Category: Rod J. Rosenstein

DOJ SWEARS IN 31 NEW IMMIGRATION JUDGES WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING ITS ROLE IN CREATING AN UNMANAGEABLE BACKLOG! — Honesty & Admitting Own Mistakes Would Be A Prerequisite To A Rational Backlog Reduction Program! — Sessions Gone But System Remains FUBAR!

http://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=7cb1d269-89ec-411d-ab01-e88041025ddf

Molly O’Toole reports for the LA Times:

WASHINGTON — A girl in a pink bow stood proudly center stage Friday at the Justice Department, dwarfed by two statues and adults in black judicial robes behind her.

“We need more judges,” quipped James McHenry, director of the executive office of immigration review, which administers the country’s clogged immigration courts. “We’re now recruiting children too.”

Thus went the ceremony for officials, family and friends to welcome 31 new immigration judges, the second-largest class ever.

The Trump administration has hired more immigration judges in two years than was done in the previous seven years, according to Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who plans to retire soon.

But the hiring surge is unlikely to resolve the backlog of nearly 830,000 immigration cases that continues to grow.

Rosenstein said the new judges — on top of 414 currently serving — will help cut the vast logjam.

“Whether the immigration backlog continues to grow depends in large part on how immigration judges discharge their duties,” Rosenstein said.

It will also depend on money. McHenry notified immigration court staffers last week that budget shortfalls had blocked the hiring of additional judges and would delay recruitment of court support staff, according to BuzzFeed.

The caseload worsened significantly during the 35-day government shutdown over President Trump’s demands for a border wall. About 400 immigration judges were furloughed, and tens of thousands of hearings were canceled or delayed, exacerbating delays that now exceed two years on average.

Amid continued fighting with Congress over immigration and border security funding, the White House has requested money for 100 additional teams of immigration judges for 2020.

Migrants routinely wait years for a final determination of whether they can stay in the country, according to a Homeland Security inspector general’s report released Thursday.

In contrast to regular U.S. courts, immigration courts are not in the judicial branch of government. The judges are classified as government attorneys at the Justice Department and they ultimately report to Atty. Gen. William Barr.

The Trump administration has prioritized deporting thousands of migrants in detention and preventing their release into the United States while they await court hearings.

But because of limited detention space and record numbers of asylum seekers and Central American families adding to the backlog, Trump officials have released some detained migrants.

Some administration policies also have proved counterproductive to reducing the backlog, according to some current immigration judges, former officials — and McHenry.

Boosting enforcement efforts without increasing resources for immigration courts “could seriously compromise” their “ability to address [the] caseload and greatly exacerbate the current state of the backlog,” McHenry wrote to Rosenstein in October 2017.

In a plan that officials said would reduce the backlog, the Justice Department at the time instituted a quota for immigration judges and forced them to reopen closed cases. The caseload grew by more than 230,000 new cases last year, however.

McHenry sought to steel the new judges on Friday, saying they were entering into “the most significant and emotionally charged debate over immigration for some time.” He even read out a “pause for tense laughter.”

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Rosenstein continues to play the “blame shame game.” Because the Trump Administration and the DOJ have given “built to fail” and counterproductive enforcement “gimmicks” priority over fixing the glaring due process problems in Immigration Court, and because today’s Immigration Judges have been forced to function more like “gerbils in a wheel” than independent judicial officials, the backlog is likely to continue to grow no matter what the individual Immigration Judges do. Indeed, they have been stripped by this Administration of not only their dignity as judges but also the last vestiges of control over their own dockets.

To his credit, McHenry actually tried to tell his handlers at DOJ that some of their misguided, enforcement-driven, restrictionist “backlog reduction” efforts would make the backlog even worse. He was ignored. And, the backlog has exponentially increased under this Administration — more judges in the hands of an Administration dedicated to “malicious incompetence” in the field of immigration has simply resulted in more backlog.

The one thing that judges can still control — impartial professional due process in each individual case coming before them — has been buried by this Administration’s dishonest rhetoric and “just pedal faster” invectives. But, any Immigration Judge who wants to succeed in real life terms, save lives, sleep at night, and be remembered by history as part of the solution not the problem will largely “tune out” the DOJ’s highly disingenuous babble about that which they can’t control and concentrate instead on guaranteeing fairness and due process in each individual case coming before her or him.

PWS

03-17-19

Related posts:

  1. WHERE “JUSTICE” IS A CRUEL FARCE: As Career Officials Continue To Flee Or Be Thrown Off The Ship, Restrictionists Tighten Political Control Over Immigration “Courts” — Institutions Created To Insure Due Process Now Being Weaponized To Eradicate It, As Congress & Article IIIs Shirk Their Constitutional Duties!
  2. NO EXPERTISE NECESSARY! – At The “New EOIR,” Immigration Judges No Longer Need to Demonstrate Immigration Experience – Just a Willingness To Send Migrants to Potential Death, Danger, or Misery Without Due Process or Fundamental Fairness – When Your Job Is To Impose Arbitrary “Death Sentences,” Maybe It’s Easier If You Don’t Understand What You’re Really Doing!
  3. HON. JEFFREY S. CHASE: The History Of A Flawed Judiciary; The Intentional Tilting Of Asylum Law Against Asylum Seekers; The Farce Of Justice In The Immigration Courts; The Need For An Independent Article I Court!
  4. Judge Mimi Tsankov @ ABA JOURNAL: 🆘 Immigration Courts Now A Human Rights Catastrophe Threatening The Heart ❤️ & Soul 😇 Of American Justice!

TRUMP CELEBRATES MIDTERM “VICTORY” WITH BOLD FOUR-PRONGED ATTACK ON CONSTITUTION AND RULE OF LAW! — Trump Earns Courtside’s Coveted “Five Clown Rating!”

  • First, he trashed the 1stAmendment by attacking, insulting, demeaning, and revoking the White Press credentials of CNN Correspondent Jim Acosta while fabricating an alleged “incident” involving Acosta that both national TV recordings and dozens of eye-witnesses testify never happened;

  • Second, he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions (no tears, please, for this corrupt public official and immoral person) and appointed sycophantic Acting Attorney General (and former right-wing commentator and established Trump suck-up) Matt Whitaker, a sleazy maneuver which now gives Trump control over the Mueller investigation through Whittaker (indeed, some legal experts say this maneuver in and of itself could easily be construed as an obstruction of justice);

  • Third, while half-heartedly saying he would be willing to work with House Democrats, he then threatened them with retaliation if they had the audacity to exercise their Constitutional authority to investigate him and his corrupt Administration;

  • Finally, he reportedly plans on Friday to illegally overrule the Refugee Act of 1980 for asylum seekers through an “Executive Order” – a mean-spirited, controversial, and unnecessary move that almost certainly will be blocked by the Federal Courts therefore touching off yet another round of acrimonious and largely frivolous litigation. You can read Vivian Salama’s account about Trump’s latest plans to thumb his nose at the law in pursuit of his racist agenda in the WSJ here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-immigration-directive-revamping-asylum-system-1541629100?emailToken=00b769f8b7a4e89eba0f99cf5b2477154uBTkiIEqaA4RxhOj6r+MwpvKdjXbRWeUanRuOJdVFK4XBp2y4cx7py6fMlif4uGIYfAXBjcnBluaPYf4RL4PppT8TfGt2sTJrEbTE781qozrIjvN+p3sEae+AYFLY5x&reflink=article_email_share

And, remember folks, this is just “Day One of Phase II” of America’s Continuous National Clown Show! Stay tuned for more daily clown performances and hilarious degradations of America, our laws, human rights, and our values from under the Big Top! Today’s Trump performance get Courtside’s coveted “Five Clown” rating!

🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

PWS

11-06-18

Related posts:

  1. HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM COURTSIDE! — I Take A Look Forward @ 2019’s Big Immigration Stories
  2. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: CLYDE W. FORD @ LA TIMES: “Opinion: The immigration crisis and the racism driving it have roots in Hitler’s ‘bible’”
  3. 🏴‍☠️☠️⚰️KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: AILA Blasts Appointment Of Prosecutors Without Judicial Qualifications To Top Judicial Positions in Billy the Bigot’s Weaponized Anti-Due-Process “Court” System — Dysfunction, Bias, Illegitimate Decisions Run Rampant As Congress, Article IIIs Fail to Enforce U.S. Constitution!
  4. REPORT FROM FBA, AUSTIN: Read My Speech “JUSTICE BETRAYED: THE INTENTIONAL MISTREATMENT OF CENTRAL AMERICAN ASYLUM APPLICANTS BY THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE FOR IMMIGRATION REVIEW”

GONZO’S WORLD: HOW SESSIONS IGNORES FACTS AND MISREPRESENTS STATISTICS TO SUPPORT HIS PRE-ORDAINED RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA! — “[A] bid to supplant facts and expertise with an ideological agenda.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/trump-admin-rejected-report-showing-refugees-did-not-pose-major-n906681

Dan De Luce and Julia Edwards Ainsley report for NBC News:

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has consistently sought to exaggerate the potential security threat posed by refugees and dismissed an intelligence assessment last year that showed refugeesdid not present a significant threat to the U.S., three former senior officials told NBC News.

Hard-liners in the administration then issued their own report this year that several former officials and rights groups say misstates the evidence and inflates the threat posed by people born outside the U.S.

At a meeting in September 2017 with senior officials discussing refugee admissions, a representative from the National Counterterrorism Center came ready to present a report that analyzed the possible risks presented by refugees entering the country.

But before he could discuss the report, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand dismissed the report, saying her boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would not be guided by its findings.

“We read that. The attorney general doesn’t agree with the conclusions of that report,” she said, according to two officials familiar with the meeting, including one who was in the room at the time.

Brand’s blunt veto of the intelligence assessment shocked career civil servants at the interagency meeting, which seemed to expose a bid to supplant facts and expertise with an ideological agenda. Her response also amounted to a rejection of her own department’s view, as the FBI, part of the Justice Department, had contributed to the assessment.

WH reportedly looking to turn away an additional 20K refugees

AUG.15.201804:55

“She just dismissed them,” said the former official who attended the meeting.

The intelligence assessment was “inappropriately discredited as a result of that exchange,” said the ex-official. The episode made clear that “you weren’t able to have an honest conversation about the risk.”

A current DHS official defended the administration’s response to the intelligence assessment, saying immigration policy in the Trump administration does not rely solely on “historical data about terrorism trends,” but rather “is an all-of-the-above approach that looks at every single pathway that we think it is possible for a terrorist to come into the United States.”

A spokeswoman for DHS said, “If we only look at what terrorists have done in the past, we will never be able to prevent future attacks … We cannot let dangerous individuals slip through the cracks and exploit our refugee program, which is why we have implemented security enhancements that would prevent such violent individuals from reaching our shores, while still upholding our humanitarian ideals.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

Following the dismissal of the assessment, anti-immigration hard-liners in the administration clashed with civil servants about how to portray the possible threat from refugees in documents drafted for inter-agency discussions, former officials said. In the end, the president’s decision last year to lower the ceiling for refugee admissions to 45,000 did not refer to security threats, but cited staffing shortages at DHS as the rationale. But once the decision was issued, the White House released a public statement that suggested the president’s decision was driven mainly by security concerns and said “some refugees” admitted into the country had posed a threat to public safety.

An Afghan refugee sleeps on the ground while another looks out a window in an abandoned warehouse where they and other migrants took refuge in Belgrade, Serbia, on Feb. 1, 2017.
An Afghan refugee sleeps on the ground while another looks out a window in an abandoned warehouse where they and other migrants took refuge in Belgrade, Serbia, on Feb. 1, 2017.Muhammed Muheisen / AP file

“President Donald J. Trump is taking the responsible approach to promote the safety of the American people,” said the Sept. 29 statement.

Political appointees in the Trump administration then wrote a new report a few months later that seemed to contradict the view of the country’s spy agencies.

The January 2018 report by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security stated that “three out of every four, or 402, individuals convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016 were foreign-born.”

In a press release at the time, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the report showed the need for tougher screening of travelers entering the country and served as “a clear reminder of why we cannot continue to rely on immigration policy based on pre-9/11 thinking that leaves us woefully vulnerable to foreign-born terrorists.”

But the report is being challenged in court by several former officials and rights groups who say it inflates the threat posed by people born outside the U.S. Two lawsuits filed in Massachusetts and California allege the report improperly excludes incidents committed by domestic terrorists, like white supremacists, and wrongfully includes a significant number of naturalized U.S. citizens and foreigners who committed crimes overseas and were brought to the United States for the purpose of standing trial.

Rachel Brand
Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand speaks during the opening of the summit on Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking at Department of Justice in Washington, on Feb. 2, 2018.Jose Luis Magana / AP file

Mary McCord, former assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, which prosecutes terrorism charges, said the January 2018 report is “unfortunately both over-inclusive and under-inclusive.”

“The result is a report that presents an inaccurate picture of the threat of terrorism in the United States,” McCord said.

When the report was released in January 2018, Trump tweeted that it showed the need to move away from “random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit based” because it showed that “the nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born.”

But the report only focuses on international terrorism, which is defined as a crime committed on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization. The document excludes domestic terrorism committed by groups such as white supremacists or anti-government militias, which are more likely to be supported by those born in the U.S.

Because of the way the terrorism statute is written, those who support domestic organizations like anti-government or white supremacists groups cannot be charged with terrorism, even if the groups they support have committed crimes. Only supporters of foreign terrorist organizations designated by the State Department can be charged with “material support” of terrorism.

Still, Trump has repeatedly stated that the overwhelming majority of terrorists in the United States came from overseas, even before the 2018 report.

In his first speech to Congress in February 2017, Trump said that the “vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism and terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our own country.”

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, MSNBC legal analyst and editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, took issue with that statement and sued the Justice Department to provide documents that backed up the president’s claim. But the Department was unable to locate any records.

“There are a lot of domestic terrorism cases, and they are generally not committed by people born abroad. To the extent that those cases were excluded — white supremacist violence, anti-abortion terrorism and militia violence — the inquiry is grossly biased,” Wittes wrote on Lawfare.

Wittes said that almost 100, or about a quarter, of the 402 individuals listed as foreign-born terrorists committed their crimes overseas and were brought to the U.S. to face trial.
Stephen Miller
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller at roundtable discussion on California immigration policy at the White House on May 16.Evan Vucci / AP file

During her time in government as the chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Barbara Strack said her staff worked diligently to thoroughly vet refugees for any possible terrorist links. But she said there was no information she came across that indicated refugees posed a significant security threat.

“I did not see evidence that refugees presented an elevated national security risk compared to other categories of travelers to the United States,” she told NBC News.

The administration must decide by the end of the month how many refugees to allow in the country in the next fiscal year. Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen Miller, known for his hawkish stance on immigration, has been pushing for a drastic reduction in the ceiling.

The cap was set at 45,000 last year, but the number of refugees allowed in the country has fallen far below that ceiling, with only about 20,000 resettled in the United States since October 2017. Rights advocates and former officials accuse the White House of intentionally slowing down the bureaucratic process to keep the numbers down, overloading the FBI and other government agencies with duplicative procedures.

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This level of total intellectual dishonesty, overt racism, and policy driven solely by a White Nationalist philosophy and political agenda by an Attorney General is unprecedented in my experience at the DOJ.
If you remember, Brand escaped to a “soft landing” in the private sector earlier this year. One of my theories is that she was trying to protect herself and her reputation for a future Federal Judgeship. If and when that happens, I hope that those serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee will remember her completely sleazy role in carrying Sessions’s racist-polluted water on this one. Someone with no respect for facts, the law, humanity, or professional expertise definitely does not deserve to be on the Federal Bench!
And for Pete’s sake don’t credit Sessions with any integrity whatsoever in not resigning under pressure from our “Mussolini Wannabe.” He’s not “protecting” the Mueller investigation or anything else worthy in the DOJ. In fact, he has wholly politicized the DOJ and taken it down into the gutter. The reason he “hangs on” is not because he respects the Constitution or rule of law. Clearly, he doesn’t! No, it’s because he wants to do as much damage to civil rights and people of color as he can during his toxic tenure.
Make no mistake, that damage he has done, as has been reported elsewhere, is very substantial. It has set the goals that Dr. Martin Luther King and others fought for and even gave their lives for back by decades. Despicable!

Sessions’s White-Nationalist driven lies and false narratives about refugees are described above. For the truth about refugees and immigrants and all of the great things they have done and continue to do for our country, see my recent post at https://wp.me/p8eeJm-313.

Due Process Forever — Jeff Sessions Never!

PWS

09-07-18

Related posts:

  1. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  2. JAMELLE BOUIE @ SLATE: TRUMP, SESSIONS, MILLER & THE GOP RESTRICTIONISTS HAVE PUT GOOD OL’ 1920S RACISM AT THE FOREFRONT OF THEIR WHITE NATIONALIST IMMIGRATION AGENDA! –“What good does it do to bring in somebody who’s illiterate in their own country, has no skills, and is going to struggle in our country and not be successful? . . . That is not what a good nation should do, and we need to get away from it.” — J. “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions, Attorney General of the United States of America & Unapologetic White Nationalist With A Long History Of Racism!
  3. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  4. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?

SELLOUT! — CHARLES M. BLOW @ NYT: “This is an incredible, unprecedented moment. America is being betrayed by its own president. America is under attack and its president absolutely refuses to defend it. Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/15/opinion/trump-russia-investigation-putin.html

Opinion

Trump, Treasonous Traitor

The president fails to protect the country from an ongoing attack.

Charles M. Blow

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

  • Image
President Donald Trump meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia at the G-20 Summit, in Hamburg, Germany, in July 2017. CreditEvan Vucci/Associated Press

Put aside whatever suspicions you may have about whether Donald Trump will be directly implicated in the Russia investigation.

Trump is right now, before our eyes and those of the world, committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country. It is his failure to defend.

The intelligence community long ago concluded that Russia attacked our election in 2016 with the express intention of damaging Hillary Clinton and assisting Trump.

And it was not only the spreading of inflammatory fake news over social media. As a May report from the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee pointed out:

“In 2016, cyber actors affiliated with the Russian Government conducted an unprecedented, coordinated cyber campaign against state election infrastructure. Russian actors scanned databases for vulnerabilities, attempted intrusions, and in a small number of cases successfully penetrated a voter registration database. This activity was part of a larger campaign to prepare to undermine confidence in the voting process.”

And this is not simply a thing that happened once. This is a thing that is still happening and will continue to happen. As Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the committee in February, “Persistent and disruptive cyberoperations will continue against the United States and our European allies using elections as opportunities to undermine democracy.” As he put it, “Frankly, the United States is under attack.”

The Robert Mueller investigation is looking into this, trying to figure out what exactly happened in 2016, who all was involved, which laws were broken and who will be charged and tried.

That investigation seems to be incredibly fruitful. According to Vox’s tally:

“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has either indicted or gotten guilty pleas from 32 people and three companies — that we know of. That group is composed of four former Trump advisers, 26 Russian nationals, three Russian companies, one California man, and one London-based lawyer. Five of these people (including three former Trump aides) have already pleaded guilty.”

Twelve of those indictments came last week with a disturbingly detailed account of what the Russians did. As The New York Times put it:

“From phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.”

Whether or not Trump himself or anyone in his orbit personally colluded or conspired with the Russians about their interference is something Mueller will no doubt disclose at some point, but there remains one incontrovertible truth: In 2016, Russia, a hostile foreign adversary, attacked the United States of America.

We know that they did it. We have proof. The F.B.I. is trying to hold people accountable for it.

And yet Trump, the president whom the Constitution establishes as the commander in chief, has repeatedly waffled on whether Russia conducted the attack and has refused to forcefully rebuke them for it, let alone punish them for it.

In March, the White House, under pressure from Congress, seemed to somewhat reluctantly impose some sanctions on Russia for its crimes. As CNN reported that month, Congress almost unanimously passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act last summer, “hoping to pressure Trump into punishing Russia for its election interference.” But as the network pointed out:

“Trump signed the bill reluctantly in August, claiming it impinged upon his executive powers and could dampen his attempts to improve ties with Moscow.”

Instead, Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigation as a witch hunt.

Just last week at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump said:

“I think I would have a very good relationship with Putin if we spend time together. After watching the rigged witch-hunt yesterday, I think it really hurts our country and our relationship with Russia. I hope we can have a good relationship with Russia.”

Now Trump is set to pursue just such a relationship as he meets one-on-one with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, on Monday in Finland. As Trump said earlier this month at a rally:

“Will he be prepared? Will he be prepared? And I might even end up having a good relationship, but they’re going, ‘Will President Trump be prepared? You know, President Putin is K.G.B. and this and that.’ You know what? Putin’s fine. He’s fine. We’re all fine. We’re people.”

Actually, none of this is fine. None of it! Trump should be directing all resources at his disposal to punish Russia for the attacks and prevent future ones. But he is not.

America’s commander wants to be chummy with the enemy who committed the crime. Trump is more concerned with protecting his presidency and validating his election than he is in protecting this country.

This is an incredible, unprecedented moment. America is being betrayed by its own president. America is under attack and its president absolutely refuses to defend it.

Simply put, Trump is a traitor and may well be treasonous.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Charles M. Blow has been an Op-Ed columnist since 2008. His column appears every Monday and Thursday. He joined The Times in 1994 and was previously the graphics director. He also wrote the book “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” @CharlesMBlow•Facebook

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Yup! Bogusly claiming that desperate refugees are a threat to our national security, failing to protect us, and in fact enabling and furthering the actual existential threats to our security from Putin. That’s Trump and his “fellow traveler” supporters!

Remember all oft he nonsense about the “Kobach Commission” and their bogus search for almost nonexistent “undocumented voters?” Compare all the pontificating about the “integrity of our election process” with the Administration’s “shrug off” of hard evidence that a foreign power actually did attempt to interfere in our elections with the purpose of sowing discord and electing Trump?

Trump makes enemies out of our friends, creates non-existent enemies, and treats our country’s enemies as if they were our friends!

PWS

07-17-18

Related posts:

  1. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  2. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  3. VICTORY DANCE! — ICE’S HOMAN SAYS CLIMATE OF FEAR HAS STEMMED BORDER CROSSINGS & PROVES UNRESTRAINED, ARBITRARY IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WORKS! — “There’s no population that’s off the table,” he said. “If you’re in the country illegally, we’re looking for you and we’re looking to apprehend you.” — America Won’t Be Truly Safe Until The Last Cook, Gardner, Construction Worker, Nanny, Janitor, Tree Cutter, Mechanic, Handyman, Carpenter, Home Health Aide, Computer Programmer, Healthcare Worker, Lettuce Picker, Cow Milker, Landscaper, Lawnmower, Bricklayer, Roofer, Window Washer, Waiter, Sandwich Artist, Teacher, Minister, Coach, Student, Parent, Clerk, Fisherman, Farmer, Maid, Chicken Plucker, Meat Processor, Etc., Without Docs Is Removed And US Citizens Take Over All These Jobs!
  4. THIRD WORLD AMERICA! – THE ATTACK OF THE SWAMP RATS! — Under Trump’s GOP, Americans Now Correctly View White House As The Most Corrupt Institution — But, Who Are The Fools Who Voted These Immoral Jokers Into Control?

GONZO’S WORLD: FROM PLUM TO PRUNE IN NO TIME FLAT — Once The Premier Assignment For Top Government Lawyers, The USDOJ Has Become A Legal Cesspool Where Nobody Really Wants To Work Under The Toxic Leadership Of Trump, Sessions, & Co!

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-justice-department-vacancies?mbid=nl_th_5b185e9a63b65d128d354892&CNDID=48297443&spMailingID=13649278&spUserID=MjMzNDQ1MzU1ODE2S0&spJobID=1420576926&spReportId=MTQyMDU3NjkyNgS2

Abigail Tracy in Vanity Fair:

One of the great under-reported stories of the Trump era is the extent to which the toxicity of the current administration has made high-level government appointments—once among the nation’s most prestigious vocations, and a stepping stone to more lucrative careers—virtually radioactive. John Kelly is said to be hard-pressed to fill out the ranks; State Department departures amount to “a hit on personnel that lasts a decade,” per one former official; and in policy areas from international trade to negotiations with North Korea, Donald Trump’sWhite House has failed to attract much-needed expertise. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than at the Justice Department, where 500 days into Trump’s term, his administration is still struggling to fill top spots. According to a Wall Street Journal report published Tuesday, the White House has failed to persuade at least three people to accept the traditionally plum position of associate attorney general, the No. 3 job at the D.O.J., prompting an official pause to the search.

Given the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the perilous position of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, whoever fills the spot could realistically find themselves overseeing Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The possibility has already (reportedly) scared away one associate A.G.: Rachel Brand, who left the role in February for an executive position at Walmart, told officials the job was too good to pass up. But sources close to Brand told NBC News that she was “frustrated by vacancies at the department and feared she would be asked to oversee the Russia investigation.” (A Justice Department spokeswoman pushed back on the report, calling it “false and frankly ridiculous.”) Two other candidates, attorneys Helgi Walker and Kate Todd— both veterans of the George W. Bush administration and Clarence Thomas clerkships—turned down the job, sources told the Journal, though their motivations for doing so are unclear. Nor is the No. 3 spot the only D.O.J. position the White House has failed to fill: according to the Journal, at least five high-profile units at the Justice Department still don’t have permanent, politically appointed leaders, including the criminal, civil, and tax divisions.

In a few cases, the Trump administration’s picks have been stalled in the confirmation process—the heads of both the criminal and civil units were named a year ago, for instance, but still haven’t been scheduled for a Senate vote. Per the Journal, the Russia probe is at play here, too: Democrats are “pressing nominees about how they would handle the probe should they become involved in it,” and Republicans, too, have been slow to push for a vote.

The pall of the Russia probe hangs equally heavy over current D.O.J. officials, who are constantly dodging attacks from the president over their own roles. Trump has repeatedly and publicly admonished Sessions over his recusal; in his latest attack, Trump blamed the top lawyer for the probe’s indefinite timeline. “The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself . . . I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined,” Trump tweeted, adding, “Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!” The Trump-Sessions relationship has reportedly deteriorated to the point that Trump refuses to say the former Alabama senator’s name out loud, a practice his stop aides have also picked up:

Trump’s fury with Sessions is so ever-present it has taken to darkening his moods even during otherwise happy moments. On Thursday, Trump was on Air Force One returning from a trip to Texas, reveling in both a successful day of fundraising and the heads-up he had received from economic adviser Larry Kudlow that the next day’s jobs report would be positive.

But when an aide mentioned Sessions, Trump abruptly ended the conversation and unmuted the television in his office broadcasting Fox News, dismissing the staffer to resume watching cable, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

Rosenstein, too, has been a frequent presidential punching bag. While Trump has targeted Sessions for his “original sin” of recusal, the deputy attorney general is the one responsible for appointing Mueller in the first place, not to mention for signing off on the F.B.I. raid of Michael Cohen. He’s battled with Trump allies over D.O.J. document requests and has come under scrutiny for the role he played in James Comey’s firing: on Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters that Rosenstein should be a key witness in the obstruction of justice aspect of the investigation, considering he penned a letter recommending Comey’s dismissal on the grounds that the former F.B.I. director mishandled the probe into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. Graham also sent the D.A.G. a letter questioning Rosenstein’s oversight of the investigation late last month.

The White House’s struggle to fill out the ranks would result in an unusual situation should Rosenstein recuse himself, resign, or be fired—all possible outcomes. With Jesse Panuccio serving in an acting capacity as the associate attorney general, the responsibility of overseeing the Russia probe would likely fall to Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Typically, Francisco’s job is to argue on the government’s behalf in cases that go before the Supreme Court. And while it’s unclear how Francisco would treat the role, what’s much less ambiguous is how Trump would want him to treat it. “When you look at the I.R.S. scandal, when you look at the guns for whatever, when you look at all of the tremendous, aah, real problems they had, not made-up problems like Russian collusion, these were real problems,” Trump told The New York Times. “When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”

******************************************

Gee, I remember how totally excited I was the day I got my job offer to serve as a GS-11 Attorney Adviser at the BIA under the DOJ Honors Program in 1973. Short of family events, it was one of the most exciting and satisfying events of my life. Who would have thought that 45 years later the once-proud DOJ would be run by a Jim Crow wannabe working for a White Nationalist regime?

Most of the “vibes” that I get are that everyone eligible or nearly eligible for retirement at the DOJ is getting those retirement estimates updated. Better hurry, though, before Trump & the GOP Know Nothings put the finishing touches on their plan to destroy the retirement system, the merit Civil Service, and return to the “good old days” of the spoils system where jobs could be handed out to political cronies and sycophants who could be hired and fired at will. And, of course, anyone with the integrity to stand up to these political hacks could be unceremoniously fired on the spot to make way for the kakistocracy.

Just like destroying the Constitution disingenuously is called “restoring the rule of law” in the Trump Administration, replacing the merit-based career Civil Service with a sycophantic kakistocracy is what disingenuously is termed “promoting accountability.”

PWS

06-11-18

Related posts:

  1. ON SATURDAY, “COURTSIDE” & SLATE’S JEREMY STAHL GAVE YOU THE “REAL LOWDOWN” ON AAG RACHEL BRAND’S “FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE!” — Two Days Later, NBC News Confirms What We Already Said!
  2. BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: PERVERSION @ JUSTICE: IN THE NAME OF TRUMP & WHITE NATIONALISM, HE’S TRASHED THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, THE RULE OF LAW, THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES, GAYS, IMMIGRANTS, WOMEN, & OTHERS, AND OVERALL HUMAN COMPASSION & DECENCY– BUT, SESSIONS’S ONE NOTABLE INSTANCE OF ACTING ETHICALLY AND LAWFULLY IS UNFORGIVABLE IN TRUMP’S EYES!
  4. 🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚖️⚰️👎🏻KAKISTOCRACY WATCH: BILLY THE BIGOT BLOWS BIGTIME BS AT CONGRESS: Laura Coates @ CNN With Analysis Of Billy’s Opening Statement Liefest & Stream Of Racist Tropes! — With This Trump Toady As Chief Lawyer, & Feckless Courts & Legislators, The U.S. Legal System Is Functionally Dead ☠️⚰️

TRUMP’S COWARDLY ATTACK ON CHILDREN – More Lies, Distortions, Smears, & Racism Mark Administration Officials’ Bogus Attempts To Link Refugee Children & Their Legal Rights With Gangs!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-warns-against-admitting-unaccompanied-migrant-children-theyre-not-innocent/2018/05/23/e4b24a68-5ec2-11e8-8c93-8cf33c21da8d_story.html

Seung Min Kim reports for the Washington Post:

. . . .

The issue is compounded, Rosenstein said, by the fact that these migrant children must eventually be released from detention, and many never show up for their immigration proceedings before a judge.  Rosenstein, quoting statistics from the Department of Homeland Security, said less than 4 percent of unaccompanied minors are ultimately removed from the United States.

“We’re letting people in who are creating problems. We’re letting people in who are gang members. We’re also letting people in who are vulnerable,” Rosenstein said. Because many of the migrant children lack families or a similar support system, they become “vulnerable to [gang] recruitment,” the deputy attorney general said,

Thomas Homan, the departing deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said about 300 arrests related to the MS-13 gang were made on Long Island last year. Of those arrested, more than 40 percent entered the United States as unaccompanied minors, he said.

“So it is a problem,” Homan said. “There is a connection.”

Other federal statistics paint a somewhat different tale. From October 2011 until June of last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials arrested about 5,000 individuals with confirmed or suspected gang ties, according to congressional testimony from the agency’s acting chief, Carla Provost, in June.

Of the 5,000 figure, 159 were unaccompanied minors, Provost testified, and 56 were suspected or confirmed to have ties with MS-13. In that overall time frame, CBP apprehended about 250,000 unaccompanied minors, according to Provost.

. . . .

****************************************

Read the full article at the link.

The Trump claims are, as usual, totally bogus. The percentage of gang members who come in as “unaccompanied minors” is infinitesimally small.  The vast majority of these kids are gang victims entitled to asylum or relief under the Convention Against Torture if the law were fairly applied (which it isn’t).

Contrary to the suggestion by Rosenstein, when given access to legal representation, approximately 95% of the unaccompanied children show up for their hearings. And the “vulnerability” mentioned by Rosenstein is largely the result of the Trump Administration’s “reign of terror” against migrant communities which has made nearly all migrant children, along with other community members, “easy pickings” for gangs, with no realistic recourse to law enforcement. There are actually strategies for combatting gangs. But the Trumpsters have no interest in them.

Indeed, gangs have recognized that folks like Trump, Sessions, Homan, Neilsen, and now Rosenstein are their best recruiters and enablers. How dumb can we be as a country to put these biased, spineless, and clueless dudes in charge of “law enforcement.”

Interesting that in an obvious attempt to kiss up to Trump, Sessions, & Co and save his job, Rosenstein pathetically has decided that being a sycophant and sucking up to the bosses is his best defense. Particularly when it’s at the expense of kids and other vulnerable migrants seeking protection. Pretty disgusting! And, I doubt that it will eventually save him from Trump. Just tank his reputation and his future like others who have been “slimed for life” by their association with Trump.

Join the New Due Process Army and stand up for kids against the “child abuse” being practiced by the Trump Administration and its corrupt and incompetent officials.

PWS

05-24-18

 

Related posts:

  1. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!
  2. ANOTHER WASHPOST LEAD EDITORIAL RIPS CRUEL, INHUMANE, ADMINISTRATION POLICIES ON SEPARATING CHILDREN – In Plain Terms, Our Government Is Engaging in Child Abuse!
  3. THE HILL: NOLAN SAYS THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT ICE
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A DIVERSE “NATION OF IMMIGRANTS” ANOINTS A COMMITTED XENOPHOBE AS ITS CHIEF LAW OFFICER? – Gonzo Is Deconstructing Our System Of Justice, One Day At A Time!

GONZO’S WORLD: “Apocalypto” & “Mikey P” Headline SNL “Cold Opening” Featuring “Michael ‘The Fixer’ Cohen” & “Bob Mueller”

Here’s the link:

https://apple.news/AkZhe3YpoQsOHijc1PgzkZQ

*************************

I’m betting that when the time comes that our poor nation finally is relieved of Gonzo’s “services” as AG, unlike the late Janet Reno he won’t be showing up for any live appearances on SNL. Perhaps, he’ll be out on bond awaiting trial. At least he’s smart enough to hire “Chuckie” Cooper as his mouthpiece rather than “The Fixer!”

 

PWS

054-15-18

 

Related posts:

  1. TIMOTHY EAGAN @ NYT: “The Stormy Daniels Presidency” — She’s Probably Smarter, No More Dishonest, Less Biased, & A Heck Of A Lot More “Transparent” Than The Trumpster!”
  2. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  3. JRUBE: GOP “PARTY OF PUTIN” OUT OF CONTROL!
  4. WHAT DOES TRUMP HAVE IN COMMON WITH THE GAMBINO CRIME FAMILY OTHER THAN AUDACIOUS DISHONESTY AND A PENCHANT FOR FRAUD? — PERHAPS, MUELLER & CO ARE GOING TO “ROLL UP” THE TRUMPSTERS JUST THE WAY THEY DID THE GAMBINOS! – Will Rick Gates Be The Reincarnation of “Sammy The Bull?”

DAVID LEONHARDT @ NYT — GOP SCOFFLAWS TRUMP & SESSIONS HAVE WORKED HARD TO DESTROY JUSTICE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE – But, The Law Might Yet Rise Up To Bite Both Of Them!

Leonhardt writes in the NY Times:

 

There are a good number of lawyers who don’t love their jobs. Sure, the pay is often good. But the hours can be long and the work narrow, leaving many people without much sense of a mission.

The lawyers who work for the Department of Justice, however, tend to feel quite differently about their work.

I’ve known and interviewed many over the years, and they have some of the highest job satisfaction of any group of people I can think of. “You get to do good for a living, and in the name of your country,” as James Comey said in a 2005 speech to Justice Department employees (the same speech I highlighted in my column earlier this week). “If that doesn’t motivate you to work hard, nothing will.”

To many Justice Department lawyers, doing good means pursuing equality under the law. They see themselves as representing some of the highest American ideals: Every citizen deserves the protection of the law, and no citizen is above the law.

Donald Trump does not share the view that the United States has a fundamental set of rules that apply alike to rich and poor, powerful and powerless. “Trump isn’t someone who played close to the line a time or two, or once did a shady deal. He may well be the single most corrupt major business figure in the United States of America,” The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman wrote yesterday. Waldman then listed Trump’s scams: Trump University, bankrupt casinos, illegal labor, stiffed vendors and on and on and on.

He has often figured out how to stop shy of outright illegality or, in other cases, to violate the law in ways that bring only minor sanctions. He has rarely faced big consequences for his misbehavior. But Trump now finds himself in a very different situation.

The scale of the misbehavior by him and his associates appears to be large. It occurred on perhaps the biggest national stage of all, in a presidential campaign. And dozens of talented, committed Justice Department officials have the assignment of figuring out what he actually did. Thank goodness for them and for the work they are doing.

“Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks,” The Times editorial board writes. “He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado.”

But, as the headline of that piece bluntly puts it: “The law is coming, Mr. Trump.”

************************************

It’s certainly ironic that Trump and Sessions no longer get along. They are both totally corrupt and dishonest in their own unique ways. Each is a fraud in his own right. And their shared dedication to intellectual dishonesty, bullying, racism, White Nationalism, xenophobia, divisiveness, skewed justice, and every horrible aspect of America’s past certainly should be a uniting factor.

It would be nice to think that the justice system and Justice Department that they abuse every day in office will get the last laugh and eventually sack them up.  But, it’s by no means certain that justice will be done here. On the other hand, it’s highly unlikely that Trump, Sessions, or today’s GOP will escape the judgement of history for their misdeeds and the damage they are intentionally inflicting upon our country every day that they are allowed to remain in the offices for which they are so supremely unqualified.

PWS

04-12-18

Related posts:

  1. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  2. WHAT DOES TRUMP HAVE IN COMMON WITH THE GAMBINO CRIME FAMILY OTHER THAN AUDACIOUS DISHONESTY AND A PENCHANT FOR FRAUD? — PERHAPS, MUELLER & CO ARE GOING TO “ROLL UP” THE TRUMPSTERS JUST THE WAY THEY DID THE GAMBINOS! – Will Rick Gates Be The Reincarnation of “Sammy The Bull?”
  3. BILL BARR – Unqualified For Office – Unfit To Act In A Quasi-Judicial Capacity
  4. START YOUR SATURDAY OFF RIGHT WITH “SATURDAY SATIRE” FROM COURTSIDE – THE BOROWITZ REPORT – “Former Hippies Put in Horrible Position of Rooting for F.B.I.!”

TWO FROM TAL @ CNN: DACA Rebirth & Dems Appeal To Ryan On Russian Interference

White House seeks to rekindle immigration debate on Hill

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The White House is quietly feeling the waters on trying for another push on immigration legislation as President Donald Trump continues to up the rhetoric on the issue.

Trump focused on border security and immigration last week, tweeting repeatedly about the need for congressional action and ordering the deployment of the National Guard to the border.

But sources say the there’s more than just tweets, that the White House has been quietly reaching out to allies on the Hill to explore what might be doable. Still, that outreach has to date not included any Democrats and has been unfocused, leaving it unlikely the effort could muster the votes it would need to pass.

“I think there is a real attempt to figure something out — I don’t think they actually know what they want — but there’s a legitimate want to do something on this,” said one senior GOP aide of the White House’s outreach efforts.

The aide characterized the outreach more as floating ideas than coming up with a game plan, and noted that the White House doesn’t seem to be building a coalition to pass the bill yet. Another GOP source agreed any talks are more exploratory than organized.

“It is frustrating that things are so unclear and it would be better to have a coalition that the White House is part of in these conversations, to be a little bit more specific,” the aide said.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has worked on unsuccessful bipartisan efforts to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy Trump ended, said on Fox News on Monday that there could be another opportunity.

“The President wants to do a DACA deal — border wall money plus other border security measures are very much on the table,” Graham said. “Our southern border is porous. It needs to be rebuilt strongly and the DACA kids need to have certainty their lives. I hope this President can find Democrats to work with him.”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/immigration-white-house-legislation-push/index.html

*****************************************

Dems directly appeal to House Speaker Paul Ryan on election hacking

By Tal Kopan, CNN

The top Democrats on six of the House’s key committees are appealing directly to Speaker Paul Ryan to help them obtain documents from the Trump administration related to election hacking during the 2016 contest.

In a letter sent to the speaker Tuesday morning, the highest-ranking Democrats on the House Oversight, Judiciary, Homeland Security, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and House Administration committees implored Ryan to intervene in their ongoing efforts to get the Department of Homeland Security to turn over documents related to the targeting of state election-related systems by Russian hackers.

The Democrats asked the department in October to provide copies of the notifications it sent to the 21 states it identified as the target of Russian government-linked attempts to hack voting-related systems and other related documents.

The Democrats wrote when they did not get adequate responses on an ensuing back-and-forth, they asked House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy to issue a subpoena, but he did not respond.

The Speaker’s office did not immediately respond to CNN request for comment.

Calling the administration’s response “woefully inadequate,” the group said they’ve “exhausted” the options at the committee level and asked Ryan to “personally intervene to protect the integrity and authorities of the House of Representatives.”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/10/politics/election-hacking-letter-ryan-dems/index.html

********************************

Who knows what will happen. But, for “my $.02,” I doubt that either of these has “legs.” First, Trump has “less than zero credibility” on DACA. Second, the House GOP appears to have no desire whatsoever to get to the bottom of the Russia interference, probably correctly fearing that the fingerprints of Trump, his family,  and/or his cronies will be all over the place. They might even find the connection to Putin’s personal lobbyist, “Agent Devon.”

No, I don’t have any “hard evidence.” In the end, it’s possible that Mueller will largely exonerate Trump. I know that many believe that 1) Trump isn’t subtile enough to have done anything “under the table,” and 2) if he had actually manipulated the election, he would have proudly tweeted credit for it by now.

But, the great rush to “close out” the Russia investigation and turn the attention elsewhere, along with clear Russia ties to some associated with the campaign who tried to hide those ties, and clear evidence of Russian meddling to elect Trump certainly is enough “smoke” to suggest that we might eventually find “fire.”

PWS

04-10-18

Related posts:

  1. MLK DAY 2018 — DR. KING’S DREAM OF AN AMERICA CELEBRATING EQUALITY & RACIAL HARMONY IS UNDER VICIOUS ATTACK BY TRUMP, PENCE, SESSIONS, AND A HOST OF OTHERS IN TODAY’S WHITE NATIONALIST ENABLING GOP — Who Is Going To Fight To Reclaim The Dream, & Who Is Going To “Go Along To Get Along” With The 21st Century Version Of Jim Crow?
  2. JRUBE: GOP “PARTY OF PUTIN” OUT OF CONTROL!
  3. MATTHEW NUSSBAUM @ POLITICO: WILL VLADI EVER GET TIRED OF WINNING? – NOT LIKELY IF THE “PUPPET PRESIDENT,” “AGENT DEVON,” AND VLADI’S GOP “FELLOW TRAVELERS” HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT! — “This memo just plays right into that. … This is exactly what Putin had in mind.”
  4. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!

THE “BIG NAME” CLIENT NO LAWYER WANTS!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-another-blow-to-trumps-efforts-to-combat-russia-probe-digenova-will-no-longer-join-legal-team/2018/03/25/8ac8c8d2-3038-11e8-94fa-32d48460b955_story.html

Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman report in WashPost:

President Trump’s legal team reversed course Sunday, announcing that a lawyer slated to join the attorneys handling the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation will not come on board after all, the latest sign of disarray for Trump’s legal strategy.

The development came three days after John Dowd, who had been Trump’s top attorney handling the Russia inquiry, resigned amid strategy disputes with the president.

Trump is now left, at least temporarily, without a traditional criminal defense attorney as Mueller’s team appears to be entering a critical phase in its investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign cooperated with Russia in this effort.

Joseph diGenova, the lawyer Trump wanted to replace Dowd, has often stridently defended the president on Fox News Channel and cast the Mueller probe as a conspiracy against him. Trump enjoyed the TV appearances and wanted diGenova on his team even though he did not know him, officials say.

But in a statement on Sunday, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team said both diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, who is also a lawyer, would not be working on the Russia probe because clients they are representing in connection with the investigation posed conflicts of interest.

One of President Trump’s personal attorneys, John Dowd, resigned on March 22, amid a shake-up of the president’s legal team for the Russia investigation. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

“The President is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining his Special Counsel legal team,” Jay Sekulow, counsel to Trump, said in the statement. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the President in other legal matters. The President looks forward to working with them.”

[Trump has trouble finding attorneys as top Russia probe lawyer leaves legal team]

The unraveling of the president’s legal team has left his advisers concerned. People familiar with the situation said the president has been counseled by friends that he needs to find a new lawyer to quarterback his team, and efforts are underway by people close to Trump to hire a new lawyer.

Before his resignation Thursday, Dowd had been Trump’s main point of contact with Mueller’s office and had been helping to negotiate the terms for an interview between the president and the special counsel’s team as it examines whether Trump obstructed justice by allegedly seeking to shut down the investigation, which was being conducted by the FBI until Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey in May. Mueller was then appointed special counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Trump’s legal effort is now led by Sekulow, a conservative attorney and radio host who has concentrated on constitutional issues, and assisted by Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer paid by taxpayers to represent the institution of the presidency rather than Trump personally. Cobb, too, has occasionally drawn the president’s ire, people familiar with the team have said.

A number of white-collar attorneys in Washington said the president has been unable to attract top-flight talent as he looks to overhaul his legal team, with major firms fearful that an affiliation with Trump and the Russia case could impact their ability to attract other clients and hire new lawyers.

Trump has recently been relying on Marc E. Kasowitz, who led his legal team until this summer and has represented Trump in several cases over the years. Kasowitz and Trump clashed over a number of issues, including Kasowitz’s belief that Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a top White House aide, needed to leave the administration because of the potential legal problems he faced due to the probe and the potential problems they could cause Trump. After Dowd’s hiring, Kasowitz took a diminished role in handling the case.

Ultimately, said one person close to Trump’s legal team, “He’s his own lawyer. Always has been and always will be.”

The person added: “You know what they say about a ‘lawyer’ who has himself as a client.”

**************************************

Read the entire article at the link.

“A lawyer who represents him or herself has a fool for a client.”

PWS

03-26-18

 

Related posts:

  1. THIRD WORLD AMERICA! – THE ATTACK OF THE SWAMP RATS! — Under Trump’s GOP, Americans Now Correctly View White House As The Most Corrupt Institution — But, Who Are The Fools Who Voted These Immoral Jokers Into Control?
  2. GONZO’S WORLD: HOW SESSIONS IGNORES FACTS AND MISREPRESENTS STATISTICS TO SUPPORT HIS PRE-ORDAINED RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA! — “[A] bid to supplant facts and expertise with an ideological agenda.”
  3. DAG ROSENSTEIN INADVERTENTLY MAKES COMPELLING ARGUMENT FOR INDEPENDENT ARTICLE I U.S. IMMIGRATION COURT IN SPEECH TO NEW JUDGES — Places Emphasis On Executive, Fealty To Attorney General, Not Independence. Impartiality, & Insuring Due Process! — REAL “Courts” Don’t Answer to Prosecutors!
  4. COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

GONZO’S WORLD: McCABE’S ATTORNEYS WONDER WHY HE WASN’T TREATED WITH THE SAME LENIENCY AS GONZO

Click on this picture for the NYT link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/us/politics/sessions-fbi-investigation-perjury.html

Adam Goldman, Katie Benner, Matt Apuzzo report for the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. investigated Attorney General Jeff Sessions for possible perjury last year over congressional testimony in which he said he had no contacts with Russians, according to three people familiar with the case.
In fact, Mr. Sessions later acknowledged, he had personally met the Russian ambassador to the United States during the campaign and was aware that George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser, had developed Russian ties, too. F.B.I. agents were aware of both inaccuracies in real time. And last March, when Congress asked the F.B.I. to investigate the attorney general, agents began doing so, two of the people said.
Andrew G. McCabe, the F.B.I.’s deputy director at the time, authorized the investigation, the two people said. Mr. McCabe himself was recently fired for showing “lack of candor” in an internal investigation. Mr. Sessions rejected Mr. McCabe’s appeal and fired him hours before his retirement was to take effect, jeopardizing his pension.
The investigation into Mr. Sessions began before Robert S. Mueller III was appointed special counsel to investigate Russia-related matters. Mr. Sessions’s lawyer, Chuck Cooper, said no investigation is being conducted now.
“The special counsel’s office has informed me that after interviewing the attorney general and conducting additional investigation, the attorney general is not under investigation for false statements or perjury in his confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress,” Mr. Cooper said in a statement.
The investigation was first reported by ABC News.
Perjury investigations based on congressional referrals are common, and the F.B.I. frequently investigates but seldom charges. But the fact that the attorney general himself was a focus of the Russia investigation, even if only peripherally and temporarily, shows how entangled the Trump administration has become in the case. Mr. Sessions is recused from any aspect of the investigation.
The investigation also adds a new layer to Mr. McCabe’s firing. Mr. McCabe’s lawyers have said that he did not lie and acted quickly to fix any inaccuracies or misunderstandings. Mr. Sessions has offered a similar defense, saying he never intended to mislead Congress.

. . . .

Mr. McCabe’s allies have pointed in recent days to these clarifications and asked why Mr. McCabe did not receive the same benefit of the doubt as the attorney general. But it is impossible to compare the cases because the Justice Department’s inspector general has not released his report explaining his concerns about Mr. McCabe’s candor.

. . . .

***************************

Go to the above link to read the complete article in the NYT.

Double standards are the norm in the Trump Administration and the DOJ. Ethics laws, civil rights laws, environmental laws, asylum laws, conflict of interest laws, civil service protections all are applied selectively to favor “friends of the Administration” and punish “enemies.” Just like in any good Banana Republic like the “B.A.R.!”

PWS

03-23-18

 

 

Related posts:

  1. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  2. THIRD WORLD AMERICA! – THE ATTACK OF THE SWAMP RATS! — Under Trump’s GOP, Americans Now Correctly View White House As The Most Corrupt Institution — But, Who Are The Fools Who Voted These Immoral Jokers Into Control?
  3. SLEAZE-BALL-IN-CHIEF: TRUMP WANTED TO FIRE MUELLER IN JUNE ON BOGUS GROUNDS — WHITE HOUSE LAWYER’S THREAT TO QUIT STOPPED HIM!
  4. GONZO’S WORLD: DEEP IRONY – He Might Have Fired McCabe Over Alleged “Lack Of Candor,” But Apocalyoto’s Own Lies, Misrepresentations, And Unlikely “Memory Lapses” Might Finally Catch Up With Him!

GONZO’S WORLD: DEEP IRONY – He Might Have Fired McCabe Over Alleged “Lack Of Candor,” But Apocalyoto’s Own Lies, Misrepresentations, And Unlikely “Memory Lapses” Might Finally Catch Up With Him!

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/sessions-firing-of-mccabe-violated-his-promise-to-recuse.html

Ryan Goodman reports for Slate:

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe appears to directly violate the promise Sessions made, under oath, to recuse himself from such matters.

Some might contend that Sessions’ recusal covered only the Clinton and Trump campaigns, and that McCabe’s firing involved the Clinton Foundation investigation as a separate matter. But Sessions unequivocally assured senators of his intentions during his January 2017 confirmation hearings in response to a clear and specific question from the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley. Sen. Grassley asked a follow-up question that went right to the point. In response, Sessions very clearly said his recusal would cover any matters involving the Clinton Foundation.

Here is the full exchange:

Grassley: During the course of the presidential campaign, you made a number of statements about the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, relating to her handling of sensitive emails and regarding certain actions of the Clinton Foundation. You weren’t alone in that criticism. I was certainly critical in the same way as were millions of Americans on those matters, but now, you’ve been nominated to serve as attorney general. In light of those comments that you made, some have expressed concerns about whether you can approach the Clinton matter impartially in both fact and appearance. How do you plan to address those concerns?

Sessions: Mr. Chairman, it was a highly contentious campaign. I, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign. With regard to Secretary Clinton and some of the comments I made, I do believe that that could place my objectivity in question. I’ve given that thought.

I believe the proper thing for me to do, would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton and that were raised during the campaign or to be otherwise connected to it.

Grassley: OK. I think, that’s—let me emphasize then with a follow-up question. To be very clear, you intend to recuse yourself from both the Clinton email investigation and any matters involving the Clinton Foundation, if there are any?

Sessions: Yes.

This exchange has two implications for how one understands the scope of Sessions’ recusal. First, it goes to defining the scope of the recusal that Sessions made on March 2, 2017. If it is a close call whether the Clinton Foundation matter is sufficiently connected to the Clinton campaign for the purpose of understanding Sessions’ recusal, it should be deemed to be sufficiently connected. After all, that’s essentially what Sessions told Sen. Grassley. Second, if the Clinton Foundation matter is deemed outside the scope of the recusal statement that Sessions made back in March last year, then his decision to fire McCabe shows that he failed to honor the promise for a broader recusal which he clearly made to the Senate in its decision to confirm him as attorney general. The same goes for Hillary Clinton’s emails. Sen. Grassley’s questions and Sessions’ answers specifically covered any matters involving that investigation as well.”

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Meanwhile, over at Reuters, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Mark Hosenball have uncovered some evidence that contradicts Gonzo’s “revised account” of his meeting at which George Papadopoulos’s proposed “Russia contacts” were discussed with Trump campaign officials including Gonzo. It now appears that Gonzo’s story that he immediately and strongly denounced them could be a fabrication. Or just another “memory lapse.”

“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ testimony that he opposed a proposal for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees.

Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he “pushed back” against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team.

“Yes, I pushed back,” Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee on Nov. 14, when asked whether he shut down Papadopoulos’ proposed outreach to Russia.

Sessions has since also been interviewed by Mueller.

Three people who attended the March campaign meeting told Reuters they gave their version of events to FBI agents or congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. Although the accounts they provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos’ idea.

One person said Sessions was courteous to Papadopoulos and said something to the effect of “okay, interesting.”

The other two recalled a similar response.

“It was almost like, ‘Well, thank you and let’s move on to the next person,’” one said.

However, another meeting attendee, J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign’s director of national security, told media outlets including Reuters in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos’ proposal and said no one should speak of it again. In response to a request for comment, Gordon said on Saturday that he stood by his statement.

Sessions, through Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores, declined to comment beyond his prior testimony. The special counsel’s office also declined to comment. Spokeswomen for the Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee did not comment.

Reuters was unable to determine whether Mueller is probing discrepancies in accounts of the March 2016 meeting.

The three accounts, which have not been reported, raise new questions about Sessions’ testimony regarding contacts with Russia during the campaign.

Sessions previously failed to disclose to Congress meetings he had with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and testified in October that he was not aware of any campaign representatives communicating with Russians.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 14, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

Some Democrats have seized on discrepancies in Sessions’ testimony to suggest the attorney general may have committed perjury. A criminal charge would require showing Sessions intended to deceive. Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee that he had always told the truth and testified to the best of his recollection.

Legal experts expressed mixed views about the significance of the contradictions cited by the three sources.

Sessions could argue he misremembered events or perceived his response in a different way, making any contradictions unintentional, some experts said.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Sessions’ words might be too vague to form the basis of a perjury case because there could be different interpretations of what he meant.

United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions visits families of opioid overdose victims at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, U.S. March 15, 2018. REUTERS/John Sommers II

“If you’re talking about false statements, prosecutors look for something that is concrete and clear,” he said.

Other legal experts said, however, that repeated misstatements by Sessions could enable prosecutors to build a perjury case against him.

“Proving there was intent to lie is a heavy burden for the prosecution. But now you have multiple places where Sessions has arguably made false statements,” said Bennett Gershman, a Pace University law professor.

The March 2016 campaign meeting in Washington was memorialized in a photo Trump posted on Instagram of roughly a dozen men sitting around a table, including Trump, Sessions and Papadopoulos.

Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his Russia contacts, is now cooperating with Mueller.

According to court documents released after his guilty plea, Papadopoulos said at the campaign meeting that he had connections who could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Papadopoulos continued to pursue Russian contacts after the March 2016 meeting and communicated with some campaign officials about his efforts, according to the court documents.

Trump has said that he does not remember much of what happened at the “very unimportant” campaign meeting. Trump has said he did not meet Putin before becoming president.

Moscow has denied meddling in the election and Trump has denied his campaign colluded with Russia.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch and Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay in Washington and Jan Wolfe in New York; Editing by Anthony Lin, Noeleen Walder and Jeffrey Benkoe”

**************************************

Like Trump, Gonzo is a congenital liar who has been pushing his “White Nationalist alternate world view” for so long that he wouldn’t recognize truth if it hit him in the face. I don’t know if he will ever be held accountable for all of his biased disingenuous deeds. But, at some future point, someone will “unpack” all of Gonzo’s disastrous abuses — immigration, civil rights, criminal justice, prisons — of justice at the Department of Justice and preserve them for history.

03-19-18

Related posts:

  1. ON SATURDAY, “COURTSIDE” & SLATE’S JEREMY STAHL GAVE YOU THE “REAL LOWDOWN” ON AAG RACHEL BRAND’S “FLIGHT FROM JUSTICE!” — Two Days Later, NBC News Confirms What We Already Said!
  2. THIRD WORLD AMERICA! – THE ATTACK OF THE SWAMP RATS! — Under Trump’s GOP, Americans Now Correctly View White House As The Most Corrupt Institution — But, Who Are The Fools Who Voted These Immoral Jokers Into Control?
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: SOMEBODY’S GOT TO DO TRUMP’S “DIRTY WORK” AT JUSTICE — GONZO WELCOMES THE CHANCE – “CHATTER ON THE STREET” SAYS HE’S BEEN TERRIFIC AT IMPLEMENTING RACIST, WHITE NATIONALIST AGENDA AND “DECONSTRUCTING” JUSTICE IN AMERICA! – Damage To Rights Of American Blacks, Latinos, Gays, and Other “Targeted Groups” Could Be Long Lasting!
  4. MARK JOSEPH STERN @ SLATE: GONZO’S GONE! — Bigoted, Xenophobic AG Leaves Behind Disgraceful Record Of Intentional Cruelty, Vengeance, Hate, Lawlessness, & Incompetence That Will Haunt America For Many Years!

ANOTHER DAY IN THE B.R.A. — Trump Mimics Third World Tyrants In Attacks On McCabe, FBI, Mueller Investigation, & Our Justice System!

B.R.A. = “Banana Republic of America”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/were-not-sure-why-mccabe-was-fired-but-trumps-tweet-suggests-the-worst/2018/03/17/0687c78a-2a07-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html

The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:

“MORE THAN the details of the case, President Trump’s tweet early Saturday celebrating the firing of former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is what stands out: a marquee of bullying and unseemly behavior by a president. Mr. Trump acts like a nasty, small-minded despot, not the leader of a democracy more than two centuries old in which rule of law is a sturdy pillar. If there is doubt that the timing of Mr. McCabe’s dismissal was driven by political vengeance, Mr. Trump does everything he can to prove the worst with his own sordid words.

This is the language of a banana republic. In nations without a strong democratic foundation, tyrants cling to power by belittling perceived enemies and insulting and coopting other institutions, such as a free press, law enforcement and the military, coercing them into subservience. Just look around the world at practices today in Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Turkey, to name a few. The banana republic playbook has no place in the United States, not in a town hall, not in a statehouse, least of all in the Oval Office.

Mr. McCabe is a 21-year-veteran of the FBI and served as deputy director under James B. Comey, whom Mr. Trump fired earlier. A Justice Department inspector general’s report, not yet public, reportedly found that he authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about an investigation involving Hillary Clinton and then misled investigators. He disputes the allegations, noting that he had authority to share the information and corrected what he told investigators. He previously stepped down from the deputy director’s job and was preparing to retire from the FBI on Sunday, which would have assured him of a full federal pension. The rushed timing of the firing on Friday night by Attorney General Jeff Sessions — whose own job security is perpetually threatened by Mr. Trump — robs Mr. McCabe of that full pension.

As Mr. Trump knows, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been reported to be looking into possible obstruction of justice in the firing of Mr. Comey. Mr. McCabe could be a vital witness in such a prosecution. Now the president has attempted to discredit, and lauded the punishment of, a potential witness against him, an affront to the integrity and independence of law enforcement.

Mr. McCabe’s actions as deputy FBI director are hard to evaluate without release of the inspector general’s report, due out this spring. There will be time to judge him then. What is clear today is that the president jumped on Mr. McCabe with unseemly ferocity, tweeting: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.”

In fact, the hardworking men and women of the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence agencies and elsewhere in government come to work every day to uphold the values of a democratic system based on rule of law — a system that is distinguished by the simple principle that everyone is judged fairly, not by grudge or whim, and that no one is above the law, not even the president.”

***********************

Lest there were any doubt about it, by canning McCabe less than 48 hours before his retirement, Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions cemented his position as a person just as small in heart, soul, character, and integrity as he is in stature.

The irony here is rich: What about Gonzo’s own frequent intentional and rather incredibly claimed “lapses” in candor, whether under oath or not?

PWS

03-19-18

Related posts:

  1. JRUBE: GOP “PARTY OF PUTIN” OUT OF CONTROL!
  2. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  3. GONZO’S WORLD: PERVERSION @ JUSTICE: IN THE NAME OF TRUMP & WHITE NATIONALISM, HE’S TRASHED THE U.S. CONSTITUTION, THE RULE OF LAW, THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES, GAYS, IMMIGRANTS, WOMEN, & OTHERS, AND OVERALL HUMAN COMPASSION & DECENCY– BUT, SESSIONS’S ONE NOTABLE INSTANCE OF ACTING ETHICALLY AND LAWFULLY IS UNFORGIVABLE IN TRUMP’S EYES!
  4. SLEAZE-BALL-IN-CHIEF: TRUMP WANTED TO FIRE MUELLER IN JUNE ON BOGUS GROUNDS — WHITE HOUSE LAWYER’S THREAT TO QUIT STOPPED HIM!

ETHICS HOT SEAT: TRUMP LAWYERS’ DILEMMA: How Do You Prepare A Congenital Liar To Testify Under Oath?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/donald-trump-robert-mueller-interview

Abagail Tracy reports for Vanity Fair:

“The most difficult decision a lawyer has to make is whether to allow his client to speak to the prosecutor—or in this case, the special counsel,” Robert Bennett told me, referring to the unfolding chess match between Donald Trump and Robert Mueller. Bennett, the Brooklyn-born Washington superlawyer, would know, having represented President Bill Clinton in the Kenneth Starr investigation. For a fabulist like Trump, however, the danger is tenfold: Mueller has already charged four former members of the Trump campaign with making false or misleading statements to the F.B.I. “I think there are tremendous risks in this case, because the easiest case for the government to prove would be a false statement given to the F.B.I. or the independent counsel,” Bennett added. “That’s a very easy one to prove.”

While the president initially said he is “100 percent” willing to meet with Mueller under oath, his legal team has cautioned that any interview could be a perjury trap. “He’ll be guided by the advice of his personal counsel,” Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer on the Russia inquiry, told The New York Times. For months, Trump’s lawyers have been engaged in discussions with Mueller’s team, weighing options that could mitigate the president’s legal risk. Though the format of the potential interview remains an open question, Mueller, wielding the power of subpoena, has the upper hand in shaping the negotiations. “What matters is how much leverage you have on either side,” said Renato Mariotti, a former Chicago prosecutor. “Mueller has most of the leverage . . . in the end, Mueller is going to get most, if not the vast majority, of what he wants.”

The challenge for Trump’s legal team, led by Cobb and John Dowd, is to protect the president from himself under conditions acceptable to Mueller. “It’s a very bad sign for the president that his own lawyers are so worried about whether he’s going to tell the truth that they’re trying to negotiate all of these conditions ahead of time,” Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama, told me. “Ordinarily, when you’re representing a high-ranking government official, you’re not worried about your client being forthcoming because that goes with the nature of government service. But here, I think the lawyers are wise to worry, just given Donald Trump’s track record of him confabulating in any number of ways.”

*********************************

Read the rest of Tracy’s article at the above link.

I don’t have much doubt that Trump will perjure himself. I don’t think he could tell the truth if his life depended on it. And, it’s likely that Mueller will be able to build a convincing case for obstruction against the Liar-In-Chief.

But, Trump relies heavily on the complicity of  the sleazy GOP he has come to dominate and the indifference of his voters to moral values or honest government. Trump is used to at least figuratively “getting away with murder” (remember his all too true boast that he could shoot someone in broad daylight in Times Square and his voters wouldn’t care). So, the chances of Trump being held accountable are probably minimal until 2024.

PWS

02-28-18

Related posts:

  1. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  2. WHAT DOES TRUMP HAVE IN COMMON WITH THE GAMBINO CRIME FAMILY OTHER THAN AUDACIOUS DISHONESTY AND A PENCHANT FOR FRAUD? — PERHAPS, MUELLER & CO ARE GOING TO “ROLL UP” THE TRUMPSTERS JUST THE WAY THEY DID THE GAMBINOS! – Will Rick Gates Be The Reincarnation of “Sammy The Bull?”
  3. JRUBE: GOP “PARTY OF PUTIN” OUT OF CONTROL!
  4. THIRD WORLD AMERICA! – THE ATTACK OF THE SWAMP RATS! — Under Trump’s GOP, Americans Now Correctly View White House As The Most Corrupt Institution — But, Who Are The Fools Who Voted These Immoral Jokers Into Control?

WHAT DOES TRUMP HAVE IN COMMON WITH THE GAMBINO CRIME FAMILY OTHER THAN AUDACIOUS DISHONESTY AND A PENCHANT FOR FRAUD? — PERHAPS, MUELLER & CO ARE GOING TO “ROLL UP” THE TRUMPSTERS JUST THE WAY THEY DID THE GAMBINOS! – Will Rick Gates Be The Reincarnation of “Sammy The Bull?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/rick-gates-robert-mueller-donald-trump

Abigail Tracy writes in Vanity Fair:

“Even among some of Donald Trump’s allies, there is a sense of astonishment at the White House’s handling of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. “It’s like no one took down the Gambino family,” Steve BannontoldChris Whipple in a book adaptation the Hive published this week. “Mueller’s doing a roll-up just like he did with the Gambinos. [Paul] Manafort’s the caporegime, right? And [Rick] Gates is a made man!” Indeed, Mueller, who led the F.B.I. takedown of the infamous crime family in the early 1990s, famously cutting a deal with Sammy the Bull to flip on mob boss John Gotti, appears to be executing what some have called a “Gambino-style roll-up.” First, he flippedformer Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos; then, he turnedousted national security adviser Michael Flynn. Now, CNN reports, Mueller appears to be in the final stages of a plea deal with Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman and a longtime business associate of Manafort, who was indicted alongside him last fall.

The White House reportedly views Gates’s testimony as a threat to Manafort, and not to the president. “There’d be no anxiety here,” a White House official told CNN when asked about the possibility that Gates will cut a deal. The charges against the two, after all, had nothing do with Russian collusion; the 12 counts included failure to register as a foreign agent, false and misleading statements related to that registration, and seven counts of improper foreign financial reporting—all as part of a broader conspiracy to launder millions of dollars from their consulting work in Ukraine into the United States. Manafort has pleaded not guilty, and is fighting the charges. But Gates, who has also pleaded not guilty, has been grappling with financial troubles and difficulties with his legal team. According to CNN, he has been in plea negotiations with Mueller’s team of F.B.I. investigators for about a month, and has already given an interview in which he would have revealed any knowledge he might have of criminal activity that could be traded for leniency or immunity in sentencing.

What this means for the White House isn’t exactly clear. While Manafort’s reign as campaign chairman and Gates’s role as his deputy were short-lived, the duo oversaw a series of events and interactions that have come under intense scrutiny in the ongoing Justice Department probe. Manafort and Gates ran the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, during which Donald Trump Jr. held his infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer. They were also on board during the Republican National Convention, where a number of Trump campaign officials and surrogates met with Russian officials and campaign officials altered the language of the official G.O.P. platform on Ukraine to be more sympathetic to Russian interests. While Manafort was replaced by Bannon after The New York Times alleged that handwritten ledgers showed millions in undisclosed cash payments designated for Manafort in Ukraine—a claim Manafort denies—Gates continued to work with the Trump campaign through the transition, and served as a senior official on Trump’s inaugural committee.”

For now, the most significant facts in the case remain under lock. Adam Schiff, the top ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that the panel has discovered evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 campaign, as well as evidence of subsequent obstruction. “There is certainly an abundance of non-public information that we’ve gathered in the investigation,” Schiff toldreporters. Whether that information is actionable remains to be seen. According to the White House’s own budget request, the administration expects Mueller’s investigation to continue well into next year, despite repeated assurances from the president’s legal team that it was approaching a conclusion. If Gates has the goods, perhaps it will end sooner.

*****************************************

No, the “Don of Con” isn’t “in the clear” as he incredibly asserts. In fact, it appears that the noose is slowly tightening. Exactly the kind of “dangling in the wind” to which The Don likes to subject those subordinates whom he suspects of disloyalty.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” And, there’s so much smoke surrounding The Don, his family, and his current and former associates right now that it’s a miracle nobody in the White House has succumbed to smoke inhalation.

PWS

02-17-18

Related posts:

  1. PUTIN’S PATSIES: GOP RAMPS UP PLAN TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE AT JUSTICE – With McCabe Ousted, DAG Rosenstein Appears To Be Next Target In GOP’s Move To Subvert American Government!
  2. CRIME/NATIONAL SECURITY/TRUMP: “NO DOUBTER” – ANYONE WHO THINKS THAT VALDI PUTIN DIDN’T HELP ELECT TRUMP IS BADLY MISTAKEN – Just Read Mueller’s Latest Indictment! – I’ve Got It for You!
  3. JRUBE: GOP “PARTY OF PUTIN” OUT OF CONTROL!
  4. ETHICS HOT SEAT: TRUMP LAWYERS’ DILEMMA: How Do You Prepare A Congenital Liar To Testify Under Oath?