Impeachment Or Indictment?

Sunday, on MSNBC's AM Joy, sharp-tongued columnist Jennifer Rubin predicted that in January 2021, just as his term is finally ending, Señor Trumpanzee will resign so that "President" Pence, also on his way to the garbage heap of history, can pardon him of all crimes.

Eric Levitz is always good for a yuck. His "Intelligencer" piece for New York Magazine over the weekend, Trump 2020 Shaping Up to Be a Campaign to Stay Out of Prison, was a barrel of monkeys (orange ones). "In 2016," he wrote, "Donald Trump claimed that America’s presidential election would determine nothing less than whether a proven criminal would be sent to jail-- or the Oval Office. In 2020, that might actually be the case." Trump is now implicated in a federal criminal conspiracy-- in fact, as the director of that conspiracy. He assumes, like most people following this case that "the only reason Donald Trump has not been indicted on federal charges is because he is the president. The conventional wisdom among legal scholars holds that the commander-in-chief cannot be indicted so long as he or she remains in office. That means that if Trump loses in 2020, he could promptly find himself in legal jeopardy."

[T]his says nothing of the new evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government that’s sprinkled throughout Mueller’s memo. These lines of inquiry may not bear prosecutable fruit, but Cohen’s conviction alone should be sufficient for putting the fear of a post-presidential indictment into Trump.

It is true that the president could still be impeached instead of indicted. But even if Mueller’s investigation ultimately links the president to more crimes-- and demonstrates that his 2016 campaign had illicit ties to Russia-- it is hard to imagine a critical mass of Republican senators voting to remove Trump from office. There aren’t many things that this president has done with diligence and discipline, but delegitimizing the Mueller probe in the eyes of his base is one. And given how many blatant abuses of power that base has already witnessed-- and how unwavering the Trumpen proletariat’s support for their dear leader has been through it all-- it’s hard to see the president’s approval rating dropping to Nixonian levels, no matter what Mueller’s “WITCH HUNT” yields.

All of which is to say: There is a significant chance that in 2020, Donald Trump will be running for a second-term-- and from the law-- simultaneously. And if that proves to be the case, the consequences for American political life could be dire.

For Trump, the costs of losing the 2016 election were largely superficial — by most accounts, the original aim of the reality television star’s campaign was publicity, not the presidency. And yet, the mere threat of narcissistic injury was enough to inspire Trump to sow distrust in the legitimacy of the election. In July 2016, the GOP nominee told a crowd in Pennsylvania that “the only way we can lose, in my opinion... is if cheating goes on.” One month later, he told supporters in North Carolina that if the state’s voter-ID law remained suspended, Clinton voters would go to the polls “15 times” each...

Trump never stopped disputing the integrity of the election, even after he had won. Instead, the president-elect claimed, repeatedly, that millions of illegal ballots had robbed him of his rightful popular vote victory.

In this year’s elections, Trump had far less at stake. He wasn’t on the ballot himself, and a Democratic takeover of the House was already close to a foregone conclusion by midsummer. And yet, to boost his party’s 2018 prospects, the president proved willing to fabricate an impending “invasion” by migrant terrorists and gangsters; suggest that said invasion was being organized by the Democratic Party as part of an elaborate bid to steal the midterm elections; persist in fomenting such incendiary conspiracy theories even after they inspired one of his supporters to attempt the assassination of many leading Democrats; and deploy thousands of U.S. troops to the southern border, so as to give his big lie an extra measure of credibility.

Even before Mueller’s latest revelations, this behavior was sufficient to prompt widespread anxiety about what Trump would be willing to do to win reelection, and/or what he might incite “Second Amendment people” to do should he lose it. If the president’s personal freedom ends up on the ballot in 2020, a lot of worse-case-scenarios become more plausible.

Some progressives have worried that Trump might actually be able to turn the threat of a postelection indictment into a source of electoral strength. The idea being: If the sitting president can (somewhat credibly) campaign against a deep-state plot to “lock him up,” then the Democratic nominee will struggle to focus attention on Trump’s policy failures and substantive betrayals of working people, where he is arguably most vulnerable. But that particular fear seems unfounded. Trump’s myriad scandals haven’t alienated the GOP base, but they appear to have damaged him with just about everyone else. And anyhow, there are plenty of ways to insert policy arguments into a campaign dominated by an incumbent’s corruption scandals (simply pointing out the president appears too consumed by his own problems to worry about yours could suffice).

Should the Mueller probe continue to implicate the president in unsavory and illegal activities, the Democratic Party’s 2020 prospects will improve; but America’s prospects of averting a democratic crisis and/or heightened levels of political violence won’t.

Josh Gerstein, writing for Politico, offered another possible way for Trumpists to undermine the law on which Mueller's case against Trump will eventually rest, the prohibition of using foreign money in U.S. elections. "Ravi Singh," wrote Gerstein, "an Illinois-based political consultant and self-proclaimed 'campaign guru,' is challenging a decades-old federal law barring foreign involvement in U.S. elections. He calls the provision unconstitutional, insisting Congress can’t regulate the role played by non-citizens in state and local elections... At a time when the special prosecutor’s legitimacy is being attacked on various grounds, a ruling in Singh's favor would create even more uncertainty around the broader effort to shield U.S. elections from foreign influence."

Singh is appealing a 2016 federal conviction on charges a Mexican real estate developer secretly footed the bill for a quarter million dollars-worth of digital campaign consulting that Singh provided two San Diego mayoral candidates.

The source of the funds for Singh’s campaign work, businessman Jose Azano, has homes in San Diego and Miami and spent much of his time in the U.S., but is not an American citizen or green card holder. He was allegedly hoping to gain influence in a bid to redevelop San Diego's waterfront.

Singh’s lawyers have leaned on the Tenth Amendment to support their appeal. The clause gives states and the people the powers that the Constitution does not expressly delegate to Congress.

“Congress’s effort to trample on the states’ ability to structure their political processes as they see fit violates the Tenth Amendment,” Singh attorneys Harold Krent and Todd Burns wrote in a recent brief.

Singh’s defense team notes that enforcing a ban on foreigners donating to virtually any U.S. electoral campaign has had some bizarre results. For instance, various localities including Takoma Park, Maryland, San Francisco and Chicago allow non-citizens to vote in local elections of some sort. However, under the broad federal ban, it is illegal for at least some of those foreigners to donate to candidates in those same races.

“If the eligibility of foreign nationals to vote in state and local elections is exclusively a state/local matter, it stands to reason that the eligibility of foreign nationals to make contributions related to such elections is also exclusively a state/local matter,” Singh’s defense wrote.

...The Justice Department has a blunt response to that argument.

“It does not matter that some local jurisdictions may permit aliens to vote,” prosecutors wrote in a brief defending the conviction. “That is a matter of grace, not constitutional requirement.”

The prosecution also raised the specter that giving foreigners a green light to spend in non-federal elections could lead to foreign countries effectively taking control of local governments in the U.S, particularly along the border.

“It cannot be beyond Congress’s power to prevent foreign citizens from pumping funds into local and state governments to set up foreign enclaves within United States borders,” prosecutors wrote. “If Canadian citizens decided that they wanted to install favored officials in all towns on the northern border by flooding local elections with foreign national funds, Congress would certainly be acting within its power to thwart it.”

Legal experts are divided about how much traction Singh is likely to get for his argument that Congress went too far in banning foreigners without green cards from donating to state and local races.

“Regulating the activities of foreign nationals is not only a form of protecting self-government and democratic processes, but it’s also a form of protecting the country itself,” said GOP campaign finance lawyer Jan Baran of law firm Wiley Rein.



“I think there’s actually a pretty strong federalism issue here and it’s super interesting,” said Temple University Law Professor Peter Spiro, a leading expert on citizenship and dual nationality. “If non-citizen voting is constitutionally acceptable, I’m not sure I see what the government’s rationale here is... It’s hard to see the national security explanation when you’re talking about state and local elections, and once you take that off the table it just looks like a federal diktat in terms of how states define their own political community.”

...[T]hus far the foreign donation ban has played an elusive role in Mueller’s investigation. Despite leveling more than 100 criminal charges at a total of 34 individuals and three companies, Mueller has yet to directly charge anyone with violating the foreign donation ban.

The foreign donation ban was cited in an early Mueller search warrant for the Alexandria condo owned by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who has since been convicted of bank and tax fraud and admitted to evading a federal law requiring registration of lobbyists for foreign governments.

Some have accused Mueller of deliberately avoiding charging a violation of the ban. A Russian firm that is the only defendant currently fighting a Mueller charge, Concord Management and Consulting of St. Petersburg, has alleged that the special counsel didn’t charge the company with violating the prohibition because prosecutors knew they couldn’t show the defendants knew their conduct was illegal, which the law requires.

A criminal complaint against a Russian accountant connected to Concord, Elena Khusyaynova, explicitly cites the foreign donation ban, but doesn’t charge any specific violation of it. (However, that case, focusing on alleged interference in the 2018 midterm elections, is being handled by prosecutors in Alexandria, Va.-- not by Mueller's team.)

“The Special Counsel has pleaded around the knowledge requirements of all related substantive statutes and regulations," Concord’s American lawyers, Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly wrote in a filing earlier this year that accused Mueller's team of "sleight of hand."

Last month, however, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected Concord’s drive to throw out the conspiracy charge it faces.

Mueller's office declined to comment on any concerns about how a ruling against the foreign-donation ban could impact his probe. However, at least one Mueller investigator is intimately familiar with the San Diego probe. The FBI agent who oversaw much of the Manafort investigation, Omer Meisel, also played a key role in the probe that led to charges against Singh, Azano and others.

The central focus of the San Diego inquiry-- Mayor and former Congressman Bob Filner-- never faced a federal charge, but he was hit with state charges and resigned the mayor's post amidst a sexual harassment scandal.

From the DWT Least Surprising News of the Day Department: Say, wasn't that somethin' about that Lamont fella screwin' up Joe Lieberman's website?

"On April 10, The New York Times also reported that, according to the FBI email obtained by The Advocate, 'it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont's insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude.' . . .

"Despite having reported the August 2006 allegation by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign that supporters of Ned Lamont, then his rival in the Democratic Senate primary, had "hacked" Lieberman's campaign website, numerous media outlets--including ABC, CNN, and CBS--have yet to report that an FBI investigation reportedly concluded before the November 2006 general election that there was 'no evidence of (an) attack.'"

--from Media Matters' new report on the "story of the story" of the crashing of the Lieberman campaign website in 2006, and the aftermath this month

I assume by now everyone who's found his/her way to DWT has heard the much-belated sequel to the 2006 campaign "story" of how those left-wing crazies of Ned Lamont's insurgent Connecticut Senate campaign nefariously conspired to crash the Lieberman campaign's website. The sequel, only too predictably, was that it was like the outgoing Clinton staffers' trashing of the White House as they cleared out in January 2001: It never happened.

Of course the Republicans who made up the stories about the White House vandalism were just plain flat-out lying. Imagine that! The Bush regime began, at its very instigation, with a complete, flagrant, malicious fabrication, which was never retracted, accommodated, or otherwise amended as the evidence slowly seeped out that it was all Republican lies. At least in the case of the crashed Lieberman website, the senator and his media lackey the Abominable Gerstein [above] could claim to have been misled by others, and so they continued to claim when it finally came out recently that the FBI had investigated promptly and quickly reported back to the Lieberman campaign that it was all untrue, the whole story about the demons of the Lamont campaign doing them dirt.

In fact, the vaunted Lieberman website crashed of its own lack of weight--you get the impression that it wasn't much more than a few spare parts from somebody's basement held together with duct tape and spit. Then, within a few days we learned that not only did the Liebermaniacs almost immediately know that everything they had accused the Lamont campaign of, with such certainty, was a total fabrication, but that the Democratic state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, and the Republican U.S. attorney, Kevin O'Connor, had this information and seem to have erected an impenetrable public stonewall, which kept the facts of the matter secret and allowed the Lamont campaign to suffer continuing contumely from its already-disproved bad behavior.

Even now, not surprisingly, Holy Joe and the Abominable Gerstein bat their eyes demurely and blame it all on their wicked and deceitful computer guy, who dagnab it told them it was all the Lamont meanies' fault. And then they have the world-class chutzpah to declare "case closed." Without troubling to explain how it happened that they never got around to publicly correcting the supposedly inadvertent lies they had spread so feverishly.

Certainly you would think that the most rudimentary honest and decency require, before they go talking about any cases being closed, that they offer a public explanation and apology--if only for the inadvertent error of their accusations. It is, after all, quite possible that this lie made the difference between Holy Joe slithering back into the Senate versus shuffling off, with Mrs. Holy Joe, to full-time, on-the-books employment with their K Street masters.

What? You think His Holiness's lie about opposing the war in Iraq was the lie that got him reelected? Or the lie that he would vote as a Democrat? OK, you could be right. Considering that pretty the Lieberman campaign was pretty much all lies all the time, it's hard to know without some good-quality research the relative importance of the individual lies.

Still, don't the rules say that when you're caught in a lie, you've got to acknowledge it and apologize, however quietly and insincerely, before you can blithely move on? Apparently not in the "Connecticut for Lieberman" inner sanctum.

Nor, apparently, among the media puppets who stoogefully reported the Lieberman campaign accusations. Now those meanies at Media Matters, with their tiresome fetish for facts have investigated and found that by and large the media that reported the Lieberman accusations have similarly found no need to set the record straight, one notably honorable exception being Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

Some of the detail in the Media Matters report is staggering. I encourage you to let your eyes wander through it:

Despite having reported the August 2006 allegation by Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign that supporters of Ned Lamont, then his rival in the Democratic Senate primary, had "hacked" Lieberman's campaign website, numerous media outlets--including ABC, CNN, and CBS--have yet to report that an FBI investigation reportedly concluded before the November 2006 general election that there was "no evidence of (an) attack." To the contrary, according to an April 9 article in The Advocate of Stamford, Connecticut, an October 25, 2006, FBI email indicated that the FBI had found Lieberman's website "crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary." Thus, despite coverage of the Lieberman campaign's allegations against the Lamont campaign, ABC, CNN, and CBS have yet to report that the FBI not only exonerated the Lamont campaign, but that it was reported this month that the FBI concluded the website crash was the fault of the Lieberman campaign itself.

CNN reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations repeatedly on August 8, 2006, and a total of nine times from August 8, 2006, to September 8, 2006. As late as February 23 of this year, CNN correspondent Josh Levs reported on CNN Newsroom that "back in 2006, Joe Lieberman's campaign website went down. You remember this campaign. It was a big deal, him against Ned Lamont. Well, at the very end of his campaign, his site just pretty much disappeared, and his campaign is convinced it was an attack."

On the August 9, 2006, edition of ABC's Good Morning America, senior national correspondent Jake Tapper reported: "Lieberman's campaign complained to law enforcement that its website was hacked yesterday by devious anti-Lieberman forces. Lamont said he knew nothing about the hacking. But the incident was symbolic of the tornado of anti-war liberal Internet writers, called bloggers, that Lieberman faced." On the August 8, 2006, broadcast of the CBS Evening News, then-correspondent Trish Regan reported that Lieberman supporters were "nervous not only because of this race, but also because Lieberman's campaign website was hacked into and shut down today. They're pointing the finger at the Lamont camp."

A search conducted by Media Matters for America on April 29 turned up no instances of CNN, ABC News, or CBS News programs reporting on the FBI's reported findings as of 11:59 pm ET on April 28. By contrast, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, who reported the Lieberman campaign's allegations on the August 8, 2006, edition of Countdown, covered the reported results of the FBI investigation on April 9, 2008.

Lieberman's campaign website went down on August 7, 2006, the day before the Democratic primary. Quoting from the October 25, 2006, FBI email it obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, The Advocate reported:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com website failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

[...]

The Lieberman campaign alleged it was the target of a "denial of service attack," which can involve bombarding a Web site with external communications to slow it or render it useless.

"Our Web site consultant assured us in the strongest terms possible that we had been attacked," former Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein said in December 2006.

According to the FBI memo, the site crashed because Lieberman officials continually exceeded a configured limit of 100 e-mails per hour the night before the primary.

"The system administrator misinterpreted the root cause," the memo stated. "The system administrator finally declared the server was being attacked and the Lieberman campaign accused the Ned Lamont campaign. The news reported this on Aug. 8, 2006, causing additional Web traffic to visit the site. The additional Web traffic then overwhelmed the Web server. ... Web traffic pattern analysis reports and Web logging that was available did not demonstrate traffic that was indicative of a denial of service attack."

On April 10, The New York Times also reported that, according to the FBI email obtained by The Advocate, "it was not angry bloggers or Mr. Lamont's insurgent campaign workers who rendered the site inaccessible, but sheer technological ineptitude." The April 9 Advocate report was also published in The Greenwich Time; both newspapers are owned by Gannett Co.

After losing the Democratic primary to Lamont, Lieberman ran for re-election to the Senate as an independent. Shortly after Lieberman defeated Lamont in the November 2006 general election, The Advocate reported that the U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general in Connecticut had "cleared" the Lamont campaign and its supporters of any wrongdoing. ABC, CNN, and CBS ignored that report as well. From a December 20, 2006, article in The Advocate:

The U.S. attorney's office and state attorney general have cleared former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont and his supporters of any role in the crash of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's campaign Web site hours before last summer's Democratic primary.

"The investigation has revealed no evidence the problems the Web site experienced were the result of criminal conduct," said Tom Carson, spokesman for U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor.

State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal confirmed the joint investigation "found no evidence of tampering or sabotage warranting civil action by my office." Both men declined to provide additional information, such as what might have happened to the site.

According to an April 22, 2008, Advocate article, the office of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said it "never saw or read the [October 25, 2006] FBI e-mail until its contents were reported by The Advocate" on April 9.

"Even when we work cooperatively, the FBI never shares such internal documents with my office, a practice and policy we respect given our very different roles and responsibilities," Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal, a Democrat, said his investigation into the joe2006.com crash "was active and ongoing" until December 2006.

"Throughout the investigation there were discussions between my office and the U.S. attorney's office regarding the direction of the federal investigation but not any conclusion until after the election," Blumenthal said. "To have made any premature public predictions before our investigation ended... would have been irresponsible and improper."

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney, said in a statement that the office updated the Lieberman campaign and Blumenthal on the investigation in late October 2006.

"In accordance with our usual practice ... the Lieberman campaign, as the alleged victim, and the office of attorney general, which had been conducting a contemporaneous investigation ... were provided with limited information," Carson said. "The investigation was administratively closed several weeks later."

Like the December 2006 and April 9 articles before it, the April 22 Advocate report has also been ignored by the major media outlets mentioned above that covered Lieberman's allegations against Lamont and his supporters.

So, in addition to the need for some public acknowledgment by the sleazoids of the Lieberman campaign, there is rather urgent need for coming clean on the part of Attorney General Blumenthal, perhaps with a friendly jog from U.S. Attorney O'Connor.

But then, what really is the point? Most of the media who were so eager to pass on the bogus story seem eerily uninterested in setting the record straight. Maybe the solution would be for Senator Lieberman to do the honorable thing and resign his Senate seat. He could do so with clean conscience, knowing that he would be replaced, not by the man who would have been elected to that Senate seat in an honest race in 2006, but by an appointee of Connecticut's Republican governor, Jodi Rell--in other words, a Republican like himself.

Well, we hope not quite like himself. We'd like to think that even Connecticut Republicans have higher standards than that.

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DAN GERSTEIN ISN'T JUST A TROJAN-- HE MAY WELL BE A TROJAN HORSE

"I remember people would say, ‘For once I would like to vote for the perfect candidate.’ I said, ‘You know, I had that experience once.’ I once voted for the perfect candidate. But by the time I ran for re-election, that wasn’t true anymore."

-Barney Frank (D-MA)

Take nothing at face value when it comes to treacherous hacks like Gerstein or his odious master, Lieberman

I voted for Barack Obama, far from a perfect candidate. I like the hope he represents but I voted for him because he's a slightly better candidate, in my mind, than Hillary Clinton. Her voting record is marginally better than his but they are both in the same ballpark on most important issues. Compare either to McCain and it isn't even close. McCain is a radical right ideologue with a long voting record that is as clear as day: his would be a third George W. Bush term, possibly even worse than Bush's two because of his truly unsuitable personal make up. Hillary and Obama look around equal to me, a couple of B-candidates compared to an F-candidate. Maybe she's a B-minus overall; he's not a B-plus, at least not on policy issues. In the end I just judged him more electable and reasoned that nothing is as important as stopping the reactionary Republicans from continuing to undermine all that is great and honorable about our country. I have no illusions about Obama; he is, after all, a man who chose Joe Lieberman, one of the most disgraceful characters in American politics as his Senate mentor.

Hillary and Obama have both run with a bad crowd of Insider Democrats, although on that count, one only needs look at who runs her campaign to start feeling uncomfortable about which corporate Republican-like self servers she would be appointing to fill out her administration. Is he as bad? Frankly, I'm not certain. The DLC, which represents the reactionary and corporate wing of the Democratic Party, is supporting him, according to a story today by Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left.

I'm not so sure that's exactly accurate. I suspect the DLC would prefer Hillary and be fine with Obama (even though a couple years ago he demanded they remove his name from their website). Still, there are certainly some DLC-swine on the Obama bandwagon, and probably more than just Lieberman shill Dan Gerstein (who just a few days ago was billing himself as neutral in the presidential race; all he cared about was that someone beat that unruly populist John Edwards).

The flurry of reports about Gerstein supporting Obama strikes me as somewhat odd. His most recent twisted and repugnant Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal made me think that his hysterical and uncontrollable hatred for grassroots Democrats would have him following Lieberman into the GOP. Where did this meme of Gerstein being an Obama supporter come from? Hugh Hewitt and Bill Bennett created it on their Hate Talk radio show where only a hack like Gerstein would even appear. Gerstein claims he "voted with Obama," and I assume that means he claims he voted for Obama. But it still sounds like a set-up to me and he certainly repeated right-wing anti-Obama talking points during the interview. My guess is that Gerstein will be in bed with McCain in no time at all.


UPDATE: AND WHEN GERSTEIN'S IDEOLOGICAL TWIN FINISHES IN CONNECTICUT...

Maybe he'll want to make believe he's an Obama supporter too. Reactionary Democrat Harold Ford, last year's only major Democratic loser-- since voters couldn't tell he was a Democrat by his positions-- has been up in Connecticut campaigning for rubber stamp Republican Chris Shays. Lieberman is also expected to formally endorse Shays. Jane:

Someone should let Ford know that the "D" in DLC is a passing reference to "Democrat."

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