None Dare Call It Fascism... Except Jamie Raskin

I Can't Breath by Nancy Ohanian

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin is widely considered the top constitutional scholar in Congress. He began an e-mail to his supporters yesterday with a quote from Benito Mussolini, a fascist dictator who dragged Italy into the sewer and was eventually brutally murdered and hung upside down in a Milan square while the whole city cheered: "If you pluck a chicken one feather at a time, no one will notice." It isn't unrelated to this quote by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels:

Referencing Madeleine Albright's new book, Fascism: A Warning, which he described as "chilling," Raskin wrote that "fascism is not a political ideology but a strategy for taking and abusing power. The active ingredient in the strategy is the relentless and casual dismantling of the rule of law and the rights of the people." He then enumerated how we're seeing that from the Trumpist Regime: "the formation of a secret police force by President Trump and Attorney General Barr to crush civil rights protesters; unidentified agents sweeping people off the street and detaining them without due process; overt illegal use of the White House and other federal property for campaign purposes; the endless promotion of hate, propaganda and dangerous lies; corruption and vandalization of government for private moneymaking purposes; massive assault on the Post Office to sabotage the election; and provocative presidential rhetoric encouraging civil violence and disorder."

He came right out and called what we're seeing, exactly what it is, though few members of Congress would dare: "We will have our hands full defending a November victory against every trick in the fascist playbook...These brutal times are trying to our souls."

Now, when it comes to Trump's systemic corruption of the federal government-- his "strategy for taking and abusing power"-- ProPublica's exposé on the way Trump makes it appear that he is sending relief packages of food paid for with taxpayer dollars and authorized by Congress is relatively small potatoes... one of Mussolini's single barely noticed or noted feathers. "Millions of Americans who are struggling to put food on the table," wrote Isaac Arnsdorf, "may discover a new item in government-funded relief packages of fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy and meat: a letter signed by President Donald Trump. The message, printed on White House letterhead in both English and Spanish, touts the administration’s response to the coronavirus, including aid provided through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program, a U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative to buy fresh food and ship it to needy families. The letter is reminiscent of Trump’s effort to put his signature on stimulus checks and send a signed letter to millions of recipients. It’s the latest example of the president blurring his official duties with his reelection campaign, most prominently by hosting Trump’s acceptance speech for the Republican nomination last week on the White House lawn. Democratic lawmakers have gone so far as to say the USDA letter violates the federal Hatch Act. The law prohibits government officials from using their positions or taxpayer resources to engage in electioneering. Though the president himself is exempt, the ban applies to White House staff and agencies such as the USDA."

Jonathan Chait made the relevant and overarching point at New York Magazine yesterday though: Trump’s Reelection Campaign Is Corrupting the Entire Federal Government. Trump's illegal activities in using the government for his own ends have caused what Chait called "a flurry of recent reports on new and unprecedented government activity. All of these developments follow the same theme." He mentioned right-wing nut and Trumpist DNI John Ratcliffe announcing his agencies would end the traditional briefings to Congress on election security, even as Russia continues trying cripple America by helping the Trump campaign win the election. He also mentioned the government will be sending out relief checks to coincide with voting, while Trump pressures a weak FDA bureaucracy to rush-release a vaccine before the election whether it kills people or not. Chait reported on an HHS quarter billion dollar campaign "slush fund" and reminded his readers that on Monday Trump announced a joint Justice Department–Homeland Security task force to "investigate violent left-wing civil unrest."

Chait wrote that "Trump’s unhinged rhetoric would just be a Trump problem, were it not for the fact that the government appears to be following his lead. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told Tucker Carlson last night he is 'working' on a plan to arrest leaders of Black Lives Matter, who he claims are instigating a violent plot. Trump’s Homeland Security officials have already ignored or downplayed threats involving right-wing terrorism, which has resulted in a number of deadly shootings... [T]here is a pattern in all these events: They describe recent actions by the federal government; they all serve the purpose of enabling Trump’s election; and they all conscript the power of the federal government in novel ways. It has the appearance of coordinated action-- as if Trump has ordered every arm of the government to generate whatever tools can be placed at the disposal of his reelection."

YES, ROVE HAS BEEN POLITICIZING THE STATE DEPARTMENT TOO... JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE

Front page in tomorrow's Washington Post Rove was politicizing the State Department the same way he was politicizing the Justice Department, the GSA, the Surgeon General's office... and every other piece of the machinery of government.

Rove and his deputies have illegally conducted god-only-knows-how-many (the Post says "at least half a dozen," which could mean a million but is probably somewhere between 6 and a million) Power Point presentations for diplomats "that named Democratic incumbents targeted for defeat in 2008." And if the Democrats don't do something-- something real about it, they don't deserve to escape what Rove has in store for them-- and we don't deserve such incompetent and flaccid leadership.

The documents show for the first time how the White House sought to ensure that even its appointees involved in foreign policy were kept attuned to the administration's election goals. Such briefings occurred semi-regularly over the past six years for staffers dealing with domestic policy, White House officials have previously acknowledged.

In one instance, State Department aides attended a White House meeting at which political officials examined the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004, according to documents the department provided to the Senate committee.

Biden, the Democrats' joke of a Foreign Relations Committee Chair has been making some of his toothless Inside-the-Beltway low muffled bark-like sounds about this but, apparently no one ever told him what the Hatch Act is about and what it was meant to do. Either that or he doesn't care. Or both.

LURITA DOAN HIRES A HIGH PRICED REPUBLICAN ATTORNEY TO TELL BUSH SHE DIDN'T VIOLATE THE HATCH ACT

Bush is prone to take this charade seriously because if it can be proven that Doan did violate the Hatch Act, which she clearly did, Bush's Brain will finally wind up in prison. Henry Waxman is less likely to listen to the GOP talking points.

Today's Washington Post glosses over the embarrassing report from high-powered Republican lawyer Michael J. Nardotti Jr. Marcy, on the other hand, has a serious analysis of how Doan and the Bush Regime are trying to get away with this crap.

The Republican shyster who can't seriously defend Doan's criminal behavior based on facts, demands the "allegations" be rejected because they are based on "tenuous inferences and careless leaps of logic." He doesn't mention the roomful of witnesses to her asking the question, how can we "help our candidates," after Rove's slide show about targeting Democrats and bolstering Republicans that she had her GSA staff attend, itself clearly illegal. "Several political appointees who participated in the presentation told the special counsel under oath that Doan asked that question or a version of it and that some GSA political appointees responded with ideas of how the agency could use its facilities to benefit the Republican Party." Last month Bush's Office of Special Counsel had to admit that Doan violated the Hatch Act.

Marcy is less wishy-washy than the Post, which is why reading The Next Hurrah is more enlightening than reading the Post.

Lurita Doan's lawyer, Michael Nardotti, has responded to the OSC report condemning Doan's politicization of the GSA. It's one of those reports that read like a lawyer threw a bunch of stuff at the wall in the hopes that some of it will stick: he blames Henry Waxman for tainting OSC's witnesses, he shifts the focus away from Doan's description of employees as inferior toward one claiming bias, and he claims that, when Doan asked "how can GSA help our candidates?" she addressed it exclusively to Scott Jennings, not any of her subordinates.

Marcy gets into all the details the Libby case has made her famous for. If you want to see all the twists and turns and dark little corners in this case that the Post will never get near-- let alone comprehend-- take a look at the Next Hurrah today.

Is it just the Justice Department or the entire federal government that the Bush regime has turned into "the political arm of the White House"?

"Charges are being made that the Department of Justice was the political arm of the White House."
--Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, this past week on Fox News Sunday

Say what you like about Senator Specter (and I've had some choice things to say about him here), one thing he's not is a dummy. Although the most-quoted comment from his recent Fox News Sunday appearance was, "The attorney general's testimony was very, very damaging to his own credibility," he did make clear that at least in some manner he gets what's being alleged when he noted that "charges are being made that the Department of Justice was the political arm of the White House."

Senator Specter seems to have been referring specifically to the "Purge-Gate" firings of the eight U.S. attorneys, but in fact, the more we learn about the way the Department of Justice has functioned in the Bush regime, the clearer it becomes that "the political arm of the White House" is an exact description of what it has become.

Now that we have a pretty good idea that Paul Charlton, the ousted U.S. attorney in Phoenix, was shitcanned to protect Republicrook Rep. Rick Renzi, then locked in a deadly struggle to hold onto his House seat, from a richly deserved trip to the slammer (see Howie's recap below), we need: (a) a more complete accounting of the investigations that Purge-Gate was designed to derail and, perhaps more important, (b) some accounting of the investigations that have been launched or suppressed for partisan political reasons by all the U.S. attorneys who weren't fired.

As Paul Krugman asked so pointedly, what did those "left behind" U.S. attorneys do to hold onto their jobs? Remember, the best estimate we have is that 80 percent of all prosecutions launched by Bush-regime federal prosecutors have been against Democrats. I'm no probabilities expert, but the chance that this falls anywhere remotely near the bounds of probability for impartial administration of justice seems to me zilch.

While the punditocracy obsesses over the question of whether "Idiot Al" Gonzales should be fired, it's clear that the real problem goes way beyond the cuddly li'l "Torture Guy." When "Idiot Al" tells the world that, rather like Manuel in Fawlty Towers, he knows nothing about what was going on inside the department he was ostensibly running, he is telling us that he was installed as attorney general expressly to serve as a caretaker-stooge presiding over an apparatus that is quite aptly described as "the political arm of the White House."

And not just the DoJ. Already we know about the famous "Let's Go, GOP" pep rally at the General Services Administration in January, presided over by Karl Rove henchman J. Scott Jennings, which has drawn the attention of the Office of Special Counsel for possible Hatch Act violations in attempting to coerce political activity from government employees.

Now it appears that "other shoes" are dropping all over the damned place. In today's Washington Post, R. Jeffrey Smith reports:

White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.

The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.

The White House defense seems to be that the briefings were for the benefit of the various agencies' political appointees, who presumably don't need any stinkin' Hatch Act protections.

Once again as we dig into the muck of the Bush regime, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, in his capacity as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, appears to be on the job. In connection with the GSA briefing he said: "Politicization of departments and agencies is a serious issue. We need to know more about these and other briefings."

We do indeed. What's being charged now is that, as Senator Specter might put it, the entire federal government has been made to function as the political arm of the White House.

Back in the days of Watergate, when John Dean, then Richard Nixon's White House counsel, was young and still a true-blue Nixonite, as evidence solidified of White House involvement in the break-in and especially the ensuing cover-up, he famously warned his boss--who was famously unfriendly to unfriendly news--that there was "a cancer on the presidency." If there's anyone in the White House today who's in contact with reality, that person might warn, well, anyone who would listen that this presidency is a cancer.


UPDATE FROM HOWIE: WILL YOU BE SURPRISED TO KNOW THAT ROVE & GONZO TRIED TO SAVE RENZI BY FIRING A (REPUBLICAN) U.S. ATTORNEY INVESTIGATING HIS RAMPANT CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES?

It may surprise Washington Post readers, but DWT readers can't possibly be surprised to find out that there was a "questionable" connection between Renzi and the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton.

The top aide to Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) called the office of Arizona's U.S. attorney about six weeks before the prosecutor was fired, inquiring about a federal probe into the congressman's role in a land deal that benefited a former business partner and political patron.
The former U.S. attorney, Paul K. Charlton, told House investigators this week that his office alerted the Justice Department's headquarters about the call from Renzi's chief of staff, Brian Murray, because he considered it potentially improper, according to congressional sources who spoke about the probe on the condition of anonymity. Justice rules require prosecutors to report contacts from members of Congress seeking information about investigations.

Doesn't this sound very much like a pattern? Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici and his protege stooge, Heather Wilson in New Mexico; "Doc Hastings in Washington; Jerry Lewis in California...

Anyone who thought the Republican Culture of Corruption would disappear with the indictments of key criminal leaders like Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and Bob Ney, underestimated the influence of political inertia... and of Karl Rove and the degree to which the Bush Regime has politicized the entire machinary of government.


MINI-UPDATE: BYE-BYE RENZI

Rumors of Renzi's resignation from Congress-- now that he's been kicked off all his committees and from the GOP re-election mechanism-- are sweeping the Arizona blogosphere-- and the mainstream media. Tomorrow may be the day. What about Doolittle? Sneaky Pete? Feeney? Jerry Lewis? Abu Gonzo? Heather Wilson?

A REAL INVESTIGATION OF ROVE? OR A WELL-PLANNED WHITEWASH?

One of the primary reasons-- after Bush's imperious, despotic attitude and petulance-- for the Regime holding onto the corpse of Alberto Gonzales and calling it the Attorney General, is because they fear that he's just the appetizer and that the main course is Karl Rove. Since Karl Rove is generally considered the brains behind the whole crime mob that has infested the Executive Branch, this isn't an unreasonable theory.

This morning's L.A. Times has a story by Tom Hamburger about a low-key office launching a high-profile inquiry into the arch-villain of American politics.

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

Hamburger writes that the decision to investigate Rove "is the latest evidence that Rove's once-vaunted operations inside the government, which helped the GOP hold the White House and Congress for six years, now threaten to mire the administration in investigations. The question of improper political influence over government decision-making is at the heart of the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys and the ongoing congressional investigation of the special e-mail system installed in the White House and other government offices by the Republican National Committee. All administrations are political, but this White House has systematically brought electoral concerns to Cabinet agencies in a way unseen previously."

The Office of Special Counsel has never bitten off a mouthful like this before. It stems from Rove's obvious violations of the Hatch Act and  from his interference into the office of David Iglesias on behalf of crooked Republican rubber stamps Pete "Sneaky Pete" Domenici and Heather Wilson.

Hamburger writes that the L.A. Times has learned that there were other presentation, to other government agencies like the one illegally given at GSA-- and that some were given by Rove himself. "During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans."

Some officials have said they understood that they were expected to seek opportunities to help Republicans in these races, through federal grants, policy decisions or in other ways.

A former Interior Department official, Wayne R. Smith, who sat through briefings from Rove and his then-deputy Ken Mehlman, said that during President Bush's first term, he and other appointees were frequently briefed on political priorities.

"We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results," Smith said.

Or is this merely a ploy to preempt Waxman? As my friend Buzz pointed out, "How can someone appointed by Bush be independent?"


UPDATE: PERPARE FOR THE WHITEWASH

So my instincts were correct; the head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Scott Bloch, is a corrupt toady, a complete lackey of the Bush Regime and under investigation himself! This is strictly a whitewash and an attempt to derail a serious investigation of Rove. The L.A. Times story cited above "failed to inform its readers that Bloch had been accused of retaliating against employees who disagreed with his policies, and intimidating them before they were questioned about a whistle-blower investigation inside the Office of the Special Counsel. The whistle-blower probe was launched by the White House's Office of Personnel Management inspector general nearly two years ago, according to a February 16, 2007 story in the Washington Post." In fact Discourse.net asks a crucial question about the investigation:

I wonder if the purpose of this move isn’t to insulate Rove and others. Now, they have an excuse not to answer any questions. If Congress calls, they all take the 5th — “Would love to talk but I’m being investigated by the OSC.” Ditto for the White House press office — “we never comment on pending investigations” (afterwards they say, “we already dealt with that,” but I’m getting ahead of myself).
Is it too paranoid to expect a memo saying that they failed to prove anything beyond reasonable doubt — in Dec 2008? Or maybe just before the Nov 2008 election? After all, the OSC has a record of just closing cases without review in order to be able to report a lower number of backlogged cases.
So far, everything about this administration has been worse than anyone might reasonably have expected. Why should this be any different?
I can see Rove chuckling now, ‘Please OSC, don’t throw me in that briar patch!’