirty dealing, loyalists to Berlusconi stood by him. They needed him. If Italy is a patronage society, he was the patron in chief. They forgave him his flaws. They believed in their reality, and his critics believed in theirs. Ontological facts were of little use.

While ordinary people didn’t have the time or interest to follow Berlusconi’s legal tangles, the press became obsessed with them. So much so that it lost track of—or maybe never had any interest in—covering the country’s underlying problems: the economy, unemployment, financial insecurity. Mentioning these things, which have become the rallying cries of Italy’s current populist government, was almost taboo in the final years of Berlusconi’s mandate, as if the mere mention of basic economic facts had become a political attack.

What finally drove Berlusconi from office wasn’t a political opposition—the weakness of the center-left was a major factor in his continued success—or legal trials that would have caused other world leaders to exit. It was the European debt crisis. Berlusconi agreed to step down in the fall of 2011, when bond spreads were so high that Italy risked default. A technocratic government was put in place and made unpopular reforms such as raising the retirement age.

Read: It’s the right wing’s Italy now

Now Italy is governed by populists who came to power in a protest vote against those policies. Berlusconi’s domination of the political landscape for so long made this possible. While the economy floundered and the television era was eclipsed by social media, the electorate went from cynical to angry.

Looking back on Berlusconi today, he almost seems quaint and folkloristic. He was a reflection of the society that produced him, but he wasn’t governing the most powerful country in the world, with access to the nuclear codes. Today, the most powerful man in Italy is Matteo Salvini, the interior minister and deputy prime minister from the League party, whose slogan is “Italians First.” He sees Berlusconi as a vestige of the past. It turns out he was also a harbinger of the future.

RACHEL DONADIO is a Paris-based staff writer at The Atlantic, covering politics and culture across Eu All Rights Reserved.

POLITICO

Neal gives IRS commissioner new deadline for handing over Trump’s tax returns
By AARON LORENZO

04/13/2019 10:02 AM EDT

Rep. Richard Neal
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal told IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig that the agency has “an unambiguous legal obligation” to deliver the financial documents. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

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House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal re-upped his demand for President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Saturday, telling IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig he has until April 23 to turn over the documents.

“Please know that, if you fail to comply, your failure will be interpreted as a denial of my request,” Neal (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter to Rettig three days after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration would miss Neal’s original April 10 deadline as Treasury consults the Justice Department on the matter.

A subpoena likely would come next from Neal, who told Rettig the IRS has “an unambiguous legal obligation” to turn over the six years of Trump’s personal tax returns and some business returns that Neal has asked for.

Neal’s renewed request is the latest step in what’s expected to be a protracted fight over Trump’s tax returns and comes one day after House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) announced plans to subpoena a decade’s worth of Trump’s financial data from an accounting firm tied to the president.

IRS spokesman Matt Leas said the agency “has no immediate comment” and a Treasury Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Neal is seeking Trump’s returns under a law that allows the chairs of Congress’s tax committees to examine confidential tax information. The administration has left little doubt that it will reject Neal’s request. But Ways and Means aides don’t expect any subpoena until some time after Congress returns from recess on April 29.

Neal first told Rettig to fork over Trump’s tax returns by April 10, but Mnuchin answered that day saying he couldn’t meet the deadline. Mnuchin also said he was consulting with Justice Department lawyers about oversight authority and questioned Neal’s motives.

“Those concerns lack merit,” Neal wrote in his new letter to Rettig.

Trump has insisted he won’t comply, saying that he’s being audited and can’t publicize his tax returns, a claim he’s made since he campaigned for the White House. Trump breached decades of tradition in which leading candidates from both parties always released their tax returns during their runs for the presidency.

Republicans have consistently charged that congressional Democrats are using the statute that allows Neal to request the president’s tax returns as a political weapon, warning that doing so sets a dangerous precedent.

But Neal and the lawyers advising him believe they’re on sound legal footing.

Neal’s new letter repeated Democrats’ assertions that the request for Trump’s returns “falls squarely within the Committee’s oversight authority.” He cited 10 judicial precedents on the matter and said that the Supreme Court has time and again reaffirmed the legislative branch’s role.

“It is not the proper function of the IRS, Treasury, or Justice to question or second guess the motivations of the Committee or its reasonable determinations regarding its need for the requested tax returns and return information,” the letter said.

Neal addressed both his letters to Rettig, but in hearings this week Rettig told lawmakers that the IRS is a bureau of the Treasury.

© 2019 POLITICO LLC

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Rolling Stone
Robert De Niro Wishes Jail Time For Trump
“I consider it my civic duty,” the actor said of going after the president on ‘SNL’

PETER WADE
APRIL 14, 2019 1:47PM EDT

Robert De Niro
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
It has been well documented that Robert De Niro is no fan of President Donald Trump. But that doesn’t stop the Academy Award-winning actor from lashing out whenever he gets a chance. His latest pummeling of Trump came during an interview with the Hollywood Reporter earlier this week.

Robert De Niro was asked about his appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he’s played special counsel Robert Mueller in numerous skits. De Niro said he’s not just going for laughs. “I consider it my civic duty to do that part — just to be there because [Mueller] doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t have to. It’s that simple,” the actor said.

De Niro went on to say he hoped the president will be behind bars one day saying, “I might even be happier the day that Mueller puts him in handcuffs, takes him in an orange jumpsuit and puts him away for a long time.”

De Niro was also critical of attorney general William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report, calling it “ pathetic.” He added that if the report is not handled correctly, and with satisfactory transparency, he believes the the public won’t stand for it. “I think there’s going to be a lot of mass demonstrations, a lot of protests if this is not resolved. We have to know what went on. We have to know. The handwriting on the wall,” the actor told the Hollywood Reporter.

Supporters of Trump and those who think people outside of politics should refrain from criticizing politicians, or voicing their political views. But with De Niro, those concerns fall on deaf ears. If being a target of bomb threats didn’t silence him, then it’s likely nothing will.

© 2019 PMC. All rights reserved.