WASHINGTON -- House Democrats, recovering from their failed push to remove President Donald Trump from office, are making a sharp pivot to talking about health care and economic issues, turning away from their investigations of the president as they focus on preserving their majority.Top Democrats said that oversight of the president will continue, and they plan in particular to press Attorney General William Barr over what they said are Trump's efforts to compromise the independence of the Justice Department. But for now, at least, they have shelved the idea of subpoenaing Trump's former national security adviser, who was a central figure in the president's impeachment trial.In a series of private meetings over the past week and in written instructions she distributed to lawmakers Thursday before a recess this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear that the emphasis must shift."Health care, health care, health care," the speaker said, describing the party's message during a recent closed-door meeting, according to a person in the room who insisted on anonymity to reveal private conversations. She said they had to be laser-focused on getting reelected: "When you make a decision to win, then you have to make every decision in favor of winning."The move is particularly striking given how aggressively Trump, emboldened by his acquittal by the Senate, has moved to take revenge on his perceived enemies and push the limits of his power. But just as they did before the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats appear to have decided that focusing on Trump's near-daily stream of norm-shattering words and deeds only elevates him, while alienating the swing voters they need to maintain their hold on the House and have a chance at winning the Senate.Given that the House has already taken the most powerful step a Congress can take to hold a chief executive accountable -- impeachment -- Democrats reason that there is little more they can do. Some said Trump brings enough attention to his conduct all on his own."His erratic, corrupt, unconstitutional behavior speaks for itself at this point," Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said in an interview Friday.In the nearly two weeks since the Senate acquitted Trump, Pelosi has been urging her rank and file to emphasize the same three-pronged "For the People" agenda -- creating jobs, cleaning up corruption in Washington and, above all, bringing down the high cost of health care -- that won Democrats the majority in 2018. Democrats said the $4.8 trillion budget Trump released last week makes it easier to contrast his priorities with their own.The budget would cut funding for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps and federal student loans. In the "recess packet" Pelosi distributed to lawmakers before they went home, she offered a list of suggested events in their districts -- like visits to a senior center, a food bank and an after-school program -- that could serve to highlight the impact of the proposed cuts."What the president has put forth is a destructive and irrational budget that intentionally goes after working families and vulnerable Americans," the document said.Pelosi also brought in Steven Rattner, an investment banker who advised President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, to brief Democrats privately about ways to target Trump's economic record. Rattner showed a PowerPoint presentation, portions of which were shared with The New York Times by a person who attended, with statistics showing how income inequality has worsened under Trump and how the economic gains during his tenure -- largely in the stock market -- have failed to benefit working people and the middle class.Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a freshman Democrat who represents a swing district in Pennsylvania, said that was what she would talk about when she was at home."We keep seeing more and more data about the recovery that the administration is touting, the great economy," she said. "But what hits people who have a lot of stock holdings is not hitting the families in my district. Over half of them are underwater at the end of every month now, once they pay for health care and child care and housing."The move to put impeachment in the rearview mirror comes after a dismal two weeks for Democrats. First, the Iowa caucuses turned into an electoral debacle, with no clear winner. Then a triumphant Trump delivered his State of the Union address and was acquitted the next day. Finally, Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, won the Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, jangling the nerves of moderate lawmakers.After the Senate wrapped up Trump's impeachment trial without calling any witnesses, congressional Democrats were particularly curious about what testimony John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, might have offered. Bolton asserts in a tell-all book that is set to go on sale next month that the president withheld $391 million in security aid from Ukraine to pressure the country to investigate his political rivals, corroborating a charge that was at the center of the president's impeachment.Members of the House Intelligence Committee have begun discussing whether to subpoena Bolton; they might consider doing so, for instance, if the White House succeeds in blocking publication of his book, according to a committee official who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.But Jeffries said there had been "no discussion" of trying to compel Bolton to testify, either in the Judiciary Committee, on which he serves, or at the leadership level."It has not been an issue post-impeachment," Jeffries said, adding, "I've been very clear -- and I think the speaker has, and other leaders -- that our focus should continue to be on the 'For the People' agenda, which we articulated to the American people in advance of November 2018."That may be easier said than done. Trump has complicated Democrats' push to change the subject by mounting a brash and highly public post-impeachment campaign of retribution, firing witnesses who testified against him and objecting to the Justice Department's prosecution of his friend Roger Stone. After senior officials there overruled career prosecutors to recommend Stone receive a lighter sentence, four prosecutors who worked on the case resigned. Trump then cheered the attorney general on Twitter."The impact of the prosecutors resigning en masse was huge," Scanlon, who is also vice chairwoman of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Thursday before lawmakers left Washington. "That doesn't happen with career prosecutors, and it signaled really serious misconduct. So we will have to look at that."Democrats have summoned Barr to testify before the Judiciary Committee on March 31. In a harshly worded letter sent to Barr on Wednesday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the panel's chairman, signaled that Democrats planned to question Barr about overruling prosecutors on Stone's recommended sentence and Barr's willingness to accept information about Ukraine from Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, among other matters.Nadler told Barr in the letter that the panel had "grave questions about your leadership" at the Justice Department.Since then, the matter has only escalated. Barr, in an extraordinary rebuke of the president Thursday, said Trump's Twitter attacks on the Justice Department "made it impossible" for him to do his job. Trump fired back Friday, asserting via tweets that he had a "legal right" to interfere in Justice Department cases.And Bolton's book, which is scheduled to go on sale March 17, could yield additional revelations about the president's behavior with respect to Ukraine and revive calls for Bolton to testify.At the same time, cases related to other House investigations of the president, including examinations of his finances and whether he violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by accepting payments from representatives of foreign governments who frequent his hotels, are working their way through the courts.The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether Trump can block the release of his financial records; a ruling is expected by June. An appeals court is considering whether Trump can order his advisers, including Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, from complying with congressional subpoenas.Still, Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass. and vice chairwoman of the Democratic caucus, said Democrats believed the cure for Trump's behavior runs through the ballot box."A lot of this is going to be up to making sure that we are successful in November," she said.Democrats said they have never taken their eyes off their legislative agenda, in particular lowering health care costs. Even as they voted to impeach Trump, Democrats teamed up with him on a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada.Before they left for recess, Democrats unveiled a $760 billion infrastructure plan that they have said is aimed at jump-starting bipartisan talks with the administration on how to fix the nation's crumbling roads, rails and bridges. Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said the plan would give Democrats something tangible to talk about in their home districts. But the chances of any election-year deal with Trump on the issue are vanishingly remote.Garin said his surveys on impeachment showed that while most Americans were ambivalent about removing the president from office, a majority believe he engaged in wrongdoing and committed the acts that formed the basis for the charges against him. Even so, Garin urged Democrats to follow the plan Pelosi had outlined for them."House Democrats need to talk about the same issues they've been talking about all along, which include the cost of health care and the need to lower the cost of prescription drugs, and about cleaning up government so that it works for the people and not for special interests," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

* More than 1,000 public servants decry presidential interference * Aide Conway claims justice system rigged against Trump * Robert Reich: assaulting justice, Trump has out-Nixoned NixonMore than 1,000 former US justice department officials, including some of the top government lawyers in the country, have called on attorney general William Barr to resign in the wake of the Roger Stone scandal.Some 1,143 alumni of the Department of Justice posted to Medium on Sunday a group letter that tore into Barr for “doing the president’s personal bidding” in imposing on prosecutors the recommendation of a reduced sentence for Stone, a longtime friend of Donald Trump who was convicted of lying to and obstructing Congress and threatening a witness in the Russia investigation.Barr, the officials said, had damaged the reputation of the department for “integrity and the rule of law”.The searing letter is the latest twist in a rapidly spiraling constitutional crisis that began earlier this week when Barr imposed his new sentencing memo, slashing a seven- to nine-year proposed prison term suggested by career prosecutors. In the fallout, the four prosecutors who had handled the case resigned in disgust.The letter carries weight because its signatories are exclusively drawn from past DoJ public servants. Among them are several former US attorneys appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents and section chiefs of key elements of the justice department including its antiterrorism unit.They write that it is unheard of for top leaders of the justice department to overrule line prosecutors in order to give preferential treatment to close associates of the president. They say that amounts to political interference that is “anathema to the department’s core mission and to its sacred obligation to ensure equal justice under the law”.Barr’s action amounted to an existential threat to the republic, the former officials say: “Governments that use the enormous power of law enforcement to punish their enemies and reward their allies are not constitutional republics; they are autocracies.”Barr tried to squash the perception he had been leaned on by Trump by calling on the president to stop tweeting about criminal prosecutions. He told ABC News such unrestrained comments were “making it impossible for me to do my job”.But speculation continued to swirl that Barr had kowtowed to the president. Demoralisation spread rapidly through the DoJ, intensifying when it emerged that Barr has ordered outside prosecutors to re-examine criminal cases against Trump associates including former national security adviser Michael Flynn.> The president thinks Andy McCabe should have been punished because he lied and lied several times to the investigators> > Kellyanne ConwayDespite palpable distress among both serving and former officials, and multiple warnings that Trump and Barr are threatening the very rule of law, the White House has continued to inflame the situation. Trump counsellor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday claimed the president was a victim of a “two-tier criminal justice system” that was actively undermining him and his associates.Conway used Fox News Sunday to pour fuel on the fire. The truth, she claimed, was that far from making a dangerous intervention in criminal cases involving his friends and perceived enemies, Trump himself is the victim of the politicisation of the justice system.“If you’re President Trump or people associated with him there’s prosecutions that have gone one way,” Conway said, alluding to the original sentence recommended for Stone which she contrasted with the decision announced by the justice department on Friday to drop charges against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.Directly contradicting her own claim that Trump, despite his “vast powers”, was not engaging in political interference in criminal cases, Conway proceeded to interfere in a criminal case. She called McCabe a “serial liar and leaker” and went on: “The president thinks that Andy McCabe should have been punished because he lied and lied several times to the investigators.”McCabe, a deputy to fired FBI director James Comey and a key figure in the Russia investigation, was fired by Trump in March 2018, two days shy of retirement.The furore over Trump ignoring protocols that have kept a distance between the White House and federal prosecutors since Watergate began when the president slammed the proposed sentence for Stone as “horrible and very unfair”. Hours later, Barr announced that he was imposing a reduced recommended sentence.Trump then made the constitutionally dubious claim that as president he has the “legal right” to stick his finger into any criminal case.On Saturday he duly re-entered the fray over McCabe, claiming falsely that DoJ inspector general Michael Horowitz recommended the former FBI man’s firing. Horowitz referred criticisms of McCabe to prosecutors but did not recommend dismissal.On Sunday Marc Short, chief of staff to vice-president Mike Pence, made further contentious comments on CNN’s State of the Union. Like Conway, he claimed without evidence that criminal justice was skewed against the president.“The scales of justice aren’t balanced any more,” he said, “when someone like Roger Stone gets a prosecution that suggests a nine-year jail sentence and candidly someone like Andy McCabe who also lied to federal investigators gets a lucrative contract here at CNN. People say, ‘How is this fair?’ and that’s the source of the president’s frustration.”The row has also become a major talking point among Democrats vying to take on Trump in November. Former vice-president Joe Biden told NBC’s Meet the Press: “No one, no one, including Richard Nixon, has weaponised the Department of Justice” as much as Trump.The crisis is personal for Biden, given the efforts to coerce Ukraine into investigating him and his son Hunter which led to Trump’s impeachment. Last week it was revealed that Barr has set up a channel to review information gathered in Ukraine by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani relating to the Bidens.“To have a thug like Rudy Giuliani reporting to the attorney general – I mean this is, this is almost like a really bad sitcom,” Biden said.“Any self-respecting Republican or Democratic top-flight lawyer would have just resigned by now, in my view. It’s just the things that are being done are so beyond the pale.”

WASHINGTON -- In an email a few days ago to the 270 lawyers he oversees, Nicola T. Hanna, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, offered a message of reassurance: I am proud of the work you do, he wrote.Other U.S. attorneys in the Justice Department's far-flung 93 field offices relayed similar messages of encouragement after President Donald Trump's efforts to influence a politically fraught case provoked the kind of consternation the department has rarely seen since the Watergate era. "All I have to say," another U.S. attorney wrote to his staff, "is keep doing the right things for the right reasons."But the fact that the department's 10,000-odd lawyers needed reassurances seemed like cause for worry all by itself.In more than three dozen interviews in recent days, lawyers across the federal government's legal establishment wondered aloud whether Trump was undermining the Justice Department's treasured reputation for upholding the law without favor or political bias -- and whether Attorney General William Barr was able or willing to protect it.Trump elicited those fears by denouncing federal prosecutors who had recommended a prison sentence of up to nine years for his longtime friend and political adviser Roger Stone. Barr fanned them by scrapping the recommendation in favor of a far more lenient one, leading the prosecutors to quit the case in protest.Barr then took to national television to complain that Trump's angry tweets were undermining him and his department's credibility -- a sign to some current and former lawyers that the department's freedom from political influence is in imminent danger.Their worries are compounded by the fact that people in Trump's circle have been mired in so many criminal or ethical scandals that practically any legal action on those cases could be seen through a political lens.As many of the department lawyers and some recently departed colleagues see it, Barr has devoted much of his authority and stature to bolster the president since he took office a year ago.In ever stronger terms, he has attacked the FBI's investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. He has said it was mounted on "the thinnest of suspicions" and advanced despite a lack of evidence. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, ultimately found insufficient evidence that the president or his advisers engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia but documented their openness to Moscow's sabotage effort.While he has pledged that the department will not pursue politically motivated investigations, Barr said this month that he had created an "intake process" for the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to forward supposed proof of misconduct in Ukraine. Giuliani has claimed to have evidence damaging to former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.This month, Barr ordered reviews of several politically sensitive cases handled by career prosecutors in Washington, including that of the president's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, which has become a flash point for pro-Trump activists.Meanwhile, Barr's expansive view of presidential authority has helped Trump fight off congressional oversight. It was the Justice Department, for instance, that decided it was unnecessary to give Congress the whistleblower complaint that ultimately led to the president's impeachment.Barr's critics say those and other moves have all but invited increasingly aggressive demands from the White House. His supporters in the Justice Department counter that he has used his political capital to protect the department and national security interests. But they sound increasingly worried about whether he will be able to manage the expectations of an ever more volatile president.Barr's effort this week to scale back those expectations, officials said, was born of necessity. He is said to have told the president privately that he will not open politically inspired inquiries on Trump's behalf and that the president's public comments about specific criminal cases are damaging the department's work.When the president's public outburst over the prosecutors' sentencing recommendation for Stone made it clear that Barr's message had not sunk in, Barr and a few trusted advisers elected to deliver it again in a way that has repeatedly proved effective in grabbing the president's attention: on television, this time in a nationally broadcast interview with ABC News.By the end of the week, many at the Justice Department's headquarters were uncertain whether that interview would resolve what some called an increasingly untenable situation. Some steeled themselves for a stream of presidential invective or even Barr's departure in response.In the legal trenches where the department's lawyers handle controversial cases on a daily basis, some expressed relief that Barr had defended the department and tried to set boundaries for a president seemingly intent on erasing the red line between political motivations and individual criminal cases that has prevailed since Watergate."Thank God," one lawyer said. "I was beginning to be really upset over the sentencing, but I really admire that he told Trump to shut up," said another. A third wrote in a memo: "Barr was EXACTLY right."But others questioned Barr's sincerity, saying he was already too closely aligned with Trump's political priorities to accept his words at face value.One described Barr's timing as self-serving, saying that the president had attacked the department before but Barr spoke up only when he felt his own credibility was on the line. Another suggested that the best way for Barr to demonstrate his integrity would be to resign.All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists, or for fear of job repercussions. A spokeswoman for Barr declined to comment.The supervisor of one team of prosecutors questioned whether the Stone case portended a presidential crusade to use the department's legal powers to damage his political enemies and help his friends. Is it "a one-off or a trend?" another supervisor in a different office asked.Some former senior officials predicted that government lawyers, especially those with politically sensitive cases, would face new skepticism in court about the department's motivations."I'm sure that some DOJ attorneys feel that judges are not going to look at them in the same way," said Mary McCord, a former assistant attorney general for the department's national security division. "And I'm sure there are judges who are going to wonder, 'Can we credit what you say, or is DOJ going to come back tomorrow and say something different?'"Generally, lawyers across the department's vast legal apparatus said they were simply trying to ignore the political drama unfolding in Washington and concentrate on their own work.In the capital, the Justice Department has been grappling with Trump's tweets almost since he took office. Amazon is suing the government over its loss of a $10 billion defense contract, saying Trump's tweets prove his animosity toward its founder, Jeff Bezos. A team of Justice Department lawyers moved to withdraw from a case over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census after Trump blindsided them by declaring on Twitter that their assertions in court were "fake."Until last spring, the impact of Trump's outbursts about criminal prosecutions were blunted somewhat by the fact that he largely aimed them at Mueller, whose stature with Congress and the public made it unlikely he would be fired.Even then, Trump or his legal team hinted broadly at the prospect of pardons for some associates who faced criminal charges brought by the Mueller team. And Trump publicly praised one defendant, his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, even as a federal jury deliberated whether to convict him on financial fraud charges.But U.S. attorneys lack the political buffer that Mueller enjoyed. So Trump's attacks on the career prosecutors in Stone's case carry different weight.In his interview with ABC News, Barr seemed concerned about the possibility of more mass defections. Three prosecutors withdrew from the Stone case while the fourth resigned from the department entirely the week before Judge Amy Berman Jackson of U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia was scheduled to sentence Stone."I hope there are no more resignations," Barr said. "We, we like our prosecutors and hope they stay."As Trump has pointed out on Twitter, two of those prosecutors -- Aaron Zelinsky and Adam C. Jed -- helped carry out the special counsel's investigation, which Trump detested. Their supervisors reassured them this week that they would suffer no retaliation for withdrawing from the Stone case.Timothy J. Shea, a close ally of Barr's who took over this month as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sent his staff an email of support this week. "While there are times where reasonable minds may disagree, I respect the work that each of you do, and I will do my best to support our work," he wrote.Shea's role is especially fraught because the Washington office, the largest in the country with 300 lawyers, often handles politically sensitive cases and inherited several prosecutions begun under Mueller. At least some in that office privately complained that Trump and Barr both treated Shea's predecessor, Jessie K. Liu, shabbily.Liu, a Trump appointee, was viewed in the office as a leader who helped protect prosecutors from political meddling. But her relationship with other department officials grew strained, especially after she decided there was insufficient evidence to seek an indictment of Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of the president, according to two people familiar with the situation.She was nominated for a top job at the Treasury Department and transferred there this month to await her confirmation. Then this week, the president decided to rescind her nomination, even over Barr's objections, according to three people familiar with the discussions.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin delivered the news in a meeting, according to one of them. He gave her no reason for the reversal, and Liu resigned from the government.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company