Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Well, today's the big day. The $enate Trumpers will make it official. It was a perfect treason. If fake Democrats like Joe Manchin want to be Vichy-style collaborators, they will. The Trump Republicans have decided "We don't need a stinkin' Reichstag Fire! We'll just give our cheetomatic boy the ol' nod and wink and let him know that he's free to do whatever he wants. All is permissible! You got da power, Herr Donnie! You got carte blanche, just keep the crackpot judges and the rubles coming! Why scare the populace into giving you total power when they already voted for you and couldn't care less. We know! That's why we're here too!"

In the end, that's what the Untied States $enate, aka The League Of Extraordinary Assholes, has done. After all, as another great Russo-Republican says, "Truth isn't Truth." As if Rudy wasn't enough, another old, senile wack-job named Dershowitz took time off from getting massages at the late Jeffrey Epstein's middle school sorority house to come in and tell the nation that crime isn't crime. Whoopee! Presumably, he had his underwear on but, since he was behind a podium, maybe he wasn't even wearing pants. Now, that would be one-upping Gym Jordan! Trump couldn't find one witness who would come forward to defend his lard butt so he banned the witnesses who could have testified against him faster than if they had been Muslims or Latinos. Yep, no John "Johnny Swiffer" Bolton or Mick "Get Over It" Mulvulva).

You didn't really expect honor and courage from the United State $enate, did you? Like I've said over and over, Washington takes care of its own. That goes for both hoses and both parties but you could have 100 articles of impeachment and the result would be the same. Film of Donnie killing someone? To republicans, that's just great porn! The current $enate is nothing short of Politburo West. This is what happens when you don't pay attention, don't care and/or don't vote. Cover up accomplished. But this will be, by comparison, the good old days.

Don't Forget The Cover-Up

To Señor Trumpanzee, any Republican civil servant who puts country before Trumpism is automatically a #NeverTrumper. He casts the aspersion on anyone who testifies to the facts, a way of targeting them for his moron followers and supporters. However, that isn't to say that there are no #NeverTrumpers. There are; and almost all of them work at The Bulwark... which, by the way, has recently modified it's logo:

Early yesterday, The Bulwark performed a service by publishing Chris Truax's piece, There Was Also A Cover-up. He pointed out that "Lost in all of the current impeachment talk is the very start of this incident: How the whistleblower complaint was initially handled. As Howard Baker once put it during the Watergate investigation, the question is 'What did the President know and when did he know it?' In Trump’s case, we can add, 'And what did he do about it?' Because the administration’s initial handling of the whistleblower report now looks less like an attempt to preserve executive authority and much more like an attempt at a cover-up."

When the whistleblower filed the complaint, the Office of the Inspector General quickly concluded that it was both credible and “a matter of urgent concern.” Consequently, the OIG had a legal duty to report it to Congress. But when the OIG filed what should have been a pro-forma notification of the complaint with the Director of National Intelligence, something happened. Instead of facilitating the passing of the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees as the law requires, the administration began a frantic effort to bottle it up, permanently.

That effort culminated in an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel concluding that the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to do him a “favor” and investigate Joe Biden was not “a matter of urgent concern” under the whistleblower act. The OLC’s analysis is a stretch, at best. Seventy Inspectors General, including the Inspector General of the Justice Department itself, signed a joint letter insisting that the OLC withdraw or modify that opinion.

What’s particularly damning about this chain of events is that the OLC opinion only concluded that the statute did not “require” DNI Maguire to send the complaint to Congress. It did not conclude that the complaint could not or should not be sent to Congress.

Nonetheless, Maguire refused to help the whistleblower contact Congress directly even though the law gives a whistleblower the right to do so and directs the Director of National Intelligence to facilitate the whistleblower’s communications with Congress.

So either Maguire was acting entirely on his own, which seems unlikely. Or someone in the chain of command ordered Maguire to bury the complaint.

Who might that have been?

We don’t yet know precisely when President Trump found out about the existence of the complaint. He almost certainly knew about the complaint by the time he dictated the famous “no quid pro quo” phone text to Ambassador Sondland on September 9, because that’s the day that Inspector General Michael Atkinson sent his letter informing Congress that a complaint existed and that it was being buried by the administration.

Whistleblower by Nancy Ohanian

But it’s very possible that Trump learned about the existence of the complaint much earlier. Senator Ron Johnson, one of Trump’s biggest supporters, has provided written evidence about a curious conversation he had with President Trump on August 31, during which Trump denied that congressionally-authorized military aid was being held up to pressure Ukraine and also denied knowing who Ambassador Gordon Sondland was. Since that’s patently absurd-- we know conclusively that Trump knew exactly who Sondland was-- it is difficult to interpret this as anything other than Trump’s efforts to cover his tracks.

One possibility is that Trump learned about the whistleblower complaint directly from the Director of National Security, Joseph Maquire. When Maguire testified before the House Intelligence Committee on September 26, he was asked by Rep. Jim Himes, “Did you or your office ever speak to the president of the United States about this complaint?”

Watch Maguire’s sputtering, play-for-time non-answer. No really, it’s right here. Go watch. Now ask yourself what the odds are that the real, truthful answer to Himes’ question is “no.”

Regardless of whether or not it was Maguire, at some point Trump did find out about the complaint. What did he do then? We won’t know until the House completes its investigation, but I would bet the farm that his response was not, “Why are you telling me this? This complaint is about me. I have a conflict of interest! I can’t discuss this with you.”

As the target of the whistleblower complaint, it is axiomatic that President Trump should not have been allowed to interfere with the processing of the complaint in any way. Arguably, he should not even have been told of its existence. Preventing powerful wrongdoers from suppressing complaints of wrongdoing is the entire reason that whistleblower acts exist.

And yet, various members of the Trump administration-- possibly including Donald Trump himself-- found out about this complaint early in the process and went all out-to ensure that it never saw the light of day.

Trying to interfere with the justice system in a foreign country is bad enough. Interfering with ours is the very definition of impeachable.

Cleaning Up After Trump Is Going To Be A Full-Time Job-- He Really Does Need To Be Impeached So America Can Move Forward

Today's NY Times exposé by Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos and Michael Schmidt would be the most shocking thing to read about a White House occupant at any time in history... before 2016. Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation: Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him reads like a crime thriller or a spy thriller. It's way too long for Trump to read or to even have it read to him. Will someone in the White House do a coloring book version? Will Ivanka condense it down to half a page? There are pictures... and a chart. Actually I'm going to try to do that for Ivanka since I'm sure she's busy with... whatever she does.

Matthew Whitaker, who has privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to "jump on a grenade" for Señor Trumpanzee, said he wouldn't be able to grant his boss' wish of putting one of his cronies Geoffrey Berman, the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY, in charge of the escalating investigation of all (criminal) things Trump. So... Trump quickly "soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away." Another in a long list of Trumpy-the-Clown attempts to obstruct justice thwarted!

The Times team makes the point that Trump’s very public war against the Putin-Gate investigation has been almost normalized, "Trump," they wrote "rages almost daily to his 58 million Twitter followers that it's all a treasonous witch hunt against him. That's the public face. But there have been some less public aspects to Trump's attempts to obstruct justice as well-- the basis for this latest exposé, fusing strands that reveal "an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession."

It is a public relations strategy as much as a legal strategy-- a campaign to create a narrative of a president hounded by his “deep state” foes. The new Democratic majority in the House, and the prospect of a wave of investigations on Capitol Hill this year, will test whether the strategy shores up Mr. Trump’s political support or puts his presidency in greater peril. The president has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations.

...It was Feb. 14, 2017, and Mr. Trump and his advisers were in the Oval Office debating how to explain the resignation of Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, the previous night. Mr. Flynn, who had been a top campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, was under investigation by the F.B.I. for his contacts with Russians and secret foreign lobbying efforts for Turkey.

The Justice Department had already raised questions that Mr. Flynn might be subject to blackmail by the Russians for misleading White House officials about the Russian contacts, and inside the White House there was a palpable fear that the Russia investigation could consume the early months of a new administration.

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers mentioned in passing what Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, then the speaker of the House, had told reporters-- that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan’s words. “That sounds better,” the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the news media.

“Say that,” Mr. Trump ordered.

But was that true, Mr. Spicer pressed.

“Say that I asked for his resignation,” Mr. Trump repeated.

The president appeared to have little concern about what he told the public about Mr. Flynn’s departure, and he quickly warmed to the new narrative. The episode was among the first of multiple ham-handed efforts by the president to carry out a dual strategy: publicly casting the Russia story as an overblown hoax and privately trying to contain the investigation’s reach.

“This Russia thing is all over now because I fired Flynn,” Mr. Trump said over lunch that day, according to a new book by Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and a longtime Trump ally.

Mr. Christie was taken aback. “This Russia thing is far from over,” Mr. Christie wrote that he told Mr. Trump, who responded: “What do you mean? Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.”

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, who was also at the lunch, chimed in, according to Mr. Christie’s book: “That’s right, firing Flynn ends the whole Russia thing.”

As Mr. Trump was lunching with Mr. Christie, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office met with Mr. Spicer about what he should say from the White House podium about what was a sensitive national security investigation. But when Mr. Spicer’s briefing began, the lawyers started hearing numerous misstatements-- some bigger than others-- and ended up compiling them all in a memo.

The lawyers’ main concern was that Mr. Spicer overstated how exhaustively the White House had investigated Mr. Flynn and that he said, wrongly, that administration lawyers had concluded there were no legal issues surrounding Mr. Flynn’s conduct.

Mr. Spicer later told people he stuck to talking points that he was given by the counsel’s office, and that White House lawyers expressed concern only about how he had described the thoroughness of the internal inquiry into Mr. Flynn. The memo written by the lawyers said that Mr. Spicer was presented with a longer list of his misstatements. The White House never publicly corrected the record.

Later that day, Mr. Trump confronted the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, in the Oval Office. The president told him that Mr. Spicer had done a great job explaining how the White House had handled the firing. Then he asked Mr. Comey to end the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Flynn, and that Mr. Flynn was a good guy.

Mr. Comey responded, according to a memo he wrote at the time, that Mr. Flynn was indeed a good guy. But he said nothing about ending the F.B.I. investigation.

By March, Mr. Trump was in a rage that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from the Russia inquiry because investigators were looking into the campaign, of which Mr. Sessions had been a part. Mr. Trump was also growing increasingly frustrated with Mr. Comey, who refused to say publicly that the president was not under investigation.

Mr. Trump finally fired Mr. Comey in May. But the president and the White House gave conflicting accounts of their reasoning for the dismissal, which only served to exacerbate the president’s legal exposure.

A week after the firing, the New York Times disclosed that the president had asked Mr. Comey to end the Flynn investigation. The next day, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, appointed Mr. Mueller, a Republican, as special counsel.

Instead of ending the Russia investigation by firing Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump had drastically raised the stakes.

Mr. Mueller’s appointment fueled Mr. Trump’s anger and what became increasingly reckless behavior-- triggering a string of actions over the summer of 2017 that could end up as building blocks in a case by Congress that the president engaged in a broad effort to thwart the investigation.

On Twitter and in news media interviews, Mr. Trump tried to pressure investigators and undermine the credibility of potential witnesses in the Mueller investigation.

He directed much of his venom at Mr. Sessions, who had recused himself in March from overseeing the Russia investigation because of contacts he had during the election with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

The president humiliated Mr. Sessions at every turn, and stunned Washington when he said during an interview with The Times that he never would have named Mr. Sessions attorney general if he had known Mr. Sessions would step aside from the investigation.

...One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers also reached out that summer to the attorneys for two of his former aides-- Paul J. Manafort and Mr. Flynn-- to discuss possible pardons. The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation.

The president even tried to fire Mr. Mueller himself, a move that could have brought an end to the investigation. Just weeks after Mr. Mueller’s appointment, the president insisted that he ought to be fired because of perceived conflicts of interest. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who would have been responsible for carrying out the order, refused and threatened to quit.

The president eventually backed off.

Gaetz grabs a selfie with Trumpanzee

Sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge during a layover in Atlanta’s airport in July 2017, Representative Matt Gaetz, a first-term Republican from the Florida Panhandle, decided it was time to attack. Mr. Gaetz, then 35, believed that the president’s allies in Congress needed a coordinated strategy to fight back against an investigation they viewed as deeply unfair and politically biased.

He called Representative Gym Jordan, a conservative Republican from Ohio, and told him the party needed “to go play offense,” Mr. Gaetz recalled in an interview.

The two men believed that Republican leaders, who publicly praised the appointment of Mr. Mueller, had been beaten into a defensive crouch by the unending chaos and were leaving Democrats unchecked to “pistol whip” the president with constant accusations about his campaign and Russia.

So they began to investigate the investigators. Mr. Trump and his lawyers enthusiastically encouraged the strategy, which, according to some polls, convinced many Americans that the country’s law enforcement apparatus was determined to bring down the president.

Within days of their conversation, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan drafted a letter to Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, the first call for the appointment of a second special counsel to essentially reinvestigate Hillary Clinton for her handling of her emails while secretary of state-- the case had ended in the summer of 2016-- as well as the origins of the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Flynn and other Trump associates.

The letter itself, with the signatures of only 20 House Republicans, gained little traction at first. But an important shift was underway: At a time when Mr. Trump’s lawyers were urging him to cooperate with Mr. Mueller and tone down his Twitter feed, the president’s fiercest allies in Congress and the conservative media were busy trying to flip the script on the federal law enforcement agencies and officials who began the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Gym Jordan and Trump, a match made in GOP Heaven

Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan began huddling with like-minded Republicans, sometimes including Representative Mark Meadows, a press-savvy North Carolinian close to Mr. Trump, and Representative Devin Nunes of California, the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Nunes, the product of a dairy farming family in California’s Central Valley, had already emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s strongest allies in Congress. He worked closely with Mr. Flynn during the Trump transition after the 2016 election, and he had a history of battling the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, which he sometimes accused of coloring their analysis for partisan reasons. In the spring of 2017, he sought to bolster Mr. Trump’s false claim that President Barack Obama had ordered an illegal wiretap on Trump Tower.

Using Congress’s oversight powers, the Republican lawmakers succeeded in doing what Mr. Trump could not realistically do on his own: forcing into the open some of the government’s most sensitive investigative files-- including secret wiretaps and the existence of an F.B.I. informant-- which were part of the Russia inquiry. House Republicans opened investigationsinto the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case and a debunked Obama-era uranium deal indirectly linked to Mrs. Clinton. The lawmakers got a big assist from the Justice Department, which gave them private text messages recovered from two senior F.B.I. officials who had been on the Russia case. The officials-- Peter Strzok and Lisa Page-- repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump in their texts, which were featured in a loop on Fox News and became a centerpiece of an evolving and powerful conservative narrative about a cabal inside the F.B.I. and Justice Department to take down Mr. Trump.

The president cheered the lawmakers on Twitter, in interviews and in private, urging Mr. Gaetz on Air Force One in December 2017 and in subsequent phone calls to keep up the House Republicans’ oversight work. He was hoping for fair treatment from Mr. Mueller, Mr. Trump told Mr. Gaetz in one of the calls just after the congressman appeared on Fox News, but that did not preclude him from encouraging his allies’ scrutiny of the investigation.

Later, when Mr. Nunes produced a memo alleging that the F.B.I. had abused its authority in spying on a former Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, Mr. Trump called Mr. Nunes a “Great American hero.”(The F.B.I. said it had “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.)

The president became an active participant in the campaign. He repeatedly leaned on administration officials on behalf of the lawmakers-- urging Mr. Rosenstein and other law enforcement leaders to flout procedure and share sensitive materials about the ongoing case with Congress. As president, Mr. Trump has ultimate authority over information that passes through the government, but his interventions were unusual.

By the spring of 2018, Mr. Nunes zeroed in on new targets. In one case, he threatened to hold Mr. Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or even try to impeach him if the documents he wanted were not turned over, including the file used to open the Russia case. In another, he pressed the Justice Department for sensitive information about a trusted F.B.I. informant used in the Russia investigation, a Cambridge professor named Stefan Halper-- even as intelligence officials said that the release of the information could damage relationships with important allies.

...Gaetz makes no apologies.

“Do I think it’s right that our work in the Congress has aided in the president’s defense?” he asked, before answering his own question.

“Yeah, I think it is right.”

Ultimately, his strategy was successful in softening the ground for a shift in the president’s legal strategy-- away from relatively quiet cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s investigators and toward a targeted and relentless frontal attack on their credibility and impartiality.

Last April, Mr. Trump hired Rudolph W. Giuliani, his longtime friend and a famously combative former mayor of New York, as his personal lawyer and ubiquitous television attack dog. A new war had begun.

In jettisoning his previous legal team-- which had counseled that Mr. Trump should cooperate with the investigation-- the president decided to combine a legal strategy with a public-relations campaign in an aggressive effort to undermine the credibility of both Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department.

Mr. Mueller was unlikely to indict Mr. Trump, the president’s advisers believed, so the real danger to his presidency was impeachment-- a political act that Congress would probably only carry out only with broad public support. If Mr. Mueller’s investigation could be discredited, then impeachment might be less likely.

Months of caustic presidential tweets and fiery television interviews by Mr. Giuliani unfolded. The former mayor accused Mr. Mueller, without evidence, of bias and ignoring facts to carry out an anti-Trump agenda. He called one of Mr. Mueller’s top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, a “complete scoundrel.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Giuliani was getting help from a curious source: Kevin Downing, the lawyer for Paul Manafort, who had been the president’s 2016 campaign chairman. Mr. Manafort had agreed to cooperate with the special counsel after being convicted of financial crimes in an attempt to lessen a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Downing shared details about prosecutors’ lines of questioning, Mr. Giuliani admitted late last year.

It was a highly unusual arrangement-- the lawyer for a cooperating witness providing valuable information to the president’s lawyer at a time when his client remained in the sights of the special counsel’s prosecutors. The arrangement angered Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who questioned what Mr. Manafort was trying to gain from the arrangement.

The attacks on the Mueller investigation appeared to have an effect. Last summer, polling showeda 14-point uptick in the percentage of Americans polled who disapproved of how Mr. Mueller was handling the inquiry. “Mueller is now slightly more distrusted than trusted, and Trump is a little ahead of the game,” Mr. Giuliani said during an interview in August.

“So I think we’ve done really well,” Mr. Giuliani added. “And my client’s happy.”

But Mr. Giuliani and his client had a serious problem, which they were slow to comprehend.

In April the F.B.I. raided the Manhattan office and residences of Mr. Cohen-- the president’s lawyer and fixer-- walking off with business records, emails and other documents dating back years. At first, Mr. Trump wasn’t concerned.

The president told advisers that Mr. Rosenstein assured him at the time that the Cohen investigation had nothing to do with him. In the president’s recounting, Mr. Rosenstein told him that the inquiry in New York was about Mr. Cohen’s business dealings, it did not involve the president and was not about Russia. Since then, Mr. Trump has asked his advisers if Mr. Rosenstein was deliberately misleading him to keep him calm.

Mr. Giuliani initially portrayed Mr. Cohen as “honest,” and Mr. Trump praised him publicly. But Mr. Cohen soon told prosecutors in New York how Mr. Trump had ordered him during the 2016 campaign to buy the silence of women who claimed they had sex with the president. In a separate bid for leniency, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors about Mr. Trump’s participation in negotiations during the height of the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Mr. Trump was now battling twin investigations that seemed to be moving ever close to him. And Mr. Cohen, once the president’s fiercest defender, was becoming his chief tormentor.

In a court appearance in August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty and told a judge that Mr. Trump had ordered him to arrange the payments to the women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Mr. Cohen’s descriptions of the president’s actions made Mr. Trump, in effect, an unindicted co-conspirator and raised the prospect of the president being charged after he leaves office. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who in January became the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, said the implied offense was probably impeachable.

The president struck back, launching a volley of tweets that savaged Mr. Cohen and his family-- insinuating that Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law had engaged in unexamined criminal activity. He called Mr. Cohen a “rat.” The messages infuriated Democratic lawmakers, who claimed the president was trying to threaten and intimidate a witness ahead of testimony Mr. Cohen planned before Congress.

“He’s only been threatened by the truth,” the president responded.

As the prosecutors closed in, Mr. Trump felt a more urgent need to gain control of the investigation.

He made the call to Mr. Whitaker to see if he could put Mr. Berman in charge of the New York investigation. The inquiry is run by Robert Khuzami, a career prosecutor who took over after Mr. Berman, whom Mr. Trump appointed, recused himself because of a routine conflict of interest.

What exactly Mr. Whitaker did after the call is unclear, but there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation. He did, however, tell some associates at the Justice Department that the prosecutors in New York required “adult supervision.”

Second, Mr. Trump moved on to a new attorney general, William P. Barr, whom Mr. Trump nominated for the job in part because of a memo Mr. Barr wrote last summer making a case that a sitting American president cannot be charged with obstruction of justice for acts well within his power-- like firing an F.B.I. director.

A president cannot be found to have broken the law, Mr. Barr argued, if he was exercising his executive powers to fire subordinates or use his “complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding.”

The memo might have ingratiated Mr. Barr to his future boss, but Mr. Barr is also respected among the rank and file in the Justice Department. Many officials there hope he will try to change the Trump administration’s combative tone toward the department as well as the F.B.I.

Whether it is too late is another question. Mr. Trump's language, and allegations of “deep state” excesses, are now embedded in the political conversation, used as a cudgel by the president’s supporters.

This past December, days before Mr. Flynn was to be sentenced for lying to the F.B.I., his lawyers wrote a memo to the judge suggesting that federal agents had tricked the former national security adviser into lying. The judge roundly rejected that argument, and on sentencing day he excoriated Mr. Flynn for his crimes.

The argument about F.B.I. trickery did, however, appear to please the one man who holds great power over Mr. Flynn’s future-- the constitutional power to pardon.

“Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn,” Mr. Trump tweeted cheerily on the morning of the sentencing.

Yeah... couldn't do the synopsis version for Ivanka the way I planned. Too much important stuff here. And Saudi Arabia... that's a very big deal on top of all this. We'll have to get more into that one. I'd trust Ro to make sure everyone in the country understands exactly with Trump and his little cabal have been up to with the Saudis.

The House Intelligence Committee Republicans Screwed America. Can America Screw Them Back?

The Republicans suddenly decided that the investigation into Putin-Gate is over and that Trump and Putin didn't do anything wrong. Pretty horrifying that these people are attempting a white-wash and putting Trump ahead of America. There are 13 Republicans on the House Intel Committee but many of them are in deeply red districts and not really likely to be held accountable for this. Mike Conaway, for example represents TX-11, a district so red that the PVI is R+32. Trump beat Hillary there 77.8% to 19.1%. And that wasn't an aberration of some kind. Romney beat Obama 79.2% to 19.6%. Conaway usually gets reelected with around 80%. There was no Democrat running against him in 2016, 2014 or 2012. This cycle Democrat Virginia Louise Leeder has raised $17,117 to go up against Conaway's $1,536,342 war chest.

Early yesterday morning, Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the committee, was on CNN with Chris Cuomo. He told Cuomo that he hopes "the public gets to see these transcripts (of the hearings). They will see... how much they tried to protect the President when our job was to protect the ballot box." In terms of voter accountability,3 Republicans on the committee are retiring voluntarily-- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) , Frank LoBiondo (NJ) and Trey Gowdy (SC). There are 4 other intelligence Committee Republicans who are in severely gerrymandered districts that are considered very safe:

• Rick Crawford (AR-01)- PVI R+17
• Chris Stewart (UT-02)- PVI R+16
• Tom Rooney (FL-17)- PVI R+13
• Brad Wenstrup (OH-02)- PVI R+9

So that leaves 5 who either are or could be vulnerable in November. Voters should focus on defeating these five:

• Will Hurd (TX-23)- PVI R+1
• Peter King (NY-02)- PVI R+3
• Elise Stefanik (NY-21)- PVI R+4
• Michael Turner (OH-10)- PVI R+4
• Devin Nunes (CA-22)- PVI R+8

Will Hurd andPeter King look like they have probably reached the end of their roads, politically. The big fish, of course, would be Nunes-- but, by the numbers, his district is the toughest. Trump beat Hillary there by 10 points... a pretty steep-- albeit not impossible-- climb. The Democratic establishment is behind an uninspiring Republican-lite candidate, Andrew Janz, who venerates the death penalty and an NRA interpretation of the 2nd Amendment. The candidate who could actually beat Nunes is Ricardo Franco, who has a good connection to the voters but who is severely underfunded-- please help him here. "Today I spoke to a Poli Sci class at Fresno State," he told us, "where they are learning about Congress as well as propaganda techniques people use to get elected. Nunes calling local news outlets 'fake news' was a prime example and tonight's headlines did not go over well with them at all. Our local students are smart. Our constituents are smart. However, our youth are particularly keen on sniffing out BS when they see and hear it. Devin Nunes can spin things all he wants, but won't pass through the thorough lens of the students and constituents I talked to tonight. In fact, they sniff it out and reject it from the left as much as the right. Nunes' partisan political games and Dems that fall into the trap turn them off very quickly. You know what they did like speaking about? How for years Washington has been taking from the poor to feed the rich. These students know a statutory corporate tax rate of 20% effectively means zero. They know 'tax cuts for the middle class' are a lie after 5 years. If Mueller doesn't take Nunes down along with Trump, our voters certainly will."

There's also a great choice-- DuWayne Gregory-- in the Democrats' quest to dislodge Peter King on Long Island. King's vote with Nunes could be another brick in that road. DuWayne Gregory, the chief executive of the Suffolk County legislature, ran last time into a Long Island GOP headwind; this time he has the wind at his back. He told us that "King and his Republican cronies on the House Intel committee have failed us. This abrupt decision to shut down the investigation of Russia meddling with our elections created more questions than it answers. It is clear Peter King has not only abdicated his responsibility as a member of Congress, but as an American citizen, as well. This is a fireable offense and the voters on Election Day should do just that." Please consider helping DuWayne finish off King's shameful career by clicking on the congressional thermometer on the right and contributing whatever you can to his campaign. Let's make King and the rest of these guys symbols of this kind of treachery against the country.

Over A Quarter Billion Dollars In Wasted Wall Street Bribes Last Year Alone, As GOP Agenda Goes Up In Smoke

Tom Cole (R-OK): "I won’t defend anyone who obstructs justice. Time for Comey to appear before Congress.”

Late this afternoon, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein could no longer dither and finally announced that he had appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to oversee the ever-widening Putin-Gate scandal. Rebecca Ruiz wrote for the NY Times that Mueller's appointment "dramatically raises the stakes" for Señor Trumpanzee in the multiple investigations into his campaign’s ties to the Russians. "While a special counsel would remain ultimately answerable to Mr. Rosenstein-- and by extension, the president-- he would have greater autonomy to run an investigation than a United States attorney would. Mr. Mueller will be able to choose to what extent to consult with or inform the Justice Department about his investigation as it goes forward. [He] is viewed by members of both parties as one of the most credible law enforcement officials in the country. He served both Democratic and Republican presidents, from 2001 to 2013, and was asked by President Barack Obama to stay on beyond the normal 10-year term until Mr. Comey was appointed."

The Justice Department seems to have been pushed into the appointment after House Democrats announced were circulating a discharge petition to force a vote on legislation that would create a 12-member bipartisan, independent commission to investigate Putin-Gate, something the White House is far moire fearful of. Progressive candidate for Darrell Issa's San Diego/Orange County district. "The White House has consistently ignored Russian cyber attacks on our political process. The subsequent firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and the additional reports concerning former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did little to ease those concerns. These allegations have the potential to rock the very foundation of our democracy and only serve to further erode the public’s trust in our government. At a time when we need real leadership, the president and his backers in Congress confuse and distract from our democracy to protect their own careers. The fact is we need mature leadership coming from the legislature, not childish antics and grandstanding. As we move closer to a constitutional crisis, we must demand a thorough investigation to include the full disclosure of any and all memos former Director Comey drafted in the weeks and days leading up to his termination, in addition to Flynn’s ties to the Kremlin. But what’s even more telling is that Darrell Issa, the self-proclaimed “watchdog” of the House, serves as nothing more than a lapdog for this administration. We demand that Issa sign this discharge petition and vote in support of a full investigation into these allegations. Currently, there is a bipartisan bill, sponsored by two Democrats and two Republicans, to create a Trump-Russia commission. If Darrell was one quarter of the watchdog he claims to be, he needs to show it and sign the petition. Otherwise, we’ll know he opposes an investigation and we will remember that come November 2018.”

Ted Lieu was more succinct: "Today is a good day for American Democracy.  Thank you Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein for following the law."

Politico's Jake Sherman asserted this morning that congressional Republicans "are beginning to grapple with the real-- but far off-- possibility" that Señor Trumpanzee might've gone too far this time." Impeachment, he wrkte, is "beginning to creep into Republicans' minds, and it's noteorthy that they are not ruling it out." No, only Nancy Pelosi and Blue Dog-turned-Wall Street lobbyist Harold Ford are ruling it out, she on CNN and he on Morning Joe. Just hours ago, Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) had joined the 5 other House Republicans calling for a special prosector. By the way, as even Señor Trumpanzee understands, a special prosector is the first step towards impeachment. Sherman wrote that he was "up in the Capitol last night, chatting with members of Congress about the political dynamics now, and it would be tough to overstate how angry, confused and fed up Republicans are with President Donald Trump."

By Tuesday more Republicans began reaching the point where they realized Trump is unsalvageable. "For Republicans on Capitol Hill," wrote John Bresnahan, "Trump may finally have gone too far." The Comey memo indicating obstruction of justice "was more than just another embarrassing revelation for a president used to a near-daily barrage of scandal and staff intrigue."

Republicans are privately beginning to worry that they may one day have to sit in judgment of Trump, or that more damaging information from Comey could force the president to step down. Within hours of Tuesday's report by the New York Times, there was a distinct shift among congressional Republicans, who until now have mostly resisted criticizing Trump, let alone demanding the president be held to account for all he says or does.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) immediately said he’s prepared to subpoena the memos that Comey reportedly wrote contemporaneously to document his interactions with Trump. Chaffetz sent a letter to the FBI on Tuesday night asking for any notes, documents or records of Trump and Comey’s conversations to be turned over to his panel by May 24.

His request was echoed by AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan: "We need to have all the facts, and it is appropriate for the House Oversight Committee to request this memo."

Comey has also been invited by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to testify publicly at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to “tell his side of the story” about his dealings with Trump, Graham said Tuesday, even before this latest story broke.

More Republicans have openly discussed the possibility of a select committee or the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the Trump-Russia connection. It's still a minority of GOP lawmakers, but Republican leaders are watching closely.

...In private, top Republicans fear that this latest Trump controversy-- coming just a week after he fired Comey, and only one day after it was revealed that the president revealed highly classified intelligence information during a meeting with Russian officials-- will overwhelm everything they are trying to do legislatively. Health care, tax reform, building up the Pentagon-- all of it is potentially threatened by the latest furor.

And if Republicans are paralyzed and can’t pass anything despite control of the White House and Congress, how can they justify their majorities when they go before voters next year?

And by this morning, Politico was reporting that Wall Street was giving up on the 2017 tax break it believed the $297,982,444 it had spent on congressional bribes during 2016 alone had guaranteed them. The Dow closed down over 370 points today. Below are the half dozen biggest recipients of Financial Sector largesse for the 2016 cycle-- bribes that crooked and avaricious Wall Street wheelers and dealers now realize won't translate into promised tax cuts for the corporations and the 1%:

• Marco Rubio (R-FL)- $8,316,068
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)- $5,466,397
• Chuck Schumer (D-NY)- $5,010,163
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $4,415,864
• Rob Portman (R-OH)- $4,415,864
• Pat Toomey (R-PA)- $3,964,709

Ben White's report indicates that "Wall Street and corporate America view President Donald Trump’s bold agenda for a sweeping tax overhaul as largely dead for the year. Executives, lobbyists and Wall Street analysts increasingly believe the administration-- distracted by repeated crises while facing a short and crowded legislative calendar-- will be unable to deliver on Trump’s promise to slash corporate and individual tax rates this year and ignite significantly faster economic growth. The main hope now in corporate America and on Wall Street is that the White House and Congress manage to bypass a scary fight over raising the nation’s debt limit this summer, keep the government open and avoid any major foreign policy crisis."



Republican congressional tolerance for Trump's kleptocratic and authoritarian instincts was entirely based on his willingness to sign their Obamacare repeal and their plans to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy while shredding the social safety net for the poor and eviscerating services for working families. If Trump's bungling and bluster is jeopardizing that, other Republicans will soon be following Walter Jones, Justin Amash, Carlos Curbelo, Barbara Comstock, Erik Paulsen and, this morning, Adam Kinzinger into the camp calling for a special prosecutor (shorthand for impeachment).

Comey Wrote Detailed Memos After His Meetings And Calls With Señor Trumpanzee

Everyone who's had any interactions with Señor Trumpanzee has probably been doing the same Jim Comey was doing, namely keeping a careful record. Trump has a long, well-documented history as a real scumbag who lies more easily than anyone you've probably ever met. Comey wrote a memo after every interaction-- like the one when Trump asked him to lock up reporters and the one where Trump asked him to shut down the investigation of probable Russian agent Michael Flynn. The request to end the Flynn investigation was made in the Oval Office back in February. Michael Schmidt wrote that the existence of Señor Trumpanzee’s request is the clearest evidence that the so-called president "has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links" between Trumpanzee’s criminal associates and Putin. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the thuggish Trump "immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned... The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations."

In poll released by PPP yesterday most people expressed views of the Trump-Comey problem that do not weigh in Trump's favor. 66% of respondents, for example, understood that the head of the FBI owes his allegiance to the country, not to the occupant of the White House. Only 23% felt otherwise. For all Trump's screaming about "fake news," only his pathetic base-- 33%-- felt that the Russia story is fake news and only 37% of the respondents agreed with Trump's decision to fire Comey. 54% thought Trump fired Comey because of the Russian investigation and only 34% felt Trump didn't do it because of Russia. There is a plurality for impeachment now-- 48% for and 41% against-- but there will need to be a lot more public persuasion before Pelosi, presuming the Democrats win in 2018, agrees to proceed.

Obstruction of justice leads here

Comey's memo quotes Trumpanzee saying "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." He insisted Flynn had done nothing wrong. The White House-- in which every person is either an inveterate liar or someone willing to tolerate inveterate liars-- disputes the content of a memo which would be proof that Trump was illegally interfering with a serious federal criminal investigation.

Schmidt reported that "Comey created similar memos-- including some that are classified-- about every phone call and meeting he had "with the psycho president. After Comey wrote his memos up he would share them with other senior FBI officials.

Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret-- even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation-- so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

...The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner in the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty-- which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter posting on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

Are Sessions And Trump Orchestrating A Cover Up? What Caused Nunes To Cancel Sally Yates' Testimony?

People aren't asking me "if" Trump is going to be impeached any longer. They're asking me "when." Chris Christie's disapproval is at 72% now. Trump's disapproval-- historically high-- isn't even in the 60's yet. The political will to impeach him-- especially among Republicans and among careerist conservative Democrats as well-- won't begin 'til he's at least where Christie is. That's what it takes for that kind of wrenching move.

Last night I had dinner with one of the most successful big-time, house-hold name attorneys in America and he told me he's working on collecting evidence against Trump, evidence that will eventually be used in cases against him. Those will come even before impeachment proceedings do. The big news about Nunes canceling the Intelligence Committee that would have included former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, broken by the Washington Post this morning, is leading towards the eventual impeachment case. What are Trump and Sessions hiding that caused the White House to have Nunes-- a sad and pathetic little lap dog-- cancel the testimony? The Post's first paragraph was absolutely devastating:

The Trump administration sought to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying to Congress in the House investigation of links between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Washington Post has learned, a position that is likely to further anger Democrats who have accused Republicans of trying to damage the inquiry.

Sessions demanded Yates not testify before Congress but she went ahead and agreed to come before the House Intelligence Committee this week anyway. Nunes "abrupt canceled" the hearing. Intelligence Committee Committee member Eric Swalwell (D-CA) was in Morning Joe today and said "this is what a cover-up to a crime looks like. We are watching it play out right now." Watch:



An independent commission is an absolute "must" at this point. When Joe Scarborough asked Bill Kristol, "They're going to have to have a Select Committee, right?," Kristen responded matter of factly, "You'd think they'd have to, but in Trump's Washington [i.e.- the swampiest swamp in the history of swamps] things that we think 'have to happen,' don't have to happen." Trump and Bannon and their regime are counting on that attitude of surrender.

As acting attorney general, Yates played a key part in the investigation surrounding Michael T. Flynn, a Trump campaign aide who became national security adviser before revelations that he had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to the United States in late December led to his ouster.

Yates and another witness at the planned hearing, former CIA director John Brennan, had made clear to government officials by Thursday that their testimony to the committee probably would contradict some statements that White House officials had made, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The following day, when Yates’s lawyer sent a letter to the White House indicating that she still wanted to testify, the hearing was canceled.

A White House spokesperson called the Post article “entirely false” and said, “The White House has taken no action to prevent Sally Yates from testifying and the Department of Justice specifically told her that it would not stop her and to suggest otherwise is completely irresponsible.”

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said the panel was aware that Yates “sought permission to testify from the White House. Whether the White House’s desire to avoid a public claim of executive privilege to keep her from providing the full truth on what happened contributed to the decision to cancel today’s hearing, we do not know. But we would urge that the open hearing be rescheduled without delay and that Ms. Yates be permitted to testify freely and openly."

In January, Yates warned White House counsel Donald McGahn that statements White House officials made about Flynn’s contact with the ambassador were incorrect, and could therefore expose the national security adviser to future blackmail by the Russians.

Pelosi has been demanding Nunes be fired as Intelligence Committee head-- or at the minimum, be forced to recuse himself from this investigation. If Pelosi is so outraged about Nunes' behavior-- and she should be-- why does' t she order her DCCC to do something they've never done before-- mount an election challenge against Nunes. Funny thing how that works: members of Congress who have to answer to their constituents in contested elections tend to be less arrogant in the way they do their jobs. As we've mentioned over and over again, the DCCC has given Nunes a free-pass to reelection in 100% of his reelection battles. Allow me to reiterate:

The DCCC has always dismissed it as "too conservative" and has never run a candidate against Nunes-- never. He skates to reelection without serious opposition. Last year his unsupported Democratic opponent, Louie Campos, didn't even raise the $5,000 that would have triggered an FEC report, while Nunes raised $2,459,235, almost entirely from special interests; only about 1% of his contributions ($25,038) coming from small donors. The bulk of his money came in the form of outright bribes from PACs ($1,623,714). He's widely considered one of the most corrupt characters in Congress and today he's sitting on a formidable $3,177,900 war-chest, interesting in a district that the DCCC has never looked at. He beat Campos 143,333 (68.2%) to 66,802 (31.8). Yes, Campos did terribly but he took 66,802 votes spending no money and with no DCCC help. One district west and south-- CA-21-- saw the DCCC and Pelosi's House Majority PAC spend $94,400 in 2014 and $1,778,846 in 2016 (primarily on ineffective-- and commissionable-- mass media) and the two Democrats who ran spend $1,690,530 (2014) and $648,918 (2016). Now remember how Campos, with his grassroots field operation turned out 66,802 Democratic voters against Nunes? In CA-21 there were just 33,470 Democratic voters in 2014 and just 49,643 in 2016. Even with money, you only win if you know what you're doing. The DCCC has absolutely no idea and local Democrats are-- at best-- out of practice, everything atrophied from lack of use.

The district is minority-white now. Ethnically, it is 45.9% Latino, 41.9% white, 7.0% Asian and 2.5% black. McCain and Romney both beat Obama with just over 56%. Last year Trump beat Hillary 52.1-42.6%. According to the old CBO report, if TrumpCare becomes law, 87,694 Nunes constituents will lose their health insurance. That number, with the changes Ryan put through to placate extremists, is probably closer to 100,000. Now. Remember, Nunes only netted 143,333 votes in 2016, not that many more than the people who are liable tol lose their health care. The DCCC should be working on organizing and registering those voters now. They aren't.

This is on Pelosi. As Ted Lieu tweeted early this morning, "Since Rep Nunes is acting like a Trump appointee, he should apply for a White House position. There are lots of openings." The DCCC should do it's part-- even if the atrophied local party takes 2 cycles to accomplish it-- and take on Nunes electorally.

HOW SAFE IS IT TO FLY?

Not very-- at least not according to a reluctantly-released (some would say "covered-up") $8.5 million survey of thousands of airline pilots by NASA in 2005. But the results were never released and it took the Associated Press until now to squeeze them out of the Bush Regime (by filing a Freedom of Information Act request). Although there's been a lot of back and forth and embarrassed bureaucrats and denials on the political level, it looks like the survey was covered up because NASA thought the release would frighten the flying public and have a negative impact on the bottom line of the airline companies.

Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey.

Do you think the Bush Regime would put the financial safety of the airline companies ahead of the public's right to know if flying was safe? According to the NY Times our old pal, Rep Brad Miller, chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology, someone I would certainly trust far more than any cronies of anyone in the Regime, intends to find out.

The chairman of Brad's committee, a pro-business, conservative Democrat from Tennessee, Bart Gordon, was aghast. "This is like a drug manufacturer finding out through trials that there are problems with a drug and not making the public aware because they don't want to reduce the sales of the drug or scare the public. It could be enormously helpful in a wide range of areas in trying to understand mishaps."