Who Goes To Prison First-- Barr Or Giuliani?

An economic survey for CNBC that was completed before the Ukraine scandal and impeachment mania shows that Trump's job approval rating has continued to collapse and is now at an all-time low for this poll-- 37% approve, 53% disapprove (minus 16). Because of recent developments, the survey is out of date and superseded by more recent polls showing even worse numbers for Trump.

My favorite pollsters this cycle, Change Research, went into 31 Democratic-held districts-- districts that Trump won in 2016 but that Obama had won at least once-- after Pelosi had come out for impeachment, but before the Ukraine scandal had broken wide open. 63% of likely voters in these fairly key districts-- 71% of Hillary voters and 51% of the mentally challenged morons who are stupid enough to have voted for Trump-- are following the news closely. Key findings:

• 63% of likely voters are very closely following the "news of the recent intelligence community whistleblower complaint about President Trump’s communications and actions concerning Ukraine.” 71% of Clinton voters are currently following this news very closely compared with 51% of Trump voters.
• 45% of likely voters, including 85% of Democrats and 42% of independent voters, say “President Trump’s communications and actions concerning Ukraine” raise very serious concerns. (By comparison, just 36% of voters are very seriously concerned about “Joe Biden’s dealings with Ukraine while he was Vice President.”)
• Voters in these Trump-won seats are evenly split on the impeachment issue: 49% support “opening an impeachment inquiry, while also working on other priorities,” including 43% who support it strongly. 49% also support “voting to impeach” the President at this time. Already, 72% of the white college women who were so critical to Democrats’ gains in 2018 support impeachment, as do 48% of independents.

As Jimmy Kimmel said on his show, you can't say Trump is unravelling because it implies he was once raveled. And Kimmel wasn't the only late night comic making fun of Trump's pathetic twitter-campaign against impeachment. Watch Trevor Noah and Colbert. And here's Seth Meyers:





Does Trump have a plan to avoid being impeached? Politico reported his team is scrambling to come up with one and that right now there's no plan, no strategy and not even unified messaging to fight back. Just Trump, high on Adderall making a jerk out of himself on Twitter. This attitude probably will sink him:

“He doesn’t need a war room,” said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and an informal Trump political adviser. “This is not about impeachment. This is just a coup d’état.”

The infighting over the fate of a war room reflects the long-standing operational styles of the Trump White House and 2016 campaign over the past four years, during which personnel battles often overshadowed any well-honed strategy. The president has always preferred to run his White House with a team-of-rivals approach, with aides fighting over various policies or political options and Trump alone as the decider at the center of the action.

As John Harwood reported for CNBC, as Trump and his enablers in Congress and the White House "have feverishly sought to redirect a whistleblower’s complaints toward Democratic adversaries, the evidence makes mincemeat out their weak parries. Hardwood reported that GOP defenses for Señor Trumpanzee's conduct on Ukraine "simply don’t hold up... [E]ven cursory scrutiny of evidence that has emerged so far knocks down assorted GOP arguments like shanties in a hurricane... 'The fissures are growing,' GOP former Rep. Carlos Curbelo told me. 'I’ve heard from members who are at the end of their ropes. They just feel trapped.'" And now even 23% of Republican voters support an impeachment inquiry. Drip, drip, drip.

Even while the Trump grievance machine is reaping millions for his campaign (and defense)-- 50,000-plus new donors and $8.5 million in two days-- David Frum wrote in his Atlantic column how Trump is taking the opposite approach to impeachment strategy that Bill Clinton did. "During the Lewinsky scandal, Clinton focused on doing his job. Trump isn’t even pretending... Trump may have no impeachment war room, but he does have an impeachment strategy. He deployed it this past weekend. It’s the same strategy he brought to his presidential campaign, then to his presidency: all base, all the time. In 1998 and ’99, Bill Clinton directed his anti-impeachment messaging to voters who did not necessarily approve of him, but who feared impeachment as disruptive. Trump’s message is aimed only at his most all-in supporters, those who see him as a victim of plots and persecution by shadowy, unseen forces."

One reason why Trump's defense is in a shambles-- aside from his own nature-- is that Giuliani and Barr have a contentious relationship. A team of Wall Street Journal reporters wrote that Barr thinks Giuliani is, basically, a clown and an incompetent and assert that Señor Trumpanzee's "relationships with his private lawyer who once aspired to be his attorney general and the man who currently has that post are complicating White House efforts to build a legal and public-relations strategy to keep Mr. Trump in office." Señor T "is receiving advice from two very different lawyers: Mr. Giuliani, who blankets the airwaves morning and evening with combative interviews and is prone to exaggeration; and Mr. Barr, a more measured figure but one who has drawn criticism for appearing overly close to Mr. Trump. As Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani’s job is to defend the president; as attorney general, Mr. Barr’s is to defend the Justice Department and the institution of the presidency. Yet Mr. Trump at times refers to the two men almost interchangeably. In a July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Mr. Trump pressed his counterpart to investigate Democrat Joe Biden, Mr. Trump didn’t draw a distinction between the roles of Messrs. Giuliani and Barr, saying repeatedly that he would have both of them call to discuss the possible Biden investigation and other matters."

“When he was in private life, Trump was accustomed to having lawyers where he was the client, he would give directives and they’d do their best to fulfill his directives,” a former senior administration official said. “The government works a little bit differently. That was something he didn’t know, didn’t appreciate and I’m not sure if he’s ever fully comes to terms with.”

Mr. Barr was surprised and angry to discover weeks later that the president had lumped him together with Mr. Giuliani on the phone call with Mr. Zelensky, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Justice Department said Mr. Trump never asked Mr. Barr to contact the Ukrainians.

House committees on Monday subpoenaed Mr. Giuliani for documents related to his efforts to pressure Ukraine to probe Mr. Biden. Mr. Giuliani didn’t respond to a question about whether he would comply.

Democrats have used the Trump-Zelensky phone call to raise questions about Mr. Barr’s own conduct. “I do think the attorney general has gone rogue,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Friday on CNN. “Since he was mentioned in all of this, it’s curious that he would be making decisions about how the complaint would be handled.”

...In the days since House Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry, Mr. Giuliani has been a near-constant fixture on TV, declaring himself a whistleblower and confirming he would deliver a paid speech at a Kremlin-backed conference, only to reverse himself hours later. Mr. Barr, in contrast, departed for Italy for a previously scheduled trip and hasn’t spoken publicly.

On Monday, a Justice Department official said Mr. Barr had asked the president to make introductions in several countries that may have information relevant to a federal probe into the origins of the Mueller investigation, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly decried as a “witch hunt.”

One such introduction was to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whom Mr. Trump recently called at Mr. Barr’s request, two government officials said. The FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 after the Australian government tipped off the U.S. that another foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign appeared to have foreknowledge of the release of hacked material by Russia.

Despite legal careers that intersected under Mr. Trump, people close to Mr. Barr say he and Mr. Giuliani have never been close and that he is privately mystified by what many in conservative legal circles view as Mr. Giuliani’s meddling in matters that should be handled by officials in government. Mr. Barr has privately told associates that he believes Mr. Giuliani’s behavior in general isn’t helpful to the administration.

Mr. Trump likes and respects Mr. Giuliani but his perception of him is “cyclical” and varies depending on the day, a person close to the president said. The president so far appears to appreciate Mr. Giuliani’s very public defense of their Ukraine strategy. On Wednesday, speaking at the United Nations, Mr. Trump called Mr. Giuliani a “great lawyer” and said: “I’ve watched the passion that he’s had on television over the last few days. I think it’s incredible the way he’s done.”

“The only person that likes Rudy on TV right now is Trump,” said another person close to the president, adding that Mr. Trump “likes people who get on TV and fight for him.”

Giuliani has known the president for decades, but bolstered his standing with Mr. Trump with his loyal support of his campaign in 2016. Mr. Trump didn’t always return the favor. He often needled the former mayor for falling asleep on long flights, and joked about whether Mr. Giuliani was looking at cartoons on his iPad, a former aide said.





Mr. Trump also berated Mr. Giuliani in front of others at the wedding of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in 2017. The president complained that Mr. Giuliani was spitting while he was talking and ordered him to stand elsewhere, the aide said.

After the release of the Access Hollywood tape weeks before the election in which Mr. Trump was captured making lewd comments about women, few advisers were willing to go on the Sunday talk shows to defend the candidate. Mr. Giuliani taped all five shows-- after which Mr. Trump attacked him for his performance. “Man, Rudy, you sucked. You were weak. Low energy,” the candidate told him, according to a book by two former campaign aides, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.

Mr. Giuliani rarely complained about such treatment, jockeying with other aides and advisers to sit next to Mr. Trump at dinner or on the plane. “Rudy never wanted to be left out,” one former aide said. “If you were ever between Rudy and the president, look out. You were going to get trampled.”

After the election, Mr. Giuliani was eager for an administration post-- foremost, that of attorney general. He didn’t get it.

Yet Mr. Trump valued his loyalty. In staff meetings at the White House, the president would pre-empt complaints about Mr. Giuliani’s behavior on television by interrupting and making clear that he appreciated how hard the former mayor was fighting for him.

“Everyone shuts up after that,” a White House aide said.

Mr. Trump didn’t know Mr. Barr well before tapping him as the country’s top prosecutor on the recommendation of his legal advisers. Their relationship grew stronger during the final stages of the Mueller investigation, an administration official said, adding that Mr. Trump was pleased with the way his attorney general handled the end of the probe. In the months since, Mr. Trump has often privately praised Mr. Barr, and the two speak regularly.

Mr. Barr unrolled the Mueller team’s findings in a way that favored Mr. Trump, prompting criticism that he appeared overly interested in defending the president and risked the Justice Department’s independence from the White House. It was Mr. Barr who determined, along with then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, that Mr. Trump hadn’t obstructed justice, after Mr. Mueller opted not to make a decision on that matter, citing a Justice Department policy barring the indictment of sitting presidents.

A couple days ago right-wing journalist Joel Gehrke reported that Giuliani's incompetence led to what looks like Trump's impeachment. He reported that Giuliani was conned by Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko, "a disreputable official who hoped to avoid being fired by President Volodymyr. "Lutsenko, 54, convinced Giuliani," according to Gehrke, "that he had evidence of corruption involving former Vice President Joe Biden. But his back-channel meetings are widely perceived as an attempt to forge the kind of political alliance with Trump that would make it difficult for Zelensky to oust him.

When Lutsenko’s allegations provoked Trump to recall the top U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Kurt Volker, the other key American diplomat in Ukraine policy, downplayed the issue by casting doubt on the outgoing prosecutor’s motives.

“Other people in Ukraine are trying to use the U.S. domestic politics as a vehicle for their own engagement, either in fighting their domestic enemies inside Ukraine or trying to feel like they’ve got some special relationship with people in the United States,” Volker, who resigned last week as the State Department’s special representative for the war in Ukraine, said in May.

That was Volker’s explanation for a series of explosive allegations that Lutsenko aired throughout the spring, as Zelensky surged in the presidential elections. Lutsenko claimed to have evidence that Ukrainian officials helped 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign by leaking information that would lead to the indictment of a Trump campaign adviser.

Lutsenko also suggested that Biden had protected his son, Hunter, by pressuring Ukrainian officials to fire a previous prosecutor who was investigating a company that had hired the younger Biden. Trump would echo these suspicions in his now-famous July 25 phone call with Zelensky, but Ukrainian activists counter that Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor Biden denounced, was in fact refusing to investigate the company.

“He was dismissed because of a lack of willingness to investigate this particular case as well as other important cases,” Daria Kaleniuk, director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, said in July. “[Lutsenko] wanted to become a person with whom people in the United States wanted to talk, and then probably he found Giuliani and found a sexy story that fit into the Giuliani agenda.”

Lutsenko had a motive for resorting to these tactics. The prosecutor general was an ally of the outgoing president, Petro Poroshenko, the oligarch who came to power after Yanukovych was ousted in 2014. When Lutsenko was appointed in 2016, he had a “reformist” reputation due to his record as an enemy of Yanukovych, but that would change.

“By the time Zelensky was running, it was pretty clear that all of these corruption investigations under Poroshenko and Lutsenko's watch wasn't going anywhere,” Shevel said. “And so, clearly the idea would be that there would be changes.”

Lutsenko lost his job at the end of August, but Giuliani kept pursuing the allegations against the Bidens. Now, the ex-prosecutor is now undermining those efforts, portraying Giuliani as pushing him to “start an investigation just for the interests of an American official” and adding that he knew of no illegal activity by either the former vice president or his son.

“The president has done things ... based on his obvious presumption that there is something to be found about Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton in Ukraine,” said the central European specialist. “What if there's no there there? It means, then, that Giuliani may have drawn Trump into a situation which is, politically, extraordinarily damaging-- for no purpose.”

Many Americans look forward to seeing both Giuliani and Barr behind bars-- sooner the better.