The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.
Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect writes—Which Are the Real Mismanaged States?
Republicans seem bent on finding a way to punish the blue states in the next tranche of emergency legislation coming from the Congress. Rick Scott, the former governor and current senator from Florida, has contrasted his state’s low budgets with those of blue New York and California (all of which were in balance before the pandemic struck), while President Trump has claimed that “Republican states are in strong shape.” Trump has also chastised states with Democratic governors for their presumed tardiness in lifting shelter-in-place orders. “There just seems to be no effort on certain blue states to get back into gear,” he has lamented.
The real difference between blue states and red, if I may borrow a term from the anti-choice movement, is that the blue states are pro-life while the red states are largely indifferent to same.
That’s certainly clear from the divide we’re seeing on the readiness to open states up at a time when the rate at which COVID-19 is spreading is still increasing in most parts of the country. It’s also true when it comes to matters budgetary. Allegedly well-managed Florida has had perhaps the most inefficient unemployment insurance system in the country. As of mid-April, more than 850,000 Floridians had filed for unemployment, while a bare 34,000 had actually received checks. The number of applicants has now grown to 1.9 million, of whom just 28 percent have received their UI from the state. Had Scott and his Republican successor as governor, Ron DeSantis, invested a sufficient level of public funds to create a more well-run system, Floridians wouldn’t now be subjected to this breakdown in necessary state services.
Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner at The New York Times writes—There Used to Be Justice. Now We Have Bill Barr:
It’s easy to grow numb to the abuses of the Trump era. But Mr. Barr’s intervention in the Flynn and Stone cases is a deviation even from the standards at the outset of Mr. Trump’s presidency. The corrosion at the Justice Department from the beginning to the homestretch of Mr. Trump’s first term illustrates a long-term problem of maintaining the independence of a department with unrivaled powers of investigation and prosecution. [...]
The attorney general, whom the president hires and can fire, is supposed to advise the president and advance his or her policies. But he is also obligated to enforce the law impartially and not to use it to shield the president’s allies or punish his enemies.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Why Aren’t More Newspapers Calling on Trump to Resign?
Much of the country seems to have grown complacent about the massive failures, criminal violations, and ubiquitous lies coming from Donald Trump. It would be an overwhelming task to chronicle all of them, but Joe Lockhart made an attempt to highlight the most egregious.
After three years of political and actual carnage under Trump, including Robert Mueller’s description of acts that amounted to, he told Congress, obstruction of justice; Trump’s “fine people on both sides” reaction to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville where a counter-protester was killed; his rampant conflicts of interest and credible accusations of his violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution; his close to 17,000 false statements; a travel ban that primarily targets mostly Muslim-majority countries;impeachment for alleged extortion of a foreign government (he was acquitted in the Republican Senate), and the gross mishandling of a deadly pandemic, you’d think somebody on an editorial board might say it’s time for the President to leave.
That was part of a column by Lockhart in which he attempted to answer the question of why more newspaper editorial boards haven’t called for Trump’s resignation. For some historical precedent, he notes the following.
By the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974, virtually every major newspaper in America had called for President Richard Nixon’s resignation. During the investigation and impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, more than 100 newspapers called for him to resign.
Given that both Woodward and Bernstein have said that Trump’s Ukraine scandal alone was worse than Watergate, it is an important question to ask.
Leanna S. Wen at The Washington Post writes—We’re retreating to a new strategy on COVID-19. Let’s call it what it is:
The administration has yet to use these words, but it appears that we’re adopting a strategy that I recognize from other aspects of public health: harm reduction.
Harm reduction was initially developed as a public health approach to reduce the negative consequences of drug use. It recognizes that while stopping drug use is the desired outcome, many people won’t be able to do that. For those individuals, needle-exchange programs can reduce their risk of acquiring HIV and hepatitis and transmitting these infections to others. Such programs do not promote or condone drug use, as some critics contend. Rather, they face the reality that if a behavior with harmful consequences is going to happen regardless, steps should be taken to reduce the risk for both individuals and others around them. Think, too, of safe-sex campaigns, or motorcycle helmet laws.
And this seems to me where we are with covid-19: We’re no longer trying to eliminate the virus. Instead, we are accepting that Americans will have to live with it.
Mindy Isser at Jacobin writes—The Post Office Is a National Treasure. We Can’t Let the Privatizers Destroy It:
On May 6, President Trump appointed longtime GOP donor Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman, as the new postmaster general. Curiously absent from DeJoy’s résumé is any experience working in the USPS — the first time in nearly two decades the postmaster general has not been selected from the postal service’s ranks. In a statement on DeJoy’s appointment, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) — one of four unions that represent postal employees — said that if DeJoy pursues an agenda of privatization, he “will be met with stiff resistance from postal workers and the people of this country.”
There’s plenty of reason to suspect DeJoy will do so, falling in line with the man who selected him. [...]
The USPS is the second largest employer in the country — topped only by the federal government — with over 600,000 workers. A little more than one-third of postal employees are women; 18 percent are veterans. A source of well-paying, union jobs, the USPS is also an engine for racial justice. Nearly a quarter of all postal workers are black, and the postal service has long been a means for black Americans to access decent pay and stable working conditions. As early as 1861, federal employment in the postal service was open to African Americans, and since the end of the Civil War it has provided a home for black workers throughout the country. As William Burrus, the first black president of the American Postal Workers Union, has warned, a successful assault on the postal service would “put an end to the relationship between people of color and their opportunity to climb up the ladder of success in our country … The post office has permitted millions of African-Americans to better themselves.”
Amanda Marcotte at Salon writes—Trump flunkies try to scapegoat Anthony Fauci — but we all know who's really to blame:
Just a month ago, I predicted that Donald Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and right-wing media were setting up Dr. Anthony Fauci as their scapegoat for Trump's massive failures. (That admittedly wasn't difficult, since the far right has been attacking Fauci all along.) Now here we are, with the death toll from the novel coronavirus soaring past 83,000 and the unemployment rate at 15% (and likely closer to 20%) and, sure enough, some of the worst Trump flunkies are looking to blame the sober-minded infectious disease expert who's been working tirelessly on the coronavirus problem, despite having the worst possible boss imaginable.
Some on the right, in their ludicrous efforts to depict Trump as blameless (and almost hapless), are painting Fauci as an all-powerful mastermind who is somehow controlling the government against the president's will — and even suggesting he's faking the scientific understanding of how contagious the coronavirus is. [...]
This is the paradox of Trumpian authoritarianism. On one hand, Trump ran on the promise that "I alone can fix it", but from the second he set foot in the Oval Office, he and his supporters have depicted him as a helpless child being controlled by a nefarious "deep state" that is working against him. Now the narrative forming against Fauci holds that he somehow manipulated Trump or controlled his decisions on handling the coronavirus.
Kim Kelly at The Baffler writes—Barely Necessities:
ONE OF THE DEFINING PORTRAITS of the coronavirus crisis has been that of the heroic, self-sacrificing “essential worker”—the doctor, nurse, janitor, transit operator, grocery store worker, farmworker, or meatpacking plant worker—who valiantly reports to their job each day, often swathed in public accolades instead of PPE, and gives their all to keep society running smoothly. Many of them are paid minimum wage and lack health insurance and other benefits. In New York City, the current epicenter of the pandemic, they’re even greeted with a nightly round of applause and pot clanging.
Many writers—and workers themselves—have pointed out the cognitive dissonance that comes with treating essential workers with the forehead-scraping reverence usually reserved for battered troops returning from one of our imperialist forever wars. It’s even more awkward for those who are still putting in hours at businesses that have been deemed “essential” but are really anything but, from print shops to pet grooming salons. These reluctant heroes are yet another example of how the United States values capital over labor, and how bosses can (and will) exploit any legal loophole they find, even amid a global public health crisis, in their pursuit of the almighty dollar.
William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut writes—The HEROES Act Is a Vital Step Toward Ending COVID, So of Course It Is Doomed:
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) unveiled the beginnings of an answer to this crisis. The $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or HEROES Act, would be the largest relief package ever passed in the U.S. if it actually sees the light of day. It is incomplete in a number of vital areas, but it is a stupendous improvement over Trump’s whistle-past-the-overflowing-graveyard plan of pretending none of this is actually happening. [...]
The centerpiece of the bill is another $1,200 direct payment to individuals — up to $6,000 per household. As with the previous relief package, this would also be a one-time payment, and that has led to some appropriately vigorous argument from the progressive wing of the Democratic party.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Ilhan Omar (D-Minneapolis) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) co-signed a letter to Speaker Pelosi urging the HEROES Act be modified to make such payments a recurring monthly phenomenon. There was talk of doing just that in the early stages of the bill’s drafting — Senators Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), Kamala Harris (D-California) and Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) proposed legislation guaranteeing a $2,000 monthly payment to citizens for the duration of the pandemic — but those ideas did not survive the final draft.
Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg writes—Republican Deficit Hawking Is About to Backfire:
Republicans, then, are not guilty of hypocritically caring about the deficit only when they are out of office. They never care about the actual budget deficit, while always caring about their specific positions on spending and revenue. It’s true that they deploy the rhetoric of deficit reduction when they believe it will help them politically (which, of course, is the way political parties always use words).
But while the emphasis sometimes changes, the policy usually doesn’t. They favor lower taxes, especially for the wealthy, lower spending on many social programs and higher spending on programs for the military, among a few other things, more or less all the time. What’s striking about the mainstream Republican position is consistency, not hypocrisy. Even during the pandemic, they resisted Democratic efforts to spend money on hospitals and expanded coronavirus testing. Yes, they supported funding to support failing businesses, but again: Republicans don’t consider all government spending to pump up the deficit — just spending on things they don’t like.
Now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other congressional Republicans are reluctant to agree to any new pandemic relief and stimulus money. Because, they say, of the deficit. I don’t think this means they expect to lose power in November, as at least one political scientist has speculated, or that they’re bluffing; it just needs translation. When they say they care about deficits, it just means that they oppose this particular kind of spending — in this case, aid to state and local governments, extended unemployment benefits, money for health care and the post office, and more.
Michael H. Fuchs at The Guardian writes—Trump is making America an obstacle in the global fight against Covid-19:
President Donald Trump’s incompetent handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating the death and destruction caused by the virus in the US. It is also crippling the global response to the crisis, and the costs could be even deadlier.
When global crises hit, American leadership is essential. Whether it was launching the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) or marshaling efforts to respond to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the US has played a central role in tackling many of the world’s deadliest health crises. American leadership is far from perfect, but it is necessary to tackle threats of a global magnitude.
This pandemic is one of the greatest challenges the world has faced since the second world war. [...]
A successful global effort to defeat the pandemic will require a robust American response. Instead, Trump is making it harder for the world to address the crisis.
Mark Hertsgaard at Covering Climate Now writes—The COVID-19 Stimulus Debate Is a Pivotal Climate Story:
Of course, it’s neither desirable nor feasible to keep economies on permanent lockdown in the name of climate stability. Which may explain why variations of a Green New Deal, an idea first pressed by climate activists, are garnering support from more and more pillars of the establishment. The European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the mayors of 33 of the world’s biggest cities, the leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies, Germany and France, a coalition of investors who manage more than $32 trillion worth of assets—these are just some of the voices arguing that the government stimulus programs being devised to revive pandemic-stricken economies must be green.
Covid-19 recovery programs “should not be a return to ‘business as usual’—because that is a world on track for more than 3 degrees C of overheating,” warned a statement by the mayors of New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, São Paulo, Seoul, and 27 other cities with a combined population of 750 million people. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, has argued that instead of ploughing trillions of dollars into fossil fuel energy sources and infrastructure, countries “should try to leapfrog ahead” by investing in solar and wind power and emulating the UK government’s plan to phase out gasoline and diesel engine cars by 2035.
A study led by Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at The World Bank, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University found that green stimulus programs outperform their opposites. The economists’ examination of more than 700 stimulus programs launched after the 2008 global financial crisis found that investing in energy efficiency—for example, by retrofitting buildings—and renewable energy yielded more jobs and higher monetary returns than traditional stimulus programs.
Nick Martin at The New Republic writes—Is the Supreme Court Scared of Tribal Sovereignty?
In 2003, writing a concurrent opinion in United States v. Lara, a case that determined an individual can be charged with the same crime in tribal and federal court, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas described the contradictory nature of federal case law as it relates to Indigenous policy: “In my view, the tribes either are or are not separate sovereigns. And our federal Indian law cases untenably hold both positions simultaneously.” This week, nearly 20 years removed from Thomas’s assessment, the high court’s institutional inability to grasp the basics of tribal sovereignty was once again on full display.
On Monday morning, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McGirt v. Oklahoma, a case concerning whether the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s 1866 treaty reservation boundaries are still legally in place. The MCN reservation was never officially dissolved by Congress, meaning that a large swath of what is now Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory, is still technically under MCN jurisdiction, even if it is effectively governed by the state. The appealing party, Jimmy McGirt, is currently serving a life sentence for sex crimes he committed against a child. The case is not concerned with his guilt, which was well established, but rather the jurisdictional issues that arise from the fact that McGirt’s crimes were committed on what is still technically MCN land, but he was tried in state court. (Typically, federal courts have jurisdiction over major crimes committed on sovereign Native soil.)
The issue was initially argued in Murphy v. Carpenter last spring, but because Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, had heard the case when he was sitting on the Tenth Circuit, he had to recuse himself, leading to a 4–4 split. Seeking to bring in Gorsuch to answer the question definitively, the court took on McGirt, which quickly became one of the most intriguing tests of the United States Indian Country legal framework in recent memory. Listening to the arguments, as the public is now able to do because of the pandemic, it was clear that most of the justices had a staggering but sadly unsurprising lack of knowledge on the basic tenets of sovereignty and Indian Country.
Jonathan Chait at New York magazine writes—Obamagate’ Is Trump’s Name for the Crimes He’s Trying to Commit Himself:
President Trump likes to accuse his political antagonists of crimes, almost always imaginary, and his favorite target is President Obama. Trump claims Obama illegally persecuted him, though the details of the accusation have changed. Three years ago, he claimed the crime was a “tapp” of his phones (“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process.”) The charge evolved to claiming Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, committed a crime by “unmasking” Trump officials surveilled in talks with foreign leaders.
Trump seems to return to the charge in times of stress. He has renewed the charge, calling it “OBAMAGATE!” When asked by a reporter what crime he was claiming Obama had committed this time, Trump replied, “You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody.” [...]
For Trump, “Obamagate” is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. He believes every president does, and should, use the Department of Justice as a weapon to protect his friends and harass his rivals. The greatest ire he has reserved for any of his underlings is the yearslong grudge he’s held against Jeff Sessions for the sin of following the black-letter law requiring his recusal from the Russia investigation, and refusing Trump’s entreaties to violate the law by un-recusing himself.
Months after it was revealed that he had made dozens of questionable stock trades ahead of a global pandemic—and advised wealthy constituents to do the same—Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina had his cellphone seized by federal agents Wednesday night. The agents were at the senator’s Washington, D.C., residence.
Burr, who is a member of the “Gang of Eight” and the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sparked scrutiny in mid-March after making 33 transactions in February, that rid him of a significant chunk of his stock portfolio and netted him anywhere between $628,000 and $1.72 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. The transactions came after briefings on the potential impact of the novel coronavirus from the U.S. Department of Health.
While NPR broke the story about the private warnings to rich Tar Heels, ProPublica was the first to report on the selloff.
ProPublica’s analysis indicated that the Feb. 13 selling spree was Burr’s “largest selling day of at least the past 14 months.”
As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.
A week after Burr’s sales, the stock market began a sharp decline.
[...]
Burr is not a particularly wealthy member of the Senate: Roll Call estimated his net worth at $1.7 million in 2018, indicating that the February sales significantly shaped his financial fortunes and spared him from some of the pain that many Americans are now facing.
The newest and wealthiest member of the Senate, Georgia’s Kelly Loeffler, also got in on the secret selloff, making 29 transactions that add up to millions. It’s worth noting that Burr is just one of three senators (and the only one still in office) who voted against the 2012 STOCK Act, which, as McClatchy puts it, “explicitly prevents members of Congress and their staffs from using nonpublic information for insider trading.” Both the FBI and the DOJ have refused comment, as has Burr’s team; however, as the LA Times notes, the search warrant indicates “a significant escalation” in the investigation into Burr’s possible violation of the STOCK Act.
On Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul responded to former Vice President Joe Biden being one of a number of high ranking Obama administration officials who may have received intelligence from unmasking requests targeting Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security advisor.
This is all according to newly-declassified documents by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, to which the senator said Biden was “caught red-handed” using U.S. spy powers to “go after a political opponent.”
.@RandPaul: "Remember we went through this thing called impeachment? They said President @realDonaldTrump was using the govt to go after a political opponent? This is VP Biden using the spying powers of the US to go after a political opponent. He's caught red-handed here." pic.twitter.com/r0j7falhQq
— The Hill (@thehill) May 13, 2020
Paul went into detail during a press conference on Wednesday.
A reporter asked Paul, “If this happens to a current president, this would be an impeachable offense, if not a criminal offense.”
“Can you imagine? Yeah,” Paul responded.
Another reporter queried the senator, “Would you like there to be criminal charges brought against them?”
He replied, “I think we need to get to the bottom of this, and I think the first thing is to interview, under oath, [Acting] Director of National Intelligence [Grenell] and get to the bottom of what goes on with unmasking. How unusual is this that the entire upper echelon — individually it wasn’t just one request for this, there were dozens of requests. Almost everyone in President Obama’s top circle wanted to see this and wanted to listen to this conversation.”
President Trump said later on Wednesday in the wake of this recent news, “The unmasking is a massive thing. I just got a list. Who can believe a thing like this?”
President Trump: "The unmasking is a massive thing. I just got a list. Who can believe a thing like this?" pic.twitter.com/Htp4eSOa8j
— The Hill (@thehill) May 13, 2020
Paul had more thoughts at his press conference.
“But this is troubling,” Paul continued. “This isn’t about national security, this is about eavesdropping on your opponent and eavesdropping on the new president’s top advisor. This is very, very troubling. This was being led by at least by Vice President Biden, if not [President Obama], and we need to get to the bottom of it to make sure it never happens again.”
“For the average American, they’re worried that this could happen to a top general like Flynn, but could you imagine this power being unharnessed on an ordinary American? How would we defend ourselves?” Paul wondered.
President @realDonaldTrump: Joe Biden said he knew nothing about @GenFlynn’s unmasking, but how do you know nothing if you're one of the unmaskers? pic.twitter.com/u3ghkpDtQJ
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 13, 2020
After another reporter questioned what the timeline and larger context of the unmasking might have looked like, Paul made further comments.
“The way I read it, is it looks like each of these administration officials actually individually requested to listen to this conversation,” Paul said. “It was like, well, someone says, ‘why don’t we have someone go listen to this and send the transcript around.’ It sounds like each of these people individually did.”
The senator continued, “These rumors have been going around for years that President Obama’s administration was abusing this power of unmaking, and this sounds like these were abusing it to go after a political opponent, which I think is a very serious offense and should be investigated — and the fact that Vice President Biden is directly involved with unmasking a political opponent. Think about it.”
RELATED: New CNN Poll Shows Donald Trump Has Tied His Highest Approval Rating Ever
Sen. Rand Paul: "Vice President Biden is guilty of using government to go after a political opponent." https://t.co/v8fERsgVcN pic.twitter.com/f0wWQAv8VW
— The Hill (@thehill) May 13, 2020
Then Sen. Paul reminded the press of recent history concerning accusations about corruption and coverups.
“Remember we went through this thing called impeachment? ” Paul said. “They said President Trump was using the government to go after a political opponent?”
“This is Vice President Biden using the spying powers of the United States to go after a political opponent,” Paul declared.
“He’s caught red-handed here,” he finished.
The post Rand Paul: Biden ‘Caught Red-Handed’ Using Government Spying To Go After ‘Political Opponent’ appeared first on The Political Insider.
Declassified documents have revealed that then Vice President Joe Biden and other officials in Barack Obama’s administration were involved in the unmasking of General Michael Flynn.
Intelligence officials can ask to reveal the true identities of anyone who was involved in a conversation that government agencies have surveilled, in a process known as “unmasking.” Recently declassified documents have revealed that Vice President Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, the then-Director of the CIA John Brennan, Obama’s former chief of staff Denis McDonough and the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, all sought to “unmask” General Mike Flynn after he was surveilled.
“Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request,” the documents, released by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, said. “Only certain personnel are authorized to submit unmasking requests into the NSA system. In this case, 16 authorized individuals requested unmasking for [REDACTED] different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principals.”
The documents added that “while the principals are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information. This response does not include any requests outside of the specified time-frame.”
Senator Rand Paul said the discovery was “alarming” and “very, very troubling:”
This is about eavesdropping on your opponent, and eavesdropping on the new President’s top advisor, so this is very very troubling, and it was being led at least by Vice President Biden, if not the President. We need to get to the bottom of this so that it never happens again, because really, for the average American, they’re worried that this could happen to a top general like General Flynn, but can you imagine this power being unharnassed on an ordinary American? How would we defend ourselves?… These rumours have been going around for years, that President Obama’s administration was abusing its unpower of unmasking, and it sounds like they were abusing it to go after a political opponent, which I think is a very serious offence, and should be investigated. The fact that Vice President Biden is directly involved with unmasking a political opponent. Think about it. Remember we went through this thing called impeachment? They said President Trump was using the govenment to go after a political opponent? This is Vice President Biden using the spying powers of the US to go after a political opponent. He’s caught red-handed here.
.@RandPaul: "Remember we went through this thing called impeachment? They said President @realDonaldTrump was using the govt to go after a political opponent? This is VP Biden using the spying powers of the US to go after a political opponent. He's caught red-handed here." pic.twitter.com/r0j7falhQq
— The Hill (@thehill) May 13, 2020
I completely agree with the Senator! If President Trump was caught doing this, I have no doubt he would have been successfully removed from office. How the Democratic Party and any Americans can support a candidate now who has been, as Senator Paul clearly says, “caught red handed” spying on their political opponents using government power, is beyond me.
The post Biden, Comey, Obama Officials Involved In ‘Unmasking’ Of General Flynn appeared first on The Political Insider.
The Trump administration—in hopes of both deflecting focus from their catastrophic handling of our country’s public health and economic well-being while creating some kind of faux scandal placing blame on former President Obama that they can connect to Democratic candidate Joe Biden—have begun something they are branding “Obamagate.” The basic premise is that then-President Barack Obama illegally created an FBI witch hunt to illegally wiretap and entrap Trump’s criminal national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in a crime.
Lawyer Bradley Moss was brought on to discuss the legal ramifications of a possible Obamagate. Asking what Mr. Moss thought of all the “transcripts, the notes we found the week before. Texts all kinds of things that now are raising a lot of questions from people about the Flynn prosecution and the Russia investigation.” Arming himself with every Trump law team argument over the past three years, Moss launched into a 60 second shutdown of every stupid conservative talking point on Obamagate.
BRADLEY MOSS: Yeah, I'm sitting here trying to figure out what exactly constitutional deprivation was there? What is the crime that people think, you know, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are going to be prosecuted under? To be clear—and this is using the words of President Trump and his lawyers for the last three years—any sitting president can get any classified information they want. According to Donald Trump, they can launch any investigation they want. They can tell the FBI to pursue only particular individuals. This is not me saying it. This is what Donald Trump's been saying for three years.
This was their argument during the Mueller probe. This was their argument during the impeachment investigation. That the president has this kind of authority. So what did we find out? That Barack Obama was aware about intelligence intercepts on the Russian ambassador when he was talking with General Flynn? That there had just been an attack on our election a couple months earlier? We were still dealing with the fallout of Russian election interference in 2016. There was a concern about a counterintelligence prom with Michael Flynn, and they had a discussion.
I'm shocked. I can't believe they had that conversation. What is the crime?
You know who was really shocked? Fox News, who quickly did what they do best: throw to a pillow commercial.
Host: Well, ah, we’re gonna have to leave it there.
Enjoy!
A Senate committee will vote next week on a subpoena related to a Republican-led investigation targeting Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
According to a memo obtained by POLITICO, the Senate Homeland Security Committee plans to vote next Wednesday on Chairman Ron Johnson’s request to issue a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic public-relations firm, as part of the panel’s probe of corruption allegations against Hunter Biden and the Obama-era State Department.
The vote comes as the Republican-led Senate aims to resume its normal business amid the coronavirus pandemic, including confirming judicial nominees and reauthorizing federal surveillance powers. But Democrats have slammed the GOP’s agenda since the chamber returned to Washington last week, arguing that senators should prioritize mitigating the economic and public health impacts of the coronavirus crisis over partisan priorities.
“We’re in the middle of a public health and economic crisis, but instead of holding oversight hearings about testing, PPE, or bringing in the FEMA administrator, Senate Republicans are choosing to pursue diversionary, partisan conspiracy theories to prop up President Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of the decision to schedule a subpoena vote during the pandemic.
Committee rules require a vote on a subpoena if the minority party objects. The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, has vigorously opposed the Biden investigation, and he has demanded defense briefings in advance of any subpoena vote.
“The American people deserve to know the extent to which the U.S.-based, Democrat-led consulting company leveraged its connections within the Obama administration to try to gain access and potentially influence U.S. government agencies on behalf of its corrupt client, Burisma,” said Austin Altenburg, a spokesman for the committee.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, initially planned to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former consultant for Blue Star Strategies, but ultimately withdrew those plans amid concerns about Telizhenko’s credibility given his unsubstantiated claims of coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
Telizhenko’s involvement in the investigation prompted angry exchanges at a classified all-senators briefing in March centering on election security. Sources described the briefing as “combative” and “personal” as Democratic senators challenged Johnson and argued that his investigation undermines U.S. national security by aiding Russian efforts to sow disinformation in the U.S. political system.
Blue Star Strategies did work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company whose board Hunter Biden served on. The investigation centers on allegations that Blue Star Strategies, which has withheld certain documents from Johnson, sought to leverage Biden’s role on the board to influence policy matters at the State Department. Biden and his father reject the claims, which have been pushed by President Donald Trump and his allies, in particular his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Johnson has said he plans to release an interim report over the summer on the status of the investigation.
On the other side of the Capitol, the Democratic-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking into the State Department’s communications with the senators as part of their investigation.
“[The] State Department appears to be a willing partner in this naked political exercise after completely stonewalling the impeachment inquiry,” a committee aide said. “Chairman [Eliot] Engel has requested that State produce to the Foreign Affairs Committee all the information sent to Senators Johnson and Graham no later than this Friday. We’re not going to allow the State Department to be turned into an arm of the Trump campaign.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s vociferous attacks on Donald Trump in the months and weeks and days leading up to Trump’s November 2016 victory were well covered. Sen. Graham’s subsequent change of heart concerning Trump has also been a depressing reminder that integrity in Washington, D.C. is easily bought. But one big-time donor—and former member of Graham’s presidential campaign finance team—is fed up with spineless Republican operatives.
Richard Wilkerson, former chairman and president of Michelin’s Greenville, South Carolina-based North America operations, is fed up with Sen. Graham. A couple of weeks ago, Wilkerson told local news outlets that he was going to support Graham’s challenger, Jaime Harrison, for South Carolina’s Senate. At the time he said he believed Harrison was the right choice for South Carolina. Wilkerson based this on work the two had done to get stronger environmental regulations implemented in the state. On Monday, however, Wilkerson elaborated on his change of allegiance, penning a scathing op-ed in the Greenville News that really laid bare how low his opinion of Sen. Graham has fallen.
Wilkerson explained that while he does not normally make a habit of discussing his political opinions publicly, the reaction to the news that he was supporting Harrison over Graham made him feel he needed to explain. Citing the various reactions to his support of Harrison—which ranged from positive to classic conservative misdirection attempts at boycotting Michelin tires—he said, “I suppose this person did not know that I retired eight years ago, but seems to want to punish the outstanding working people at the company I love.” Wilkerson writes that his decision was a heartfelt one and something he had been dealing with since Trump took office.
Specifically, Wilkerson began to wonder about Sen. Graham in relation to Donald Trump’s continuous attacks on then Sen. John McCain: “What is the character of a man who will not defend his best friend? If he won’t defend John McCain, why would I expect him to defend any of us in South Carolina?” Wilkerson highlighted Sen. Graham’s retreat into divisive politics, his support of the tax scam for the richest among us, and his most recent attacks on public safety: viciously fighting against a federal extension that would expand unemployment benefits to the growing tens of millions of Americans out of work due to the Republican mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilkerson writes that he ended his support of Graham a couple of years ago, and wrote to the Senator telling him that “I no longer recognized him as the man I once supported.”
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Campaign ActionSen. Graham has been facing this music for a couple of years now as time after time, he has failed every test of integrity and character that has come his way during this administration. Sen. Graham’s about face from the impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton to the recent impeachment of Donald Trump was a never-ending stream of video clips exhibiting how flimsy Graham’s political “ideals” really are. His opponent, Harrison, has taken advantage of this hypocrisy in his campaign for Graham’s seat.
The political field is filled with all kinds of hypocrites. The pressure and speed with which someone will step all over their principles for power is a frequent topic of discussion on both sides of the political spectrum. In recent years, with the rise of Donald Trump to the top of the Grand Old Party, the degree to which Republicans have publicly compromised their previous positions and opinions has been staggering. While not surprising to those of us paying attention, it has been somewhat shocking to people who may not have realized how desperate for power so many people really are.
Sen. Mitt Romney on Tuesday admonished the Trump administration for touting its coronavirus testing operation in recent days after weeks of missteps, accusing the White House’s testing czar of playing politics.
“I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that is most positive politically,” the Utah Republican told Adm. Brett Giroir, a commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, during a Senate hearing on the pandemic. “Of course, I don’t expect that from admirals.”
Romney pointed out that the day before, Giroir stood in the White House Rose Garden and “celebrated” the U.S. surpassing South Korea’s number of coronavirus tests conducted per capita, after South Korea’s handling of its outbreak came to be viewed as something of a gold standard around the world.
“But you ignored the fact that they accomplished theirs at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March,” the senator continued. “And, as a result, by March 6 the U.S. had completed just 2,000 tests, whereas South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests.”
The Trump administration’s failure to facilitate widespread testing in the U.S. from the outset has been widely criticized, and is seen by many — including Romney — as one of the major reasons the virus was able to spread, undetected and unchecked, throughout the country in February and March.
It was “partially” because of the White House’s lag, Romney asserted, that South Korea’s death toll from the virus is only around 250 while the U.S. death toll has surpassed 81,000, despite each country publicly reporting its first coronavirus cases on the same day.
“I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever,” Romney said.
The White House has made serious progress in expanding testing capabilities in recent weeks — though public-health experts have warned that millions more tests per week are needed to safely reopen the country — and held the Rose Garden news briefing on Monday in which Giroir spoke to highlight those improvements.
“If you look at per capita, everyone talks about South Korea being the standard today,” Giroir said on Monday. “We will have done more than twice their per capita rate of testing that was accomplished in South Korea.”
At that event, President Donald Trump boasted that the United States has “prevailed on testing” as he rolled out a plan to help states test at least 2 percent of their populations — or 12.9 million people — in the month of May. In Tuesday’s hearing, Giroir predicted that the figure nationwide could be ramped up to 50 million by September.
The White House has bristled at the continued criticism, as detractors assert that the uptick in testing is too little too late. In a briefing at the White House on Tuesday, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany complained to reporters about coverage of the previous day’s event.
“You can’t demand that we reach South Korea and say that we are bragging when we do,” she said.
But Romney, a frequent critic of Trump and the only Republican in Congress to vote to convict the president earlier this year on an article of impeachment, posited that there was a grim reason for testing numbers in the United States having caught up to South Korea’s.
“The fact is their test numbers are going down, down, down now, because they don’t have the kind of outbreak we have,” he said of South Korea. “Ours are going up, up, up as they have to. I think that’s an important lesson for us as we think about the future.”