...
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
YWA's pick for quote of the year
There are so many good ones, but I'm going to have to go with this one from Robert Mueller's press statement after conducting two years of investigation into the Trump campaign:
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
“If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
Say no to Joe "no malarky" Biden
Of course that's malarkey. Joe Biden would never choose a Republican running mate. Saying he would consider it is malarkey.
That reminds me, Pod Save America's final cast of the year includes New Year resolutions of the top Democratic contenders for president. It's.......interesting. And I'm liking Cory Booker more than ever. If he's not at least vice president on the ticket, he better be offered Secretary of State.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Impeachment witness case thrown out
Judge Richard J. Leon, of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled that the lawsuit by the former presidential aide, Charles M. Kupperman, was moot because House Democrats had subsequently dropped the attempt to subpoena him.
[...]
[Kupperman] had asked a court to clarify whether he should obey a subpoena from Congress to testify in the impeachment inquiry, or defy it on the White House’s instructions.
[...]
The lawsuit by Mr. Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Trump, had been closely watched because it was seen as a harbinger for whether his former boss, John R. Bolton, might testify about what he knows about Mr. Trump’s use of his official powers to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations that could benefit him politically.
Mr. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, has let it be known that he has additional relevant information about the Ukraine affair than other witnesses who defied the White House and testified before the House.
[...]
Unlike the Miers and McGahn lawsuits, both of which were brought by the House in an effort to get a judge to order the former executive branch officials to comply with subpoenas, Mr. Kupperman did not wait for Congress to sue him. Instead, he filed a lawsuit against both the House and the White House, asking Judge Leon to tell him which side was right.
But House Democrats decided not to pursue litigation against recalcitrant witnesses in the Ukraine inquiry, seeing the slow pace of the judicial process — including inevitable appeals up to the Supreme Court — as guaranteeing that Mr. Trump could run out the clock before the 2020 election, even though he is accused of trying to rig it by soliciting foreign interference.
[...]
Bolton is represented by the same lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, as Mr. Kupperman, and he also made clear that he would not testify unless a court ordered him to comply with a subpoena — suggesting that he would echo Mr. Kupperman and file a lawsuit seeking judicial resolution of the dispute.
The White House, in the administrations of both parties, has argued that top presidential aides are absolutely immune from being forced to testify about their work, meaning they do not even have to show up in response to a congressional subpoena.
Federal District Court judges have twice rejected that constitutional theory — once in a 2008 case involving Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel to President George W. Bush, and once this year in a case involving Donald F. McGahn II, a former White House counsel to Mr. Trump.
[...]
The Justice Department has appealed to a federal appeals court the ruling that Mr. McGahn must testify.
NYT
Trump as Stalin
I'm sure he didn't realize he was in essence saying that HE was giving away the country, but Chelsea Clinton saw it.On the evening of July 10, 2017 staffers at the U.S. embassy in Brussels—the official office for the ambassador to the European Union—received an unusual call from the seventh floor of the State Department back in Washington. The office of then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was irate. Someone in Brussels with access to the mission’s Twitter account had liked the wrong tweet. It had set off alarm bells in Foggy Bottom.
[...]
It was one written by Chelsea Clinton and directed at President Donald Trump in a public spat that took the internet by storm.
That week in July, Trump drew criticism for his decision to let his daughter Ivanka fill his seat at the G20 meeting of top economic powers in Hamburg, Germany. After days of the pile on, Trump took to Twitter the morning of July 10 to claim his decision to have Ivanka represent the U.S. at the G20 was “very standard” and that Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany agreed. Not more than 15 minutes later, he switched his tenor and began attacking Clinton and the press. “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!,” Trump said.
Daily Beast
I would venture to say it's highly likely that Trump was not only aware of it, but gave the command to find out who "liked" Clinton's tweet.Clinton shot back: “It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not.”
That tweet garnered more than half a million likes, including by the account for the U.S. mission to the European Union. That kickstarted a weeks-long investigation, prompted by the secretary’s office, into who exactly at the Brussels mission had access to the Twitter account and hit “Like” on Clinton’s tweet, according to two former U.S. officials.
[...]
[P]eople were interviewed about whether they, as administrators of the account, had mistakenly or deliberately pressed the “Like” button. All of them denied any wrongdoing, those sources said. One individual familiar with the exchanges said the Secretary of State’s top managers in Washington “wanted blood” and called Brussels numerous times demanding the name of the culprit.
U.S. officials in Belgium were never able to give Tillerson’s office a name and soon after, the embassy restructured the Twitter account and limited access to just two individuals.
The concern from the secretary’s office over social media messaging continued after Tillerson into the era of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to two U.S. officials at American embassies overseas.
[...]
[O]fficials are wary of promoting social-media posts that might seem to undermine the desires of the president, according to multiple former and current administration officials. They fear the posts will be quickly undercut, if not directly rebuffed, by a single, angry tweet from President Trump’s personal account.
[...]
It is unclear if Trump—who is famously thin-skinned about criticism or even mean tweets from prominent critics—himself was aware of this intra-administration kerfuffle over the Clinton tweet, but some of his lieutenants certainly were.
Don't think this will stay within the Trump admininstration. If Trump is reelected, it's coming to you.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Iraq air strike follow-up
Dozens of protesters broke into the US embassy compound in Iraqi capital Baghdad on Tuesday after smashing a main door and setting fire to a reception area.
[...]
Witnesses at the scene reported flames rising from inside the compound and at least three US soldiers on the roof of the main building inside embassy.
[...]
The US ambassador to Iraq and other staff were evacuated from the embassy.
Earlier, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the embassy to protest US air attacks that killed 25 fighters from an Iran-backed Shia group in Iraq this week.
Shouting "Down, Down USA!" the crowd hurled water bottles and smashed security cameras outside the embassy grounds.
Iraq's caretaker prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said that crowds should leave the compound "immediately."
"We recall that any aggression or harassment of foreign embassies will be firmly prohibited by the security forces," Abdel Mahdi's office said several hours after the attack began.
[...]
Tuesday's attempted embassy storming took place after mourners held funerals for fighters killed in a Baghdad neighbourhood, after which they marched on to the heavily fortified Green Zone and kept walking till they reached the embassy.
[...]
The protesters raised flags of the powerful paramilitary group Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), of which Kataib Hezbollah [the target of US air strikes two days ago] is part, and several people climbed over the wall of the embassy and chanted "death to America" and "no, no America", witnesses said.
[...]
Speaking from the scene in Baghdad, Al Jazeera's Simona Foltyn said there was no indication of an armed confrontation so far.
"This entire funeral procession, consisting mostly of PMF members and their followers, has entered through these gates without any resistance whatsoever from the Iraqi security forces that are supposed to guard the Green Zone," she said, speaking from outside the US Embassy.
[...]
The US attack - the largest one targeting an Iraqi state-sanctioned group in recent years - and the calls for retaliation represent a new escalation in the proxy war between the US and Iran playing out in the Middle East. The US military said "precision defensive strikes" were conducted against five sites belonging to Kataib Hezbollah, which is a separate force from the Lebanese group Hezbollah, in Iraq and Syria.
alJazeera
Two sources at the demonstration witnessed the attempt to break into the embassy, adding that security personnel fired tear gas to repel the attack. Video and photos on social media show demonstrators smashing the windows of the embassy and burning items outside its walls.
[...]
Questions have also been raised as to whether Iraqi forces allowed the protesters to reach the US embassy, a highly fortified building in a ares that is usually restricted.
The strikes and protests also come at a time of high tensions between the US and Iran, and have stoked fears of a new proxy war in the Middle East.
Washington has tightened the economic squeeze on Tehran this year through its "maximum pressure" campaign, while Iran has responded with what it calls for "maximum resistance," including reducing its compliance to the international nuclear deal.
The Trump administration pulled the US out of that deal in May 2018, sparking a campaign of provocation between the two nations.
CNN
Monday, December 30, 2019
Meanwhile in Syria/Iraq
The United States military on Sunday struck five targets in Iraq and Syria controlled by an Iranian-backed paramilitary group, the Pentagon said, a reprisal for a rocket attack on Friday that killed an American contractor.
The airstrikes, carried out by Air Force F-15E fighter planes, hit three locations in Iraq and two in Syria controlled by the group, Kataib Hezbollah. Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said the targets included weapons storage facilities and command posts that were used to attack American and partner forces.
A United States response to an attack that kills or wounds Americans is not unusual. But Sunday’s retaliation involved direct strikes on Iranian proxies, making it particularly dangerous ground.
[...]
ISIS has lost its territory, and tensions have risen between Tehran and Washington over the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign.
Rocket attacks over the last two months by Iranian proxies threatened the uneasy peace, and Friday’s deadly strike broke it. The key question now is whether the American counterattack tamps down the cycle of violence or escalates it.
NYT
Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned on Monday U.S. air strikes that hit several bases of an Iran-backed militia and killed at least 25 people, demanding respect for Iraq’s sovereignty.
Reuters
I thought Trump was going to get our military out of the Middle East.Powerful political blocs within Iraq are describing Sunday’s U.S. strikes against an Iran-backed militia as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty — once again raising concerns about the viability of long-term plans to keep American troops in the country.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Badr al-Ziyadi, a member of Iraq’s parliament who is also part of a collation close to powerful Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has called for an end to the agreement that keeps American troops in the country.
Sadr, whose militias fought and killed U.S. troops for years following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, said Monday that he will work with Iran-backed militias to end the U.S. presence in Iraq through legal means, but noted that he will “take other actions” if that strategy fails.
[...]
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Sunday during a press conference held at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida that the strikes were carried out by F-15E Strike Eagles.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Esper phoned Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi about a half an hour before the strikes and said that U.S. forces were about to bomb the Iran-backed militia.
Abdul-Mahdi asked for the U.S. to call off the strikes, according to the Wall Street Journal story.
[...]
The U.S. has deployed an additional 14,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East over the last six months to confront Iran’s malign behavior across the region.
Esper has said he is considering deploying additional forces to counter Iran.
Military Times
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
NPR is leftist!
Noah is so right. I can remember some years back when NPR was leftist. Not any more. Not for a long time.
What NPR is, is serious and educational. I'm guessing that seems leftist to some conservatives.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
An argument against Congressional term limits
I'm skeptical. Very.
Yes, Missouri implemented eight-year term limits. There's a middle ground between eight years and life. Also, it's something that requires some length of time to settle into whatever it will ultimately be. Give it time. Adjust whatever problems arise.
That's a little extreme. Surely we could have people go to Congress from State legislatures after having proved some degree of competence there.In one recent survey, 75 percent of Americans said they supported term limits, including 65 percent of Democrats.
For that reason, it's worth spending a few minutes on this point, because it does get to a fundamental problem with how the public views Washington. There is a perennial myth that the problem with Washington is that the longer people spend there, the more corrupt they become. Therefore, the only way to ensure good judgment in politics is to constantly have a bunch of fresh-faced lawmakers who are total rookies and don't understand how anything in Washington works.
Vox
And how are executive branch politicians there for the long haul? They're subject to reelection, and in the case of the US president, limited to two terms (for now).Since 15 states do have term limits, we actually can know something about their effects. And the political science literature here is pretty unequivocal. Term limits are the surest way to weaken the legislative branch and empower the executive branch. Term limits are also a great way to empower special interests and lobbyists. Basically, what term limits do is shift power toward those who are there for the long haul.
Why is that? And, as I've said, maybe the term limits are too short.In one study, a post-term-limits respondent said that after term limits, "agencies [do] what they want to. [One bureaucrat told me] we were here when you got here, and we'll be here when you're gone." As the authors of this study note, "Legislative oversight is the venue of specialists. A term-limited legislature tends to be populated by generalists, who lack the accumulated knowledge to exercise oversight effectively, if they even recognize it as their responsibility."
Same argument. And why can't lobbying reforms be considered along with term limits? I'm sure we could think of something.In term-limited states, lawmakers and their staff have less time to build up expertise, since they are there for a limited time. But like the executive agencies of the state government, lobbyists and interest groups are also there year after year. They are the true repeat players building long-term relationships and the true keepers of the institutional knowledge. This gives them power.
Also, as far as executive agencies go, often presidents hold over directors from the previous administration for continuity and institutional knowledge. Those directors are still beholden to the policy desires of the president, who, and I repeat, is limited to two terms.
Well, there you go. Career officials are the strength of our diplomatic corps. Perhaps professional career staffing in Congress could be investigated. It may not be a good idea, but if that seems like a viable possibility, give it a shot.I've argued that the best way to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington is for Congress to invest in its long-term professional staffing capacity. The same logic applies if Congress wants to reassert its authority as the first branch.
That, again, is an argument against lobbyists, not against term limits. If staffers can't make sense of the policy without lobbyists explaining it to them, it's because the policy was written by lobbyists in the first place![T]he reforms Democrats passed, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, actually did slow the revolving door. But as far anybody can tell, its minor tweaks to the revolving door did absolutely nothing to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington — again, because lobbyists' influence comes primarily from the fact that congressional staffers depend on lobbyists to make sense of policy.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
About that secretive phone call
Our only information on yesterday's Trump-Putin phone call comes from the Kremlin. And not much at that.
How is that right? Where are the investigations?
How is that right? Where are the investigations?
"Issues of mutual interest."The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation initiated by the Russian side, has thanked U.S. President Donald Trump "for information transmitted via the special services that helped prevent the commission of terrorist acts in Russia."
There was no immediate confirmation from the U.S. side.
The call also reportedly included discussion of "a set of issues of mutual interest," according to the official Kremlin website.
Both leaders, Putin's office said, agreed "to continue bilateral cooperation in the fight against terrorism."
No other details were provided.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.In August, the Kremlin said in a statement that Trump offered Putin help in fighting vast wildfires in Siberia. The phone conversation had taken place on the “initiative of the American side,” the Kremlin added. The White House later confirmed the two leaders’ conversation.
And in 2017, photos from Trump‘s first Oval Office meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia surfaced online from the Kremlin. The meeting had been closed to the American media.
Lavrov had another a closed-door Oval Office meeting with Trump earlier this month — on the day House Democrats unveiled articles of impeachment against him. Afterward, Trump praised the “very good meeting“ in a tweet, saying the two had discussed “election meddling.“ But at a news conference at the Russian Embassy, Lavrov wouldn‘t answer that claim directly, suggesting only that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had raised the issue during a separate meeting.
Politico
Credit where credit is due
Of course there had to be a catch. The share of the power revenues could eventually come from private income if Trump/GOP succeed in privatizing all the operations they'd like to, but the land loss compensation will always come from tax payers. And the revenue share may well have amounted to more than $8 million a year. At any rate, the bill takes money away, so the actual compensation is going to be less than $8 million however you slice it.President Donald Trump announced that he had signed three bills "to support tribal sovereignty and native culture" in a tweet on Dec. 27.
[...]
[I]n recent months, the president has acted on several issues that affect the Native American community. On Nov. 26 he created a task force to look into the crisis of missing and murdered women in Native American communities.
[...]
The three bills include compensation to the Spokane tribe for the loss of their lands in the mid-1900s, reauthorization of funding for Native language programs and federal recognition of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana. For the Spokane, the compensation act comes more than half a century after the Grand Coulee Dam flooded more than 21,000 acres of their land. The bill orders the Bonneville Power Administration, an American federal agency based in the Pacific northwest, to pay the tribe $6 million per year for 10 years and $8 million each year afterwards in compensation for the losses of their land. However, the bill also prevents the Spokane from claiming a share of the hydropower revenues generated by the dam, which they were previously entitled to.
The Hill
Meanwhile, the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, which became law in 2006 but expired in 2012, will be reauthorized, granting $13 million in funds to smaller groups of Native American students each year starting 2020 until 2024.
In the age of Trump
Hard to do with a "leader" who spews hate on a daily basis.On Saturday night, an attacker stabbed five people during Hanukah festivities at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, Rockland county, about 30 miles north of New York City, in what Governor Andrew Cuomo called “an act of domestic terrorism”. The attack was the latest in a string of antisemitic incidents in the region.
“After the hateful assaults we saw this past week in Brooklyn and Manhattan, it is heart-wrenching to see the holiday of Hanukah violated yet again. We are outraged because the answer is clear: the Jewish community NEEDS greater protection,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted on Sunday following the stabbings.
[...]
New York mayor Bill de Blasio urged New Yorkers come together to resist the rise of antisemitism.
“We have snuffed out hatred before and forced it back,” he said, announcing an expansion in efforts to educate the city’s school children on the issue, along with extra neighborhood policing.
[...]
“The challenge is that there are antisemitic tendencies rising up in ways that we have not seen in a very long time” ADL regional director Evan Bernstein told CNN. “This is beyond policing. These are communal problems, societal problems, that we need to get ahead of.”
Guardian
Visiting Monsey on Sunday morning, Cuomo said the attack was “about the thirteenth incident of antisemitism” in the state of New York over recent weeks, and described the climate of intolerance as “an American cancer in the body politic”.
[...]
The incidents come less than three weeks since a Kosher store in Jersey City, in the neighboring state of New Jersey, was attacked as part of an hours-long assault that left six people dead, including three civilians, one police officer and both suspects.
[...]
Across the US, other recent incidents in which swastikas or antisemitic graffiti have been used to vandalize property include a high school in Encinitas, California; a Boston elementary school; and at a synagogue in Washington DC.
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Assuming Mulvaney, et al., have lawyered up
Their mistake was in thinking that he might give a shit about the interests of the United States.Deep into a long flight to Japan aboard Air Force One with President Trump [on June 27, more than a week after Mr. Trump had first asked about putting a hold on security aid to Ukraine,], Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, dashed off an email to an aide back in Washington.
“I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “Did we ever find out about the money for Ukraine and whether we can hold it back?”
[...]
“Expect Congress to become unhinged” if the White House tried to countermand spending passed by the House and Senate, [the aide, Robert B. Blair,] wrote in a previously undisclosed email. And, he wrote, it might further fuel the narrative that Mr. Trump was pro-Russia.
[...]
Trump’s order to hold $391 million worth of sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, night vision goggles, medical aid and other equipment the Ukrainian military needed to fight a grinding war against Russian-backed separatists would help pave a path to the president’s impeachment.
[...]
American diplomats used the withheld aid as leverage in the effort to win a public commitment from the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to carry out the investigations Mr. Trump sought into Mr. Biden and unfounded or overblown theories about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.
[...]
What emerges is the story of how Mr. Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon, created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration, left key aides like Mr. Mulvaney under intensifying scrutiny — and ended only after Mr. Trump learned of a damning whistle-blower report and came under pressure from influential Republican lawmakers.
[...]
Opposition to the order from his top national security advisers was more intense than previously known. In late August, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, for a previously undisclosed Oval Office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in interests of the United States.
NYT
Really? They're going to use the "we're too stupid to be criminals" defense?By late summer, top lawyers at the Office of Management and Budget who had spoken to lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department in the weeks beforehand, were developing an argument — not previously divulged publicly — that Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief would simply allow him to override Congress on the issue.
[...]
Mulvaney is shown to have been deeply involved as a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump’s demands for the freeze across the administration.
[...]
Those carrying out Mr. Trump’s orders on the aid were for the most part operating in different lanes from those seeking the investigations, including Mr. Giuliani and a number of senior diplomats, including Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.
[...]
[S]ome key players are now offering a defense that they did not know the diplomatic push for the investigations was playing out at the same time they were implementing the aid freeze — or if they were aware of both channels, they did not connect the two.
Seriously? Administration officials have to Google to find out what's going on? Jesus.Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with Mr. Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trump’s attorney-client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he learned of the substance of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call weeks after the fact.
Yet testimony before the House suggests a different picture. Fiona Hill, a top deputy to Mr. Bolton at the time, told the impeachment inquiry about a July 10 White House meeting at which Mr. Sondland said Mr. Mulvaney had guaranteed that Mr. Zelensky would be invited to the White House if the Ukrainians agreed to the investigations — an arrangement that Mr. Bolton described as a “drug deal,” according to Ms. Hill.
[...]
At the center of the maelstrom was the Office of Management and Budget, a seldom-scrutinized arm of the White House that during the Trump administration has often had to find creative legal reasoning to justify the president’s unorthodox policy proposals, like his demand to divert Pentagon funding to his proposed wall along the border with Mexico.
In the Ukraine case, however, shock about the president’s decision spread across America’s national security apparatus — from the National Security Council to the State Department and the Pentagon.
[...]
On Sept. 10, the day before Mr. Trump changed his mind, a political appointee at the budget office, Michael P. Duffey, wrote a lengthy email to the Pentagon’s top budget official, with whom he had been at odds throughout the summer about how long the agency could withhold the aid.
He asserted that the Defense Department had the authority to do more to ensure that the aid could be released to Ukraine by the congressionally mandated deadline of the end of that month, suggesting that responsibility for any failure should not rest with the White House.
Forty-three minutes later, the Pentagon official, Elaine McCusker, hit send on a brief but stinging reply.
“You can’t be serious,” she wrote. “I am speechless.”
[...]
Typical of the Trump White House, the inquiry was not born of a rigorous policy process. Aides speculated that someone had shown Mr. Trump a news article about the Ukraine assistance and he demanded to know more.
[Russell T. Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget,] and his team took to Google, and came upon a piece in the conservative Washington Examiner saying that the Pentagon would pay for weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine, bringing American security aid to the country to $1.5 billion since 2014.
By all means, don't interrupt the president's golf game with pressing foreign aid business.The budget office officials had little idea of why Mr. Trump was interested in the topic, but many of the president’s more senior aides were well aware of his feelings about Ukraine. Weeks earlier, in an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump batted away assurances that Mr. Zelensky was committed to confronting corruption.
“They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
[...]
With the [aid] money having been appropriated by Congress, it would be hard for the administration to keep it from being spent by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The task of dealing with the president’s demands fell primarily to a group of political appointees in the West Wing and the budget office, most with personal and professional ties to Mr. Mulvaney. There was no public announcement that Mr. Trump wanted the assistance withheld. Neither Congress nor the Ukrainian government was formally notified.
[...]
The four top political appointees helping Mr. Mulvaney execute the hold — Mr. Vought, Mr. Blair, Mr. Duffey and Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s top lawyer — all had extensive experience in either congressional budget politics or Republican and conservative causes.
Their efforts would cause tension and at times conflict between officials at the budget office and the Pentagon, some of whom watched with growing alarm.
The single largest chunk of the federal government’s annual discretionary budget, some $800 billion a year, goes to the Pentagon, spy agencies and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The career official in charge of managing the flow of all that money for the budget office is an Afghanistan war veteran named Mark Sandy.
After learning about the president’s June 19 request, Mr. Sandy contacted the Pentagon to learn more about the aid package. He also repeatedly pressed Mr. Duffey about why Mr. Trump had imposed the hold in the first place.
[...]
From the start, budget office officials took the position that the money did not have to go out the door until the end of September, giving them time to address the president’s questions.
It was easy enough for the White House to hold up the State Department portion of the funding. Since the State Department had not yet notified Congress of its plans to release the money, all it took was making sure that the notification did not happen.
Freezing the Pentagon’s $250 million portion was more difficult, since the Pentagon had already certified that Ukraine had met requirements set by Congress to show that it was addressing its endemic corruption and notified lawmakers of its intent to spend the money.
So on July 19, Mr. Duffey proposed an unusual solution: Mr. Sandy should attach a footnote to a routine budget document saying the money was being temporarily withheld.
[...]
Mr. Sandy said in testimony that he had never done [that] before in his 12 years at the agency.
And there was a problem with this maneuver: Mr. Sandy was concerned it might violate a law called the Impoundment Control Act that protects Congress’s spending power and prohibits the administration from blocking disbursement of the aid unless it notifies Congress.
“I asked about the duration of the hold and was told there was not clear guidance on that,” Mr. Sandy testified. “So that is what prompted my concern.”
[...]
[O]n July 18, [...] a group of top administration officials meeting on Ukraine policy — including some calling in from Kyiv — learned from a midlevel budget office official that the president had ordered the aid frozen.
[...]
That same day, aides on the House Foreign Affairs Committee received four calls from administration sources warning them about the hold and urging them to look into it.
A week later came Mr. Trump’s fateful July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Bolton, the national security adviser, had recommended the call take place in an effort to end the “incessant lobbying” from officials like Mr. Sondland that the two leaders connect.
Some of Mr. Trump’s aides had thought the call might lead Mr. Trump to lift the freeze. But Mr. Trump did not specifically mention the hold, and instead asked Mr. Zelensky to look into Mr. Biden and his son and into supposed Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election. Among those listening on the call was Mr. Blair.
Mr. Blair has told associates he [...] saw the aid freeze not as a political tool, but as an extension of Mr. Trump’s general aversion to foreign aid and his belief that Ukraine is rife with corruption.
Just 90 minutes after the call ended, and following days of email traffic on the topic, Mr. Duffey, Mr. Sandy’s boss, sent out a new email to the Pentagon, where officials were impatient about getting the money out the door. His message was clear: Do not spend it.
“Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction,” Mr. Duffey wrote in his note.
[...]
This caused immediate discomfort at the Pentagon, with a top official there noting that this hold on military assistance was coming on the same day Ukraine announced it had seized a Russian tanker — a potential escalation in the conflict between the two nations.
[...]
By that point, officials in Ukraine were getting word that something was up. At the same time, the effort to win a commitment from the Ukrainians for the investigations sought by Mr. Trump was intensifying.
[...]
And inside the intelligence community, a C.I.A. officer was hearing talk about the two strands of pressure on Ukraine, including the aid freeze. Seeing how they fit together, he was alarmed enough that by Aug. 12 he would take the extraordinary step of laying them out in detail in a confidential whistle-blower complaint.
[...]
In a very unusual step, the White House removed Mr. Sandy’s authority to oversee the aid freeze. The job was handed in late July to Mr. Sandy’s boss, Mr. Duffey, the political appointee.
[...]
Two budget office staff members left the agency after the summer. Mr. Sandy testified that their departures were related to the aid freeze, a statement disputed by budget office officials.
Pentagon officials, in the dark about the reason for the holdup, grew increasingly frustrated. Ms. McCusker, the powerful Pentagon budget official, notified the budget office that either $61 million of the money would have to be spent by Monday, Aug. 12 or it would be lost. The budget office saw her threat as a ploy to force release of the aid.
[...]
Complicating matters, another budget battle was escalating. Mr. Vought was attempting to impose cuts of as much as $4 billion on the nation’s overall foreign aid budget. It was an entirely separate initiative from the Ukraine freeze, and was quickly abandoned, but helped the White House establish that its concern about aid was not limited to Ukraine.
By the second week of August, Mr. Duffey had taken to issuing footnotes every few days to block the Pentagon spending. Office of Management and Budget lawyers approved each one.
[...]
In a previously unreported sequence of events, Mr. Mulvaney worked to schedule a call for [August 12] with Mr. Trump and top aides involved in the freeze, including Mr. Vought, Mr. Bolton and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. But they waited to set a final time because Mr. Trump had a golf game planned for Monday morning with John Daly, the flamboyant professional golfer, and they did not know how long it would take.
And that call to Zelensky was "perfect".The planned-for conference call with the president never happened. Budget office lawyers decided that Ms. McCusker had inaccurately raised alarms about the Aug. 12 date to try to force their hand.
In Bedminster with Mr. Trump, Mr. Mulvaney finally reached the president and the answer was clear: Mr. Trump wanted the freeze kept in place. In Washington, the whistle-blower submitted his report that same day.
[...]
Backed by a memo saying the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department all wanted the aid released, Mr. Bolton made a personal appeal to Mr. Trump on Aug. 16, but was rebuffed.
On Aug. 28, Politico published a story reporting that the assistance to Ukraine had been frozen.
[...]
Bolton’s relationship with the president had been deteriorating for months, and he would leave the White House weeks later, but on this front he had powerful internal allies.
On a sunny, late-August day, Mr. Bolton, Mr. Esper and Mr. Pompeo arrayed themselves around the Resolute desk in the Oval Office to present a united front, the leaders of the president’s national security team seeking to convince him face to face that freeing up the money for Ukraine was the right thing to do. One by one they made their case.
[...]
Trump responded that he did not believe Mr. Zelensky’s promises of reform. He emphasized his view that corruption remained endemic and repeated his position that European nations needed to do more for European defense.
“Ukraine is a corrupt country,” the president said. “We are pissing away our money.”
[...]
On Aug. 31, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, arranged a call with Mr. Trump. Mr. Johnson had been told days earlier by Mr. Sondland that the aid would be unblocked only if the Ukrainians gave Mr. Trump the investigations he wanted.
When Mr. Johnson asked Mr. Trump directly if the aid was contingent on getting a commitment to pursue the investigations, Mr. Johnson later said, Mr. Trump replied, amid a string of expletives, that there was no such demand and he would never do such a thing.
Around the same time, White House lawyers informed Mr. Trump about the whistle-blower’s complaint regarding his pressure campaign.
[...]
Behind the scenes in Warsaw, Mr. Sondland, the American envoy who was Mr. Trump’s point person on getting the Ukrainians to agree to the investigations, had a [blunt] message. Until the Ukrainians publicly announced the investigations, he told Mr. Yermak, the Zelensky adviser, they should not expect to get the military aid. (Mr. Yermak has questioned Mr. Sondland’s account.)
[...]
[T]op lawyers at the budget office were developing a proposed legal justification for the hold.
[...]
The president, the lawyers believed, could ignore the requirements of the Impoundment Control Act and continue to hold the aid by asserting constitutional commander in chief powers that give him authority over diplomacy. He could do so, they believed, if he determined that, based on existing circumstances, releasing the money would undermine military or diplomatic efforts.
[...]
Mr. Bolton was opposed to using [that] argument. [...] And pressure from Congress was intensifying. Mr. Johnson and another influential Republican, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, were both pushing for the aid to be released.
[...]
Democrats in the House were gearing up to limit Mr. Trump’s power to hold up the money to Ukraine, and the chairmen of three House committees had also announced on Sept. 9 that they were opening an investigation.
Still, White House officials did not expect anything to change, especially since Mr. Trump had repeatedly rejected the advice of his national security team.
But then, just as suddenly as the hold was imposed, it was lifted.
Ditch Mitch
Amy McGrath, a Democrat and former Marine fighter pilot, has officially filed to challenge Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s 2020 US Senate election.
In the 2018 midterm elections, McGrath narrowly lost to Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) to represent the state’s 6th Congressional District. During her first months on the campaign trail before officially establishing her candidacy, McGrath outraised McConnell and other Democrats by bringing in nearly $11 million.
In 2016, Trump carried Kentucky by nearly 30 points. But last month, Gov. Matt Bevin, the nation’s “Trumpiest governor,” lost his reelection bid to Democrat Andy Beshear, after President Donald Trump campaigned for Bevin and said a loss for the unpopular incumbent would send “a really bad message.” The president pleaded, “You can’t let that happen to me!”
Mother Jones
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Add emoluments violations to articles of impeachment
I know they've wanted to keep the impeachment process narrow, due to the complexity, but there are so many other articles that could have been drawn, not the least of which is Trump's violation of both foreign and domestic emoluments restrictions, using the office of the presidency to line his pockets.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
It's laughable that people also point to Trump's refusal to take a salary as president as evidence of his largesse and lack of corruption.In November, we noticed a mysterious spike in the price of available rooms at Trump’s DC hotel for a Saturday night in December. The minimum cost was 13 times the average, but we couldn’t identify a reason for the spike, until photos surfaced of the Trump Victory Committee’s winter retreat at Trump’s Hotel on that exact night, which appears to have sold out much of the venue. While the least expensive room for a one-night stay at the hotel was around $500 on surrounding days, the cheapest room on December 14 was a whopping $6,719. With access to Trump, Pence, and other top officials, and a bonus invitation to the White House holiday party for donors, we no longer have to wonder why.
On November 7th, CREW flagged a massive spike in the cost of a room on December 14, suggesting that every less expensive room in the hotel was sold out, leaving only pricey suites. Presumably, rooms were taken up by donors to Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising committee of the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. The exorbitant cost is even more evidence that hosting fundraisers at the Trump International Hotel is one of the best ways to sell out the notoriously empty venue, sending donor money right into Trump’s pocket.
[...]
There’s no question that political spending like the Trump Victory Committee fundraiser has helped make Trump’s DC Hotel one of the few bright spots in his financial portfolio, despite it’s high vacancy rate. CREW has tracked 72 political events held at Trump properties during the Trump presidency, 40 of which have been held at his DC hotel. [...] The Center for Responsive Politics found that all the political spending at the hotel is paying off, totalling nearly $20 million since the 2016 election cycle.
Rate spikes like this have happened before at Trump’s DC hotel, on the Fourth of July and during a Senate Republican retreat in November; but at thirteen times the average rate, The Trump Victory retreat drove an unprecedented jump.
[...]
[T]o be personally making millions off of a reelection effort is both unprecedented, and wildly corrupt. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that the presidency has cost him business. The repeated rate jumps at his hotel surrounding political events suggest that, at least for his DC property, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
CREW
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
The Russian playbook
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.In 1997, a Russian political scientist named Aleksandr Dugin and a serving Russian General named Nikolai Klokotov sat down and wrote a text that would become the foundation of Russian geopolitical strategy over the next 20 years. It was called “Foundations of Geopolitics” and it was all about how Russia could reassert itself in the world.
[...]
The book starts out by saying that the shrewd thing for Russia to do is to steer clear of direct military confrontation. Instead, the book counsels Russian leaders to favour political stealth. It emphasises the need for the infiltration of Western institutions, and the use of soft power to shape the world in Russia’s favour.
[...]
The text then goes into a very specific list of to-dos, about Russia’s posture towards almost every nation on earth.
[...]
The book argues that Ukraine should - surprise, surprise - be annexed by Russia. “Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics.” It goes on to argue that the only use for an independent Ukraine would be to provide a barrier to Europe, but that it’s not necessary.
Next, it turns to Britain. The book’s authors say Russia should encourage Britain to leave the European Union, and thus weaken it.
[...]
Score so far, Putin: 2, Rest of World: 0.
[...]
It identifies Iran as a key ally for Russia, and recommends that Turkey should receive a series of “geopolitics shocks” using Kurds and Armenians to keep it off-balance.
[...]
It says that China should be encouraged to have its geopolitical posture aligned to its south – Indo-China (except Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia - so that Russia can remain predominant on the “Eurasian” mainland. It also talks about making Germany and France the predominant powers in the European Union, in order to unbalance that alliance, and encourage an anti-Atlantic sentiment on the continent. Score so far is Putin: 6, Rest of World: 0.
But perhaps most amazing part of the book is when it calls for Russia to “introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilising internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics.” If that reads like an accurate description of Trump’s inner-circle, again remember that this text was written twenty years ago.
[...]
They believed that the West had [...] infiltrated their institutions in the late-1980s, and weakened the Soviet state from within. They therefore sought revenge in kind - influencing the institutions of other countries, to return Russia to what they considered its rightful place as a superpower.
[...]
Of course, every nation has influential strategic thinkers who help leaders shape their thinking, but the Foundations of Geopolitics has had an outsized influence since it’s publication 20 years ago. By some accounts, the book has been used to teach a generation of military officers in Russia, while Dugin himself continues to be considered a member of Putin’s inner circle.
There are many factors that go into geopolitics — and it can be easy to overstate Putin’s influence in what are tendencies that may have arisen anyway. But reading through the document, it is hard to escape the conclusion that much of Russia’s foreign policy has been shaped by Dugin and Klokotov’s thinking - and that that is in turn, shaping the way the world is heading.
News.au
Trump's retweets
I've seen people quesitoning where Trump comes across these accounts in the first place. It's not inconceivable that his social media director, Dan Scavino, is combing the MAGAsphere for them, and it's also not inconceivable that Scavino is creating some of them. On the other hand, Don Jr seems to have a direct line of white supremacist ink flowing into his veins.
And many of Trump's retweets seem to be from accounts using the face of a pretty young white woman, so even though those could just be - and many if not most likely are - bot accounts, they would surely be ones that show up as "followers" of his own account and thereby get his attention.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
"We tortured some folks"
Don't look backward, right Obama?
For the umpteenth time: Lack of accountability has consequences.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
Impeach the motherfucker
He hates them all. But New York scares him.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Watergate
There's a documentary streaming on Netflix about Watergate, which if you watch, will convince you of that statement, and also that if Nixon had had Twitter and today's GOP, he wouldn't have had to step down.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
The Federal Reserve says Trump's tariffs have hurt America
So much winning.President Trump's tariffs on imports — meant to boost the economy — ultimately led to job losses and higher prices, a new study from the Federal Reserve has found.
"We find that tariff increases enacted in 2018 are associated with relative reductions in manufacturing employment and relative increases in producer prices," the report by Fed economists Aaron Flaaen and Justin Pierce reads.
MarketWatch first reported the study, noting that 10 primary industries were hit by retaliatory tariffs and higher prices, including producers of magnetic and optical media, leather goods, aluminum sheet, iron and steel, motor vehicles, household appliances, sawmills, audio and video equipment, pesticide, and computer equipment.
[...]
In September of this year, U.S. consumers and businesses paid a record $7.1 billion in tariffs.
The Hill
Say no to Joe
It doesn't matter. Until Congressional subpoenas are used to throw political dissidents in jail, they're lawful. Defying a Congressional subpoena should have legal consequences. Joe is advocating defiance of a federal subpoena. Just like Trump.Former Vice President Joe Biden (D) said Friday that he would not comply with a Senate subpoena to testify in President Trump's impeachment trial.
“What are you going to cover?” Biden said when asked about a subpoena in an interview with the Des Moines Register's executive editor Carol Hunter. “You guys are going to cover for three weeks anything that I said. And (Trump’s) going to get away. You guys buy into it all the time. Not a joke."
He went on to say it would be part of Trump's tactic to "take the focus off" himself.
The Hill
And now I want to know just what Joe IS hiding.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE: This was an unforced error on Joe's part, and a disqualifying from office response. A president who has signaled he won't abide by a lawful subpoena is the president we already have. A proper response:
UPDATE:
That's what SHOULD happen. But if it's not what DOES happen, and you happen to get a Congressional subpoena, you have to appear. YOU don't get to decide if there's a legal basis for it or not. The best you can do is fight it in court and find out. You can't just refuse to comply. Otherwise, you're just like the Trump cabal, assuming you're above the law.
Because of course he did
Vicious.Donald Trump has retweeted material that publicly names the purported whistleblower whose complaint about the US president’s dealings with Ukraine led to his impeachment.
The president on Friday night sent a retweet from one of his supporters containing the alleged name of the individual. Trump drew the attention of his 68 million Twitter followers to the post which, along with publicising the name, inaccurately claimed that the whistleblower “committed perjury by making false statements” and is being protected by Adam Schiff, chairman of the House intelligence committee. There is no evidence to support these assertions.
Earlier, on Thursday, Trump had also retweeted a post by his re-election campaign’s “war room” that linked to an article by the conservative Washington Examiner news website. The article, published on 3 December, has the name of the alleged whistleblower in its headline.
The Guardian
But not from Republicans, right?Trump’s retweet quickly drew sharp criticism.
I'd like to know what of his behavior IS acceptable from a US president.Amy Siskind, president of the New Agenda, a nonpartisan advocacy organisation, posted on Friday: “This is not acceptable behavior from the so-called leader of our country, and he must be called to task for it!”
So what?[The whistleblower] has become something of a rightwing obsession. Their alleged name and photograph have been circulating in conservative media for months. Despite whistleblower protection laws, they have to be driven to work by security detail to protect their safety.
The president was following in the footsteps of his own son, Donald Trump Jr, who last month tweeted an article that contained the name and was then grilled about it on the TV talk show The View. Trump Jr claimed he was a “private citizen” sharing information on social media.
And I'm also a private citizen sharing information on social media, but I don't publicize the alleged whistleblower's name.The show’s hosts argued this was disingenuous considering that he is the president’s son.
The vendetta is Trump's. The whistleblower's identity is irrelevant. The facts of the claim are what matters, and they've been shown to be true.Last month the Guardian asked him if he was thinking about tweeting out the name of the whistleblower.
The president replied: “Well, I’ll tell you what. There have been stories written about a certain individual – a male – and they say he’s the whistleblower.”
Trump went on to claim, without evidence, that the whistleblower is linked to John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, and Susan Rice, the ex-national security adviser. “If he’s the whistleblower, he has no credibility because he’s a Brennan guy, he’s a Susan Rice guy, he’s an Obama guy, and he hates Trump, and he’s a radical. Now, maybe it’s not him. But if it’s him, you guys ought to release the information.”
Trump has made several more appeals for the media to out the whistleblower, amplified by Republican allies in in Congress, who allege the person is a Democrat pursuing a vendetta. At a Trump rally in Kentucky, the US senator Rand Paul urged reporters: “Do your job and print his name!” Trump applauded.
That's retaliation.The Daily Beast reported: “Several people close to the president, such as Ivanka Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, had privately cautioned him against saying or posting the name in public, arguing it would be counterproductive and unnecessary.”
Legal experts disagree on whether identifying a whistleblower is a crime. Some argue the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 forbids retaliation against an employee for blowing the whistle on perceived wrongdoing but does not prevent a president or member of Congress from identifying a whistleblower.
And outing the whistleblower. And nasty-tweeting Democrats by name.With few public engagements, Trump, based at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, has spent the Christmas period furiously tweeting and retweeting false claims and conspiracy theories related to Ukraine and impeachment.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
The usual excuse for Trump’s online abusiveness—he’s counterpunching—amounts in this case not to a defense but to an indictment: Counterpunching literally means retaliating, and retaliation is what is forbidden by federal law.
[...]
Trump is organizing from the White House a conspiracy to revenge himself on the person who first alerted the country that Trump was extorting Ukraine to help his reelection: more lawbreaking to punish the revelation of past lawbreaking.
[...]
Donald Trump will not be bound by any rule, even after he has been caught. He is unrepentant and determined to break the rules again—in part by punishing those who try to enforce them. He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House.
The Atlantic
Friday, December 27, 2019
Trump's favorite SEAL, as described by his men
These men are the heroes.In cramped interview rooms in San Diego, SEALs who spoke to Navy investigators painted a picture of a platoon driven to despair by a chief who seemed to care primarily about racking up kills. They described how their chief targeted women and children and boasted that “burqas were flying.”
[...]
“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told the investigators.
[...]
The trove of materials also includes thousands of text messages the SEALs sent one another about the events and the prosecution of Chief Gallagher. Together with the dozens of hours of recorded interviews, they provide revealing insights into the men of the platoon, who have never spoken publicly about the case, and the leader they turned in.
Platoon members said they saw Chief Gallagher shoot civilians and fatally stab a wounded captive with a hunting knife. Chief Gallagher was acquitted by a military jury in July of all but a single relatively minor charge, and was cleared of all punishment in November by Mr. Trump.
[...]
In the video interviews with investigators, three SEALs said they saw Chief Gallagher go on to stab the sedated captive for no reason, and then hold an impromptu re-enlistment ceremony over the body, as if it were a trophy.
[...]
Asked whether the chief had a bias against Middle Eastern people, Special Operator Scott replied, “I think he just wants to kill anybody he can.”
Some of the SEALs said they came to believe that the chief was purposefully exposing them to enemy fire to bait ISIS fighters into revealing their positions. They said the chief thought that casualties in the platoon would increase his chances for a Silver Star.
[...]
The platoon members told investigators that they tried repeatedly to report what they saw, but that the chain of command above them was friendly toward Chief Gallagher and took no action. Finally, in April 2018, they went outside the SEALs to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Chief Gallagher was arrested a few months later.
[...]
They tried to keep tabs on the case, texting one another and commiserating over a series of setbacks, including accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, the removal of the lead prosecutor and reports that the judge overseeing the case was being investigated on suspicion of lying under oath.
“This stuff is frustrating to read and makes it seem like Eddie will possibly get away with murder (literally),” Special Operator First Class Dylan Dille texted the group.
[...]
“I am also convinced that we are gonna answer to a higher power someday, and everything happens for a reason,” wrote Special Operator Dille, who has since left the Navy. “Not compromising our integrity and keeping right on our side is all we can do.”
[...]
Three of the men who testified at the trial left the Navy afterward, and have been trying to keep a low profile while they build civilian lives. Others are still in the SEAL teams, in some cases working on classified assignments. Some fear that coming forward has hurt their chances at success in the SEALs, but none have reported any retaliation. All of them declined to comment for this article.
[...]
Chief Gallagher has repeatedly insulted them on social media and on Fox News, especially Craig Miller, whom the chief singled out for weeping while talking to investigators.
Chief Gallagher retired from the Navy with full honors at the end of November, and has announced that he was starting a SEAL-themed clothing line.
[...]
Since his arrest nearly a year ago, Chief Gallagher has insisted that the charges against him were concocted by six disgruntled SEALs in his platoon who could not meet his high standards and wanted to force him out.
“My first reaction to seeing the videos was surprise and disgust that they would make up blatant lies about me, but I quickly realized that they were scared that the truth would come out of how cowardly they acted on deployment,” Chief Gallagher said in a statement issued through his lawyer.
[...]
The video interviews and private group text conversations obtained by The Times do not reveal any coordinated deception among the SEALs in the chief’s platoon. Instead, they show men who were hesitant to come forward, but who urged one another to resist outside pressure and threats of violence, and to be honest.
“Tell the truth, don’t lie or embellish,” one sniper who is now in SEAL Team 6 told the others in a group text in 2017, when they first tried to report the chief. “That way, he can’t say that we slandered him in any way.”
When several SEALs in the group questioned what would come of reporting the chief to their commanders, another wrote: “That’s their decision. We just need to give them the truth.”
It is an unspoken rule among their teams that SEALs should not report other SEALs for misconduct. An internal investigation could close off choice assignments or end careers for the accusers as well as the accused. And anyone who reported concerns outside the tight-knit SEAL community risked being branded a traitor.
NYT
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)