Are We Watching A Coup Unfold In Real Time?

 

Prohibited Acts by Nancy Ohanian

This morning, the Washington Post, and other newspapers across the country, reported that the Trump Regime ordered agencies to not cooperate with the Biden transition team until Trump tells them to. "Officials at agencies across the government who had prepared briefing books and carved out office space for the incoming Biden team to use as soon as this week were told instead that the transition would not be recognized until the Democrat’s election was confirmed by the General Services Administration, the low-profile agency that officially starts the transition."

This morning CBS News reported that Trump consiglieri William Barr has authorized U.S. attorneys across the country to "pursue substantial allegations" of voting irregularities before the election is certified. Barr offered no evidence of fraud. "The authorization from Barr," wrote Claire Hymes, "provides an exception to a long-standing Department of Justice policy meant to prevent the appearance of impacting the outcome of the election. The department manual on the Prosecution of Election Offenses advises, 'not to conduct overt investigations, including interviews with individual voters, until after the outcome of the election allegedly affected by the fraud is certified.' Barr's memo quickly prompted the resignation of the Justice Department's top prosecutor for election crimes, Richard Pilger."

Asked on Monday about the chances of the coup requested by a group of royalists on Sunday, the army chief replied: "Below zero."

Royalists had called for a coup after thousands of anti-government protesters again rallied in support of demands for reform of the monarchy.

Oops; sorry, that was from yesterday... in the Bangkok Post and part of a discussion of the current political turmoil in Thailand, not Trumpistan. Here. Trump is, at best, having an emotional outburst/tantrum and at worst actually attempting a coup. Cody Fenwick noted today that "Trump's assault on democracy, as emotionally driven as it may be, is also a genuine attempt to overturn the results of the election, even if it is ill-fated and poorly thought out."

Before the election, Trump made his strategy clear. He repeatedly said he thought that the election would be decided by the Supreme Court, and he used this point as a justification for rushing through the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Now, his campaign is launching a series of lawsuits-- which many serious legal analysts dismissed as frivolous and baseless-- hoping that something will stick and enable him to remain president.

And while it initially seemed other Republicans might not stick by him in this fight, they increasingly fell in line. Sens. Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News to support Trump's refusal to concede. On Monday, Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, both of whom face runoff races against Democrats in early January, wrote a letter demanding their own Republican secretary of state step down, lobbing vague and, again, unsupported allegations of misconduct in the state's election-- which Biden appears to have won. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, on the chamber's floor, defended Trump's refusal to concede and offered support for the president's effort to pursue lawsuits on Monday.

Within the administration itself, the situation looked even worse, as described by the Associated Press. A top official in charge of starting the transition when an Electoral College victor is "apparent" refused to start cooperating with Biden. Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and tried to replace him with Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, though it's not clear he had the legal authority to do so. Reports indicate other important officials could soon be fired as well.

Washington Post reporter Shane Harris wrote that Trump is likely to be a national security threat as ex-president. After all, he "selectively revealed highly classified information to attack his adversaries, gain political advantage and to impress or intimidate foreign governments, in some cases jeopardizing U.S. intelligence capabilities. As an ex-president, there’s every reason to worry he will do the same.

All presidents exit the office with valuable national secrets in their heads, including the procedures for launching nuclear weapons, intelligence-gathering capabilities-- including assets deep inside foreign governments-- and the development of new and advanced weapon systems.

But no new president has ever had to fear that his predecessor might expose the nation’s secrets as President-elect Joe Biden must with Trump, current and former officials said. Not only does Trump have a history of disclosures, he checks the boxes of a classic counterintelligence risk: He is deeply in debt and angry at the U.S. government, particularly what he describes as the ‘deep state’ conspiracy that he believes tried to stop him from winning the White House in 2016 and what he falsely claims is an illegal effort to rob him of reelection.

On Halloween in 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot to death-- 30 bullets were pumped into her-- by her 2 bodyguards, Satwant and Beant Singh. Both men immediately threw down their weapons and surrendered. That was brave of them. Just sayin'. (Beant was immediately shot dead and Satwant was later hanged.) Of course, Trump has always been more a Nicolae Ceaușescu than an Indira Gandhi.

Even if most Americans don't remember this photo of 

 the Ceaușescus being summarily executed, all Eastern Europeans do, including Melania Trump, who was working as a prostitute at the time

Everyone Hates William Barr-- And For Good Reason

 

1,612 former Justice Department lawyers and judges have signed an open letter to Trump consiglieri William Barr, calling him out for using the Department as an auxiliary of the Trump reelection campaign (which is illegal). They have served both Democratic and Republican administrations and each took the same oath that Barr did "to defend the Constitution and pursue the evenhanded administration of justice free from partisan consideration. Many of us," they wrote, "have spoken out in previous statements, motivated by an ongoing concern that President Trump and Attorney General Barr are weaponizing the DOJ in the service of Trump’s personal interests, thereby doing grave damage to the rule of law, to the foundational principle that the law should be applied equally to all Americans, and to the DOJ’s institutional credibility as an independent law enforcement agency."

We speak out again now because we fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections. He has signalled this intention in myriad ways, from making false statements about the security of mail-in voting from foreign hackers to falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud and coercion. Most recently, the Department made a premature and improper announcement of a mail-in ballot tampering investigation that the White House immediately used as a talking point in its campaign to discredit mail-in voting and to further the claim it will be rigged against President Trump.

And based on Attorney General Barr’s public statements and other evidence, it appears that he will use the ongoing inquiry into the origins of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election-- known as the “Durham investigation” after John Durham, the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut tapped by Barr to lead it-- to help President Trump’s reelection chances. There are serious questions about whether there is a legitimate basis for the Durham investigation. It has been repeatedly politicized and tainted by President Trump, and both the DOJ’s Inspector General and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have concluded that the Russian interference investigation was wholly appropriate and methodologically sound. But even if there is a legitimate predicate for the Durham investigation, there is clearly no justification for taking public action on it in such close proximity to the November election. Such a blatant politicization and abuse of federal law enforcement power risks immense and lasting harm to our democracy and to the integrity and reputation of the DOJ.

The core principle of federal law enforcement-- familiar to all DOJ lawyers-- is that the law should be applied equally and impartially, free from partisan considerations. It is embodied in the Constitution and countless laws and rules governing the conduct of federal prosecutors, including DOJ policies-- both written and unwritten-- designed to avoid interference with an election. One such unwritten policy-- sometimes called the “60-Day Rule”-- creates a presumption that DOJ personnel should not take public steps or make public statements about a criminal investigation in the period immediately before an election if doing so could influence the vote.

Attorney General Barr is well aware of the 60-Day Rule and the longstanding policies and traditions it serves. Indeed, he endorsed it during his own Senate confirmation hearing, explaining that it exists because “the incumbent party has their hands on … the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political party.” Earlier this year, Attorney General Barr issued a memorandum to DOJ personnel in which he reiterated that “the Department has long recognized that it must exercise particular care regarding sensitive investigations and prosecutions that relate to political candidates, campaigns, and other politically sensitive individuals and organizations-- especially in an election year.” In doing so, he acknowledged the importance of “ensur[ing] that the Department’s actions do not unnecessarily advantage or disadvantage any candidate or political party.” During his first tour as Attorney General, Barr criticized just such an action, when Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh indicted former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger days before the 1992 election, thereby damaging President George H.W. Bush’s re-election campaign.

But now, Attorney General Barr seems to be ignoring the principle altogether in his handling of the Durham investigation, which he has continued in spite of President Trump’s repeated efforts to use it as a political weapon. President Trump has publicly insisted on prosecutions of numerous persons associated with what he calls the “Russia Witch Hunt,” including former President Obama and former Vice President Biden, and has bluntly stated that Attorney General Barr’s ability to be considered “the greatest attorney general in our history,” versus just “an average guy,” hinges on whether he prosecutes them. President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggested that he has reviewed documents related to the investigation that demonstrate that “it’s time for people to go to jail.” Far from distancing himself from these abuses of power, Attorney General Barr has repeatedly violated DOJ policy by commenting on the investigation, to include opining that its subjects committed crimes constituting “one of the greatest travesties in American history” and “sabotage” of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Such improper political influence from the White House and guilt-presuming comments not only violate DOJ policy, they undermine fundamental fairness and due process.

While the 60-Day Rule’s presumption against pre-election action can sometimes be overcome for legitimate law enforcement purposes-- such as the need to enforce a subpoena when a prosecutor fears evidence will be destroyed or the need to make an arrest when a suspect may flee-- we are aware of no such exigencies here. The recent resignation of Nora Dannehy, one of prosecutors on the Durham investigation-- in apparent protest of pressure to produce unprecedented pre-indictment findings before the election-- further suggests that the Durham investigation is being used as a means of partisan interference in the election on President Trump’s behalf.

In recent remarks, Attorney General Barr criticized DOJ career prosecutors for being insufficiently deferential to the Trump administration and the political leadership at DOJ. Attorney General Barr’s comments display a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of career prosecutors and why many of them have openly resisted his interventions on President Trump’s behalf. While it is of course true that the DOJ is managed by its political leaders, when those leaders violate their oath to faithfully execute the law, the career staff is obligated by their own oaths of office to uphold the principle of equal justice under law. All DOJ officials, including Mr. Durham himself, should respond to any improper efforts to influence the election by: reporting misconduct; refusing to carry out improper directives; and following the lead of Ms. Dannehy and others and resigning rather than violate their oaths of office. The Inspector General should protect the DOJ’s integrity by answering the call of the House of Representatives to open his own investigation into election interference. And given Attorney General Barr’s demonstrated willingness to use the Department to help President Trump politically, the media and the public should view any election-related activity by the DOJ-- including any announcement or findings related to the Durham investigation-- with appropriate skepticism.

BONUS: Do You Find Melania To Be A Sympathetic Figure?

Don't. She isn't. She's no prisoner of Zenda. A really disgusting leaked tape that's been circulating (until she caught COVID):

Breaking Democracy Is A Republican Party Thing Now

 

Slimeball by Nancy Ohanian

I have no idea if George Packer knew he was comparing democracy to religion in his Atlantic essay Trump Is Trying to Trick Americans Into Giving Up on Democracy... but that's how I read it. "Democracy," he wrote "depends on belief in democracy-- on an extraordinary leap of faith by ordinary people that their rulers will abide by the rules, that their votes will count, that their compatriots won’t tear the country apart, that lies won’t become truth. When the checks and balances have all given way, the last barrier to an authoritarian regime is public opinion. It will stand or fall on November 3. According to a new poll by the international organization More in Common, the only issue that matters to Americans across the political spectrum is the integrity of the November presidential election. In the same poll, more than three-quarters of Americans-- again, from left to right-- still express a belief that citizens can change society through their actions. And yet similarly large majorities expect high levels of voter fraud or voter suppression in November; trust in government, the media, and one another is abysmally low. Another recent poll, by YouGov, finds that just 22 percent of Americans expect the election to be free and fair; when told that experts say the election cannot be rigged, only 19 percent believe it. Americans are in the desperate position of clinging to something precious that they expect to betray them."

Yesterday I was talking with western New York congressional candidate, Nate McMurray about a stunt his opponent, hereditary billionaire Chris Jacobs, pulled on Saturday. The Trumpist incumbent, speaking at a rally of extremists where an effigy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo was beaten and hung, was part of a mob. "This district has a history of political climbers like Bill Paxon, Tom Reynolds, Chris Lee and Chris Collins who used the communities and families of NY-27 for personal gain," McMurray told me. "But the hatefulness on display Saturday was a disgraceful new low. Chris Jacobs and his comrades in western New York have fully embraced the worst of Trumpism. Extreme Republicans like Chris know that if every American votes they will lose. So they traffic in conspiracies, lies and the politics of fear to destabilize the electoral process and end democracy as we know it. And their march toward authoritarianism will not end with a whimper but with the bang and butt of a gun. Chris should be ashamed of how far he has debased himself, all to try and win an election."

Packer wrote that "Democratic faith turns out to be as fragile as it is necessary, and Trump specializes in undermining it. When he repeatedly asserts massive fraud months before Election Day, announces that he won’t respect results that go against him, and refuses to promise a peaceful transfer of power-- the litmus test of democracy-- he is forcing Americans into a mental trap that can resemble madness. The president says that the election is rigged, and he also insinuates that he will rig the election. To believe him is frightening; to discount him is foolish. Either way, Trump becomes ever more powerful, while the people-- on whose consent his power entirely depends-- slip into passivity and paralysis, or are pushed into rage, even political violence.This is exactly the atmosphere of chaos in which Trump thrives. He makes it almost impossible to hold on to the idea that the election can be free and fair. But the survival of democracy, which lives and dies in our minds before anywhere else, depends on that idea. For the election to succeed, we have to think and act as if it will succeed.

Trump uses words the way Russian intelligence employs “active measures” operations: not to inform or persuade, but to poison the mental atmosphere, to confuse and agitate the public until it begins to lose faith in rational discourse and, ultimately, in democracy. Whether or not this continuous ink spray could actually lower voter turnout, Morris said, it will degrade “our belief in each other as common citizens of a republic.” Sizable numbers of Americans in both parties are now willing to tolerate political violence in the aftermath of an election, according to a Democracy Fund Voter Study survey last spring: 20 percent of Republicans in the event of alleged vote fraud, 20 percent of Democrats if Trump loses the popular vote but wins the Electoral College. Americans are edging toward civil conflict.

In the coming weeks, anyone who cares about our democracy has to hold two conflicting ideas in mind while remaining sane. The first is that Trump should be taken at his word when he warns that he will do whatever is necessary to stay in power. This dark prospect requires a constant state of alertness, a refusal to seek comfort in hoping for the best or looking to Trump’s party or his judges for some glimmer of salvation. At this stage of his presidency, naivete is unforgivable.

But the second idea, even more demanding, is that our votes still matter. Not just that they’ll be counted, but that they are sacred, if anything in a secular democracy can be called by that word. This idea means refusing to give way to panic or despair or, most crippling of all, the sullen resentment into which subject populations are worn down by authoritarian rulers. The more we dwell on what Trump might do, the likelier he’ll be to get away with something. He’ll have become the omnipotent central character in the drama, occupying the place that rightfully belongs to a democratic people, who are reduced once more to watching in outrage. We have to believe that power still lies in the people, or else we’ve already surrendered it.

For weeks, Belarusians have filled the streets of their cities to insist that their votes are sacred. Beatings, grenades, flashbangs, arrests, torture, and disappearances by the state have neither deterred them nor driven them to violence. Some commentators have said that the United States is not yet Belarus. This is true enough, though we are closer than seemed imaginable just a few years ago. The real question is whether Americans have what it takes to be Belarusians.

Tuesday, Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, was on CNN, where he said that after reading the NY Times piece on Trump's taxes, he realized that Trump makes Nixon look like a rookie amateur. He sees Trump going to trial if he loses the election because what he's guilty of is not tax avoidance but full-blown tax fraud. "Tax evasion is a 5 year felony. It's a pretty serious crime and the more money that's stolen, the longer you go to jail for... The only thing saving him at this point is the Department of Justice’s guideline that says you can’t indict a sitting president."

Ah... yes, the Department of Justice. It's like when The Mob takes over the FBI. CREW-- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington-- made an abuse of power case for impeaching Barr. Pelosi is bound to ignore it for narrow partisan reasons but CREW made the case that Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that impaired the Special Counsel investigation of Trump, "the conduct of lawful inquiries by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the purpose of that agency, and the oversight and impeachment powers of the United States House of Representatives. These actions violate DOJ’s founding principal to maintain the independence and impartiality of federal prosecutions from political intervention." There can be little doubt that Barr is also guilty of directing federal law enforcement officers to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens who gathered to engage in peaceful protest outside of the White House and across the country. They want to see an impeachment inquiry by the House that focuses on whether Barr abused the powers of his office by engaging in a course of conduct that was 'seriously incompatible with our system of constitutional government.' At a minimum, that inquiry should consider whether Barr:

• Corruptly subverted the Special Counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of President Trump for obstruction of justice;
• Interfered with the lawful functions of the Department of Justice by overturning the actions of career prosecutors in the cases of Roger Stone Jr. and Michael Flynn and by firing United States Attorney Geoffrey Berman;
• Obstructed lawful investigations of the United States House of Representatives; and
• Abused and exceeded the powers of the Attorney General to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

Attorney General William Barr's reputation is in freefall but history is filled with bootlicking architects of fascist dictatorships just like him. They are true believers. They care not at all for their reputations. Whatever temporary success they gain, they will take. And they will gain whatever we give them.

I've always said that when the scum among us rise to the top, their newly acquired spotlight eventually reveals who they really are, at least to a point that drives them from office even when the majority of the population remains oblivious.. The sad thing is that it takes that step to do it when what they are is so obvious from the start. I remember saying that back when Newt Gingrich became House Speaker. Sure, Republicans still hold him dear. In fact, he's a huge Trump supporter and sycophant these days but becoming Speaker effectively ended his career in elective office and relegated him to a position of sleazoid K-Street bagman and blubbering FOX "News" "contributor" ala Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and a grotesque assortment of quack "doctors" like Scott Atlas, pretend ex-CIA officers like Wayne Simmons, numerous fake scientists, birth certificate "experts" like Pamela Geller, and the rest of the ragtag menagerie they keep coming up with. I look forward to the day when Barr takes his loathsome Jabba the Hutt act to FOX. He's already been on FOX so much lately that he's obviously passed the audition and I just turned off one of the farcical Sunday talk shows when a picture of him polluted my screen. What remains to be determined is Barr's FOX "News" official start date (hopefully very soon) and what poor intern gets the job of cleaning up the gooey slime trail every time he appears. Word is that he even has his own chair at the studio, if only because no one else wants to sit in it after he has; the guy sweats even more than Rudy.

Meanwhile Barr is not just a punchline. He is after all, Trump's Consigliere. I would say that he is Trump's Tom Hagen but that would be a grievous insult to Mr. Hagen and his Don. Meanwhile, he is shamefully politicizing the Justice Department to the max, to extremes that previous bad AGs like John Mitchell only dreamed about. Career Justice Department people with integrity like Nora Dannehy and others have resigned over Barr's flagrant politicization of investigations. Barr is more than Trump's Roy Cohn. He is a traitor to this country and its rule of law.

Barr sees himself not as the protector of the 332,000,000 American people but as the protector of 1 pathetic fascist orange menace to society who is attempting to install himself as dictator for life. Consider William Barr an apprentice madman on this horrid Trump reality TV show we are all living in. Recently, Barr, in a speech at Hillsdale College in Michigan, insanely compared COVID-19 lockdowns to slavery, equating the attempt to save lives to destroying lives by putting people in chains and whipping them every day. Barr also recently even went so far as to run interference for his boss in a rape case (the subject of tonight's meme), even when his boss refuses to submit to a DNA test that would clear his name if he was innocent. Barr's action has turned the United States Justice Department into Donald Trump's private law firm. But, just ask yourself when did anyone of "good standing" in republican circles like William Barr ever come out against rape vote agianst rape. Most of them regard rape as nothing. We saw that in the Kavanaugh hearings. Congress has always been one big frat house where frat boys of both parties have treated rape as ritual or at least nudge-nudge, wink-wink stuff. Now, we have a president and his personal AG who, apparently perversely inspired by the Hussein family rape rooms in Iraq, seek to codify it. 1-800-LUV-RAPE indeed.

Last week, Jabba the Barr revealed still more plans for expanding his brand of personal and ideological corruption for the Department of Justice and modeling it after Fraz Gurtner's German Justice Department of the Third Reich years. This would, of course, fulfill the Republican Party's decades long dream of full nazification of America. The latest sign of his intent was also given during his now notorious Hillsdale speech. In it, he made noises (suggestions) about prosecuting Democratic mayors, not all mayors, just Democratic ones. How long before he and his madman boss try to brand Americans who vote for Democrats as seditious? That will be fine with the red hat-wearing, red flag-waving 62,000,000 who voted for this. The Democrats will, as they always do, either meekly get on the train or just let it run over them.

Europe Is Closing Up Again, While Trump Under-Boss Mobster William Barr Compares Quarantines To Slavery

 

Magical Mystery Cure by Chip Proser

I can remember back in mid-March thinking how horrible the pandemic was for Italy and being certain would never been that bad for us over here. (That Trump is in charge must have slipped my mind.) Yesterday Italy reported 1,585 new cases of COVID, bringing the country's total to 293,025 (4,848 cases per million residents). 4,848 cases per million residents is, at least relative to the U.S. pandemic, a very small number. Italy, in fact, is better off than every American state other than Maine (3,691 cases per million residents) and Vermont (2,732 cases per million residents). You want to see tragedy? Look at these ghastly numbers from the dozen worst-hit states in the U.S., which helps explain why Americans are banned from virtually every country on earth:

• Louisiana- 34,268 cases per million residents
• Florida- 31,403 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 30,891 cases per million residents
• Arizona- 29,079 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 28,911 cases per million residents
• Georgia- 28,167 cases per million residents
• South Carolina- 26,050 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 26,085 cases per million residents
• New York- 24,709 cases per million residents
• Texas- 24,460 cases per million residents
• Iowa- 24,425 cases per million residents
• Nevada- 24,218 cases per million residents

The U.S. average is 20,706. Italy is in another-- more habitable-- universe entirely. Except... It looks like Europe's second wave has begun, not just in Italy, but all across Europe. CNN reported that the World Health Organization warned that coronavirus cases are surging alarmingly in Europe, as a 'very serious situation' unfolds across the continent. As Covid-19 infections spike to record numbers, European governments are imposing strict local measures and weighing up further lockdowns in a bid to halt a second wave of the pandemic. But WHO regional director Hans Kluge said at a Thursday news conference that the increase in cases should serve as a warning of what is to come. 'Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March,' Kluge said. 'Last week, the region's weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients.' More than half of European nations have reported an increase of more than 10% in new cases in the past two weeks, Kluge added. 'Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period,' he said."

There are now full blown emergencies unfolding across the continent. These were the reported new cases on Tuesday ---> Wednesday and ---> yesterday (along with cases per million residents):

• Spain +9,437 ---> +11,193 ---> +11,291 (13,380 cases per million residents)
• Belgium +851 ---> +489 ---> +1,153 (8,271 cases per million residents)
• Russia +5,529 ---> +5,670 ---> +5,762 (7,436 cases per million residents)
• France +7,852 ---> +9,784 ---> +10,593 (6,362 cases per million residents)
• Romania +1,111 ---> +1,713 ---> +1,679 (5,658 cases per million residents)
• U.K. +3,105 ---> +3,991 ---> +3,395 (5,615 cases per million residents)
• Netherlands +1,379 ---> +1,542 ---> +1,753 (5,138 cases per million residents)
• Italy +1,229 ---> +1,450 ---> 1,585 (4,848 cases per million residents)
• Ukraine +2,905 ---> +2,958 ---> +3,584 (3,806 cases per million residents)
• Czechia +1,674 ---> +2,136 ---> _1,707 (3,989 cases per million residents)
• Germany +1,623 ---> +2,021 ---> +1,393 (3,200 cases per million residents)

Kluge told CNN that "In the spring and early summer we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off. In June cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers, however, should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region. This pandemic has taken so much from us... And this tells only part of the story. The impact on our mental health, economies, livelihoods and society has been monumental."

While there was an increase in cases in older age groups, those aged 50 to 79, in the first week of September, Kluge said, the biggest proportion of new cases is still among 25- to 49-year-olds.

Countries across the continent have been easing lockdowns and reopening their economies, but governments are now scrambling to avert further outbreaks.

In France, Covid-19 hospitalizations have risen in recent days in large cities such as Paris, Bordeaux and Marseille.

Earlier this year, the first coronavirus wave spiked fast in France, but it was cut short by a strict nationwide lockdown. In total more than 31,000 people died there from the disease, out of more than 443,000 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

Now, the number of new infections is rising fast. A record was set over the weekend with more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. The number of clusters has been rising steadily and, most worryingly, nationwide, the number of people in intensive care has risen 25% in the past week.

Cases in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Italy have also increased.

New restrictions were imposed across England this week barring people from meeting socially in groups of more than six, of all ages, indoors or outdoors. Scotland and Wales have also tightened their social distancing rules.

From Friday, even stricter measures will apply in the northeast of England amid a "concerning rise" in Covid-19 infection rates there, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced in Parliament on Thursday.

The measures include a ban on socializing outside households or "support bubbles" and a mandated closing time of 10 p.m. for all bars, pubs, restaurants and leisure centers. They will apply to seven areas-- including the cities of Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham-- and will affect more than 1.5 million people.

Hancock stressed the need to take "immediate action" against the virus with winter approaching.

At least 41,773 people have died with coronavirus in the UK, according to JHU, the highest toll in Europe and fifth-largest number of any country in the world.

The UK government has come under pressure over recent failings in its coronavirus testing system, with some people-- including health care workers-- experiencing difficulty in accessing tests or being directed to testing sites far from home.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended Britain's coronavirus testing record Wednesday, saying it compared favorably to other European countries and that recent problems were due to a "colossal spike" in demand.

Authorities in the Spanish capital of Madrid are to announce new coronavirus restrictions on Friday as the country also responds to an uptick in the number of cases.

Spain has now recorded more than 30,000 deaths since the start of the outbreak, with more than 600,000 total cases.

Madrid accounts for approximately a third of all new cases, according to data from the country's health ministry.

The president of Madrid's regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has suggested that migrant populations are partly to blame.

"(The outbreaks are partly) due to the way of life of Madrid's immigrants and the population density of these districts," she said Tuesday. "It is a way of life in Madrid."

Meanwhile, German authorities have imposed new restrictions and ordered more testing in a popular Bavarian ski resort after a coronavirus outbreak that has been linked to a US citizen working at a lodge operated by the US Army.

The state prosecution service in Munich said it had launched an investigation into the American who may have caused the surge in cases.

New regulations imposed in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen over the weekend mean local bars will now close at 10 p.m. Parties are limited to 100 people-- down from 200-- and groups eating indoors are capped at five, down from twice that.

In America... it's all denialism from the nation's leaders-- pretending. Trump and the Trumpist governors first and foremost. Oh... and the goons I hope to see at Nuremberg-like trials one day, like his consiglieri William Barr. He likened the effort to protect the country from a pandemic he doesn't understand to slavery. Watch the idiot:





New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio thought again about opening up his city's schools. He was smart to do so, while most "leaders" are trying to shove decisions like that off on anyone they can. The NY Times' Eliza Shapiro reported that he acknowledged that "the system had still not fully surmounted the many obstacles that it faced in bringing children back during the pandemic." Shapiro is too dull-witted to understand that DeBlasio was doing the right thing and the courageous thing and she slanted her entire piece to disparage him. What a piece of crap this one is! Most of her writing made me want to vomit. It could have been written by anyone from inside the Trump Regime.

She did note, however that "The mayor said that he decided to delay the start of the school year and opt instead for a phased-in reopening after a three-hour conversation at City Hall on Wednesday with the leaders of the unions representing the city’s principals and teachers, along with senior mayoral aides. Those union leaders have been explicitly warning for weeks that schools were not ready to reopen for myriad reasons, from poor ventilation in some aging buildings to a severe staffing crunch that the principals’ union estimated could leave the city needing as many as 10,000 educators. A Thursday report from the city’s Independent Budget Office put that number closer to 12,000. Some principals have said in recent days that they lacked dozens of teachers for their schools. Mr. de Blasio said that the teacher shortage was his main reason for again delaying in-person classes. But he did not explain why he waited until just before the start of the school year to acknowledge the seriousness of the staffing issue, even though union leaders and his own aides have been raising alarms about it for weeks... No large district in the country has yet attempted to reopen schools on a hybrid basis, and New York’s challenges may discourage other systems from trying a similar approach. The nation’s other large school systems decided earlier in the summer to start their school years remote-only, but none have a virus transmission rate as low as New York’s." I hope the school's in L.A. get a clue. God knows they have no leadership worth calling a leader. And the teachers' unions' officials in California need to grow some balls or step aside for younger members.

Do You Consider Barr More A Crime Fighter Or More A Crime Spree?

Yesterday, Wall Street Journal reporters Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman wrote that Barr told Justice Department prosectors that he wants protesters charged with sedition. Wikipedia defines Sedition as "overt conduct that tends toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or resistance against, established authority" and reminded it's readers that "in 1940, the Alien Registration Act, or 'Smith Act,' was passed, which made it a federal crime to advocate or to teach the desirability of overthrowing the United States Government, or to be a member of any organization which does the same. It was often used against communist party organizations. This Act was invoked in three major cases, one of which against the Socialist Worker's Party in Minneapolis in 1941, resulting in 23 convictions, and again in what became known as the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 in which a number of pro-Nazi figures were indicted but released when the prosecution ended in a mistrial. Also, a series of trials of 140 leaders of the Communist Party USA also relied upon the terms of the 'Smith Act'-- beginning in 1949-- and lasting until 1957. Although the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions of 11 CPUSA leaders in 1951 in Dennis v. United States, that same Court reversed itself in 1957 in the case of Yates v. United States, by ruling that teaching an ideal, no matter how harmful it may seem, does not equal advocating or planning its implementation. Although unused since at least 1961, the 'Smith Act' remains a Federal law"... There was "a brief attempt to use the sedition laws against protesters of the Vietnam War. On 17 October 1967, two demonstrators, including then Marin County resident Al Wasserman, while engaged in a 'sit-in' at the Army Induction Center in Oakland, California, were arrested and charged with sedition by deputy US. Marshal Richard St. Germain. U.S. Attorney Cecil Poole changed the charge to trespassing. Poole said, 'three guys (according to Mr. Wasserman there were only 2) reaching up and touching the leg of an inductee, and that's conspiracy to commit sedition? That's ridiculous!' The inductees were in the process of physically stepping on the demonstrators as they attempted to enter the building, and the demonstrators were trying to protect themselves from the inductees' feet. Attorney Poole later added, 'We'll decide what to prosecute, not marshals.'"

Sounds like something Barr would just love to be involved with, right? He "told told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government, people familiar with the conversation said. In a conference call with U.S. attorneys across the country last week, Mr. Barr warned that sometimes violent demonstrations across the U.S. could worsen as the November presidential election approaches. He encouraged the prosecutors to seek a number federal charges, including under a rarely used sedition law, even when state charges could apply."

Barr also told John Kass at the Chicago Tribune that "There’s no more secret vote with mail-in vote. A secret vote prevents selling and buying votes. So now we’re back in the business of selling and buying votes. Capricious distribution of ballots means (ballot) harvesting, undue influence, outright coercion, paying off a postman, here’s a few hundred dollars, give me some of your ballots. You know liberals project. All this bullshit about how the president is going to stay in office and seize power? I’ve never heard of any of that crap. I mean, I’m the attorney general. I would think I would have heard about it. They are projecting. They are creating an incendiary situation where there will be loss of confidence in the vote. Someone will say the president just won Nevada. 'Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!' Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from." What a crime fighter!!

Prohibited Acts by Nancy Ohanian

Except when it comes to... crime. Yesterday Pam Martens and Russ Martens asked at Wall Street On Parade What Happened to the Criminal Case against Goldman Sachs at Barr’s Justice Department? Is Barr a criminal himself? Anyone who even scratches the surface can have here no doubt about it. Many members of the Trump Regime need to be tried and sentenced to very long terms in prison-- and no one who's name isn't Trump (or Kushner) more so than Barr.

On December 6 of last year, four reporters at Bloomberg News signaled that the U.S. Department of Justice was close to a settlement of its criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs in the 1MDB matter. The reporters wrote as follows:

“The Justice Department and other federal agencies, in internal discussions held in recent weeks, have weighed seeking penalties between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, the people said. That’s less than what some analysts have signaled Goldman might have to pay. While a settlement could be announced as soon as next month, the terms could change before a deal is finalized…”

The terms, indeed, seem to have changed. It’s now more than 9 months since that article was published and there hasn’t been a peep out of the Justice Department about criminal charges against Goldman Sachs. According to the Bloomberg report, Barr has “directly immersed himself in the case.”

Both Barr and the Deputy Attorney General, Jeffrey Rosen, hail from Kirkland & Ellis, one of the primary law firms representing Goldman in the matter. Barr was “Of Counsel” to Kirkland while Rosen worked at the law firm for 29 years.

1MDB is a sovereign wealth fund in Malaysia. Goldman raised over $6 billion in bond offerings for the fund. According to the Justice Department, $4.5 billion of that was “misappropriated” and used “to fund the co-conspirators’ lavish lifestyles, including purchases of artwork and jewelry, the acquisition of luxury real estate and luxury yachts, the payment of gambling expenses, and the hiring of musicians and celebrities to attend parties.” Bribes and kickbacks were also allegedly made. Goldman made more than $600 million in fees from the bond offerings.

In July, the Malaysian government settled the case against Goldman Sachs for $3.9 billion. Another law firm representing Goldman Sachs is Sullivan & Cromwell. On June 19, Barr released a statement announcing that Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney (i.e. top federal prosecutor) for the Southern District of New York (where Goldman Sachs is headquartered), would be “stepping down.” Barr said President Trump would be naming Jay Clayton, the sitting chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to fill the slot. Clayton hails from Sullivan & Cromwell.

The problem was, Berman had not agreed to “step down”; he said so publicly, and was, in reality, being ousted by Barr in the midst of numerous key criminal cases being handled by his office.

The fallout resulted in 65 professors and faculty from Barr’s alma mater, George Washington University Law School, releasing a letter the following week stating that Barr’s actions “have undermined the rule of law, breached constitutional norms, and damaged the integrity and traditional independence of his office and of the Department of Justice.”

On the same day that letter was released, June 23, the New York City Bar Association sent a letter to leaders in the House and Senate calling for Barr to resign. The letter, which included the signature of the President of the Board of Governors of the National Bar Association, Alfreda Robinson, said that Barr’s actions “form an overwhelming public impression of an Attorney General whose primary loyalty is to the President who appointed him, not to the American public or the rule of law.”

There is little likelihood that Clayton will be confirmed by the Senate for the post. Both Senators from New York, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, have said they will not give the greenlight to Clayton’s nomination. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said he will not move Clayton’s nomination forward without the approval of those two Senators, following a longstanding policy of the Judiciary Committee.

That’s welcome news. As we previously reported, Sullivan & Cromwell was involved in making some of the luxury purchases on behalf of the alleged looters of 1MDB, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Two of Goldman’s senior bankers, Ng Chong Hwa (a/k/a Roger Ng) and Timothy Leissner, have already been indicted for “conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB,” and “paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials.” Leissner pleaded guilty in the matter. Roger Ng’s trial has been delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the case against the Goldman Sachs’ bankers is the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. Quietly, on the eve of the July 4th weekend, Barr also removed the U.S. Attorney in that office-- Richard Donoghue. He is to become the Deputy to the Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen at Main Justice.

Rather than allowing the second in command of the Eastern District to take over, as Geoffrey Berman had demanded of Barr in the Southern District of New York matter, Barr announced on July 10 that Seth DuCharme, who had been working at Main Justice, would become Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York office. DuCharme was sworn in the same day that Barr made the announcement.

Trump’s Hail Mary vs Biden? Hail Durham; Hail Barr! Or will Biden Hail Dunn-Bauer?

William Barr by Nancy Ohanian

The one thing, which could plausibly sink Biden’s ticket and (less easily) re-elect Trump’s ticket, would be bombshells from the Attorney General William Barr-delegated investigation, by U.S. Attorney John Durham, of the Russiagate investigation (which includes, without being limited to, criminal conduct).

That’s my view, and apparently the view of the two VSPs who have recently published, in the VSP forum Just Security, the following two shots across Durham’s bow.

[July 25th 2020-- 1st Shot: Danger to US Intelligence Analysis:]

• one wonders whether the long-running investigation shepherded by John Durham... is being readied for a role as the next election-shaping "October Surprise." If true, the reported nature of Durham’s investigation poses a serious threat to US foreign intelligence collection and analysis extending well beyond any political impact.

Author:

• George Croner: Former principal litigation counsel at the National Security Agency. He is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and a member of the Advisory Council at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeCroner.

[August 6th 2020-- 2nd Shot: Open Letter to Durham:]

• If the conclusion is reached by you [Durham] or others at the Justice Department that a report on your investigation should be issued, or that criminal indictments are warranted, these actions should be deferred until after the 2020 presidential election.

Author:

• Fred Wertheimer (@FredWertheimer)... served from 1981 to 1995 as President of Common Cause, a national citizens’ advocacy group. is the Founder and President of Democracy 21... primary focus is campaign finance issues and laws and it promotes government integrity, transparency and accountability policies to accomplish its goals.

Barr has publicly predicted that Durham will find new evidence of old allegations and perhaps new examples of improper conduct. Barr's prediction seems credible to me because the contrary arguments tend to be less granular, tend to over-simplify the findings of previous investigations, and tend to delay as long as possible addressing new disclosures that keep trickling out from Rightwing lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act.

Although the strength of evidence Durham may find is impossible to predict, what is already foreseeable is that Barr would probably like to balance several competing pressures, such as:

1- Barr has long opposed constraints on Presidential power, and clearly hates the way that Russiagate was used against Trump.
2- Barr must hate being vilified by the many elite critics of his performance as Trump’s attorney general.
3- Barr has occasionally admitted that Trump himself is one reason that Barr's work in the Trump administration is so stressful (and of course Barr can see as well as anybody else that Trump's casual polarizing of the populace is bad for preservation of domestic and imperial institutions).

Bottom line, Barr’s sweet spot is probably for Durham to bring any indictments, and to make any other public indications of his findings, soon after the November 3 vote count has been finalized, and to push them forward as far as possible before the new Administration takes office. This approach would:

1- Cool off the TDS rage of Barr’s critics (by not helping Trump get re-elected);
2- Vindicate some of Barr’s previously vilified actions; and
3- Deliver to the next administration the gift of reinforced Presidential powers/immunities (which will be greatly appreciated behind the scenes, even if not in public rhetoric).

Durham himself presumably appreciates how the above balancing would play out for Barr, and similarly for Durham himself, without there needing to be any express discussion of such crass matters between two such experienced government lawyers.

So how bad will Durham’s results be for Biden? Nobody knows, but everybody knows it could easily be bad enough to undermine the ‘honeymoon’ (if any) available to Biden. This feeds through to Biden’s selection of Vice Presidential running mate. For example:

1- Biden might hesitate to select Susan Rice, because any Durham dirt on Biden would probably also splash onto Susan.
2- Biden might hesitate to select the Republican (close to W. Bush) Condoleeza Rice out of concern that this would further incentivize Barr and Durham to wound Biden so grievously that he must hand over the Presidency to his Republican Vice President.
3- Of course, if much today’s polarization in D.C. is basically an intensified version of the Kabuki of prior decades, then a Biden selection of Condi could be part of a deal in return for Barr and Durham downplaying Biden’s role in whatever dirt they find. That would be win-win for everybody who is anybody (which of course does not include us, or Bernie, or even political neophyte E. Warren). The main barrier to this type of deal would be that Biden doesn’t appear to have the mental bandwidth for this kind of plotting. Also, his inner circle doesn’t appear to have the type of beltway lawyer whom Barr would be comfortable trading winks and nudges with.

But the second circle, according to [Poliitico’s Biden’s Retro Inner Circle], contains just such a person:

• “Anita is the go-to person on both, ‘How do we go on offense and dominate the news cycle?’ and ‘How do we clean this mess up?’” said a former colleague. (Dunn’s husband, Bob Bauer, Obama’s former White House counsel, is also a key member of the larger Biden brain trust.)

Will Barr Be The First Attorney General To Be Impeached? Or Is Pelosi Too Tired?

Pre-Trump, historians have considered the two worst Attorneys General to be Wilson's A. Mitchell Palmer and his successor, Harry Daugherty, who was appointed by Warren G. Harding and also served, briefly, under Calvin Coolidge. Daugherty, a career criminal, was complicit in the Teapot Dome Scandal and was indicted and tried twice, although shenanigans in the Justice department led to hung juries and dismissals. The House Judiciary Committee also took up impeachment charges against him (1922) but partisan politics intervened and he was never impeached. That was the closest any Attorney General has come to impeachment.

If Memphis, Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen has his way, William Barr, will be the first to actually be impeached. Pelosi and his clique oppose impeachment-- not because they believe he doesn't deserve to be removed from office, but because they feel it's too big a hassle before the election. Former Austin City Attorney Mike Siegel, a candidate for Congress (TX-10) feels strongly that Cohen is doing the right thing by moving forward. "The Attorney General has proven himself to be a threat to democracy and the rule of law," Siegel told me yesterday, "and I thank Congressman Cohen for pushing forward and making a record of Barr’s unlawful and incredibly damaging actions. The corruption of the Trump Administration is pervasive and never-ending, but it remains important that we draw clear lines about what is acceptable in a democratic nation."

On Friday, Cohen said "Even if the ultimate trier of the Senate is impotent to see the truth and to exercise discretion in keeping with the American public and the rule of law, we should pursue impeachment of Bill Barr because he is reigning terror on the rule of law." He wrote to his colleagues that he intends "to introduce a resolution laying out many instances of Attorney General Barr’s misconduct and urging the Judiciary Committee to continue its investigations into these instances, evaluate the evidence, and to determine if this constitutes impeachable conduct." Most Democrats are afraid to get on Pelosi's bad side and aren't joining Cohen's request for an inquiry, although Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Joe Neguse (D-CO) have both called on Barr to resign. New Jersey Congressman Bill Pascrell tweeted out his support for Cohen last week.

Pelosi said the solution to the "mess" that Barr is, would be the election. "He is contemptible; there’s no question about that. But at this point, let’s solve our problems by going to the polls and voting on Election Day, 131 days from now." Members of Congress make $174,000 a year. The majority and minority leaders of both the House and Senate make over $193,000 a year. And the Speaker-- Pelosi-- makes $223,500. Is that what she gets all that extra money for-- shoving her responsibilities off to the voters in 131 days. Barr can-- and, no doubt will-- cause irreparable damages in the next 131 days.

Yesterday, law professor Jennifer Taub penned an OpEd for Newsweek, William Barr Is Not America's Attorney General. Barr, she wrote, was activated by Trump "to do his personal and political bidding." John Elias, who works in the anti-trust division at DOJ, "testified that Barr is bending justice to serve Trump. As one example, Elias said that in August 2019, the antitrust division's leadership unjustifiably directed staff to investigate the world's four largest automakers to appease Trump. A month earlier, California announced that Ford, Volkswagen of America, Honda and BMW had each agreed to follow the state's emissions standards, which were far more stringent than what would be required under Trump's planned rollback. The deal humiliated Trump, and he lashed out on Twitter. The day after those tweets, the investigation began, said Elias, who explained that this was inappropriate in any case, as there are long-standing legal doctrines that make both state action of this type and joint efforts by private businesses to influence policy lawful."

She wrote that former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer "was the moral conscience of the hearing and gave perhaps the most overt condemnation of Barr. 'I believe that Attorney General Barr is a major threat to our legal system and to public trust in it,' he said. Barr has worked 'to free the president from accountability under a broad range of checks and balances that have played a critical role in our system for many decades,' Ayer testified. 'He has also grossly misused his powers as attorney general to advance the president's personal and political interests, and to protect his friends.'"

The bottom line is this: Barr is yet another public resource that the president is using for his private benefit. A tool. Even the witness invited by the Republican leadership, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, did not deny the pressure Trump exerts on the attorney general. With Barr, Trump has the entire criminal justice apparatus in his hands to target his enemies and reward his family and friends.

But here's the good news. Congress created the position of the attorney general in 1789 with the Judiciary Act. Over the centuries, statutes have further fleshed out the attorney general's powers and duties. Congress still has the authority to shape this role, fund the Justice Department and, of course, impeach. It is long past time to use these powers. Our nation's top law enforcement officer must serve the public interest of justice, not the whims of a corrupt, authoritarian president.

But Pelosi wants to leave him to keep behaving this way for 131 days because... it's inconvenient? "Frankly," said Ayer, "my worry is he’s going to do it more and more in the weeks and months ahead as we get closer to the election." Ironically, House Republicans agree with Pelosi that there should be no impeachment hearings. Gym Jordan (R-OH): "Bill Barr is trying to do the Lord’s work to clean it up, so it doesn’t happen again."

Jordan set the tone. Barr, with his “exemplary record,” was “restoring integrity” within the department, said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH). The hearing was a “farce,” said Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), with Democrats knifing Barr for “trying to clean up and clear up messes made by the previous administration.” Most ominously, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) told the three witnesses that “history will not judge you kindly in the days ahead… whether we get to continue this experiment in self-government or not.” A spokesperson did not respond to a question about whether Gohmert believes the American republic is in danger of collapse.

It was the most foursquare defense of Barr from Hill Republicans yet. Their support for Trump, post-Russiagate and post-impeachment, is compulsory at this point. But on Wednesday, they went beyond allegiance to Trump to affirmatively portray Barr as the one out to drain the swamp.

  They did so days after perhaps the lowest point in Barr’s brief tenure. On Friday, Barr lied that the U.S. attorney in New York had resigned, prompting a weekend standoff over ousting Geoffrey Berman before Barr partially backed down. It remains unclear if Barr will himself testify before the House committee, but he knows he has a GOP firewall if he does.

Against all that, Democrats had rhetoric. Their leadership doesn’t want to impeach Barr. Their caucus is internally divided on what to do about him. Their response, which frequently overshadowed their focus on the substance of Elias and Zelinsky’s testimony, was to hurl invective at Barr. Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called him Trump’s “fixer.” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called the politicization of the Justice Department “worse than Watergate, worse than Nixon.” Referring to Barr’s violent suppression of the June 1 protest in Lafayette Square, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) said that to the attorney general, friends of the president get pardons and reduced jail time, but “if you’re peacefully protesting brutality, you get tear-gassed.”

Jerry Nadler, who at first toed the Pelosi line about not impeaching Barr, now says he's considering it, telling reporters who asked if there will be impeachment hearings that "We're looking into that; we may very well. I think the weight of the evidence and of what's happened leads to that conclusion. More than one solid progressive, each of whom would love to see Barr impeached, told me they thought that Cohen should wait to drop the resolution until after Barr testifies... or if he refuses to testify. That takes away the argument of Republicans that the Democrats were already biased against him.

William Barr's Department Of Crime And Corruption

Before Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered, King Henry II was heard shouting "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" Ever since, tyrants have adapted the phrase to make themselves clear about having something wicked down without having to resort to specificity. When Trump was screaming for "his Roy Cohn," the zeitgeist puked up William Barr. Trump has been delighted ever since. And with good reason.

Barr is destined to take his place, in the history books, along earlier Attorneys General like A. Mitchell Palmer, who served under Woodrow Wilson, Harry Daugherty, was served under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, John Mitchell, who served under Nixon and one of his execrable Trumpist predecessors, Jeff Sessions.

Yesterday a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, voted 2-to-1 to order the lower court judge who tried Michael Flynn to dismiss the case. The decision was written by a fake judge appointed by Trump, Neomi Rao, and backed up by another Republican, Karen Henderson. Ttrump has sp polluted the federal judiciary that these fake judges didn't care that Flynn had plead guilty twice.

Yesterday, reporting for the Washington Post, Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian covered the politicization and perversion of the Trump/Barr Department of Justice. They tepidly noted that a federal prosecutor’s testimony yesterday that he was pressed by supervisors to offer a more lenient sentencing recommendation for a friend of Trump’s capped a remarkable four-month stretch in which Barr repeatedly bent the Justice Department to Trump’s political interests-- generating significant controversy but no personal consequence.

Since February, Barr has intervened in two criminal cases to the benefit of those who once advised Trump; ousted a U.S. attorney who is investigating Trump’s personal lawyer; and dutifully implemented Trump’s vision for a forceful crack down on demonstrators in the District protesting police violence.

Democrats and legal observers have decried the moves-- calling on Barr to resign or be investigated by his agency’s internal watchdog-- and morale inside the Justice Department has plummeted, according to several Justice Department employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly. But lawmakers, who already held Barr in contempt last year for defying congressional subpoenas, seem to have little in the way of practical recourse.

Republicans, who control the Senate, would short-circuit any bid to impeach and remove Barr, who they have asserted is drawing ire because he is trying to ferret out the corruption of his Justice Department predecessors in a Democratic administration.

“I think Barr’s conduct has made it clear that he is not acting as the attorney general for the people of the United States, but as a private attorney to protect the interests of the president,” said former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade. “What can be done about William Barr? I really think the only thing that can be done is impeachment. And I think that this Republican Senate has shown it doesn’t really have any appetite for that.”

The tension over allegations of Barr’s malfeasance reached new heights Wednesday as the House Judiciary Committee took testimony from two current prosecutors, including one who had worked on the team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The hearing came just as an appeals court panel dealt a blow to Barr’s critics, siding with the Justice Department and ordering a reluctant lower court judge to immediately drop the criminal case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, as Barr had sought.

Aaron Zelinsky, who formerly worked for Mueller and is now an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, said political leadership had pressured him and other career prosecutors to issue a lighter sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime Trump friend convicted of lying to Congress. Zelinsky made clear that he thought the reason for the pressure was inappropriate.

“What I heard repeatedly was that this leniency was happening because of Stone’s relationship to the president, that the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice and that his instructions to us were based on political considerations,” Zelinsky said.

Zelinsky’s testimony was buttressed by a different prosecutor, who works on antitrust matters and said that Barr had personally intervened to spur investigations of mergers in the marijuana industry, even when career officials thought such work was unnecessary.

The prosecutor, John Elias, said the reason seemed to be Barr’s personal distaste for the marijuana business. He also said the Justice Department’s antitrust division was made to investigate deals between the state of California and four automakers to limit emissions, a day after Trump tweeted his displeasure about the arrangement.

“Personal dislike of an industry is not a valid basis upon which to ground an antitrust investigation,” Elias said.

House Democrats said that the prosecutors’ testimony showed that Barr has politicized the Justice Department to help Trump and his friends. In a strident opening statement, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) called Barr “the president’s fixer.”

“The cancer that we must root out is his decision to place the president’s interests above the interests of the American people,” Nadler said.

Legal analysts said the hearing itself was remarkable: prosecutors such as Zelinsky are virtually never permitted or willing to speak to Congress at all, let alone to describe the deliberations surrounding a particular criminal case. They negotiated their appearances independently of the Justice Department, but their lawyers conferred with department officials about limits on their testimony.

“Mr. Zelinsky’s courageous testimony makes more painfully explicit and shocking the brazenness with which the attorney general and other Justice Department officials now readily manipulate cases to serve the president’s political ends,” said David Laufman, a former Justice Department counterintelligence official now in private practice. “And it also indicates how impervious these officials think they are to any meaningful accountability and consequences for their wrongful conduct.”

...In Barr’s first months on the job, Mueller’s team delivered to the attorney general its final report, and Barr stepped fully into controversy. Instead of quickly releasing the report’s executive summaries, Barr condensed the findings into a four-page letter he sent to Congress. The letter declared Mueller had not found evidence to substantiate a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to influence the 2016 election, and had not reached a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed justice. Barr said he had evaluated that question himself, and determined that Trump had not.

The bare-bones description so infuriated the special counsel team that Mueller sent a letter to Barr complaining that the attorney general “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of the investigative report. Barr ultimately pushed to make public a largely unredacted copy of Mueller’s entire report, though on the day of its release, he gave a news conference characterizing it in a way that closely mirrored Trump’s talking points.

In recent months, critics have alleged that Barr has sought to undo the special counsel’s work. Zelinsky testified that career prosecutors initially won their fight over Stone’s sentencing recommendation and filed essentially the request they wanted. But early the next morning, Trump tweeted his displeasure, and Barr directed that a new memo be filed, prompting Zelinsky and three other career prosecutors to withdraw from the case.

Barr has said that he did not discuss the case with the president and that his intervention was not a result of the president’s tweet. In the episode’s aftermath, he gave a remarkable interview saying Trump’s social media missives “make it impossible for me to do my job.”

Barr asked U.S. Attorney John Durham in Connecticut to review the FBI’s Russia investigation and U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen in St. Louis to review the Flynn case-- unusual moves that critics say are meant to fuel Republican attacks on an inquiry that dogged Trump’s presidency. Last month, at Jensen’s recommendation, Barr had the Justice Department move to walk away entirely from the prosecution of Flynn, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI’s about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Ryan Fayhee, a former Justice Department prosecutor now in private practice at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said that Barr had “clearly participated in the systematic undoing of the Mueller investigation,” noting that-- in part because of coronavirus-related releases-- none of those Mueller charged are currently in prison.

“It’s thinly veiled and troubling to say the least,” Fayhee said. “Bill Barr is very bright, capable, and ran a Department of Justice that didn’t look anything like this the last time around-- and didn’t act like this the last time around. The only different factor is the person in the White House.”

Critics have noted that Barr, too, has taken other steps that have fallen in line with the president’s interests. Like Trump, he has voiced skepticism about mail-in voting, telling the New York Times Magazine it could be susceptible to a foreign operation, even though current and former election officials dispute that.

At Trump’s request, he led the law enforcement response to recent protests in the District over police violence and controversially ordered the pushing back of protesters from outside of Lafayette Square near the White House on June 1. That led to police using chemical irritant and horses against largely peaceful demonstrators, just before Trump walked across the square for a photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church. Barr has said the events were not related.

Last week, Barr moved to oust Geoffrey Berman as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Berman’s office has been investigating Rudolph W. Giuliani, a personal lawyer to Trump, though the Justice Department has disputed that Berman’s removal is related to any particular case.

A spokesman for Barr said Wednesday that Barr had agreed to appear before the Judiciary Committee on July 28; he has not made such an appearance since Democrats took over the House majority in 2019. Though analysts note that he is unlikely to face any legal consequences for his various recent moves, he still has to answer to his peers, the public and his own department. Thousands of Justice Department alumni have endorsed various letters calling for Barr’s ouster, and this week, a group of professors at the George Washington University Law School, from which Barr has a degree, condemned his actions.

“At some point,” said McQuade, the former U.S. attorney, “you lose the room.”