"And Then You Are Lost. He Has Eaten Your Soul."

Just hours after the media disclosed that Mueller was not happy about how Barr had twisted his investigation's findings on Trump-- watch Maddow above-- Barr waddled over to the Senate, confident that the Judiciary Committee chair, Lindsey Graham, would protect him. Graham actually only made things worse by lying so blatantly that at least one TV news station was forced to break in to let their viewers know Graham wasn't being truthful. Anyway, before Barr waddled, everyone had already read Mueller's letter. Not you? Here; read away:

The House Judiciary Committee seems to have decided that they will hold Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify. I doubt he cares but he should have gone over anyway. Nadler and his crew aren't going to get any tougher on him than the senators were yesterday. Mazie Hirono (D-HI): "The American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter & liar who sits in the Oval Office."



Most people paying attention seem to feel Barr must resign if people are going to have any confidence in the Department of Justice under Trump. It's worth reading James Comey's OpEd in the NY Times: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr, actually-- tragically-- a best case scenario for Barr.

People have been asking me hard questions. What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay President Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?

And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?

What happened to these people?

I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.

Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it-- this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room.

I must have agreed that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history because I didn’t challenge that. Everyone must agree that he has been treated very unfairly. The web building never stops.

From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does-- you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him.

Sure, you notice that Mr. Mattis never actually praises the president, always speaking instead of the honor of representing the men and women of our military. But he’s a special case, right? Former Marine general and all. No way the rest of us could get away with that. So you praise, while the world watches, and the web gets tighter.

Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear-- things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

You can’t say this out loud-- maybe not even to your family-- but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.

And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

"Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president." OK, but at what point do people start to realize how damning working for the Regime is? What you are doing to your soul, you good name, your family, your country and its values? At what point? Not decades before he became president? Not at that point? No? How about when he started throwing babies into cages? Still not? What will it take? What?

Checks & Balances was painted by Nancy Ohanian. Barr's confirmation as AG was painted with the help of 3 conservative Democrats: Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Joe Manchin (WV) and Doug Jones (AL)

Too late for Barr. He's got to resign or be impeached. He lied to Congress under oath and he lied to the American public. Elizabeth Warren: "Barr has shamed the office of attorney general with his partisan approach. I think he should resign... The attorney general does not swear an oath of loyalty to any one individual. The attorney general swears an oath of loyalty to the Constitution of the United States and the people of the United States. Barr has made clear that he doesn’t see his loyalty that way, and that disqualifies him from being attorney general."

With Butthead In The White House, EVERYTHING Is Connected

On KABC this morning, Ann Coulter addressed the massive morning drive audience about her former hero, Donald Trump, urging them to "Forget the fact that he's digging his own grave. The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot." We don't all agree why, but I think that a good 70% of the country would agree. So much has happened since she wrote In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! in 2016. Earlier this morning someone asked Trump how much influence she's had over his policy decisions. "Ann Coulter," he babbled, "I don’t know her. I hardly know her. I haven’t spoken to her in way over a year. But the press loves saying, 'Ann Coulter.' Probably if I did speak to her, she’d be very nice. I just don’t have the time to speak to her. I would speak to her. I have nothing against her. In fact, I like her for one reason. When they asked her right at the beginning, 'Who’s going to win the election?' she said, 'Donald Trump.' And the two people that asked her that question smiled. They said, 'You’re kidding, aren’t you?' Nope. Donald Trump. So I like her. But she’s off the reservation. But anybody that knows her understands that. But I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t follow her. I don’t talk to her."

Defeating Trump is the most important priority for the majority of American voters for 2020. But it shouldn't be the only priority. Replacing him with some status quo ante corporatist like Biden or Bloomberg or Gillibrand will simply predict what no one thinks is possible: another Trump down the road. Let's opt for a great president instead of just someone who can beat Trump. They can probably all beat Trump. Think about what will happen after they beat Trump. In the famous words of Chris Hayes: "Who will they fight for? What will they fight for? Who can be trusted to do what they say?" I'd happily vote for Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley or Marianne Williamson. Yesterday Bernie sent a note to his supporters that reminded me why he's on the top of my list.

Let me be very clear. We cannot allow this country to become an oligarchy in which a handful of billionaires control our economic and political life.

At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, when the three richest people own more wealth than the bottom half of the country and when 46% of all new income goes to the top 1%, we need a progressive tax system which demands that the very wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

That is what I want, and that is what poll after poll shows the American people want.

We will no longer tolerate huge tax breaks for the one percent while children in this country go hungry.

We will no longer tolerate massive tax loopholes which allow profitable corporations to stash billions in profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while veterans sleep out on the street.

We will no longer tolerate a disastrous trade policy which allows major corporations to shut down here, send our jobs overseas and then line up for lucrative government contracts.

We will no longer tolerate CEOs of major corporations earning 350 times what their average employee makes.

The insatiable greed of the billionaire class must end. They cannot get it all.

We need an economy and tax system that benefits all of us, not just the few, and we can do that by creating a fair and progressive tax system that demands that wealthy individuals and profitable corporations begin paying their fair share of taxes.

There is a lot of debate in Congress on this issue, but among the people we represent, there is none. Democrats, Republicans and Independents, people of all backgrounds and from all communities believe that it is time for the wealthiest Americans to start paying their fair share.

...Instead of repealing the estate tax and giving a massive tax cut to the richest two-tenths of one percent, as Trump wants, we must substantially increase this tax on multi-millionaires and billionaires to reduce wealth inequality and preserve democracy in America.

Instead of companies like Amazon, that made $16.8 billion in profits over the past two years but have paid ZERO in federal income taxes-- and in fact received a $269 million tax refund-- it’s time to demand corporations pay their fair share in taxes so we can rebuild the disappearing middle class.

Instead of encouraging and rewarding Wall Street speculators who gamble trillions of dollars of others people’s money, it’s time for Congress to pass a financial speculation tax and use the money to ensure kids who study hard and do well in school can go to college, regardless of the income of their family.

Instead of giving $1 trillion in tax breaks to some of the richest people and corporations in the history of the world, Congress should be raising the minimum wage to a living wage for working people, $15 an hour, and nothing less.

Today in America, we have a rigged economy that is held in place by a corrupt campaign finance system-- one that amounts to legalized bribery.

But the good news is that the American people are with us on all of these issues, and have been for some time. They know that at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, the very rich must pay their fair share of taxes.

And much like we have moved the needle on issues like Medicare for All, college for all, jobs for all, and fighting climate change, we can do the same on this issue as well.

Bernie concluded by asking if people agree that instead of cutting taxes for corporations and some of the richest people in the history of the the world, it’s time for a progressive tax system that benefits all of us, not just those at the top. Maybe he slanted the results by adding "The greed of the billionaire class has got to end. And if Congress won’t do it, then we must."

Yeah, what we must do is present Congress with apathy to follow. Since we first published the list of co-sponsors of Pramila Jayapal's Medicare-For-All act the first week of February tons of more members have rushed to sign on as co-sponsors. No doubt many of them are true believers, like Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Katie Porter (D-CA), but pressure from their constituents may have had more than a little to do with some of the New Dems like Ed Perlmutter(CO) and Katie Hill (CA), as well as Blue Dog Vicente Gonzalez (TX). There's been at least a new co-sponsor per day, every day including weekends!

Timothy Faust did a definitive Guide to Medicare-For-All that should be a must-read for everyone who talks or writes about healthcare. He agrees that Pramila Jayapal's new Medicare-For-All bill-- probably unveiled in another couple of weeks-- "is astonishingly strong, and should become the baseline for federal legislation toward single-payer healthcare." (Democrats have 8 other healthcare bills floating around, some decent, some horrible. Faust's answer: "The relatively simple problems of health finance have been made very complicated by people who make money off of healthcare. So what are all of the issues being discussed and what do they mean? What’s really 'Medicare for All' and what’s not? How do existing bills stack up? And why does this matter?

The problem of American health finance-- not care, but finance-- can be expressed in two complementary points:

• It is extremely profitable to charge a sick person as much as possible, so long as someone is footing the bill.
• It is not profitable to insure people who are sick or who are likely to become sick.

This is the way things work now. Hospitals, manufacturers, and their various middlemen jack up costs, while insurance companies demand massive public subsidies to keep them from jettisoning people who most need insurance. If insurers can’t get those subsidies, they increase your costs of purchasing and using your insurance plan to compensate for the jacked-up costs.

Staring down these problems are the corporate dorks and the feckless policy dweebs whose policy prescriptions, whose wildest visions, continually place corporations in charge of our healthcare, and ensure that American public money subsidizes them for failing at it. If you hear 2020 candidates talk about the rot of American healthcare, look out if they float a “pragmatic policy solution” or talk about plans named something like “Medicare Extra As A Service... For You!” (If they’re polite, perhaps they will at least say they support “Medicare for All” before announcing they’d be open to keeping the feet of private insurance companies on our throats).

These pathetic programs, which usually revolve around a “public option,” are what happens when politicians understand the need for a massive change but lack the moral imagination to do anything but genuflect to existing structures. They are, in reality, corporate bailout packages which do very little for you, but quite a bit for the Aetnas and the Sacklers and the Joe Manchins.

On the other hand, you have federal single-payer, often called “Medicare for All.” Healthcare plans in the single-payer mold pool all the money currently spent on healthcare to insure every person in America. By pooling this buying power into one giant public insurer (the single payer), “Medicare for All” has much more leverage to determine prices through negotiation. It can say, “oh, we’re only going to pay $200 for an MRI instead of $1,000"; or, “our data shows that a knee replacement costs $15,000 to perform even though you bill five times that amount; take it or leave it,” and since it’s the only insurer in town, the hospital has to take it. This isn’t radical-- virtually every other country with universal coverage has a form of aggressive rate-setting. (And it lets the hospital spend a lot less money on massive towers of billing staff.)

You'll have to read his whole long, powerful piece to understand why he believes that Jayapal's bill-- and only Jayapal's bill-- "appears to meet all of the criteria for a proper single-payer plan. It includes long-term care with a preference toward home health. It sets guidelines for care but lets doctors overrule them. It is, by all accounts, the first actual robust single-payer bill of the post-ACA era. If you are looking for a bill to call 'Medicare for All,' this is the one. It must not be permitted to be weakened."

All that said, do not forget-- and I know you won't-- Every Day Is a New Low in Trump's White House. That's also the name of the piece The Atlantic just published by former FBI Director and Trump enemy Andrew McCabe. When someone told Trump about it, he started whining on Twitter as is his wont.

The Atlantic piece is an adaptation from McCabe's soon-to-be-published book, The Threat. McCabe makes you feel you are there as history is being made.

On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, my first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI, I sat down with senior staff involved in the Russia case—the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As the meeting began, my secretary relayed a message that the White House was calling. The president himself was on the line. I had spoken with him the night before, in the Oval Office, when he told me he had fired James Comey.

A call like this was highly unusual. Presidents do not, typically, call FBI directors. There should be no direct contact between the president and the director, except for national-security purposes. The reason is simple. Investigations and prosecutions need to be pursued without a hint of suspicion that someone who wields power has put a thumb on the scale.

The Russia team was in my office. I took the call on an unclassified line. That was another strange thing-- the president was calling on a phone that was not secure. The voice on the other end said, It’s Don Trump calling. I said, Hello, Mr. President, how are you? Apart from my surprise that he was calling at all, I was surprised that he referred to himself as “Don.”

The president said, I’m good. You know-- boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?

He went on: I received hundreds of messages from FBI people-- how happy they are that I fired him. There are people saying things on the media, have you seen that? What’s it like there in the building?

This is what it was like: You could go to any floor and you would see small groups gathering in hallways, some people even crying. The overwhelming majority liked and admired Director Comey-- his personal style, the integrity of his conduct. Now we were laboring under the same dank, gray shadow that had been creeping over Washington during the few months Donald Trump had been in office.

I didn’t feel like I could say any of that to the president on the phone. I’m not sure I would have wanted to say it to him in person, either-- or that he would have cared. I told him that people here were very surprised, but that we were trying to get back to work.

The president said he thought most people in the FBI voted for him-- he thought 80 percent. He asked me again, as he had in his office, if I knew that Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation. Then he got to the reason for his call. He said, I really want to come over there. I want to come to the FBI. I want to show all my FBI people how much I love them, so I think maybe it would be good for me to come over and speak to everybody, like tomorrow or the next day.

That sounded to me like one of the worst possible things that could happen. He was the boss, and had every right to come, but I hoped the idea would dissipate on its own. He said, Why don’t you come down here and talk to me about that later?

After we agreed on a time to meet, the president began to talk about how upset he was that Comey had flown home on his government plane from Los Angeles-- Comey had been giving a speech there when he learned he was fired. The president wanted to know how that had happened.

I told him that bureau lawyers had assured me there was no legal issue with Comey coming home on the plane. I decided that he should do so. The existing threat assessment indicated he was still at risk, so he needed a protection detail. Since the members of the protection detail would all be coming home, it made sense to bring everybody back on the same plane they had used to fly out there. It was coming back anyway. The president flew off the handle: That’s not right! I don’t approve of that! That’s wrong! He reiterated his point five or seven times.

I said, I’m sorry that you disagree, sir. But it was my decision, and that’s how I decided. The president said, I want you to look into that! I thought to myself: What am I going to look into? I just told you I made that decision.

The ranting against Comey spiraled. I waited until he had talked himself out.

Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?

I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.

He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”

I wrote a memo about this conversation that very day. I wrote memos about my interactions with President Trump for the same reason that Comey did: to have a contemporaneous record of conversations with a person who cannot be trusted.

People do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of presidential accountability. Today we have a president who is willing not only to comment prejudicially on criminal prosecutions but to comment on ones that potentially affect him. He does both of these things almost daily. He is not just sounding a dog whistle. He is lobbying for a result. The president has stepped over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he has encountered them. Every day brings a new low, with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were “on the box” at Quantico, he would break the machine.

After Comey’s firing, the core of my concern had to do with what might happen to the Russia case if I were to be removed. I convened a series of meetings about that investigation-- including the one interrupted by the call from the president-- in which I directed an overall review of every aspect. Was the work on solid ground? Were there individuals on whom we should consider opening new cases? I wanted to protect the Russia investigation in such a way that whoever came after me could not just make it go away.

As requested, I went back to the White House that afternoon. The scene was almost identical to the one I had walked into the previous night. Trump was behind the Resolute desk. He lifted one arm and jutted it out, fingers splayed, directing me to take a seat in one of the little wooden chairs in front of him. Reince Priebus, then the chief of staff, and Don McGahn, then the White House counsel, were in the other chairs.

The president launched back into his speech about what a great decision it was to fire Jim Comey, how wonderful it was that the director was gone, because so many people did not like Comey, even hated him-- the president actually used the word hate.

Eventually he changed the subject. He said that he wanted to come to FBI headquarters to see people and excite them and show them how much he loves the FBI. He pressed me to answer whether I thought it was a good idea. I said it was always a good idea to visit. I was trying to take some of the immediacy out of his proposal-- to communicate that the door was always open, so that he wouldn’t feel he had to crash through it right away. I knew what a disaster it could turn out to be if he came to the Hoover Building in the near future. He pressed further, asking specifically, Do you think it would be a good idea for me to come down now? I said, Sure.

He looked at Don McGahn. The president said, Don, what do you think? Do you think I should go down to the FBI and speak to the people?

McGahn was sitting in one of the wooden chairs to my right. Making eye contact with Trump, he said, in a very pat and very prepared way, If the acting director of the FBI is telling you he thinks it is a good idea for you to come visit the FBI, then you should do it.

Then McGahn turned and looked at me. And Trump looked at me and asked, Is that what you’re telling me? Do you think it is a good idea?

It was a bizarre performance. I said it would be fine. I had no real choice. This was not worth the ultimate sacrifice.

In this moment, I felt the way I’d felt in 1998, in a case involving the Russian Mafia, when I sent a man I’ll call Big Felix in to meet with a Mafia boss named Dimitri Gufield. The same kind of thing was happening here, in the Oval Office. Dimitri had wanted Felix to endorse his protection scheme. This is a dangerous business, and it’s a bad neighborhood, and you know, if you want, I can protect you from that. If you want my protection. I can protect you. Do you want my protection? The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate.

For whatever reason, the visit to the FBI never happened.

One of the regularly scheduled meetings with the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and some of their staff came two days later, on Friday, May 12. After the meeting, I asked the deputy, Rod Rosenstein, if he could stay behind. In part I wanted to talk with him about ground rules governing the separate investigations of the Russia case by the FBI and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rosenstein had oversight because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had had to recuse himself owing to his own interactions with Russians during the campaign. But my main message was this: I need you to protect the process.

After speaking to these points, Rod shifted his gaze. His eyes were focused on a point in space a few yards beyond and behind, toward the door. He started talking about the firing of Jim Comey. He was obviously upset. He said he was shocked that the White House was making it look as if Jim’s firing had been his idea. He was grasping for a way to describe the nature of his situation. One remark stands out. He said, There’s no one that I can talk to about this. There’s no one here that I can trust.

He asked for my thoughts about whether we needed a special counsel to oversee the Russia case. I said I thought it would help the investigation’s credibility. Later that day, I went to see Rosenstein again. This is the gist of what I said: I feel strongly that the investigation would be best served by having a special counsel. I’ve been thinking about the Clinton email case and how we got twisted in knots over how to announce a result that did not include bringing charges against anyone. Had we appointed a special counsel in the Clinton case, we might not be in the present situation. Unless or until you make the decision to appoint a special counsel, the FBI will be subjected to withering criticism that could destroy the credibility of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

Rosenstein was very engaged. He was not yet convinced. I brought the matter up with him again after the weekend. On Wednesday, we would be briefing the Hill. As I saw it, by informing Congress of the bureau’s actions, we would be drawing an indelible line around the cases we had opened—the four cases known publicly and any others that may have gone forward. The four known publicly were those of Carter Page, a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign and a man with many Russian ties; George Papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser, who had told a foreign diplomat that the Russians had offered to help Trump’s campaign by providing information on Hillary Clinton; Michael Flynn, for a brief period the president’s national security adviser, who had pursued multiple high-level contacts with the Russian government; and Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, who had shady business dealings with Ukrainians and Russians.

On the afternoon of May 17, Rosenstein and I sat at the end of a long conference table in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol. We were there to brief the so-called Gang of Eight-- the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Rosenstein had, I knew, made a decision to appoint a special counsel in the Russia case. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York, was to our right. Mitch McConnell, the Republican senator from Kentucky and the Senate majority leader, was to our left. The mood in the room was sober.

After reminding the committee of how the investigation began, I told them of additional steps we had taken. Then Rod took over and announced that he had appointed a special counsel to pursue the Russia investigation, and that the special counsel was Robert Mueller. The Gang of Eight had questions. What was the scope of the inquiry? Who would oversee the special counsel? How could the special counsel get fired? Rod answered every question. Then it was over.

When I came out of the Capitol, it felt like crossing a finish line. If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do.

Post-Trump, America Needs Something Better Than Another Back To Normalcy President

It would be a tragic mistake for Democrats to pick a 2020 nominee based solely on ousting Trump. Electability is always an important consideration but it should never-- not even now-- be the only consideration. Almost any reasonably decent candidate should be able to beat Trump. It's not about them; it's not even about Trump. It's about us. Is there a candidate offering us something we want from our government? Chances are, whomever can get it together to win the primary is going to beat Trump.

Right now wikipedia is keeping a running list of potential Democratic nominees. 6 have declared: ridiculous New Dem multimillionaire ex-Congressman John Delaney, Richard Ojeda, Michael Arth, Ken Nwadike (the Free Hugs Guy), Robby Wells and Andrew Yang. Washington Governor Jay Inslee and spiritual teacher and author Marianne Williamson have exploratory committees. And then there are two dozen who have "expressed interest," from Bernie and Biden to Oscar De La Hoya, Michael Bloomberg and Tracy Flick.

On CNN Sunday, the Democrats' great GOP ally Rick Santorum warned Jake Tapper that Democrats have to pick someone unexpected to win-- he'd probably like Beto or Alexandria, or maybe Richard Ojeda, Pete Buttigieg, or Julian Castro to be the nominee-- and not someone "expected." He said "When the Democrats win, they pick someone unexpected. Or someone that is not the favorite-- Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter-- when they pick John Kerry or Al Gore or Hillary Clinton, they lose. So I'm hoping for Bernie [Sanders] or Elizabeth [Warren] or somebody like that. Some tired, old-- Joe Biden, put them out there and we'll win. If they pick someone new then I think they have a chance." Another Tapper guest, Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger, said it couldn't be anyone "far left" and then went on to define Nancy Pelosi and anyone who isn't from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party as being far left. He's sad that it's taking too long for the Democrats to transform themselves into the Eisenhower Republican Party while the GOP has moved so rapidly and decisively transforming themselves into a Hitlerite fascist party. Kinzinger was pumping for a nice safe corporate whore, Joe Biden and said he could beat Trump. "He can attract the kind of people voting for Donald Trump, the middle class, the blue-collar workers. I think he's the one that can take that away. If you put somebody like Bernie Sanders up, it's just out of the stream of what people want." Luckily Nina Turner was on the panel as well and she corrected both GOP doofuses: "Let me tell you something, wanting people to have a $15 an hour minimum wage, wanting to make sure that people have Medicare for all... there is no far-left, so don't paint Sanders and other people like that." Sure they do. Turner wants Democrats to win; Kinzinger and Santorium want Republicans to win. Is that so complicated?

2020 isn't just an opportunity to get rid of Trump. It's also an opportunity to replace him with someone as good as he is horrible-- with the great president America hasn't seen in over 7 decades! It's a chance to pick a candidate based on a vision for moving America forward. In 1920-- exactly a century ago-- the country went for a schlemiel who had a campaign theme everyone get behind: a return to normalcy (after the Great War). They wound up with a catastrophe: Warren G. Harding, the beginning of a downward spiral that led directly to the Great Depression and World War II. The Return to Normalcy candidate for the centenary is of course Joe Biden, the ultimate status quo or status quo ante candidate with nothing to offer except "not Trump."

Well-meaning Republicans-- not just sneaking partisans like Santorum-- will also be urging Democrats to nominate Biden or one of the other blind establishment centrists (say a Hickenlooper or, worse stir, a Bloomberg). Sunday night, at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, 2 "good" Republicans-- James Comey and Nicolle Wallace-- begged Democrats for a back to normalcy candidate. They hate Trump, although perhaps for somewhat different reasons than normal people hate Trump. They think he stole their putrid conservative party. They just want to bring back more putrid conservatism. That isn't what we want though, is it.

When CNN reports that "former FBI Director James Comey asked American voters Sunday night to end Donald Trump's presidency with a 'landslide' victory for his opponent in 2020," it sounds sweet to us. "All of us should use every breath we have to make sure the lies stop on January 20, 2021," said Comey, who "all but begged Democrats to set aside their ideological differences and nominate the person best suited to defeating Trump in an election. 'I understand the Democrats have important debates now over who their candidate should be,' Comey told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace, 'but they have to win. They have to win.'" We know that but what comes after we win is important to us too.

Over the course of more than an hour, Comey repeatedly derided Trump's character, again likening the atmosphere around the President to what he saw in prosecuting mafia figures and suggested that Trump's tweets could eventually amount to witness tampering. Asked if Trump might be an unindicted co-conspirator in some of the crimes recently described by special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey said he didn't know, "but if he's not there, he's certainly close."

Still, Comey said he hoped that Trump would be swept out of office without being impeached. Framing the rise of Trumpism as a political ill the country needed to exorcise at the ballot, he expressed a hope that Americans would "in a landslide rid ourselves of this attack on our values."

"Removal by impeachment would muddy that," he said, and potentially leave a third of the country feeling like their chosen leader had been removed in a "coup."

Trump's decision to fire Comey in May 2017 was a key factor in the appointment of Mueller, who was handed the job by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of Comey's dismissal and the subsequent leak of a memo in which he recounted Trump asking that he end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. In a book and in public statements, Comey has become a leading critic of Trump-- and Trump has berated him in turn, relentlessly and usually on Twitter.

Hours earlier, Trump attacked Comey in a pair of testy morning tweets, claiming without evidence that the former FBI chief had lied on Friday in his testimony to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.

Comey laughed at the idea Trump had even looked over the actual testimony, joking to Wallace before she could read the tweets, "He's finished reading the 253 pages?"

After hearing the words out loud, he turned serious.

"My reaction to it is actually disturbing to me, which is kind of, 'Eh, there he goes again.' I thought I was 'Lyin' James Comey' now I'm 'Leakin' James Comey'. But I kind of shrug and sometimes smile and laugh about it and then I have a secondary reaction, which is to be horrified at my own numb reaction," Comey said. "We have to remind ourselves the President of the United States of America is publicly announcing that people are committing crimes, that they should be in jail."

Asked if Trump's tweets could be viewed as witness tampering, Comey answered carefully-- insisting he had no insight into Mueller's thinking.

"I'm not prepared to judge it," Comey said, "but again, if I were prosecuting a case in the Southern District of New York and a prominent person started attacking my witnesses, I'd want to know so what's going on there and does that cross the line from free speech, which we have to keep protected, into something else?"

Speaking about the period before the 2016 election, Comey was unsparing of Republican congressional leaders who he said opposed making public intelligence community concerns over Russian interference.

"To their everlasting shame, the leaders-- (Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell, (House Speaker Paul) Ryan-- refused," Comey said. "I think they're going to have a hard time explaining that to history."

He had kinder words for former President Barack Obama, describing the Democrat as a foil to Trump in almost every way.

"I was struck that Barack Obama is the best listener as a leader I had ever seen and Donald Trump is the worst I've ever seen," Comey said. "Obama had the confidence to be quiet and try and get that. Donald Trump is a deeply, deeply insecure person, so I don't see any prospect that he would be able to be quiet for long enough to hear the truth."

Speaker... 2020?

Hillary surrogates used to whisper that if were was elected president he wouldn't be able to get anything through Congress because he hand allies there (other than Raul Grijalva, Keith Ellison, Tulsi Gabbard, Ro Khanna and Alan Grayson). Now there are way more than that behind Bernie and his programs and in 2020 there should enough to swing Congress towards the widely popular ideas he's running on, from Medicare-for-All and Job Guarantee to Free state universities and the Green New Deal. In 2020, we need to elect Bernie and and House ready for his programs. No more New Dems and Blue Dogs from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Two silly-as-whoopie-cushions updates (a little early morning humor): Third Way wants Beto-- imagine a BETO/Lieberman ticket!!-- and, even more hilarious, Biden has been hiring DCCC staffers... which should be enough to guarantee him a sad, sad DOA campaign.

Five True Things About Mike Pence

Image courtesy The Atlantic, "God's Plan for Mike Pence"

by Gaius Publius

In the wake of ultra-right bombings and shootings, with the Mueller investigation in mind and thoughts of the 2020 election close at hand, it seems appropriate to look at Vice President Mike Pence. He could be made president before 2020, and if so, he may be president afterward as well.

So let's consider this set of five true things about Mike Pence.

1. Mike Pence Is the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History

In 2016, just after the November election, Jeremy Scahill wrote this about the soon-to-be vice-president:

Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence — and his fellow Christian supremacist militants — would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. “This may not be our preferred candidate, but that doesn’t mean it may not be God’s candidate to do something that we don’t see,” said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the U.S. government enforce “biblical values.” In June, Barton prophesied: “We may look back in a few years and say, ‘Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none of us expected.’”

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

“The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That’s the only legitimate government,” contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” “So when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.”

This is extreme as it gets in the world of Christian dominionism. "They want a God-led government" — their god that is, an Old Testament god who terrorizes enemies, punishes unsanctioned sex and permanently assigns to women a status less than human. If you were to equate this god's dogma with Sharia law, you'd not be wrong.

Interestingly, one of the most prominent voices for dominionism, R.J. Rushdoony, was also a fan of Ludwig von Mises and his extreme form of economic libertarianism, a belief that put Rushdoony in the same economic camp as Charles Koch. Expect a President Pence to follow in those footsteps as well — religious restriction for you, extreme economic freedom for him and his friends.

2. Mike Pence Is Anti-Science

In 2002 Mike Pence said on the floor of the House (h/t Mike Stone at Progressive Secular Humanist):

I would simply and humbly ask, can we teach it as such and can we also consider teaching other theories of the origin of species? Like the theory that was believed in by every signer of the Declaration of Independence. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence believed that men and women were created and were endowed by that same Creator with certain unalienable rights. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. And I believe that, Mr. Speaker. ...

I believe that God created the known universe, the earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe. ...

I just would humbly ask that, as new theories of evolution find their ways into the newspapers and into the textbooks, let us demand that educators around America teach evolution, not as fact, but as theory [among competing explanations]. ... But let's also bring into the minds of all of our children all of the theories about the unknowable, [so] that some bright day in the future, through science and perhaps through faith, we will find the truth of from whence we come. [bolding mine]

It's easy to imagine a Mike Pence Education Department mandating this teaching to the extent it can, and a Supreme Court dominated by "five Antonin Scalias" — Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh — upholding him.

3. Mike Pence Is Virulently Homophobic

Pence is not only anti-woman, he's rabidly anti-gay, so much so that others suspect he has "those urges" himself. So far those suspicions have proved groundless, but there's no doubting the virulence of his homophobia.

Just one example (h/t Mike Gallagher at LGBTQ Nation): As Governor Mike Pence signed a bill to jail same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license. "To prove that he wasn’t singling gay people out, Pence was also willing to jail marriage clerks who supplied a license or clergy who performed the wedding."

4. Mike Pence Could Well Be Guilty of Obstruction of Justice in the Comey Firing

From Jed Shugerman at Law and Crime in 2017 (emphasis added):

On Friday, news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained a draft letter written by President Trump and advisor Stephen Miller explaining Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey. They wrote the letter over the weekend of May 5-7, and then on May 8th, Trump distributed and read the letter to senior officials, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and Vice President Mike Pence. Then the letter was edited, and Trump fired Comey the next day.  On Friday, I suggested on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” on MSNBC that the most significant development was Pence’s potential criminal liability for his role in obstruction of justice (and I emphasize “potential,” because all we have at this stage are allegations in media reports and a lot more questions about the contents of the letter and Pence’s role in revising or editing it).

I have explained in other posts why Trump’s firing of Comey constitutes obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), and arguably Sections 1503 and 1505. “(c)Whoever corruptly- (2)… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” 18 USC 1515 defines “official proceeding,” and includes Congress and authorized government agencies. The 2d and 5th Circuits have held that an FBI investigation is an official proceeding (but a 9th Circuit case raises questions about that interpretation). But keep in mind that 1) Congress had already started its investigation (including having Comey testify about the Russia probe), and 2) prosecutors had already obtained grand jury subpoenas in the Flynn case. These official proceedings had already begun, particularly in the Flynn investigation, which had been the focus of Trump’s questions to Comey in January through April. Firing Comey would impede those official proceedings, and Trump himself more or less confessed to trying to influence and impede the Russia investigation by firing Comey: first on national TV to NBC’s Lester Holt, then in the Oval Office to Kislyak and Lavrov on an official transcript.

In this new post, I explain Vice President Pence’s potential criminal jeopardy for conspiring to obstruct justice, aiding the obstruction of justice, and “misprision of a felony” in concealing the obstruction of justice. ...

This should put him squarely in Robert Mueller's crosshairs. But the point may be moot, because...

5. Robert Mueller Appears to Be Protecting Mike Pence

I've always seen Robert Mueller as a political actor, a Republican political actor, the greatest evidence of which is his apparently deliberate mishandling, as head of the FBI, of the Bush era anthrax attack investigation, about which Marcy Wheeler has written a great deal.

As I read the evidence, the motive for sabotaging the investigation appears to be that it was veering in the wrong direction, beginning to point to domestic terrorists on the right. Evidence of domestic terrorism was not countenanced under President Bush, and Mueller was, among other things, a "loyal Bushie." The only other explanation for this obviously bungled investigation is incompetence, and I think Mueller is perfectly competent at what he considers his job. The question was, what did he consider the more important aspect of his job, finding the truth or supporting the Bush-Cheney agenda? (I may write more on the anthrax attack later, pulling all that evidence together, but it's too much to go into here.)

So I don't believe Robert Mueller's mission in the Trump-Russia investigation is to "find the truth." I think his mission is to "find enough truth to get rid of Donald Trump," and in that mission he's supported by the whole of the Democratic Party, the centrist media establishment, the national security establishment, and any elements of the Republican Party establishment not dependent on Trump supporters for power.

It's beyond obvious that anyone looking for crimes by Donald Trump will find them. He's been soaking in criminality his entire career. Mueller is very likely finding enough financial crime to blackmail Trump from office should he want to take that route.

As you read above, Mike Pence looks very much a part of that criminality by his behavior during the James Comey firing. So why isn't Pence being investigated by Robert Mueller along with the myriad others whose lives Mueller has pulled open?

From Allegra Kirkland at Talking Points Memo:

‘A Bit Of A Mystery’: Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance From Pence?

...Pence was absent from many of the key incidents Mueller is reportedly investigating as part of his sprawling probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But he was intimately involved with several, including the firing of former FBI director James Comey, and the subsequent efforts to settle on a rationale for that firing, which appear to be at the center of the Mueller investigation.

So it’s puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration’s second-highest-ranking official. Pence’s lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence’s full cooperation.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Pence’s name hasn’t really surfaced at all,” Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department’s criminal division, told TPM. “There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I’m surprised.”

Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record, while the special counsel’s office declined comment. Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but in December [2017] forcefully denied to CNN that Pence’s office was preparing for a meeting with Mueller.

As of mid-January [2018], NBC reported that the special counsel had made no overtures to Pence about an interview.

Just a few things you should know as you wait the outcome of the Mueller-Trump cage match. The Koch-funded radical right accomplished one of its most-cherished goals when Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. It now has "five Scalias" on the bench, and radical rule from the judicial branch is assured for the next generation, if not far longer.

An emotionally stable, ideologically reliable, radical rightwing president is the next goal. Meet Mike Pence.

GP
  

Eventually Everyone Will Flip On Trumpanzee... Except Some Voters In Wyoming, Oklahoma And West Virginia

Trump is demanding Sessions fire his perceived political enemies. Months ago he went nuts on Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray about why they hadn't fired Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from the FBI for disloyalty to the all high Trumpanzee, unable to distinguish between loyalty to America and loyalty to the Führer, who "pressed his attorney general and FBI director to work more aggressively to uncover derogatory information within the FBI’s files to turn over to congressional Republicans working to discredit the two FBI officials."

The effort to discredit Strzok and Page has been part of a broader effort by Trump and his allies to discredit and even fire FBI officials who they believe will be damaging witnesses against the president in Mueller’s obstruction of justice probe.

Those attacks, in turn, are part of a broader push to denigrate Mueller himself and make it easier for Trump to publicly justify his potential firing. Those efforts have taken on new urgency as Mueller continues to rack up guilty pleas from former senior Trump officials like Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, and after the FBI, in conjunction with other federal prosecutors, raided the office, home, and hotel room of Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer. Trump’s fury over the raid has made many of his closest advisers worry that he’s inching closer to firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller probe, and possibly Mueller as well.

Friday night, a team of Washington Post national security reporters wrote that Sessions said he'd quit if Trumpanzee fires Rosenstein. That might be another incentive for Señor T to initiate his own Saturday Night Massacre. I wonder if anyone has explained to the ignorant Putin puppet what the Saturday Night Massacre was and what it led to.

He's still fuming that Sessions recused himself from all things related to Putin-Gate and would love to see him leave the Justice Department. Sessions called Don McGahn, the official chief White House counseland told him if Trumpanzee fires Rosenstein over the Cohen raid, he may have to resign. The Post speculated that "the protest resignation of an attorney general-- which would be likely to incite other departures within the administration-- would create a moment of profound crisis for the White House." Really? Why? Trump only cares about what his base thinks and none of this would mean anything to them as long as Trump tweets something derogatory about Sessions.

The 4 Post writes pointed out that "Last summer, when it appeared Trump was going to fire Sessions or pressure him to resign, Republican lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups rallied to Sessions’s side and warned the president not to move against him." Since then, Trump's power with the GOP has grown immensely and he doesn't care what Republican lawmakers or conservative advocacy groups whine about. If he's not king of America, he is king of the GOP. He dominates the Republican Party utterly and entirely. He refers to Sessions as Mr. Magoo and Rosenstein as Mr. Peepers. There is no one who can stand up to him--no one. And remember, Rosenstein isn't some Obama administration hold-over. Rosenstein, a Republican, was put in place by Señor Trumpanzee himself.

Trump had told senior officials last week that he was considering firing Rosenstein, who was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support last year. Since then, alumni of the Justice Department have rallied to Rosenstein’s defense.

As of Friday afternoon, more than 800 former Justice Department employees had signed an open letter calling on Congress to “swiftly and forcefully respond to protect the founding principles of our Republic and the rule of law” if Trump were to fire the deputy attorney general, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III or other senior Justice Department officials.

...Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, is tasked with running the day-to-day operations of the sprawling agency of 113,000 employees who work for the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Bureau of Prisons; U.S. attorneys offices; and Main Justice, the agency’s headquarters. But from the time he was confirmed in May of last year, the investigation into possible coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump associates and agents of the Russian government has overshadowed everything he has done.

...A month after Rosenstein became deputy attorney general, he was criticized for his role in the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey. Rosenstein wrote a critical memo lambasting Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the White House later used the document as a pretext to remove the FBI director. After a few days, though, Trump said he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired Comey. Comey has said in recent days he believed Rosenstein “acted dishonorably” and could not be trusted.

At that point, Rosenstein was overseeing the Russia investigation because Sessions had recused himself. On May 17, about a week after the Comey firing, Rosenstein announced that he had appointed Mueller as special counsel to conduct the Russia investigation.

Rosenstein took the action without first consulting Sessions and notified him when he was at the White House meeting with Trump. The decision took Trump by surprise and greatly angered him.

A person close to the White House and the Justice Department said Sessions has “vacillated, I think, from being concerned about the deputy leaving or being fired and recognizing that Rosenstein has not been a friend of either him or the department.”

...This week, two of Trump’s top legislative allies and leading members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus met with Rosenstein and pressed him for more documents about the conduct of law enforcement officials involved in the Russia probe. They warned him that he could face impeachment proceedings or an effort to hold him in contempt of Congress if he did not satisfy Republican demands for more documents.

By forcing the Justice Department into releasing Comey's memos to themselves, House Republicans-- who promptly leaked the memos to the press-- blundered into making Trump look even more repulsive and more guilty than he already looked. On top of which there's all this chatter about whether or not the sleaze-bag Michael Cohen will "flip" on Trump. It's unimaginable to be but... isn't Trump in the White no less unimaginable? [Also unimaginable: the media referring to yenta and Fox scumbag Alan Dershowitz as a "liberal."]

Two sources close to the president said people in Trump’s inner circle have in recent days been actively discussing the possibility that Michael Cohen-- long seen as one of Trump’s most loyal personal allies-- might flip if he faces serious charges as a result of his work on behalf of Trump.

“That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment,” said Alan Dershowitz, the liberal lawyer and frequent Trump defender who met with the president and his staff over two days at the White House last week. “They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”

...In a court filing last week, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York explained the FBI raid was “the result of a months-long investigation” into the president’s lawyer and that prosecutors were looking for evidence of crimes related to his business dealings.

Trump and his allies fear that documents and recordings that the FBI swept up from Cohen’s home and office could come back to haunt the president, whose lawyers have joined Cohen’s in New York in asserting attorney-client privilege and are asking a federal judge to approve an independent review of the material.

“Who knows what Cohen has in those files,” said a person close to the White House.

But their concerns go beyond Cohen’s voluminous files. Increasingly, Trump’s outside advisers are worried about the risk posed by Cohen himself.

“I think for two years or four years or five years, Michael Cohen would be a stand-up guy. I think he’d tell them go piss up a rope. But depending on dollars involved, which can be a big driver, or if they look at him and say it’s not two to four years, it’s 18 to 22, then how loyal is he?” said one defense lawyer who represents a senior Trump aide in Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“Is he two years loyal? Is he 10 years loyal? Is he 15 years loyal?” the attorney added. “That’s the currency. It’s not measured in inches. It’s measured in years.”

Jay Goldberg, a longtime Trump lawyer, told the Wall Street Journal that he spoke with Trump on Friday about Cohen and warned the president against trusting Cohen if he is facing criminal charges. Goldberg said he warned the president that Cohen “isn’t even a 1” on a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 was remaining fully loyal to the president, the newspaper reported.

...The prospect of years or even decades in prison might be easier to swallow if Cohen believes a presidential pardon is possible. White House officials and others close to the president insist that last week’s decision to pardon former Vice President Dick Cheney’s senior aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on perjury charges dating to his service in the George W. Bush administration was not intended to send a message to Cohen-- but it nonetheless could go a long way toward reassuring the president’s lawyer.

“They’re going to squeeze him like a grape. I think in the end he’ll pop unless Trump pardons him,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute and a former senior counsel during independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton.

...Cohen flipping “would be Trump’s worst nightmare,” said John Dean, the former White House counsel whose cooperation with Watergate prosecutors helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

“It would be as stunning and life-disrupting a surprise as his winning the presidency,” Dean added. “And if there is any prosecutor’s office in the USA that can flip Cohen, it is the Southern District of New York.”