In this unfolding story I would like to point out that – moving along from “total exoneration” – President Trump this weekend called the people who ran the Special Counsel’s Office “dishonest and treasonous.” Total exoneration ain’t all its cracked up to be, it seems.
As we await Bill Barr’s ‘redactions’ of the Mueller Report, I wanted to pass on to you this note from a TPM Reader and member of the appellate bar. It may seem deep in the weeds at first. But it’s a window into Barr’s conduct so far that I was not at all aware of, or rather I knew the bare facts but hadn’t at all understood the implications. They bear directly on Barr’s subservience to the White House and current approach to executive power …
The focus on Barr and what he has done/is doing regarding the report has been fantastic.
But there is another, overlooked data point that makes clear that we should be very suspicious about how Barr approaches his responsibilities as AG – including his redactions to the Mueller report and his supervision of the ongoing Trump investigations in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere.
The Administration’s decision a few weeks ago to change its position and argue that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional didn’t get the attention it deserves. It is a shocking breach of the Justice Department’s duty to make reasonable arguments in support of the constitutionality of federal laws. There many such reasonable arguments in support of the ACA – as numerous conservative scholars have explained in blog posts and briefs since the DoJ announcement; it is the position that the Administration is now endorsing that is entirely unreasonable.
Any student of Jewish history and anti-Semitism will tell you that philo-semitism is often just a slight distance from anti-Semitism. President Trump is a good example of this. This weekend he spoke at the Republican Jewish Coalition, a Jewish Republican activist group. He was a big hit, not surprisingly. But he repeatedly talked about Jews as though they were a monolith not giving him enough credit for helping Israel or indeed actually Israeli citizens. Read More
“He stated that he was a patriot, that he loves the President, and that he hates radical Muslims in our government.” – Criminal complaint against Patrick W. Carlineo, Jr., charged with making death threats against Rep. Ilhan Omar.
I got this email from TPM Reader TH, basically asking why we’re cutting Bob Mueller such slack if we’re criticizing Bill Barr for covering up for the President. Specifically, if he was charged with answering whether or not Trump obstructed justice why did he punt? Why did he shirk that responsibility? Let me share TH‘s take and then I’ll respond.
I appreciate the really great work y’all are doing on the Mueller investigation. Totally agree with everything you’ve said about Barr’s specious response. But I don’t quite understand why you and others aren’t harder on Mueller, too. We’ve credited him with far more moral rectitude than he has actually shown. (He looks the part, being a tall male and all, and in American life that goes a long way.) He was explicitly tasked with deciding the question of obstruction. As Lawrence Tribe and many others have pointed out, it’s inexplicable that he deferred the question to “the politicals,” especially in light of Barr’s well-known opposition to any obstruction charge. Imagine a judge in a routine criminal or civil matter saying, “fuck if I know!”
Important point to remember here, as Natasha Bertrand points out. Back in November 2017, Barr told The New York Times that he thought the “predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the [Clinton] foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so-called ‘collusion.'” Read More
Man in charge of releasing Trump’s taxes doesn’t think he should release them.
If you’re in the greater DC area or able to get there, I wanted to let you know we’re holding an event in DC the evening of May 9th. We’ll have a special guest speaker and panel discussion after the speech. It’s all focused on congressional oversight – what is happening right now, how it works, how it gets reported on and more. If you’re an Inside member a ticket comes with your membership. But we also have a limited number of tickets available for purchase for Prime members. So if you’re interested in joining us drop us a line and we’ll put you on a list to be notified with more details. It’s an opportunity be part of a very important, thought-provoking discussion and share eats, drinks and conversation with our guests and members of the TPM editorial team. More soon.
The Times had a story overnight about how President Trump pushed Mitch McConnell to fast track his nomination for the Chief Counsel of the IRS in the early months of this year, an obviously key position in any fight over securing the President’s taxes. What I was more interested in was the information a bit further down in the article that notes that Michael J. Desmond is actually a one time Trump tax lawyer and long time colleague of William Nelson and Sheri Dillon, Trump’s long time tax attorneys and the folks who put together his purported non-blind blind trust. Remember the press conference with the glued together stacks of papers? Read More
Overnight we had a number of new stories shedding new light on what should have been obvious from the moment Bill Barr released his letter. Let me start by just pointing out a few key articles. While we’re seeing new information come out about the Mueller report, we should also note the continued credulousness of a lot of the DC press corps in evaluating Barr’s motives and aims in this whole drama. Read More