Trump Family Corruption-- Unprecedented

 

Who didn't know that the presidential election would devolve into a question about whose family is more corrupt and disgusting/ Democrats don't want to consider that Biden's family is hideous and Republicans don't want to consider that Trump's family is far more hideous-- and I'm certainly not talking about Ivanka being a closeted lesbian, which is so awesome and the least hideous thing I've ever heard about her. [Although I do want more information about why Donald, Jr. hates Barron. That seems beyond the pale, doesn't it?] No, what I'm talking about is the familial corruption. The video above is useful and so is this Dan Alexander piece in Forbes, Forbes Estimates China Paid Trump At Least $5.4 Million Since He Took Office, Via Mysterious Trump Tower Lease. There are so many bits and pieces, deciphering them all and weaving them into an overall narrative will be a journalist-- and, more importantly, a judicial-- cottage industry for years to come.

And who didn't know that Jared was a beard?

It should have been a warning to every viewer of the Thursday debate when Trump asserted that "I don’t make money from China," that hand his spawn were no doubt on the take. And I have no doubt that it goes way beyond Alexander's revelation that he "collected millions of dollars from government-owned entities in China since he took office. Forbes estimates that at least $5.4 million has flowed into the president’s business from a lease agreement involving a state-owned bank in Trump Tower.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China signed a lease for space in 2008, years before the president took office, paying about $1.9 million in annual rent. Trump is well-aware of the deal. “I’ll show you the Industrial Bank of China,” he told three Forbes journalists touring Trump Tower in 2015. “I have the best tenants in the world in this building.”

Trump moved from the skyscraper to the White House in 2017, but he held onto ownership of the retail and office space in the building, through his 100% interest in an entity called Trump Tower Commercial LLC. That put him in an unusual position, given that government-owned entities in China hold at least 70% of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Suddenly, a routine real estate deal became a conduit for a foreign superpower to pay the president of the United States.

The arrangement posed legal concerns, since the U.S. Constitution prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state” without Congressional approval. Ethics experts, who have often focused on the president’s hotel in Washington, D.C., argued that the president would be in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause from the moment he took office.

On January 11, 2017, Trump and his team held a press conference inside Trump Tower, not far from the office of the Chinese bank. Trump’s lawyer, Sheri Dillon, claimed that routine business transactions are not violations of the so-called Emoluments Clause. But she also said the president planned to donate all foreign government profits at his hotel to the U.S. Treasury. The next month, first son Eric Trump, who had just taken over day-to-day operations of his father’s business, told Forbes the donations would come from “all the properties.”

Perhaps Eric Trump meant all hotel properties, because it sure doesn’t seem like the Trump Organization handed over all their profits from the deal with the Chinese. The Trump Organization reportedly donated a total of $343,000 to the U.S. Treasury in 2017 and 2018, Trump’s first two years as president. Yet, a document connected to Trump Tower suggests that over those same two years, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was set to pay about $3.9 million in rent. Operating profit margins inside the building are an estimated 42%, which would suggest that the deal yielded $1.6 million of earnings over those two years. Even if you only count roughly 70% of that money as coming from the Chinese government, it still adds up to $1.2 million-- or more than three times what the Trump Organization reportedly gave to the Treasury.

The lease was set to expire on October 31, 2019, according to a debt prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2018, the state-owned bank agreed to a new lease in a different office building nearby, suggesting it might leave Trump Tower. But then, the bank decided to stay in the president’s building anyway. “They are keeping a couple of floors,” Eric Trump confirmed onstage at a business conference in October 2019.

The new arrangement is somewhat murky. Contacted Friday morning, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization initially said that the bank had “consolidated with their other offices in New York.” When told that Forbes might publish that statement, the spokesperson then seemed to confirm that the Chinese bank was in fact maintaining space in the building: “They’ve exited the vast majority of their space in Trump Tower.” The website for the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China still lists an address inside Trump Tower.

Trump has other financial connections to China. The New York Times revealed Tuesday that the U.S. president has a bank account in China. His daughter, Ivanka Trump, received 41 Chinese trademarks from the time she was appointed a White House adviser in March 2017 to April 2019, according to an analysis of documents. The review also showed that the trademarks Ivanka applied for after her father’s inauguration got approved about 40% faster than those she sought out beforehand.

You want to see the swamp drained for real?

Remember when Trump campaigned on draining the swamp? That was a joke then because Trump is and has always been the swamp. Yesterday Josh Dawsey, Rosalind Helderman and David Farenthold reminded Washington Post readers that we're living through the most corrupt presidency ever. They noted that "during his four years in office, Trump has taken few steps to clean up Washington. He has instead presided over a norm-shattering expansion of private interests in government. The government has had to spend money at Trump’s private hotels as his family has traveled around the globe. Trump sidestepped rules that had been designed to prevent nepotism, allowing his son-in-law to serve in a top government role. He has touted companies run by supporters and allies who received government contracts. His administration has allowed former lobbyists to serve in jobs in which they have oversight of policies that affect their former employers... [T]he president has worsened Washington’s profiteering culture in nearly every way."

“The whole administration has taken Trump’s tone-- self-dealing, self-enriching, enriching your friends and families-- that’s smart, if you listen to Trump,” he said.

...Rich contributors have long had access to elected officials in Washington, but as president, Trump has dropped any pretense that they should not be afforded special treatment.

Donors and others seeking access appear routinely at his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey, where they have buttonholed the president on the patio or golf course.

The ability of outside favor-seekers to influence Trump has at times worried administration officials. A group of Mar-a-Lago members sought to shape the direction of the Department of Veterans Affairs, as the former VA secretary detailed in a book. Donors attending fundraisers at his Bedminister club weighed in on the GOP tax bill, according to people familiar with internal discussions.

Meanwhile, lobbying firms that can claim access to Trump’s inner circle have thrived.

Barry Bennett, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser and lobbyist for foreign interests, said business for him was booming before the coronavirus pandemic.

The president’s attacks on the swamp have been effective in one way, he said: “To the extent that Washington is less popular, and people are more angry at their government, that’s been the effect of the Trump presidency.”

When Trump launched his presidential bid, he distinguished himself from rivals for the Republican nomination by saying he would fund his own campaign, eschewing the support of donors who he said corrupted the political system by seeking favors in exchange for their contributions. The argument proved powerful with voters.

“I will say this--  [the] people [who] control special interests, lobbyists, donors, they make large contributions to politicians and they have total control over those politicians,” he said at a Republican primary debate in March 2016. “And frankly, I know the system better than anybody else and I’m the only one up here that’s going to be able to fix that system, because that system is wrong.”

He likewise termed super PACs, which can accept unlimited amounts of money, a “disaster.” “They’re a scam,” he said at a debate in October 2015. “They cause dishonesty.”

Trump unveiled the phrase “drain the swamp” in a speech in Green Bay, Wis., in October 2016, wielding it as a weapon against Democrat Hillary Clinton, who was benefiting from a network of wealthy donors that she and former president Bill Clinton had cultivated over four decades.

“There were a lot of Democrats that Trump may not have beaten with that message,” said Charles R. Black Jr., who has worked as a Republican lobbyist and consultant for nearly five decades. “The message worked-- but it worked especially because of who she was.”

It was quickly a hit with Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, entering the lexicon of call-and-response cries at his signature rallies. It remains one of the most popular chants and resonant messages, campaign aides say.

“We’re going to go to Washington. We’re going to drain the swamp,” Trump said at a North Carolina rally in 2016. As the crowd picked up the chant-- “Drain the swamp! Drain the swamp!”-- Trump explained that when he first heard the phrase, he hated it. He thought it was “hokey.” But then he said he noticed how crowds responded.

“The place went crazy,” he said, adding: “Now I love the expression. I think it was genius.”

By then, Trump’s original promises to use his own wealth to power his campaign had crumbled.

He ultimately reported spending $66 million of his own money on his winning campaign, only a small portion of the more than $564 million he raised by the end of 2016. By July 2016, he began appearing at fundraisers for a super PAC supporting his election.

Trump made no pretense of self-funding his 2020 campaign. Instead, he spent four years attending closed-door events for his wealthiest supporters, raising millions of dollars for his campaign and the America First super PAC.

Some of the country’s most powerful individuals have lent their properties for Trump’s gilded fundraising events, from the California hillside mega-mansion of Oracle founder Larry Ellison to the Hamptons beachfront palace of hedge fund manager John Paulson. The entry fee for some: as high as $580,600 a person, with much of the money flowing to the Republican National Committee, which as a party committee can accept large contributions. Many of the events are at Trump’s private clubs or hotels, where donors both contribute to his campaign and stay or dine at his properties.

Donors have gotten access not just to Trump at these events, but also to a range of senior Cabinet officials such as Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Trump advisers such as Peter Navarro, Kellyanne Conway, Bill Stepien and Corey Lewandowski, invitations show.

While his predecessors typically kept their remarks at donor events short and scripted, Trump speaks loosely and profanely-- even discussing sensitive military operations and vulgarly describing political foes.

...The ability of high-dollar donors to shape Trump’s views was put into sharp relief earlier this year, when onetime Trump supporter Lev Parnas released recordings of events.

In the recordings, one donor could be heard proposing the president hold a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, at a South Korean golf course he owned. Another donor, who owns a Canadian steel company, pushed Trump to limit steel imports to the United States.

Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman, who were working with Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, urged the president to recall the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, whom they viewed as unfriendly to interests of a new natural gas company they had formed.

“Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow,” Trump could be heard immediately instructing an aide after the two made the request.

Parnas, now a sharp critic of Trump, has been charged with campaign finance violations and defrauding investors in his company. He has denied wrongdoing. Parnas said it was widely understood by donors that they were paying for face time with Trump.

“Everyone knew that about Trump-- all it took was that one minute, if he liked it,” he said. “It was okay to spend a million dollars on a dinner. Because that dinner could make your whole life.”

...Overall, Trump has largely failed to fulfill the pledges he made in his Green Bay “drain the swamp” speech. He had promised he would push Congress to pass a five-year lobbying ban into law so it could not be lifted by a future president. But he never proposed such legislation. Nor did he ask Congress to impose a similar five-year lobbying ban on its members, as he had promised he would in 2016.

In addition, he never tried to seek to “close all the loopholes” used by former government officials who get around registering as lobbyists by calling themselves “consultants” and “advisers.” And he never acted on his pledge to stop foreign lobbyists from campaign fundraising-- and in fact, has benefited from their financial support.

As his promises to curtail lobbying have faded, Trump allies who can offer insight to private interests have flourished.

“People who know how Washington and the administration works, those people are always going to be valuable,” Bennett said.

...[A] report compiled by Public Citizen in March 2018-- only 14 months into the administration-- found that 133 former lobbyists had been appointed to the Trump administration. They included 60 who had lobbied within two years of joining government and 35 of those former lobbyists were appointed to oversee the specific topics about which they had previously lobbied.

Last year, ProPublica found that at least 33 former Trump administration officials had found ways to essentially lobby after leaving government, despite the supposed five-year ban on such activities. Some styled themselves consultants and advisers-- the kind of end run around the rules that Trump once railed against.

“It’s a meaningless piece of paper that was just put out to live up to the ‘drain the swamp’ promise,” Holman said of the executive order. “No one takes it seriously.”

Reforming Government-- Raúl Grijalva Wants To-- Pelosi And Her Team Want To Pretend They Do Too... But They Don't

 

McConnell's never going to allow the Senate to debate it and even if he did and it passed, Trump would never sign it. But that didn't stop Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) from introducing new legislation to end the common practice of hiring lobbyists in a revolving door scheme that swampifies the executive branch-- and it's not just something corrupt Republican do. Corrupt Democrats do it too. Last week, writing for the American Prospect, David Dayen showed how Grijalva is forcing corporate conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party "to take a stand on whether they will hold a potential Joe Biden administration to at least the same anti-corruption standard that Barack Obama held for himself as president."

Grijalva's new bill would "deny confirmation of any nominee to an executive branch position who is currently or has been a lobbyist for any corporate client or officer for a private corporation, in this or any future administration. That would include all Cabinet officials, and any of the roughly 1,200 Senate-confirmed positions throughout the federal government. The letter, endorsed by Demand Progress, the American Economic Liberties Project, the Revolving Door Project, and the Sunrise Movement, represents a baseline request for personnel in the next administration. Groups had proposed something similar to this for months, but not this sweeping a ban, and not with the full-throated support of a House committee chair."

The Grijalva rule is a stronger version of President Obama’s lobbyist ban. Under Obama, any registered lobbyist was barred from government service in the issue area where they lobbied until they had been unregistered for two years. On the way out, these officials couldn’t lobby the government for the remainder of the administration. Obama’s rule was a little leaky, as it didn’t apply to unregistered, de facto lobbyists who were obviously engaged in influence-peddling, lobbyists registered outside the two-year ban, or lobbyists hired for a government job outside their lobbying area.

It’s been long forgotten and is now somewhat risible, but Donald Trump also has a lobbying order in place, which replaced his predecessor’s. The Trump rule allows lobbyists into the government as long as they recuse themselves from anything they lobbied on for two years. It also allegedly bans former executive branch members from lobbying the government for five years, though it only applies to the agency where they worked.

According to one count, 281 lobbyists had worked in the Trump administration as of last October, including the secretaries of defense, interior, energy, labor, and homeland security, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler. In addition, several former Trump officials found a way around the modest post-government lobbying ban.

The Grijalva rule tightens the Trump and even the Obama standard significantly. Not only is there no safe-harbor period for former lobbyists-- they’re out of government no matter how long ago they lobbied-- but the rule includes all officers of private corporations, of which there have been many in the past two administrations.

...Biden hasn’t committed even to restoring the weaker Obama-era order on lobbying, despite promising a kind of Obama restoration throughout his campaign. Numerous business types have been pitched for top slots in a Biden administration, and his transition team includes former Apple lobbyist Cynthia Hogan, Facebook director Jessica Hertz, and Jeffrey Zients, former Facebook board member and president of Cranemere, a conglomerate that buys and sells businesses. TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson and co-CEOs of Ariel Investments John Rogers and Mellody Hobson have also been mentioned as potential Cabinet-level officials.

Yesterday Grijalva told me that "No democracy can survive if it has one set of rules for the public and another for insiders. Americans have seen decades of special corporate favors and billion-dollar giveaways, and they won’t accept that as the natural state of things any longer. If we’re going to restore faith in our government, we have to end the revolving door, not just reverse it, and we have to end corporate government once and for all." We need to ask ourselves what the leaders of both parties find unacceptable about that premise-- and why they are so doggedly in favor of the status quo. 

Wednesday, the Washington Post ran a Pelosi-generated piece on House Democrats' unveiling "a sweeping package of reforms... designed to strengthen Congress’s ability to check the executive branch and prevent abuses of power, especially by the president." No mention of Grijalva or his proposal-- just more bullshit from Pelosi and her disgustingly GOP-like, corrupt leadership team. "The package," wrote Karoun Demirjian, "which its architects have informally referred to as “post-Trump reforms,” includes measures to restrain the president’s power to grant pardons and declare national emergencies, to prevent federal officials from enriching themselves, and to accelerate the process of enforcing congressional subpoenas in court. It also includes provisions to protect inspectors general and whistleblowers, increase penalties for officials who subvert congressional appropriations or engage in overt political activity, and safeguard against foreign election interference. Taken together, the proposals represent the Democrats’ long-awaited attempt to correct what they have identified as systematic deficiencies during the course of President Trump’s tenure and impeachment, in the style of changes Congress adopted after Richard Nixon left office. Unlike the post-Watergate reforms, however, which took years to enact, today’s House Democrats have collected their proposed changes under one bill reflecting several measures that have been percolating piecemeal through the House."

It's all about Trump and doesn't touch any of the systemic corruption that has made DC one of the swampiest cities on the planet. Pelosi and Hoyer should have learned a lesson from all the millions of Americans who voted for Trump in 2016. They're incapable of learning any such lesson.

Shahid Buttar is the San Francisco reformer running for Pelosi's seat in November; there's no progressive, just a contest between a corrupt garden variety Democrat and a real fighting progressive. Today, Buttar told me that "Unfortunately, Democrats have followed the Republican playbook in Washington for years. The bipartisan revolving door between K St. and Capitol Hill is the dirty secret of Washington-- and a big part of the reason why our government has grown so unresponsive to the needs of voters struggling to endure the compounding crises of our times."

He said he's "running to replace the leading corporate Democrat in part to help the party grow more responsive to grassroots concerns, and to help make our government more responsive to We the People. I’d be eager to support Rep. Grijalva’s bill in Congress, and to promote other checks and balances to limit and counteract corporate influence peddling in Washington."

Demirjian continued that "In a joint statement, seven committee chairs [though not Grijalva] signaled their legislation is intended to 'prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections. It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president,' the statement says. 'These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk.' All good stuff... except for the steaming pile of hypocrisy sitting in the middle of the room in plain view.

Nate McMurray is the progressive Democrat in western New York taking on the newest slimy little Trumpist in Congress, hereditary multimillionaire Chris Jacobs, a complete knee-jerk kind of politician. Nate, in contrast, is an independent-minded leader who told me yesterday that "The Democratic leadership is not really well connected to working people and communities. And it really shows-- Democrats lost a lot of ground over the years at the state and local level. But the situation is fixable. The grassroots of the Democratic party has bold initiatives that excite and inspire voters to get involved, and the Democratic Leadership would do well to really listen."

Liam O'Mara is running for a southern California seat occupied by one of the most overtly corrupt members of Congress, Crooked Ken Calvert. When Fox News was looking for a corrupt slimebag to use as an example of DC corruption, they did a Mike Wallace special on Calvert's corruption. This morning Liam told me to call him old-fashioned or "an idealist; call me whatever you like-- but I believe that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people ought to serve only the people-- not corporations and wealthy special interests. Our elections need to be publicaly funded, and all lobbying, in the sense of contributions, needs to end." The topic boils his blood. He continued:

Lobbying used to mean catching someone in the lobby and pressing your case-- that's it! And advocates for bills make perfect sense to me. But when someone can come at you flush with cash from a corporation and say, please vote for things we like, and here's a million bucks to keep your job... that shit needs to be illegal. Now. Right fucking now.

We have hundreds of congresscritters taking vast amounts of cash for their campaigns, and that should be understood as bribery, plain and simple. A bribe is something offered in exchange for a decision in your favour. What else can we call it when someone takes a corporation's money, then votes to advance that same corporation's interests? It's a damned bribe!

I don't care which party you call home-- if you take a big wad of cash from someone and then push their legislative agenda, you are violating your oath to serve the people and the Constitution of this country. It's way past time for some changes. We need to apply the laws properly against bribery, pass a total ban on cash lobbying, introduce publicaly-funded elections, and, as the president disingenuously put it, drain the swamp!

 

Candidate Endorsement Alert In New Jersey: Hector Oseguera

New Jersey's 8th congressional district-- most of Hudson County, parts of Essex and Union counties and includes Hoboken, Elizabeth, Weehauken, West New York, half of Newark and parts of Jersey City, Kearny, Harrison, Belleville and Bayonne. The district is 55% Hispanic, 44% foreign-born and strongly Democratic. The PVI is D+27. Republicans don't even try. Hillary beat Trump 75-21% and in 2018, the Democratic incumbent, Albio Sires took 78% of the vote. Sires had no primary.

This year he does. On Monday, in a post comparing the two political party establishments, I asserted that all but one of the New Jersey incumbents suck but, unfortunately, the challengers I had spoken to weren't likely to win-- while noting I hadn't yet spoken with Sires' opponent, Hector Oseguera and that he may be the exception. Since then, I have and... he is. What a great candidate! And with a perfect platform for his hard-pressed district (and America)! We asked him write a guest post about an issue New Jersey voters he talks to are concerned about enough to make them switch their allegiance from the party machine candidate to an actual reformer. Hector chose corruption, tragically fitting in his state, particularly in machine-controlled Hudson and Essex counties. Please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Blue America congressional thermometer on the right and giving what you can.


Corruption In Congress Needs To Be Fought-- Hard
by Hector Oseguera

It's become a national joke that the political establishment in New Jersey is corrupt, but there's nothing funny about corruption. Political corruption robs opportunity and resources from the communities that need them most. This working class community desperately needs funding for schools, roads, hospitals, public transit, all manner of social services that our government should be providing. Yet resources for those basic services always seem to be lacking.

If you ask yourself why, look no further than my opponent, whose district director, Richard Turner, is also simultaneously: the mayor of Weehawken, North Hudson Fire and Rescue Chairman, and a "consultant" for the town of West New York, where my opponent was once mayor. Richard Turner pulls in four public service paychecks. Those are four jobs, four opportunities, that should be available to qualified candidates, but instead become casualties of North Jersey political patronage. My opponent takes money from Exxon Mobil, and so it's no surprise that he does not support a Green New Deal; he takes money from the insurance companies, and so it's clear why he isn't a proponent for Medicare-For-All; he receives contributions from the luxury real-estate developers, so we know why he doesn't have a strong stance on affordable housing. On issue after issue, the reason why the people of my district are denied the representation they deserve boils down to the corrosive effects of corruption on our political system.

My experience as an anti-money laundering attorney puts me in a unique position to root out the corruption that has nested in North Jersey. I've investigated international scandals such as the Panama Papers in Panama, the Russian Laundromat in Estonia, and Operation Cash Wash in Brazil; each time diving deep into the financial networks of shady shell corporations and illicit schemes that involve bribery, money laundering, and corruption. I've proposed the most ambitious anti-corruption platform of the 2020 election cycle, and have the tools necessary to realize those proposals. I've spent my career combating corruption in our financial system, and am now ready to do the same for our government.

The reception from the community has been tremendous, and we find ourselves in a one-in-a-million chance of truly knocking out this corrupt political establishment. Given that the progressive slate drew Column A, the premier ballot position, we're not asking voters to do anything other than what they've done for generations, "Vote Column A All the Way!" While for years this slogan has been the calling card of the establishment, the coveted spot on the ballot that virtually guarantees electoral victory, this year voters looking for change will, for the first time ever, know that a vote for "Column A" is a vote for integrity, transparency, and progressive values.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Barton Proudly Explains How He And His Cronies Helped Destroy Planet Earth

Joe Barton (Villain-TX)

Republican former Congressman Joe Barton is a 70 year old energy lobbyist now. Once he was the all-powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee as well as the dean of the Texas congressional delegation. His dream was the deregulation of electric and gas-- and everything else. Barton, one of Congress' most corrupt members, was the ultimate climate change denier. After a trove of pornographic selfies of Barton surfaced in 2017, he announced he would not seek reelection in 2018. On Sunday, Barton wrote a long column, I knew my bill to lift the ban on U.S. oil exports was important. I hardly expected it to change the world for the Dallas Morning News. He has hardly reformed his views but the column condemns himself and his congressional cronies who seems to have set out to make global warming even worse.

To this day, the only person to serve in the House who solicited and accepted more bribes from the Energy Sector than Joe Barton ($4,626,327) was former Speaker John Boehner ($4,909,902). In 2014, his donors wanted one thing really badly-- and Barton delivered for them. In his own words: "I started hearing from oil companies about a new idea, to lift an old ban on oil exports... I agreed to try. As a longtime member of Congress, I knew this would be a long and difficult road that would require bipartisan cooperation, and I couldn’t guarantee success. At the time, I hardly understood how lifting this one rule could change the world."

Repeal was not initially popular, as many environmental groups wanted to restrict oil and gas production, not create new markets for it. Undaunted, several companies and individuals decided it was a job that needed to be done.

On Dec. 9, 2014, I introduced the bill. It had seven co-sponsors, all Republicans, including one Texan, Mike Conaway of Midland.

...On Feb. 4, 2015, I introduced HR 666. My staff immediately demanded I reintroduce the bill to get a better number. So I hurried back to the House floor and reintroduced the identical bill, but with a new number. HR 702 had 37 original co-sponsors, all Republicans.

Having only Republican sponsors was a big problem. In 2015, the Republicans had a comfortable majority in the House, but the bill would have to pass in the Senate and gain President Barack Obama’s signature. Obama was opposed to another energy issue of the time, the Keystone oil pipeline, and would later veto that bill when it came to his desk.

I needed Democratic support. Not just nominal support, but active participation in the effort to pass the bill. One of the seldom-discussed truths about Congress is that while most of the media attention goes to the bomb-throwers on both sides of the aisle, the way to actually pass law that improves the lives of everyday Americans is work together. Ideally, my Democratic leader should be a member of the Energy and Commerce committee, which had primary jurisdiction over the bill.

I asked Gene Green, from Houston, to be my primary Democrat sponsor. He was interested, but numerous refineries in his district were opposed to the bill, and he also was concerned about creating a totally open market for crude exports. My bill was only two pages long, and expressly prohibited any federal agency or official from imposing permits or restrictions on crude oil exports. The president would retain his emergency power to stop exports in an emergency.

So Green said no, as did Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania. Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas agreed to co-sponsor, but she didn’t want to be the lead Democrat. I turned to Henry Cuellar of Laredo, a member of the powerful appropriations committee with a history of working across the aisle. Plus, the Eagle Ford Shale was in his South Texas district. He needed time to consider the bill and communicate with people in his district. After about a month, he agreed to be the lead Democrat.

Of the 137 co-sponsors, 15 were scummy crooked Democrats, starting with Texas Blue Dog Henry Cuellar. He was followed by Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO), Marc Veasey (New Dem-TX), Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA), David Scott (Blue Dog-GA), Tim Ryan (D-OH), Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog-OR), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX), Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) and Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL). It passed on October 9, 2015, 261-159. 6 Republicans and 153 Democrats voted against it. 26 Democrats voted in favor, the co-sponsors and a batch of other corrupt, easily bought whores including-- Lacy Clay (D-MO), Gwen Graham (Blue Dog-FL), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ), Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), Beto O'Rourke (New Dem-TX), Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA), Albio Sires (D-NJ), Stephen Lynch (New Dem-MA) and Filemon Vela (Blue Dog-TX).

Milwaukie, Oregon's progressive mayor, Mark Gamba, is running for the seat held by Kurt Schrader, who backed Barton's efforts to repeal the export ban. "This," he told us today, "is a prime example of why blue dog, 'moderate democrats', are in some ways more dangerous than Republicans. This bill would not have passed without their capitulation. Billions of gallons of American Oil would not currently be filling our atmosphere with carbon and other pollutants. Please note also, this bill kept the price of crude oil down worldwide when the Iranians attacked the Saudi oil fields! That is exactly the opposite of what is called for if we hope to curb the worst effects of the looming climate catastrophe! This is a perfect example of the lies that Kurt Schrader tells when he pretends to care about climate change. Stopping this one bill would have made a world of difference and passing it did nothing to benefit his district and most certainly sped up the climate chaos. Keep in mind that he is the leader of the blue dog caucus, his decision to support this bill undoubtedly brought many more democrats in line with the republican’s wishes. When I get into office, one of my top priorities will be to reinstate the ban. It’s really unfortunate that real Democrats have to work to fix problems that supposed Democrats caused in the first place."

Boston conservative New Dem Stephen Lynch, a longtime Climate Crisis denier, voted with Barton as well. His progressive primary opponent, Brianna Wu," sees a pattern in Lynch's conservatism. "Even though Stephen Lynch was against impeachment from the beginning, I'm sure a part of him is glad the hearings are finally happening.  He's one of those conservative establishment Democrats who want to silence the majority of us who want a more progressive agenda.  The differences between Lynch and myself are probably too many to mention, but I'll try.  I was for impeachment since before the Mueller Report; Lynch said we hadn't "made the case" and we would get Trump re-elected.  I support a Green New Deal; Lynch says it's too aspirational and we have 100 years to address climate change.  I support Medicare For All; Lynch says he isn't convinced it will work.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  Take a look at Lynch's donors and you'll see why he is beholden to the establishment and is not going to waiver. Lynch actually had the audacity to run for chair of the House Oversight Committee after being against impeachment until the very end.  My campaign launched an effort to tell Congress to say no to Lynch, and we won.  We will defeat Lynch in 2020.  Whether the establishment wants to admit it or not, the progressive movement is alive and well, and we will win in 2020 and beyond."

HR 702 had a reasonable number of co-sponsors, and it was bipartisan. So far, so good. But, to become law, it needed much, much, more. It needed a Senate companion bill with bipartisan Senate leadership. It needed to be blessed, or at least not opposed, by House and Senate party leadership. It needed to be passed by at least one of the congressional chambers as a stand-alone bill. It needed support from as many outside groups as possible and, conversely, to be opposed by as few outside groups as possible.

Last, but not least, it would be very helpful if the president supported it, because it would take a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate to override his veto. What we needed, in short, was a coordinated, organized strategy and a plan to implement that strategy.

The first order of business was to get Fred Upton, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee, on board. He agreed to support the bill. House Speaker John Boehner didn’t promise active support, but he thought the bill was a good idea and should be given a chance. In a similar fashion, the republican majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, gave his approval.

On the Democrat side, Cuellar and I both knew we couldn’t get the support of Democratic House leadership, but we hoped we could persuade them to be neutral. Nancy Pelosi, minority leader at the time, and assistant minority leader Steny Hoyer both agreed to let the bill, if it came to the floor, be a “free” vote. What this meant was while they would vote against the bill, they wouldn’t ask the Democratic whip to recommend a “no” vote or the House Democratic caucus to make it a binding “no” vote. Persuading the House Democratic leadership to take a hands-off approach was a major tactical and strategic victory. It would not have happened without Cuellar’s active leadership.

Meanwhile, I met with my Texas senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and obtained their support. I also asked for and received the support of the chairwoman of the Senate energy committee, Lisa Murkowski.

Murkowski was trying to move a comprehensive energy bill through the Senate, and she felt adding the export ban repeal would strengthen her larger bill. As it turned out, her bill didn’t move, but including the export ban repeal helped with the Senate later at the end of the year. Cornyn got the endorsement of Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell.

On the Democratic side, Cuellar and I met with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, another area of intense shale oil activity. She agreed to be the lead Senate Democrat, and she worked tirelessly to get her fellow Senate Democrats to vote yes.

...Environmental groups opposed the bill out of concern it would also inhibit switching to alternative, green energy. The environmentalists wanted to keep our oil in the ground. Luckily, their top legislative priority was stopping the Keystone oil pipeline, so while they opposed HR 702, they did not wage all-out war against it.

...What do oil executives think of the results? Pioneer’s Sheffield said, “When the Iranians attacked the Saudi oil fields, the world price of oil would have gone to over $200 a barrel,” if not for the repeal of the export ban.

And Jim Teague, chief executive of Enterprise Products, the country’s largest exporter of crude oil, said, “Without the crude oil export ban repeal, the United States would not be producing half of the oil it is today because it could not be exported.”

Justin Miller, who covers politics for the Texas Observer, noted in a series of tweets on Sunday that Bernie, Warren, Booker are among those who say they will reinstate the ban. Status Quo Joe, Mayo Pete, Kamala and Castro haven't announced their stands. "It's hard to overstate just how significant the effect of ending the crude oil export ban has been-- both as a huge boon for the ONG industry and as a huge blow to the keep-it-in-the-ground movement. Hard to put this boom back in the box," he wrote. "Interestingly, Barton contends that passage was much smoother than anticipated because enviro groups were focused mostly on the Keystone pipeline fight. (26 Dems ended up voting to lift the ban)... There's some interesting nuggets in this though. Barton explains how Henry Cuellar was critical to getting Dem leadership to stay neutral, freeing up ONG lobbying campaign to court dozens of House Dems."

Dems Seek $70 Million Corporate Cash to Fund 2020 Convention

Every word a true one

by Thomas Neuburger

Almost the very definition of corruption is trading money for favors while serving the public interest in public office. Almost, but not quite. There are other definitions, and Zephyr Teachout's "self-serving use of public power for private ends" is still the best. But money-for-gifts-and-services is the easiest to identify and despise.

For those not permanently married to the Democratic or Republican parties as tribal identities, what's to choose between the legalized corruption of Joe Biden and his family and the international-mob–infested corruption of Donald Trump and his? Not much, except perhaps in degree.

Do we really need evidence of a quid pro quo, a smoking gun, to see a body on the floor, its money in someone else's hands, and a room where two walked in but only one walked out, to know a bribe occurred? If you can convict a person of murder on strong circumstantial evidence — and you can — you can convict (in your mind) for bribery the same way.

The DNC Responds to the Sanders No-Corporate-Money DNC Pledge

With that in mind — and remembering Bernie Sanders' recent pledge to forbid corporate funding of the DNC and Democratic Party convention — let's look at what the pre-Sanders DNC is up to:

Dems seek lobbyist cash to fund Milwaukee convention

Party representatives are meeting with lobbyists about funding the $70 million event as candidates swear off corporate-connected dollars.

Two top operatives planning the Democratic Party’s 2020 convention in Milwaukee went to K Street last week to pitch lobbyists on their plans for the $70 million event.

Against the backdrop of the Democratic primary, it was an awkward pairing — representatives for special interests meeting with top Democrats while the party’s leading presidential candidates reject corporate PAC and lobbyist cash. But Democratic National Committee officials explained during the meeting how corporations can help foot the bill for the convention, regardless of who the nominee is, addressing some lobbyists’ worries that a crusading left-wing nominee like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could try to reject corporate money, embarrassing convention sponsors.

Two things to note about that passage: First, "representatives for special interests" is fog-talk for corporate bribe-givers. Amnesty International is also a "special interest," but no one considers them a nest of money-laundering bribery agents.

Second, did you see the inclusion of Elizabeth Warren along with Bernie Sanders in the last sentence? To my knowledge, the anti-corruption Warren hasn't yet followed Sanders lead in forbidding corporate gifts to the DNC, its convention and her inauguration if she's the nominee.

Here's just part of what Sanders' Issue page promises regarding corporate funding of his party if he's the nominee and president:

As the Democratic nominee, Bernie will:

• Ban corporate contributions to the Democratic Party Convention and all related committees.

As president, Bernie will:

• Ban all corporate donations for inaugural events and cap individual donations to $500.

• End the influence of corporations at the DNC.

• Ban donations from federal lobbyists and corporations.
• Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for National Party Chairs and Co-Chairs
• Ban Chairs and Co-Chairs from working for entities:
  • With federal contracts.
  • That are seeking government approval for projects or mergers.
  • Can reasonably be expected to have business before Congress in the future.

• Ban advertising during presidential primary debates.

• Institute a lifetime lobbying ban for former members of Congress and senior staffers.

Again, this is just some of what he's promised on this issue. (He's also going to overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court's original sin when defining money as speech, but that's a subject for another day.)

Will Elizabeth Warren Support Sanders' No-Corporate-Money DNC Pledge?

Has anyone seen a response to this from Warren? I hope we get one, and I hope it's as strong — I also hope she's asked if she agrees with Sanders' position during one of the debates — but given her "play nice with the Party" stances, I'm not overly optimistic. Here's how the New York Times described her message to Party leaders: "While her liberal agenda may be further left than some in the Democratic establishment would prefer, she is a team player who is seeking to lead the party — not stage a hostile takeover of it."

Either that's inaccurate — a real possibility, since the Times has a horse in this race — or Warren is unlikely to be as full-throated about strangling the Party-wants-corporate-money monster in its bed, if she speaks about it at all.

Will the DNC Return Corporate Money If Sanders Is the Nominee? No.

So the Party is going full bore into K Street offices, selling what they can offer and hoping K Street will offer what they want — $70 million, for now.

And, at least according to Politico in the article cited above, the DNC won't give back any what they manage to harvest from corporate sources if Sanders is the nominee: "The DNC doesn’t plan to return any corporate money that is donated to the convention regardless of the nominee, convention CEO Joe Solmonese told POLITICO."

So that's that.

We knew going in he'd be like that

There's an interesting little war setting up between Sanders and the Party. No wonder no one but us "small people" want Sanders to win. It's definitely a club, the DNC is in it, and we're not even invited to hold their coats.
 

Surveillance Nation: How DEA Agents Search and Seize Property from Amtrak Passengers

Cops can do anything they want in modern America. This is from a 2015 Washington Post piece entitled "Cops took more stuff from people than burglars did last year." Notice the jump in seizures near the end of Obama's first term.

by Thomas Neuburger

As you listen to the panicked fear that the U.S. government will turn authoritarian under Trump, consider the following story about the DEA and drug surveillance on the Amtrak Southwest Chief, the long train between Chicago and Los Angeles.

To "keep you safe," this is what cops get to do:

DEA Agents Ambush Amtrak Passengers With Controversial Searches and Seizures

by Amy Martyn

A few hours characteristically behind schedule, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief rolls into Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the small station that it shares with the Greyhound bus service on the edge of downtown.

Most people step off to stretch their legs or have a cigarette during the layover, the longest smoke break in the entire trip. That’s when two plainclothes agents come aboard the train on a rainy day in March 2019.

One agent walks to the back of the aisle in the first coach car and waits, quietly observing. The other is tasked with getting people to talk and open their bags. His name is Jarrell, or Jay, Perry, and he’s done it hundreds of times before.

Perry is white and looks like he’s in his fifties. He’s bald and slightly overweight, with a weightlifter’s build to compensate, and he’s dressed in a baseball cap, a gray sweatshirt, and jeans. He’s not carrying a visible warrant or a train ticket and has no drug dog with him. When passengers reboard, they seem oblivious to his presence.

Today, he seems confident that he will find someone on board carrying drugs — or at least a substantial amount of money. He flashes a smile and a badge. A young, disheveled man in a seat by the entrance to the car agrees to let Perry search his three bags. The agent flips through the man’s luggage with tactical speed.

The author goes on to note a number of things about these tactics. I've highlighted them in the passage below:

It’s legal for Perry to search people without probable cause, a warrant, or a dog because travelers supposedly realize that they have the right to decline to submit to his searches. Perry and others in his interdiction unit have testified that they receive manifests ahead of time listing the passengers who will be arriving in Albuquerque. The courts have ruled this is also legal-- functioning like a helpful tip sheet on whom to question.

More problematically, Perry has been captured on surveillance footage boarding empty Greyhound buses and pulling bags out of the checked luggage bin. One clip captures him pressing on a bag so aggressively that he appears to be tackling it. But he stops short of opening the bag, which would be blatantly unconstitutional. Several people that Perry has seized cash from insist that they are not drug couriers and, in fact, were never criminally charged as such, though that didn’t help them get their money back.

Perry is not the only cop riding the rails. His tactics offer a case study in how law enforcement targets mass transit in the war on drugs, generating thousands of busts and a steady stream of revenue from seized assets.

To summarize:

     • You can be searched without probable cause, because it's assumed you know you can refuse (but if you do refuse, you're asking for "extra attention" and perhaps a trip to an interrogation room downtown).

     • Amtrak gives passengers lists to DEA agents ahead of time (because they know whose side they're on).

     • Your checked baggage may be searched without your knowledge (illegal, but try and stop them).

     • They can seize your cash if they have reason to suspect you're a courier (if you you're carrying "too much" money, this could be you).

     • Seized cash is part of the lifeblood of the system.

Yes, these tactics do produce arrests. But breaking into every home in every neighborhood in Los Angeles — and a great many Bel Air mansions as well — without warning or a warrant would also produce arrests, the same number or more.

Yet are these illegal tactics justified by these arrests, and given the state of civil (not criminal) asset seizure in this country, consider how strong the incentives are for cops to continue these practices. The DEA has treated the Southwest Chief and other Amtrak trains as a trout farm to fish in for dealers, methods be damned, and has done so since at least the 1990s according to the article, when Bill Clinton was president, and the practice continued unabated through Barack Obama's presidency as well.

This, Surveillance Nation, is the country Democrats are desperately trying to protect ... from Trump.

The Genesis of This Practice

How did this practice, surveilling Amtrak trains and seizing the assets of its passengers, begin? That's an interesting story on its own:

[DEA agents'] presence on the Southwest Chief and other passenger Amtrak trains is a known phenomenon that goes back decades, or at least back to the mid-1990s. That’s when an unknown DEA agent first approached an Amtrak secretary for information about the itinerary of a passenger who was under arrest.

The Amtrak secretary started using his access to Amtrak’s reservation system to regularly look for people who “might be planning to transport illegal drugs or money,” based solely on subtle clues like one-way itineraries for private bedrooms, trips booked on short notice, trips booked by third parties, and trips paid in cash. For each drug bust or cash seizure that the DEA made thanks to this information, the Amtrak secretary was rewarded a cut of the proceeds.

The person who recruited the Amtrak secretary as a DEA snitch described him to Department of Justice auditors in 2015 as “one of the most valuable interdiction informants the DEA has ever known.” ...

The Amtrak Police Department learned about the arrangement in 2014, and by that time, the Amtrak secretary had amassed $854,460 from the DEA for his work snitching on riders.

When the Amtrak police finally heard about this practice, they were upset, but not for the reason you'd expect — "Amtrak police were unhappy because they were cut out of the deal."

Welcome to America, same as it always was for a good long while. I can think of only one Democratic candidate for president under whom this won't get worse. Most of the rest, for all their other virtues, want to keep us too "safe" to be trusted to protect us from our protectors.
  

Reminder — DNC Lawyers to Court: We Do Not Owe Voters an 'Impartial' or 'Evenhanded' Primary Election

As Jimmy Breslin wrote in his blurb, this is the best book ever written about legendary Democratic Party boss Richard J. Daley, king of the smoke-filled back room deal. (Fun fact: John Belushi played a character closely based on Royko in an early Lawrence Kasden film, Continental Divide, that's well worth watching.)

by Thomas Neuburger

This is your periodic reminder that the "Democratic Party" is not an organization that Democratic voters belong to or have any right to control. The Democratic Party is instead a private organization, much like a club, that non-members support by giving it their money, their time and their votes. (The same is true of the "Republican Party.) All other "rights" and promises offered by the Party to its supporters, including those obligations described in the DNC charter, are not obligations at all, but voluntary gifts that can be withdrawn at any time.

At least, that's how the DNC sees it.

Consider this report of a 2017 court filing, one that almost no one noticed, in which Sanders supporters sued the DNC for violating the section of its charter that requires DNC-run elections to be "impartial" and "evenhanded." The DNC's defense was, in essence, "So what?" (emphasis added below):

DNC Lawyers Argue DNC Has Right to Pick Candidates in Back Rooms

Attorneys claim the words 'impartial' and 'evenhanded'—as used in the DNC Charter—can't be interpreted by a court of law

On April 28 the transcript [pdf] was released from the most recent hearing at a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the lawsuit filed on behalf of Bernie Sanders supporters against the Democratic National Committee and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for rigging the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton. Throughout the hearing, lawyers representing the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz double[d] down on arguments confirming the disdain the Democratic establishment has toward Bernie Sanders supporters and any entity challenging the party’s status quo.

Shortly into the hearing, DNC attorneys claim Article V, Section 4 of the DNC Charter—stipulating that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic presidential primaries—is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with.” Based on this assumption, DNC attorneys assert that the court cannot interpret, claim, or rule on anything associated with whether the DNC remains neutral in their presidential primaries.

The attorneys representing the DNC have previously argued that Sanders supporters knew the primaries were rigged, therefore annulling any potential accountability the DNC may have. In the latest hearing, they doubled down on this argument: “The Court would have to find that people who fervently supported Bernie Sanders and who purportedly didn’t know that this favoritism was going on would have not given to Mr. Sanders, to Senator Sanders, if they had known that there was this purported favoritism.” ...

“People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee—nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial,” [Jared] Beck [the attorney representing Sanders supporters in the class action lawsuit] said. “And that’s not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own charter says. It says it in black and white. And they can’t deny that.” He added, “Not only is it in the charter, but it was stated over and over again in the media by the Democratic National Committee’s employees, including Congresswoman Wassermann Schultz, that they were, in fact, acting in compliance with the charter. And they said it again and again, and we’ve cited several instances of that in the case.”

According to this report, attorneys for the DNC argued that the DNC was not liable to Sanders supporters if they threw the primary race to Clinton, or tilted it toward her, because:

     (a) Sanders supporters already knew the primary was rigged (did DNC lawyers really say that?), and

     (b) the DNC charter requirement that elections be "impartial" and "evenhanded" is discretionary and not a requirement.

Shorter DNC lawyers: "We don't have to run an evenhanded primary, even if we say we're going to."

About the second point, let's look at the court transcript itself. In this section, the court asks: If Sanders supporters give money to an election run by the DNC, and if the DNC violates its charter and runs an election that unfairly disadvantages Sanders, do Sanders supporters have standing to sue?

DNC's response is below. "Mr. Spiva" is Bruce Spiva, one of the DNC's defense lawyers (emphasis mine):

THE COURT:  All right. Let me ask the defense -- we're going to go into the issue of standing now at this point.

Let me ask counsel. If a person is fraudulently induced to donate to a charitable organization, does he have standing to sue the person who induced the donation?

MR. SPIVA:  I think, your Honor, if the circumstance were such that the [charitable] organization promised that it was going to abide by some general principle, and the donee -- or donor, rather, ultimately sued, because they said, Well, we don't think you're living up to that general principle, we don't think you're, you know, serving kids adequately, we think your program is -- the way you're running your program is not adequate, you know, you're not doing it well enough, that that -- that they would not have standing in that circumstance.

[On the other hand] I think if somebody -- a charitable organization were to solicit funds and say, Hey, we're gonna spend this money on after-school programs for kids, and the executive director actually put the money in their pocket and went down the street and bought a Mercedes-Benz, I think in that circumstance, they would have standing.

I think this circumstance is even one step further towards the no standing side of that, because here we're talking about a political party and political principles and debate. And that's an area where there's a wealth of doctrine and case law about how that -- just simply giving money does not give one standing to direct how the party conducts its affairs, or to complain about the outcomes, or whether or not the party is abiding by its own internal rules.

And I should say, your Honor, I just want to be clear, because I know it may sometimes sound like I am somehow suggesting that I think the party did not -- you know, the party's position is that it has not violated in the least this provision of its charter.

THE COURT:  I understand.

MR. SPIVA:  So I just want to get that out there. But to even determine -- to make that determination would require the Court to wade into this political thicket. And -- you know, which would invade its First Amendment interests, and also, I think, would raise issues -- standing issues along all three prongs of the standing test.

After a legal discussion of the "three prongs," the court asks this:

THE COURT:  And then one other question on the issue of standing for the defense. Is there a difference between a campaign promise made by a political candidate and a promise that pertains to the integrity of the primary process itself? In other words, President George H.W. Bush's --

MR. SPIVA:  "Read my lips."

THE COURT:  -- promise -- "read my lips, no new taxes," and then he raised taxes. Well, he could not be sued for raising taxes. But with respect to the DNC charter, Article V, Section 4, is there a difference between the two?

MR. SPIVA:  Not one -- there's obviously a difference in degree. I think your Honor -- I'm not gonna -- I don't want to overreach and say that there's no difference. But I don't think there's a difference that's material in terms of how the Court should decide the question before it in terms of standing, in that this, again, goes to how the party runs itself, how it decides who it's going to associate with, how it decides how it's going to choose its standard bearer ultimately. In case after case, from O'Brien, to Wymbs, to Wisconsin v. LaFollette, Cousins v. Wigoda, the Supreme Court and other courts have affirmed the party's right to make that determination. Those are internal issues that the party gets to decide basically without interference from the courts.

[...]

You know, again, if you had a charity where somebody said, Hey, I'm gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X, and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that's different. 

But here, where you have a party [the DNC] that's saying, We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we're gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have -- and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.

To this day the DNC believes that if it wanted to "go into back rooms" and "pick the [presidential] candidate," this would "have been their right," and no one outside the organization would have any right to enforce the DNC charter or interfere in any other way.

Good to know as we watch the 2020 machinations unfold before us.
 

The Anti-Sanders Press Influenced the 2016 Primary. Will It Do the Same Again?

How will these people respond if they think Sanders was cheated again?

by Thomas Neuburger

Like many I watched the 2016 Democratic primary carefully, and like many I was appalled by what looked like rampant cheating of varying types and degrees by national party leaders, state officials and local functionaries. So I'm going to publish an occasional series on what went down in 2016 as a sort of inoculation against the same occurring again.

I have another goal as well. Last time the Sanders campaign was surprised by its popularity, and I suspect it took some time for its leaders to adapt to what it was starting to accomplish. I also suspect that the cheating, the tilting of the playing field, the attacks from the wings by actors not even in the play also surprised the campaign, and it found itself scrambling to respond, or scrambling to decide even to respond at all.

After all, if you're polling at 5% against a shoo-in opponent, you're seen as a gnat, barely worth swatting at, and the occasional "slings and arrows" are not meant to wound or kill, just keep you at bay. Not so when, to everyone's surprise, the gnat grows large, grows a following, and starts filling football stadiums when the shoo-in candidate still can't fill a gymnasium.

Then the "slings and arrows" become bazookas and howitzers, and no one in the suddenly large upstart campaign has a plan for that.

This Time People Can Prepare

Not so this time around. The events of 2016 offer plenty of fair warning. To that end I'd like to document just what some of those bazookas and howitzers were, so not only the campaign — but you and I, the voters — can be prepared, can know what we're looking at.

Who anticipated, for example, that California Democratic Party officials at the precinct level would misinstruct election workers, or hand out provisional ballots instead of ballots appropriate for "no party preference" voters (independents) so that much of the (pro-Sanders) independent vote would be disenfranchised? Who anticipated that voters in select precincts in New York, and many other states, would discover on election day that their party registrations had been changed without their knowledge?

This time around we can anticipate all of that, and call it out in real time if it occurs.

The Heavy Thumb of the Anti-Sanders Press

But let's start with a national problem in the 2016 election — the role of the press in trying to make sure, to the extent it could, that Bernie Sanders would lose to Hillary Clinton. One of the best sources of information for this is Thomas Frank's long-form examination "Swat Team: The media’s extermination of Bernie Sanders, and real reform," written for the November 2016 issue of Harper's Magazine. (Unless you're a Harper's subscriber, the article is paywalled. An archived version can be found here.)

Frank states his goal: "My project in the pages that follow is to review the media’s attitude toward yet a third politician, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this year. By examining this recent history, much of it already forgotten, I hope to rescue a number of worthwhile facts about the press’s attitude toward Sanders. Just as crucially, however, I intend to raise some larger questions about the politics of the media in this time of difficulty and transition (or, depending on your panic threshold, industry-wide apocalypse) for newspapers."

His examination of the "press's attitude toward Sanders" produces a striking discovery:

I have never before seen the press take sides like they did this year, openly and even gleefully bad-mouthing candidates who did not meet with their approval.

This shocked me when I first noticed it. It felt like the news stories went out of their way to mock Sanders or to twist his words, while the op-ed pages, which of course don’t pretend to be balanced, seemed to be of one voice in denouncing my candidate. A New York Times article greeted the Sanders campaign in December by announcing that the public had moved away from his signature issue of the crumbling middle class. “Americans are more anxious about terrorism than income inequality,” the paper declared—nice try, liberal, and thanks for playing. In March, the Times was caught making a number of post-publication tweaks to a news story about the senator, changing what had been a sunny tale of his legislative victories into a darker account of his outrageous proposals. When Sanders was finally defeated in June, the same paper waved him goodbye with a bedtime-for-Grandpa headline, hillary clinton made history, but bernie sanders stubbornly ignored it.

Frank marshalls much data to support his claims. I'll leave you to examine those details for yourself.

"Defining Sanders Out"

Frank then turns to the question of why this occurred (emphasis mine below):

I think that what befell the Vermont senator at the hands of the Post should be of interest to all of us. For starters, what I describe here represents a challenge to the standard theory of liberal bias. Sanders was, obviously, well to the left of Hillary Clinton, and yet that did not protect him from the scorn of the Post—a paper that media-hating conservatives regard as a sort of liberal death squad. Nor was Sanders undone by some seedy journalistic obsession with scandal or pseudoscandal. On the contrary, his record seemed remarkably free of public falsehoods, security-compromising email screwups, suspiciously large paychecks for pedestrian speeches, escapades with a comely staffer, or any of that stuff.

An alternative hypothesis is required for what happened to Sanders, and I want to propose one that takes into account who the media are in these rapidly changing times. As we shall see, for the sort of people who write and edit the opinion pages of the Post, there was something deeply threatening about Sanders and his political views. He seems to have represented something horrifying, something that could not be spoken of directly but that clearly needed to be suppressed.

That threat was to their own status as insider Ivy League–educated friends-of-people-with-power, especially Democratic Party power, which had aligned itself with the upper 10%, the professional class, against the lower 90%, the great unwashed.

In Bernie Sanders and his “political revolution” ... I believe these same people saw something kind of horrifying: a throwback to the low-rent Democratic politics of many decades ago. Sanders may refer to himself as a progressive, but to the affluent white-collar class, what he represented was atavism, a regression to a time when demagogues in rumpled jackets pandered to vulgar public prejudices against banks and capitalists and foreign factory owners. Ugh.

Choosing Clinton over Sanders was, I think, a no-brainer for this group. They understand modern economics, they know not to fear Wall Street or free trade. And they addressed themselves to the Sanders campaign by doing what professionals always do: defining the boundaries of legitimacy, by which I mean, defining Sanders out.

And it wasn't just bias in the way the news was written; the editorials and op-eds were also brutal. As Frank points out, "the Post’s pundit platoon just seemed to despise Bernie Sanders."

Four Year Later

It's been four years since 2015, when the upstart first reared his head and showed himself a viable threat. The forces arrayed against him have had time to reflect, as have the forces on his side.

Will the the leaders of the present Party do all they can to extinguish the threat of Sanders' "political revolution"? It's clear they've already started. Will the press do their part to stem the tide? The jury's out so far. Some coverage has been remarkably bad (also here), while other coverage is surprisingly fair. We'll see.

In those four years the voters have also had time to reflect. Many took note of the 2016 sabotage, as they would call it, and many are ready, their remembered anger just waiting to be rekindled. Party leaders are aware of this. As a former vice-chair of the DNC said recently, "if we even have anybody raising an eyebrow of ‘I’m not happy about this,’ we’re going to lose [the general election] and they’ll have this loss on their hands," meaning the DNC.

It won't take much to make a martyr of Sanders in the eyes of his supporters, especially after 2016. The only questions are:

• Is the fear of Sanders and his political revolution, which would send many of them scrambling for other work and start to cut Party ties to the donor class, enough to make their opposition turn to obviously illegal means?

•  If Sanders is indeed made "a martyr," as the party official quoted above fears, what will be the response of the independent voters who swell those stadium appearances?

The stakes were high in 2016. Given our greater nearness to looming catastrophes, climate being just one of them, the stakes are exponentially higher today. We do indeed live in interesting times.
 

Ukrainian Prosecutors: Why Doesn't the U.S. Dept. of Justice Want Our Evidence on Democrats?

Joe and Hunter Biden in 2009 (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

by Thomas Neuburger

Wheels within wheels. This is from longtime investigative reporter John Solomon, writing in The Hill (emphasis mine throughout):

Ukrainian to US prosecutors: Why don't you want our evidence on Democrats?

Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes. But, they say, they’ve been thwarted in trying to get the Trump Justice Department to act.

Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get visas from the U.S. embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to Washington.

Intrigued? Look at the elements:

• Evidence of foreign interference to help Democrats win the 2016 election
• Democratic Party politicians being protected from investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors
• The Trump administration refusing to act or help

Here is some of what Ukrainian investigators have found. Solomon again:

Ukraine is infamous for corruption and disinformation operations; its police agencies fight over what is considered evidence of wrongdoing. Kulyk and his bosses even have political fights over who should and shouldn’t be prosecuted. Consequently, allegations emanating from Kiev usually are taken with a grain a salt.

But many of the allegations shared with me by more than a half-dozen senior Ukrainian officials are supported by evidence that emerged in recent U.S. court filings and intelligence reports. The Ukrainians told me their evidence includes:

• Sworn statements from two Ukrainian officials admitting that their agency tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The effort included leaking an alleged ledger showing payments to then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort;
   
• Contacts between Democratic figures in Washington and Ukrainian officials that involved passing along dirt on Donald Trump;
   
• Financial records showing a Ukrainian natural gas company routed more than $3 million to American accounts tied to Hunter Biden, younger son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who managed U.S.-Ukrainian relations for the Obama administration. Biden’s son served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings;
   
• Records that Vice President Biden pressured Ukrainian officials in March 2016 to fire the prosecutor who oversaw an investigation of Burisma Holdings and who planned to interview Hunter Biden about the financial transfers;
   
• Correspondence showing members of the State Department and U.S. embassy in Kiev interfered or applied pressure in criminal cases on Ukrainian soil;
   
• Disbursements of as much as $7 billion in Ukrainian funds that prosecutors believe may have been misappropriated or taken out of the country, including to the United States.

What should we make of this?

Democrats Getting Foreign Help in 2016?

The first two points above should frighten the "attack on our democracy" crew — looking at you, Adam Schiff, and you, Rachel Maddow — but so far, nothing from that quarter. It seems electoral attacks on our democracy and election matter only when Trump, Russians and Republicans are involved.

And yet:

Ukraine’s evidence, if true, would mark the first documented allegation of Democrats receiving assistance from a foreign power in their efforts to help Clinton win the 2016 election. ... There is public-source information, in Ukraine and in the United States, that gives credence to some of what Ukrainian prosecutors allege.

A court in Ukraine formally concluded that law enforcement officials there illegally tried to intervene in the 2016 U.S. election by leaking documents of Manafort’s business dealings after he was named Trump’s campaign chairman. And a Ukrainian parliamentarian released a purported tape recording of a top Ukrainian law enforcement official bragging that he was responsible for the leak and was trying to help Clinton win.

Solomon notes a 2017 Politico report containing much the same information. One wonders why no one cares.

Joe Biden's Ukraine Corruption Problem — "Well, son of a bitch, he got fired"

The second two bullets above relate to something I've been privately aware of for a while, that Joe Biden has a Ukraine corruption problem and it's serious.

For example, from an April 1, 2019 report by Solomon on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine's leading private natural gas producer, we find this:

U.S. banking records show Hunter Biden’s American-based firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, received regular transfers into one of its accounts — usually more than $166,000 a month — from Burisma from spring 2014 through fall 2015, during a period when Vice President Biden was the main U.S. official dealing with Ukraine and its tense relations with Russia.

The general prosecutor’s official file for the Burisma probe — shared with me by senior Ukrainian officials — shows prosecutors identified Hunter Biden, business partner Devon Archer and their firm, Rosemont Seneca, as potential recipients of money.

Yet in that same report we learn that Joe Biden not only got that prosecutor fired, he bragged about it with the cameras rolling:

In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.

“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.

Which led Solomon to ask these questions:

Nonetheless, some hard questions should be answered by Biden as he prepares, potentially, to run for president in 2020: Was it appropriate for your son and his firm to cash in on Ukraine while you served as point man for Ukraine policy? What work was performed for the money Hunter Biden’s firm received? Did you know about the Burisma probe? And when it was publicly announced that your son worked for Burisma, should you have recused yourself from leveraging a U.S. policy to pressure the prosecutor who very publicly pursued Burisma?

Joe Biden's Ukraine corruption problem is not just a recent one. The underlying story of how Hunter Biden and his company, Rosemont Seneca Partners, got involved with Burisma in the first place also raises questions:

Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden may have leveraged the [2014] Maidan coup and war in East Ukraine to strike lucrative oil fracking deals in East Ukraine, along with a John Kerry family friend.

Limassol, Cyprus based energy firm Burisma Holdings, collected large energy contracts in the East of Ukraine, with Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, closely tied to the energy production company, which pushed for fracking exploration on land owned by East Ukrainian residents.

Will anyone who matters in the U.S. talk about it?

Why Does Trump's DOJ Not Care?

The last puzzle — after the alleged Ukrainian interference "in our democracy" on behalf of the Clinton campaign, and the Biden corruption allegations — is the lack of response by the Trump Department of Justice. As Solomon's story details, it's not like Ukrainian prosecutors haven't tried to raise the alarm. Yet so far nothing from the Trump administration. Ukrainian prosecutors are still being denied visas to visit the U.S. so they can present their case to U.S. prosecutors.

There's not enough evidence to show why there's been no action on these charges, and, of course, action might still be forthcoming. But we can look at what the effect of burying this story and any potential prosecution might be by looking at who benefits.

1. Burying this story and preventing prosecution benefits Joe Biden. A corruption prosecution of his son Hunter in either the U.S. or Ukraine, plus the knowledge that Biden used his position as vice-president to protect his son, might well be the finishing blow to his still-not-announced 2020 candidacy.

2. Burying this story benefits mainstream Democrats generally, not just Joe Biden. Note that Biden said that Obama was in on the plan to blackmail Ukrainian officials to fire the prosecutor. The benefit to Obama's thus-far untarnished reputation would be undeniable.

In addition, if indeed Joe Biden is the shining knight on which the Party, like a lady in distress, have pinned their ribbons and hopes, his fall could mark the end of those hopes. What do mainstream Democrats hope for from Biden? The defeat of Bernie Sanders in the primary, or anyone like him.

3. In an odd way, burying the story benefits Donald Trump as well. If 2020 will truly be another "change year" for the electorate, whom would Trump rather run against — an old school, been-around-too-long mainstream Party regular (with baggage), or a genuine change candidate like Bernie Sanders, a man whose crowds rival and surpass Trump's own?

It's speculative, of course, to assess motives at this point, but the benefits to those listed are obvious and easy to divine.

However this story develops, stay tuned. We'll learn a lot if it breaks into the mainstream. We'll also learn a lot if it doesn't.