Comey testimony will not be public

Not sure what the GOP is gaining here with 24 hours.  Fiddling with the transcript?  That seems risky if Comey can talk freely about it.

Maybe it's just them being dicks.  Like always.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The will of the people

Add Missouri to Michigan and Wisconsin for GOP thwarting the will of the people.  (Not to mention Georgia and North Carolina.)

The voters of Missouri this month overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment with the aim of making their state government work in less partisan, less corrupt ways.

The amendment bars lawmakers from accepting lobbyists’ gifts worth more than $5. It also bars former state officials from accepting a paid lobbying job for two years after leaving office. And it changes the process for drawing state-legislature districts to be fairer for both parties.

Some 62 percent of Missourians voted for the amendment, known as Clean Missouri. And yet, in the three weeks since Election Day, top Republicans in Missouri have started a cynical effort to weaken the new law.

[...]

Last week, opponents of the amendment created a political group to undermine it, Tony Messenger, a metro columnist for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has noted. The group has the Alice-in-Wonderland name of “Fair Missouri” and $150,000 in initial funding. Its goal is to place a new measure on the ballot that would sabotage parts of the amendment before they can take effect.

[...]

It also fits two larger — and disturbing — patterns. One, local legislators of both parties have recently shown a willingness to undercut citizen-passed initiatives, Sarah Holder of CityLab has noted. The city council in Washington is a good example: Dominated by Democrats, it overturned a wage increase for restaurant workers a mere four months after voters approved it.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Rudy Giuliani might ought to STFU

In an interview with AM 970's The Answer in New York, Giuliani accused Mueller of crossing a line by "intimidating" Trump's allies into saying "what he believes [is] his version of the truth."

“They obviously exerted a lot of pressure on him. Mr. Cohen unfortunately has a history of significant lies in the past," Giuliani told host John Catsimatidis, reacting to Cohen's admission last Thursday that he lied to Congress when he previously detailed to the body the extend of the president's business dealings in Russia.

"This isn’t a search for the truth. It’s a witch hunt," Giuliani continued. "This is what is wrong with these special prosecutors an independent counsels. They think they are God."

"They seemed to want to prosecute people at any cost, including the cost of ethical behavior and the rights of people."

[...]

"They want [Paul Manafort] to give certain forms of evidence that would implicate the president in things that Mr. Manafort says are untrue," Giuliani said.

"And they are pressuring him, and creating a real risk that the man might commit perjury," he added. "This kind of pressure can create the risk of tainted testimony."

  The Hill

What do you think? That statement by Giuliani that Trump's written answers to interrogatories essentially conformed with what Cohen testified to (and Mueller no doubt has receipts for) wasn't quite true, and now they're panicking?

And I'm guessing that any attorney who signed off on those interrogatories better have a good claim that he didn't know they were lies, or he could be in some hot water of his own. 

Although, for Rudy, this would only be one more stick on the fire of his own complicity in the Trump-Russia collusion probe.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A cocoon of bitterness and resentment*

And paranoia.

From the planned subpoenas by Democrats in the House, to the new filings by special counsel Robert Mueller, to the recent confessions of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump has now reached the stage of post paranoia.

While the Justice Department has stressed that Trump is a “subject,” not a “target,” of the special counsel investigation, he appears to be a rather significant subject that features a virtual bulls eye.

Jonathan Turley @ The Hill

No. He IS a target; the DOJ just isn't admitting it.

The week began with what might have seemed good news for Trump. Jerome Corsi, an associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone, refused a plea bargain from Mueller that he said would force him to lie. However, the draft of the agreement had a clear target in mind, and it definitely was not Corsi.

The draft notably refers to “Donald Trump” rather than using standard code like “Person One.” It further states that the Russians did in fact use WikiLeaks as a conduit for the public release of information. It described Stone as someone “Corsi understood to be in regular contact” with candidate Trump. It recounts how Stone allegedly told Corsi to “get to” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and how Corsi related that their “friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps” with “very damaging” information, and how in early 2017, Corsi allegedly “deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016.” Corsi has been clearly treated as the direct link to Stone, and Stone as the direct link to Trump.

Then came the guilty plea by Cohen for lying to Congress, an account loaded with clear shots at Trump, including Cohen stating he lied to be consistent with Trump and to try to limit the Russia investigation. According to a later leak, Cohen told Mueller he was led to believe he would be given a presidential pardon or some other protection if he continued to maintain this false account. There was very little ambiguity as to the person who gave Cohen that idea in the statement.

[...]

Cohen lying to Congress does not implicate Trump unless he encouraged it, which could constitute subornation of perjury and other possible crimes, but it raises new questions about what Trump had known or even encouragement of such false testimony.

Those questions were there long before the Cohen plea. What the plea does is underline them and strongly imply the answer.

While the known evidence falls short of a clear criminal connection to the president, the immediate danger could be a strategy to trigger Trump to commit possible impeachable offenses.

This author is Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional lawyer (who tends to be very conservative in his interpretations). But, what the hell?  "Trigger...possible impeachable offenses"?

Obviously, I can't claim to know more about the Constitution than Turley, but Trump has continuously committed impeachable offenses. The fact that no one is willing to levy them doesn't mean they aren't there. You don't have to commit a crime - although Trump has done that as well - to be guilty of impeachable offenses. In fact, impeachment is not a criminal proceeding, but a political one.

If Mueller were to indict Trump Jr., he would likely wait until he indicted or secured pleas from most of the other players. This would make it more difficult to unravel the investigation and pending prosecutions. Any indictment of his son would likely trigger a furious response from Trump, and it is in such moments that the president is at his most vulnerable. Unlike past episodes, even a concerted White House staff effort in this case might not stop an enraged executive order to fire Mueller or the issuance of a slew of pardons to block prosecutions.

While some constitutional experts insist that firing a special counsel is not a crime, and therefore not impeachable, such a narrow view is contrary to the statements of the Framers and the history of impeachments. Many offenses are not federal crimes, yet they constitute impeachable abuses of power. Indeed, the Richard Nixon articles of impeachment included obstruction counts as well as the promising of “favored treatment and consideration” for witnesses to remain silent or to offer false testimony.

That's better.

The Constitution provides for charges beyond treason and bribery of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as impeachable offenses. Does dangling pardons and paying sexual partners for silence not constitute bribery? The Constitution does not specify bribery to be the taking of a bribe. It could also be the offering of one.

So let's look at "high crimes and misdemeanors", according to the Constitutional Rights Foundation:

The framers wanted a stronger federal government, but not one too strong. To achieve the right balance, the framers divided the powers of the new government into three branches—the executive, legislative, and judicial. This is known as the separation of powers. They also gave each branch ways to check the power of the other branches.

[...]

James Madison of Virginia successfully argued that an election every four years did not provide enough of a check on a president who was incapacitated or abusing the power of the office. He contended that “loss of capacity, or corruption . . . might be fatal to the republic” if the president could not be removed until the next election.

  CRF

Loss of capacity is a little tricky, since Trump had no capacity for being president in the first place. But corruption is rampant in the Trump family background, and to the extent that Trump is still tied to Manafort and Mohammed bin Salman, to name two figures, corruption is a current condition. It could also be argued that his use of personal property to gain from both US taxpayers and foreign players is corrupt. How about appointing cronies and family to high positions? How about lobbying the DOJ to investigate his rivals?

For the more than 200 years since the Constitution was adopted, Congress has seriously considered impeachment only 18 times. Thirteen of these cases involved federal judges. The “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the House charged against these judges included being habitually drunk, showing favoritism on the bench, using judicial power unlawfully, using the office for financial gain, unlawfully punishing people for contempt of court, submitting false expense accounts, getting special deals from parties appearing before the court, bullying people in open court, filing false income tax returns, making false statements while under oath, and disclosing confidential information.

Only three of the 18 impeachment cases have involved a president — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998.

[...]

[Johnson] The House passed 11 articles of impeachment. Eight involved Johnson’s violations of the Tenure of Office Act. One charged him with sending orders through improper channels. Another accused him of conspiring against Congress, citing a statement he made about Congress not representing all the states. The last summarized the other 10 charges and charged him with failing to enforce the Reconstruction Acts.

[...]

[Nixon] In 1974, the House Judiciary committee voted three articles of impeachment. One accused Nixon of obstruction of justice. Another accused him of abuse of power. The third charged him with contempt of Congress for defying the committee’s requests to produce documents.

[...]

[Clinton] In 1998, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr issued a report to the House Judiciary Committee. It found 11 possible impeachable offenses, all related to the intern scandal. Based on the independent counsel’s investigation, the House Judiciary Committee voted four articles of impeachment. The first article accused the president of committing perjury before a grand jury convened by the independent counsel. The second charged him with providing “perjurious, false and misleading testimony” in a civil case related to the scandal. The third accused him of obstructing justice to “delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence” of evidence related to the scandal. The fourth charged that he misused and abused his office by deceiving the American public, misleading his cabinet and other employees so that they would mislead the public, asserting executive privilege to hinder the investigation, and refusing to respond to the committee and misleading the committee about the scandal.

[...]

[As to the founders' intent, w]ith the [Constitutional] convention agreed on the necessity of impeachment, it next had to agree on the grounds. One committee proposed the grounds be “treason, bribery, and corruption.” Another committee was selected to deal with matters not yet decided. This committee deleted corruption and left “treason or bribery” as the grounds.

But the committee’s recommendation did not satisfy everyone. George Mason of Virginia proposed adding “maladministration.” He thought that treason and bribery did not cover all the harm that a president might do.

[...]

Madison objected to “maladministration.” He thought this term was so vague that it would threaten the separation of powers. Congress could remove any president it disagreed with on grounds of “maladministration.” This would give Congress complete power over the executive.

Mason abandoned “maladministration” and proposed “high crimes and misdemeanors against the state.” The convention adopted Mason’s proposal, but dropped “against the state.” The final version, which appears in the Constitution, stated: “The president, vice-president, and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

[...]

Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.

After the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays, known as the Federalist Papers, urging support of the Constitution. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton explained impeachment. He defined impeachable offenses as “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”

Misconduct - abuse or violation of public trust. Injury done to society itself.  Lying constantly, concealing information about his ties to Russia.  Add that to the bribery and misuse of the office charges.  We don't even have to go back to his episodes in money laundering, which truly is a crime.

Case closed on cause for impeachment of Donald J Trump by the founders of the Constitution.


* LA Times

UPDATE: Another impeachable offense:

President Donald Trump threatened to declassify “devastating” documents next year if House Democrats launch probes into his administration. “If they want to play tough, I will do it,” he said during an Oval Office interview [...] with the New York Post. "They will see how devastating those pages are." Trump told the paper he would declassify FISA warrant applications and other confidential documents from Robert Mueller’s investigation, which he said would expose efforts by the FBI, the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign to set him up. “If they go down the presidential harassment track, if they want to go and harass the president and the administration, I think that would be the best thing that would happen to me,” he said. “I’m a counter-puncher and I will hit them so hard they’d never been hit like that.” Trump also told the tabloid he would wait to reveal such documents until they are absolutely needed, saying, “It’s much more powerful if I do it then.”

  Daily Beast

French riots

Across France, more than 75,000 gilets jaunes [yellow vests] demonstrated all day on Saturday in cities or blocked roads and toll booths, with some briefly storming the runway at the Nantes airport and others blocking major motorway junctions or targeting prefects’ offices and tax offices.

[...]

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will hold an emergency meeting of senior ministers on Sunday after central Paris saw its worst unrest in a decade on Saturday. Thousands of masked protesters fought running battles with police, set fire to cars, banks and houses and burned makeshift barricades on the edges of demonstrations against fuel tax rises.

[...]

On Sunday morning, Paris authorities hired extra trucks to begin removing the carcasses of burnt cars on from the scorched pavements of some of Paris’s most expensive streets, amid graffiti calling for Macron to resign.

Piles of teargas canisters littered broken pavements in front of rows of shattered shopfronts and smashed windows, as TV channels showed non-stop footage of central Paris in flames during Saturday’s events.

[...]

Some 5,000 peaceful gilets jaunes demonstrators marched down the Champs Élysées at midday on Saturday, some carrying roses, many shouting: “Macron, resign!” and singing the national anthem.

[...]

The spontaneous citizens’ movement, began in mid-November protesting against rising fuel taxes but it has morphed into a much broader anti-government and anti-Macron one challenging inequality and poor living standards.

[...]

Violence erupted on the margins of [the] demonstrations.

[...]

[B]y early afternoon, the Arc de Triomphe was surrounded by masked protestors fighting running battles with police. The interior minister Christophe Castaner said thousands of troublemakers unconnected to the peaceful demonstrations had deliberately come to “pillage, smash, steal, wound and even kill”. He called them rioters who were “professionals at causing disorder”.

[...]

More than 400 people were arrested on Saturday, with over 300 still in police custody on Sunday. More than 130 people were injured, while one protester is in serious condition in a coma.

  The Guardian

On the margins. Masked. So who were the agitators?

UPDATE 12/4:  The French government is suspending the tax increase.

Another Easter Egg

Would it possibly be connected to the numerous sealed indictments?

Trump culture of lying

When Michael D. Cohen admitted this past week to lying to Congress about a Russian business deal, he said he had testified falsely out of loyalty to President Trump. When he admitted this summer to lying on campaign finance records about payments to cover up a sex scandal during the campaign, he said it was at Mr. Trump’s direction.

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, former senior Trump campaign officials, lied to cover up financial fraud. George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, lied in hopes of landing an administration job. And Michael T. Flynn, another adviser, lied about his interactions with a Russian official and about other matters for reasons that remain unclear.

[...]

They lied to federal authorities even when they had lawyers advising them, even when the risk of getting caught was high and even when the consequences for them were dire.

[...]

Campaign aides often echoed Mr. Trump’s pronouncements knowing they were false. People joined the top levels of his administration with the realization that they would be expected to embrace what Mr. Trump said, no matter how far from the truth or how much their reputations suffered.

For Sean Spicer, the first White House press secretary, that included falsely insisting, on Mr. Trump’s first day in office, that his inaugural crowd was the biggest in history. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who replaced him, dialed back once-daily press briefings to once every few weeks as her credibility was increasingly battered.

[...]

Even more Trump associates are under investigation for the same offense. They are part of a group of people surrounding Mr. Trump — including some White House and cabinet officials — who contribute to a culture of bending, if not outright breaking, the truth, and whose leading exemplar is Mr. Trump himself.

Mr. Trump looks for people who share his disregard for the truth and are willing to parrot him, “even if it’s a lie, even if they know it’s a lie, and even if he said the opposite the day before,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. They must be “loyal to what he is saying right now,” she said, or he sees them as “a traitor.”

[...]

For decades, such behavior was relatively free of consequence for those who aligned with Mr. Trump. The stakes in the real estate world were lower, and deceptive statements could be dismissed as hardball business tactics or just efforts to cultivate the Trump mystique.

[...]

But in Mr. Mueller, those in Mr. Trump’s orbit now confront a big-league adversary with little tolerance for what one top White House adviser once called “alternative facts.”

[...]

Mr. Trump’s own lawyers, wary of how frequently their client engages in falsehoods, are trying to hold the special counsel at bay. Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, has already been forced to pull back his own public remarks about an issue of concern to Mr. Mueller.

In a confidential memo to the special counsel, Mr. Trump’s legal team admitted that the president, not his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., drafted a misleading statement about a Trump Tower meeting between a Kremlin-tied lawyer and campaign officials in 2016.

[...]

Fearful of more deceptions, the president’s legal team has insisted that Mr. Trump answer questions only in writing.

[...]

The reasons for the lies vary, but, not surprisingly, people were most often trying to protect themselves. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, said in federal court this past week that he had misled Congress about the details of a Trump hotel project in Moscow because he did not want to contradict the president’s own false characterizations of his business dealings in Moscow.

[...]

Mr. Cohen was also on Mr. Trump’s payroll for years, so in protecting his interests, Mr. Cohen was also trying to protect his own. Mr. Papadopoulos, the former campaign aide, said he had lied to F.B.I. agents about his interactions with Russian government intermediaries because he hoped to secure a job in the new Trump administration.

[...]

Where all this is headed is unclear, but it appears that more allegations of lying are ahead. The Senate Intelligence Committee, which has also been investigating Russia’s interference in the election, has referred other cases to the special counsel’s office involving witnesses who may have lied.

  New York Times

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jumped up Jesus

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Say what?

On the speaker phone?  Dubya wasn't even there in person?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another analysis of the Cohen plea agreement effect

New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.

[...]

A draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.

[...]

Trump, identified as “Individual 1” in Cohen’s guilty plea, was said to have received direct updates from Cohen as he pursued a Moscow Trump Tower project with the Kremlin up until June 14, 2016. The president also appears in the draft charging document for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told Stone about WikiLeaks’ plans to release damaging Democratic emails in October of that year because he knew Stone was in “regular contact” with Trump. The Washington Post reported this week that Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi.

[...]

Trump has given slightly differing accounts of his Moscow business ties over time. In July 2016, he tweeted: “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” A day later he claimed, “I have nothing to do with Russia.”

In January 2017, he told a reporter: “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.”

[...]

“The president, as far as he knows, he remembers there was such a proposal for a hotel,” Giuliani said. “He talked it over with Cohen as Cohen said. There was a nonbinding letter of intent that was sent. As far as he knows it never came to fruition. That was kind of the end of it.”

  WaPo

Very convincing, Rudy.

[Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer said,] “I think the unforgiving grinding force of the U.S. justice system, which he has tried to undermine since he became president, is encircling him. I don’t think we know where he will land. But he is certainly mired in something that he is ill-equipped, legally and personally, to handle.”

Which could spell grave danger for the world at large.

As has been noted by many people, the fact that the Kremlin knew Trump, Cohen and all of the Trump cabal were lying about not having any business dealings with Russia during the campaign and, indeed, after Trump was in office, gave them leverage over Trump, as they could have threatened to reveal the truth at any time. How is that not impeachable?

Trump privately stewed as he followed news coverage of Cohen’s plea early Thursday morning, a White House official said.

A Justice official called the White House Counsel’s Office on Wednesday evening to let personnel know that Cohen would be pleading guilty in a case the following day, according to one person with direct knowledge of the notice. They were not told the details, however, which they learned about shortly before Cohen’s plea Thursday morning.

[...]

In public, Trump was defiant, telling reporters that Cohen was a liar and a “weak person” who would do anything to save himself from fraud charges he faces related to his taxi business.

[...]

“He was convicted of various things unrelated to us,” Trump said. “He’s a weak person, and what he’s trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it.”

Quite the contrary.

Trump often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV, aides say. Among White House advisers, ­Cohen is seen as an existential threat — as much or more so than the Mueller investigation itself because of his longtime role as Trump’s fixer. Trump’s legal team did not learn until Thursday that Cohen had sat for dozens of hours of interviews with Mueller’s office, according to a senior administration official.

Trump was infuriated earlier this year when Cohen released tapes of him, and asked his lawyers and advisers if anything could be done to stop him from releasing any more.

[...]

The prosecutors’ filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen’s account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses.

[...]

According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications.

Hmmmm...were Cohen and the Trump Organization destroying records by any chance?

During the midterm campaign, the president occasionally told advisers that people had forgotten about the Mueller probe and remarked positively that it was no longer dominating TV headlines.

Welcome back.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.