ONE OF THESE DAYS THESE BOOTS ARE GONNA

Here’s a short take on the significance of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to empanel a grand jury to investigate the Russian election hack.  It comes from a Twitter user whose handle is “BeleaguredPopehat.” I’ve combined his tweets into paragraphs to make it easier to read.

“This is big.  Here’s why.  The Biggitude isn't necessarily that there's a crime, or that Mueller thinks that there is one or may be one.  The Biggitude is the procedural/investigative significance of starting up a grand jury investigation and what it suggests he'll do.”

“This suggests he can, and will, compel witnesses to appear to testify. That will either yield (secret) grand jury testimony or it will yield a cascade of invocations of the Fifth, cooperation negotiations, and the like. Or both. Moreover particularly with judgmentally challenged people, this phase increases pressure and thus dumb new crimes -- obstruction, perjury, etc.”

“Plus you've got your grand jury subpoenas for documents, which tend to leak and similarly drive dumb/self-defeating reactions.  With sensible, prudent, obedient clients, this is gravely dangerous. With this crew . . . well. Hold their beer.”

“It addition, it reflects that Mueller believes there's a certain level of "there" there to justify a GJ investigation. However, with even the most justifiably esteemed prosecutor, that belief is not worthy of uncritical acceptance. Prosecutors gotta prosecute.”

One other fun fact:  In 2014, The Washington Post reported that federal grand juries issued indictments 99% of the time. 

All those high powered attorneys who left good jobs to join Mueller’s team?  They didn’t do it because they thought there was no “there” there.  This isn’t a nothingburger.  It’s a somethingburger.  Exactly what that “something” is remains to be seen, but it’s going to be seriously bad news for Donald Trump.

This Vox link is a couple weeks old, but it's a nice overview of the legal issues around Mueller's investigation:  https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/24/16008272/robert-mueller-fbi-trump-russia-explained

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL

The game is afoot!  The Wall Street Journal (link below) reports that Robert Mueller has empaneled a second grand jury in his investigation into Russian interference in the last presidential election.  His first grand jury, in Alexandria, VA, is devoted to Moscow Mike Flynn.  The new one is just a few blocks from his office in Washington, D.C.

“This is yet a further sign that there is a long-term, large-scale series of prosecutions being contemplated and being pursued by the special counsel,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. “If there was already a grand jury in Alexandria looking at Flynn, there would be no need to reinvent the wheel for the same guy. This suggests that the investigation is bigger and wider than Flynn, perhaps substantially so.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-impanels-washington-grand-jury-in-russia-probe-1501788287

LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Donald Trump is a liar.  His problem is that he’s turned into a bad liar.  From his inauguration to his tweet du jour, he makes claims that are not only demonstrably false, but patently ludicrous as well. 

Here are two examples from just last month.  Trump told the New York Times that after his speech in Poland, “Enemies of mine are saying it was the greatest speech ever made on foreign soil by a president."  He claimed that after his rant at the Boy Scout Jamboree, “I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful.”   

I doubt that, at any point in his life, Donald Trump was ever a modest person.  But now, in his 70s, he insists that everything he does is the greatest ever, and that it must be acknowledged as such.  And it’s not enough that the praise he so richly deserves comes from his supporters.  Even his enemies must acknowledge his greatness.  And if they won’t do it, Trump will do it for them:  “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Andrew Sullivan believes that this is part of a strategy.  “The point of Trump’s otherwise super-stupid tweets is clear” he wrote in New York Magazine.  “To signal the new party line — which his internet underlings and media flacks then repeat. This can, of course, require them to contradict themselves in no time at all, as Trump’s moods shift. But the ‘willingness to say black is white when party discipline requires this,’ as Orwell noted, is key to authoritarian success.”

Personally, I think it’s more complicated than that.  I don’t believe that Trump’s tweets and off the cuff remarks to the press are calculated at all.  I think they simply reflect what passes for reality in the mind of a guy who is showing unmistakable signs of dementia. 

The Orwellian element is added when his followers immediately fall in line and parrot his latest delusion.  And I think that deep down, many of them are happy to do it.  I think that a substantial portion of hard core Trump supporters have been looking all their lives for Big Brother – an authority figure who shares their prejudices and will protect them from their enemies in return for unquestioning obedience. 

But in addition to Orwell (and Percy Bysshe Shelley), I wonder if there’s also an element of Lewis Carroll in this whole charade.  If the Queen of Hearts wants red roses, the lower cards will paint the roses red.  Is it possible that people close to Trump – Jared and Ivanka, for instance – feed his ego by making up stories about the praise he’s receiving?  “Hey, Dad, we heard from a Boy Scout official who said it was the greatest speech ever,” or Mr. President, “one of your press critics admitted that the speech in Poland was fantastic.” 

Trump's a guy who enjoys his flattery, and in his current mental state, he may well be unable to distinguish the plausible from the risible.

TO PROTECT YOU AND DEFEND YOU, WHETHER YOU ARE RIGHT OR WRONG

First, a heads up that this post deals with sexual issues and is likely to be controversial.  And with that trigger warning out of the way, here we go.

Donald Trump resents the fact that congressional Republicans aren’t protecting him.  He overlooks the fact that some of them have spoken up in his defense, and the rest of them have turned a blind eye to his multiple high crimes and misdemeanors.  You could argue that, six months into Trump’s presidency, he’s benefitted from the most docile Congress in living memory. 

And working together, they’ve accomplished almost nothing.  Keep it up, guys.

Discussion of Trump’s July 23 tweet, the one complaining about Republicans who “do very little to protect their President,” hasn’t generated much speculation about what Trump wants protection from.  In a general way, of course, it’s obvious.  Robert Mueller and NY AG Eric Schneiderman continue to investigate his campaign and his family’s finances, and nearly every day brings a new revelation of wrongdoing.  Earlier this week, a White House leak suggested that Trump himself composed Don Jr.’s pathetic initial attempt to cover up his meeting with Russian spies in June, 2016.  A day later, instead of just saying “no comment,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed this clumsy attempt at obstruction of justice.  It must be fun being Trump’s lawyers.  

But back to his “protection” tweet.  My guess is that his comment was provoked specifically by the overwhelming bipartisan support (419-3 in the House, 98-2 in the Senate) for a bill that gives Congress the power to block Trump’s ability to weaken sanctions against Russia.  I think it’s reasonable to wonder why Trump would want to weaken sanctions against Russia in the first place. 

Throughout the seven months of his presidency, Donald Trump has been consistently inconsistent.  He’s abandoned many of the policies he campaigned on, and broken too many promises to count.  Apart from his inflated belief in his own self-worth, there’s only one position he’s consistently maintained:  he’s never said a harsh word about Russia or Vladimir Putin.

And now Putin has made it clear to Trump that he wants sanctions lifted.  If Trump signs the bill limiting his own power to lift those sanctions, Putin will be displeased.  If he vetoes it, the margins of passage make it clear that Congress will override his veto, making him look weak.  His only other option is to ignore it, let it become law without comment, and pretend that it doesn’t exist.  That’s basically Trump’s M.O. in dealing with bad news, so if I were betting, that’s the way I’d bet.

But this dominance dance begs the question of why Trump is worried about sanctioning Russia, our traditional enemy and clearly a hostile foreign power.  That’s the key question. 

Trump knows little and cares less about foreign policy.  He has no grand plan for an American-Russian alliance to bring peace to the Middle East, to destroy ISIS, or to destroy anything else – except maybe American democracy.  Donald Trump is literally the first American president in history to worry about offending Russia. 

My approach to this sort of conundrum is to use a modified version Occam’s Razor, the medieval principle that in choosing among competing hypotheses, you should prefer the one that requires you to make the fewest assumptions.  If I’m missing a crucial piece of information, I try to connect the dots in the most direct way, as long as it mean I have to ignore inconvenient facts or rely on improbable coincidences.

Donald Trump has strong but unexplained ties to Russia and Vladimir Putin.  I’d like to know the nature of those ties, and how they came into being.

Before I try to connect the dots, it’s worth spending some time looking at all the dots on the board.  A recent article in Foreign Policy magazine (link below) outlined seven theories that might explain the Trump-Russia connection.  I’ll summarize them here, with my own comments in brackets.

1.       There is no Trump-Russia connection.  Every apparent connection is just a coincidence, with an innocent explanation.  [This is the Pollyanna explanation.  In order to believe it, you’d have to ignore all the facts and rely almost entirely on improbabilities and coincidences.]

2.       There was Russian interference on Trump’s behalf in the election, but Russia acted independently of the official Trump campaign, and Trump was unaware of the connections between Russia and some fringe members of his staff.   [We know now that there were multiple connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, and that they included members of Trump’s immediate family.  It’s highly improbable that Donald Trump wasn’t aware of them.]

3.       There was Russian interference in the election, but it was aimed solely at weakening Hillary Clinton, not at helping Donald Trump.  [This was my personal theory until a few months ago, when collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia became too obvious to deny.  Every American intelligence agency agrees that Russia was trying to help Trump to win.]

4.       Russian intelligence actively penetrated the Trump campaign, but Trump was unaware of it, so there’s no reason to blame him for anything that happened.  [I’m not saying that Trump was aware of every last detail, but his “Russia, if you’re listening” plea for hacking assistance makes it impossible to believe that he wasn’t aware that his campaign was getting help from Russia.]

5.       Russian intelligence actively penetrated the Trump campaign, and Trump either knew about it or should have known about it.  [Now we’re getting warmer.  Trump not only should have known, he did know.]

6.       The Russians have some kind of compromising information on Trump that is serious enough to keep him in line.  [Bingo.  This is what I believe the available evidence indicates.]   

7.       Donald Trump is a Russian agent.  [Nah, Trump’s not smart enough to be a real spy.]

My hypothesis at this point is that Putin and Russia are blackmailing Donald Trump.  But what are they blackmailing him with? 

First, it’s a matter of public record that Trump family businesses have for years benefitted from infusions of Russian cash.  It is also a matter of public record that Trump’s businesses broke laws against money laundering (e.g. the Trump Taj Mahal casino) as they helped Russian oligarchs move dirty money in and out of the United States.  It’s not impossible that Trump is so deeply in hock to Russian mob figures that they essentially own him. 

But while Russian money explains the origin of Trump’s affection for Russia, I would argue that it doesn’t account for Trump’s continuing obeisance to Putin.  Those oligarchs still need their money laundered, and it wouldn’t be to Putin’s advantage to burn a reliable accomplice.  Besides, at this point, there’s nothing Vladimir Putin can do to help Trump avoid prosecution on money laundering charges.  If there’s dirty money in the Trump portfolio, Robert Mueller and Eric Schneiderman either know about it already or will find out about it soon enough. 

Similarly, there is a growing body of evidence that people close to Trump, including some of his family members, worked hand in hand with Russian agents to influence the outcome of the election.  Some of the collaborators undoubtedly expect pardons; others are probably hopeful but uncertain.  Some of the folks in the latter category may already be telling their stories to Robert Mueller, offering evidence against bigger fish in return for leniency. 

But as with the money laundering issue, the collusion toothpaste is out of the tube.  Mueller and his team know most of the story at this point.  They have wiretaps and other communications intercepts, as well as (in all likelihood) plea bargained testimony from some of Trump’s frightened underlings.  Vladimir Putin can’t be compelled to testify, and he has ways to keep his own agents quiet – up to and including murdering them – but there’s nothing he can do to derail the case Mueller is building against the Trump family on election tampering.

So far, then, we can credibly account for the origins of Trump’s Russian connections, and we can account for some minor and major criminal activity that Trump would love to keep secret from American courts and from the American public.  But none of it is sufficient to explain why he continues to worry about keeping Vladimir Putin happy.

I can think of only one other possibility.  It’s a doozy, so fasten your seatbelts.

I’m beginning to believe that the answer to my question, or something close to the answer, was revealed last fall, and was quickly brushed aside by a press corps that was struggling to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump was elected president.  I’m talking about the Steele Dossier – that memo from former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele about Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

The Steele Dossier had its fifteen minutes of fame last fall, largely due to the fact that Steele mentioned a rumor about what came to be known as the “Pee Tape.” Steele, to his credit, noted that the existence of such a tape could not be verified.  The press, citing Trump’s well known germ phobia, scoffed and moved on. 

Months passed.  And then out of nowhere on July 19, Trump brought up the Steele Dossier in an unhinged interview with the New York Times.  Why would he do that?  Why would he be worried about a report that had faded from public memory months ago? 

Here’s how I connect the dots.  I believe that it is entirely possible that Russia did indeed secretly record Trump sex tapes.  They probably did NOT involve poop or pee, but they might involve something less risible and more scandalous.  Rumors about such recordings are building.

Are these rumors credible?  In some ways, they’re too good to be true, so I try to maintain a healthy skepticism.  That said, I find them plausible enough to be worth sharing.  If this is the missing piece of the puzzle, it would account for Trump’s ongoing refusal to criticize Putin or Russia.

Let’s review a few things about Donald Trump that are matters of public record. 

Item one:  He has bragged often and publicly about his sex life, and his preference for younger women.  He palled around with Jeffrey Epstein, and told New York Magazine in 2002, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy.  He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”  Epstein served time for soliciting a minor for prostitution.  Definitely a terrific guy, lots of fun to be with.

Item two:  Multiple girls who participated in the Miss Teen USA beauty pageants have reported that Trump walked into their dressing rooms unannounced while some of them were naked.  When his older daughter Ivanka was 16, Trump said she was exactly the kind of girl he’d like to date when she was a few years older.  When his younger daughter Tiffany was a baby, Trump speculated about what her legs and breasts would look like when she reached sexual maturity.  He looks at underage girls, including his own daughters, and sees sex objects. 

Item three:  We know that Trump has visited Russia.  We know that in 2001, he warned men visiting Russia to be careful, because hidden cameras are everywhere.  He offered that advice on a Howard Stern radio show in which another guest quoted Trump as bragging that “I was just in Russia, the girls have no morals, you gotta get out there.”  Note that he said girls, not women.

What is not in the public record (yet) is a rumored investigation by New York Attorney General Schneiderman’s Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF).  The OCTF is reported to have two active Trump investigations, one of which allegedly involves Trump Model Management.  Not all of the models represented by Trump Model Management were from Russia, but some of them were.  Not all of them were under 18, but some of them were.   

You can google Trump Model Management and find multiple articles describing its unsavory activities, which include underpaying its models (as you’d expect from a Trump business), ignoring visa requirements, falsifying the age of some younger models – and hosting parties for Trump’s friends and clients using under-age models as bait.  Daily Kos (links below) was on the story shortly before the election, but it got lost in the nationwide hysteria about Hillary Clinton’s email security.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, there’s a theory among citizen journalists that the Steele Dossier is on Trump’s mind because Russian intelligence recorded him having sex with underage girls.  Maybe he knew they were minors, or maybe he just didn’t bother to ask questions when teenage girls knocked on his hotel room door.  Putin, the theory goes, set him up, and then made sure that Trump knows the tapes exist.  Now Trump is worried that copies of those recordings have found their way into the hands of western intelligence agencies.  And according to this rumor, that’s exactly what has happened.  Mueller and Schneiderman have copies of the tapes.  They know his secret.

We know Trump had the motive (he likes sex with younger women), the opportunity (he has visited Russia), and a history of recklessness in sexual matters (cheating on all his wives, and a “grab ‘em by the pussy” attitude).  But until the final piece of the puzzle – an actual sex tape – materializes, it’s still just speculation.  Informed speculation, to be sure, but speculation nonetheless.

Perhaps you’re inclined to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.  Innocent until proven guilty and all that.  Fair enough. 

While we’re waiting for more pieces of the puzzle to emerge, I invite everyone to try to come up with another explanation that accounts for all of the information in the public record, that doesn’t contradict or exclude any of that information, and that explains Donald Trump’s ongoing fealty to Putin and Russia.   

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/19/the-seven-circles-of-donald-trumps-russia-inferno-collusion/

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/6/1578544/-The-Untold-Story-of-Trump-Model-Management-A-Daily-Kos-Exclusive-Part-1

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/25/1586568/-Daily-Beast-Inside-Donald-Trump-s-One-Stop-Parties-Attendees-Recall-Cocaine-and-Very-Young-Models

http://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-donald-trumps-one-stop-parties-attendees-recall-cocaine-and-very-young-models

http://www.gq.com/story/howard-stern-donald-trump-russia-brag    

THE ELEPHANT SNEEZED AND FELL TO HIS KNEES

Mooch!  We hardly knew ye! 

It’s hard to know where to start amidst all the chaos, but what the heck – once more unto the breach, dear friends.  Let’s begin by setting the Wayback Machine to July 23, 2017.  That’s when Donald Trump tweeted, “It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.”

Now that we’re getting used to time travel, we can go back a bit further.  Almost a hundred years ago, on May 7, 1918, a former Republican president offered a prescient rebuttal to Trump’s tweet:  “The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.  He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” 

Theodore Roosevelt wrote that.  Donald Trump, who was surprised to learn that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, may never even have heard of the first President Roosevelt.  I doubt that they would have enjoyed each other’s company.  Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster.  He’d probably have tried to put Trump in jail.  

Leaving those thrilling days of yesteryear and returning to our present dilemma, I’d like to note that Donald Trump’s tweet contained at least two more errors.  Trump is typically delusional about helping elect Republican congressmen, since almost all of them carried their districts or states by larger margins than he did.  I’ll delve further into the issue of why Trump is whining about “protection” in a future post.  Today I want to say a few more words about Trump’s notion that Republicans should regard him as “their” President. 

It’s becoming pretty obvious that Trump isn’t really a Republican and doesn’t give a damn about the Republican Party.  He, as well as Ivanka and Jared Kushner, were Democratic donors until pretty recently.  So was his potty-mouthed ex-chief of staff, the Mooch.  Trump has fired most of the actual Republicans in the White House, and he’s trying to humiliate his Republican Attorney General into resigning. 

The truth is that Donald Trump has no political ideology.  All he cares about is himself, and he’ll abandon any person or principle if he thinks it will get him a round of applause. I wonder when a critical mass of congressional Republicans will figure that out. 

Of course, it’s fine with me if the Republican Party’s fate is tied to Donald Trump.  It’s time for another chorus of “everything Trump touches turns to shit.”  Republicans held their nose and clasped him to their bosom.  They deserve to suffer the consequences.  All I ask is that they stay downwind of me.

NEVERTHELESS, WE PERSISTED

I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the following individuals and groups who stopped the Obamacare repeal dead in its tracks.  From the bottom to the top, I thank:

·         Donald Trump, for being so clueless.  He understood nothing about health care, nothing about this particular series of bills, and nothing about the legislative process.  Any other Republican president in my lifetime would have made sure the bill passed.  Do you think Republicans are beginning to realize that it’s a mistake to tie their fortunes to this asshole?

·         John McCain.  I don’t take back anything in my post on Tuesday.  McCain could have stopped this farce then.  But at the last minute, in the most dramatic way possible, McCain finally did the right thing.  At long last, Arizonans have a reason to be proud of one of our senators.

·         Lisa Murkowski.  I expected her to fold.  She didn’t, despite (or maybe because of) threats from the White House.  Good on ya, Lisa.

·         Susan Collins.  The unsung hero of the efforts to block repeal.  Wile E. Coyote (i.e., Mitch McConnell) knew that Collins was going to be a “no,” and that narrowed his margin for error immensely.  No other Republican had the guts to lead the way.  Thanks, Susan.

·         Chuck Schumer and all 48 of the Democrats in the Senate.  Everyone from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin stuck together and forced McConnell to sweat it out.  Way to herd those cats, Chuck.  Good on ya. 

·         But mostly, I want to thank everyone who called a congressman, even once; who rallied, demonstrated, and protested, and generally kept the pressure on Republican congressmen ever since last spring.  We did it, guys.  We won’t win every battle, but we can beat these bastards. 

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? WELL, YOU KNOW

Last winter, people were fond of comparing Trumpism to European fascist movements of the 20th century.  After six months in power, the Trump phenomenon has begun to look more like a particularly inept version of the French Revolution.  Trump is less Robespierre than Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts bellowing “off with his head” while his minions scramble to keep him happy by painting the roses red. 

If Election Day was the equivalent of the Storming of the Bastille, we now appear to be entering the Trump Revolution’s Reign of Terror phase.  Let us hope that the modern equivalent of 18th Brumaire comes quickly.  As Napoleon Bonaparte said (more or less), never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Speaking of mistakes, I need to correct something I wrote last week about Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions.  I said that if Trump got rid of Sessions, as he is clearly trying to do, a lengthy confirmation process would be required to replace him.  I’ve since learned that if Trump were to appoint someone as acting Attorney General while Congress was in recess, that person could serve without confirmation until January, 2019, when a new Congress is sworn in. 

As it happens, Congress is scheduled to be in recess for the month of August – a perfect time for Trump to work his mischief and then head for a golf course until the dust settles.  Except that the dust won’t settle, because Trump himself IS the dust.

Because Sessions is racist and homophobic, he is popular with the Senate Republican caucus, and Mitch McConnell has a counter-move if Republicans want to use it.  The Senate could take away Trump’s recess appointment option by scheduling the month of August as a pro-forma session.  That means at least one Senator would have to show up every day, declare the Senate in session, perhaps say a few words, and then gavel the day’s session to a close. 

I should note that President Obama defied a Republican pro-forma session in 2012 to make four appointments; Republicans sued, and the Supreme Court issued a mixed ruling on the process more than a year later.  But even if a pro-forma session wouldn’t stop Trump, the spectre of a Republican Party united behind Jeff Sessions might.

Despite the fact that he’s evil, I find myself hoping Sessions toughs it out for a while longer.  The longer a recused Jeff Sessions is Attorney General, the harder it will be for Trump to fire Robert Mueller, which is clearly what this little dance is about. 

Meanwhile, new infighting has broken out among White House staff.  New kid on the block Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci has become Trump’s mini-me.  He wasted no time in threatening to fire everyone on Trump’s communications staff, and has now picked a fight with Reince Priebus, calling him a leaker and threatening him with an FBI investigation.  There’s just one tiny problem.  Priebus didn’t leak the Mooch’s financial disclosure form.  A reporter got it simply by asking his previous employer, the Export-Import Bank, for the information.  And since the Ex-Im Bank is a government agency, the information was a matter of public record anyway. 

Last week, it would have been hard to imagine anyone getting off to a worse start than Sean Spicer did in January, but the Mooch is giving him a run for his money.  Jacques Mallet du Pan, who sided with the Royalists during the French Revolution, nailed it when he wrote "the revolution eats its young."   

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION:  I want to draw your attention to the article linked below, in which Josh Marshall makes an important point about Donald Trump.  Yes, he’s an amoral predator, but there are lots of those.  What sets Trump apart, Marshall says, is his uncanny appeal to people who think of themselves as moral exemplars.  They know better, but they’re drawn to him anyway.  It’s as if they secretly want to be corrupted.

I would add this.  Trump is a failure as a businessman and president, but he’s a very good con man.  He knows something about his followers that they may not know about themselves.  Deep down, some saints want to be sinners.  Trump is like heroin to those people. He embodies what they wish they could be – the apex predator who breaks laws and commandments and seems to get away with everything.  People in his orbit give up every shred of honor and dignity to be like him.  Trumpism is a cult.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-darkness-and-the-rot

THEY DON'T GIVE MEDALS TO YESTERDAY'S HEROES

I’ve lived in Arizona since 1973.  I’ve had to pay attention to John McCain since 1986, when he ran for (and won) the Senate seat that Barry Goldwater gave up.  I voted for the other guy (Richard Kimball, if you’re curious).  I’ve voted for the other guy (or gal) five times since then.  McCain beat them all.

I get it.  He had a powerful resume – a prisoner of war from 1967-1973, a hero who rallied his fellow prisoners and refused offers of an early release because his father was an admiral.  As far as I’m concerned, he earned all of his medals.  In Vietnam, he was a hero.

After that, not so much.  He cheated on his first wife, and re-married into big money.  When he was elected to Congress, he opposed the creation of a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.  He took money from anti-porn activist and crooked financier Charles Keating and was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for his “poor judgment.”  He defended the Tailhook reunions of Navy and Marine pilots, even when it was clear that sexual harassment was rampant at these events, because boys will be boys.  He voted to convict Bill Clinton in his 1999 impeachment trial, because “boys will be boys” wasn’t a legitimate defense for Democrats.

He will live in infamy for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008.  Palin horrified decent Republicans and Democrats alike, but she was popular with a demographic that turned into Donald Trump’s notorious Base.  McCain deliberately cultivated the reputation of a maverick by offering mild criticism of Republican presidents and policies, but when it came time to vote, he always toed the party line.

That’s precisely what he did on Tuesday, providing the deciding yes vote on the motion to proceed with a vote on the Republican plan to deprive millions of Americans of health care.  And then, right after he could have stopped the bill but didn’t, Senator Maverick gave a speech on the floor of the Senate denouncing it.  That’s typical McCain, trying to have it both ways. 

I’m not disappointed in him, because both McCain’s vote and subsequent speech were perfectly predictable based on the record he’s compiled in his 30 years in congress.  McCain’s money and his congressional health insurance means he’ll get the best treatment available for his brain cancer.  But if McCain and his Republican pals have their way, an average Arizona voter who is diagnosed with glioblastoma is shit out of luck.  John McCain is no hero to me.

One of our neighbors is an Air Force veteran, who, like McCain, was a POW in Vietnam.  In 1968, he was shot down and spent five years in various prisons near Hanoi.  Myron doesn’t talk about his time as a POW, and I’ve never spoken to him about politics.  I don’t know who he voted for.  But I know he’s a good guy.  Whenever we’ve needed to borrow a tool or get help with a home repair project, he’s always ready to lend a hand. 

Maybe McCain is a good neighbor too.  But he’s a bad Senator.

PARDON ME BOY, IS THAT THE

These are the times that try men’s souls.  Donald Trump has painted himself into a corner, and he’s getting desperate – desperate enough to ask his lawyers about presidential pardon power.  I’m no constitutional lawyer, but I do know how to google, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned about what a president can and can’t do in terms of exercising the power of the pardon.  Hat tip to CNN and the Washington Post for helpful recent articles.

What sorts of crimes can the President pardon people for?  Only crimes against the United States, and crimes committed in Washington, DC.  He can’t pardon anyone for violating state laws.  That leaves the Trumps and Kushner vulnerable to prosecution in New York, where most of their businesses are headquartered.  (I’m reading that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has copies of Trump’s tax returns for the past several years, which is one thing that has Trump furious – and worried.)

Can Trump pardon his family members?  Yes, but only for crimes against the United States and crimes committed in Washington, DC.  And as Lawrence Tribe notes, pardoned criminals can still be compelled to testify in court, and their pardon means they’re not eligible for grants of immunity.  If they perjure themselves, they’re criminals again.  If they tell the truth?  Trump is probably screwed.

Can Trump pardon himself? The Constitution is silent on this issue. Proponents argue that if it’s not forbidden, it must be permissible. Opponents argue that because the word “pardon” is understood to mean something that one person grants to another, the framers of the Constitution didn’t need to forbid self-pardons; a proper understanding of the word “pardon” does that automatically. None of the presidents who’ve found themselves in impeachment trouble (Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton) have tried to pardon themselves. The only way we’ll get a definitive answer about the constitutionality of self-pardon is if Trump tries it and the Supreme Court issues a decision.

Can Trump pardon himself? The Constitution is silent on this issue. Proponents argue that if it’s not forbidden, it must be permissible. Opponents argue that because the word “pardon” is understood to mean something that one person grants to another, the framers of the Constitution didn’t need to forbid self-pardons; a proper understanding of the word “pardon” does that automatically. None of the presidents who found themselves in impeachment trouble (Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton) have tried to pardon themselves. The only way we’ll get a definitive answer about constitutionality is if Trump tries it and the Supreme Court issues a decision. 

Can Trump pardon people for potential future crimes?  No.  He could, I suppose, issue new pardons to the same people on a weekly basis for whatever laws they may have broken in the past seven days.  Given the rampant criminality of the Trump Mob, that would probably be necessary.

Is Trump required to specify the crimes he’s pardoning people for?  No.  Gerald Ford gave Nixon a blanket pardon for “all offenses against the United States” committed during his presidency.

If you’re pardoned, is that the end of it?  You walk away a free man?  Not quite.  If you’re offered a pardon, it’s not valid until you accept it.  (That’s one thing that makes a self-pardon a little ridiculous.)  And if you accept a pardon, you’re basically admitting guilt.  That was Gerald Ford’s rationale for pardoning Nixon, and he cited a 1915 Supreme Court case (Burdick v. United States) to support his contention. 

But wait, there’s more.  Any Trump family members who accept a pardon for federal crimes that are also crimes in New York State will probably discover that they’ve jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.  If they’ve already pleaded guilty to an offense in one jurisdiction, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman should have a much easier time convicting them in a state courtroom. 

For Trump himself, accepting a pardon, even from himself, could be used as evidence of criminality in impeachment proceedings, which honorable Republicans would surely launch if Trump stooped to pardoning himself.  Stop snickering!

The bottom line, though, is that while pardoning his family and even himself might buy Trump some time, it’s likely to come with a tremendous cost.  The bill is bound to come due sooner or later.  As the saying goes, if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

All this assumes that Trump intends to obstruct justice by issuing pardons, and probably also by finding a way to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  When might those things happen?  Like Jon Snow, I know nothing.  But I see that Trump is scheduled to take a long vacation (August 3-20) at his golf resort in Bedminster, NJ.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the days before August 3.

ON ONE SIDE THE GOVERNMENT, THE OTHER THE MOB

This is me, catching up on where we seem to be, how we got here, and what might happen next.  Spoiler alert:  I think the poop is about to hit the propeller. 

I believe that Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has hit upon the best description of Donald Trump, his family, and his closest confidants.  They’re not politicians.  They’re not businessmen.  They’re a crime family, like the Corleones. 

The Trumps aren’t loyal to anyone or anything but family, and their only interest is how they can monetize the presidency.  As Marshall says, “whether things were legal or right just didn’t seem to be a metric they operated in.”  But unlike their underworld predecessors, the Trumps are stupid.  Donald Trump fancies himself as Michael Corleone, but he’s really just Sonny.  And Don Jr. is definitely Fredo.

If they’d been smart enough to keep a low profile, the Trumps might have continued to operate largely under the radar.  Even The Donald’s buffoonery helped draw attention away from his unsavory business dealings.  Before he decided to run for president, the press regarded him with amusement if they deigned to notice him at all, it was with amusement rather than any sense that he might actually be dangerous.

The Trump Gang lived on the liminal boundary between shady and outright criminal.  Their motto was “see you in court,” and their strategy was to stiff partners and then string out the resulting lawsuits until many plaintiffs gave up and settled for pennies on the dollar.  They declared bankruptcy every once in a while and walked away from the financial wreckage, leaving somebody else holding the bag. 

(I know I’ve said the before, but it bears repeating.  Everything Donald Trump touches turns to shit.  The longer the Republican Party hangs in there with him, the worse they’ll smell.)

Trump’s money gave him license to cheat on his wives with impunity, and when he got tired of them, he could simply give them a hefty divorce settlement – with a strict non-disclosure agreement as part of the deal.  He had two assets – wealth and utter shamelessness – and he parlayed them into a second career as a minor celebrity. It was a sweet gig until he decided to run for president.

In an election that was criminally misreported by the national press, Donald Trump leveraged this shamelessness into a series of Republican primary victories.  Bemused reporters and commentators watched him knock off the Republicans’ so-called “deep bench” candidates one by one. They were surprised but indulgent as he took down professional politicians like Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich, as well as the usual boatload of poseurs who were essentially auditioning for work as Fox commentators.  TV news, especially, profited from Trump’s primary successes; he was good for ratings.  And then, all of a sudden, Donald Trump was the Republican nominee.

And still the press covered him as a novelty.  Like everyone else, they assumed that Hillary Clinton would win, and decided to take her down a peg before she became president.  They chose to paint Clinton’s lax email security as the most important issue of the campaign.  Trump’s gaffes were just Trump being Trump.  And then came November 8, and all of a sudden Trump was President-Elect. 

The really scary thing is that on November 9, most of the national press would have been willing to overlook Trump’s past.  All he needed to do was throw them a bone – pretend to be non-partisan, call for unity, promise to work with Democrats, and mouth the usual come-let-us-reason-together bullshit that the press always falls for.  They ran an initial spate of “Democrats aren’t the real America” pieces, and a few “today is the day Donald Trump became president” editorials, but those storylines petered out because Donald Trump was too dumb even to pretend to be a gracious winner.  He was a mob boss, not a politician.  He wanted revenge against everyone who’d opposed him.  He doubled down on his deplorable base.  He insulted the press.  In an even bigger strategic blunder, he insulted the FBI and the CIA. 

His biggest mistake was to assume that as President, he could get away with anything.  The press, the government infrastructure he inherited, even the congressional Republicans he’d need to accomplish his agenda – he thought they were all just was like everyone else he’d been dealing with all his life.  They could be flattered, bribed, or bullied into submission. 

Congressional Republicans have been pretty docile so far, but the media has not.  The press – particularly the Washington Post and the New York Times, but also, at times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and others – began pointing out that he and his spokesmen were lying almost all the time.  They began poking around into the allegations of citizen journalists that Russians had manipulated the election in some way – and their investigations proved that the much maligned citizen journalists were correct in many cases.  Saturday Night Live mocked Trump and his mob mercilessly.  They all got under his skin, and he lashed out with tweets that just got him in deeper holes.  

The intelligence community also refused to roll over for him.  Trump began firing people who were looking into his affairs.  It didn’t seem to occur to him that they’d kept records, and made sure their successors could pick up where they left off.  We can be sure that Robert Mueller has taken similar precautions in the event that Trump fires him.  

So what’s next?  Citizen journalists are reporting that Robert Mueller will soon begin to go public with at least the general outlines of the legal case he is preparing to make.  Meanwhile, Jared Kushner (Tom Hagen, I guess) is scheduled to testify in private before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday July 24, and Don Jr. is supposed to testify in a public hearing before the same committee on July 26.  Those will be a minefields, especially for Fredo. 

It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that one or more intelligence agencies managed to record those conversations Fredo had with Russian spies in June, 2016; and I would bet that the FBI and Robert Mueller have a very good idea of what went down.  I won’t be shocked if next Wednesday’s testimony includes some convenient memory lapses, and even invocations of the 5th amendment.

And now comes the news that Trump had another tantrum in an interview with the failing New York Times.  He threw Attorney General Jeff Sessions under the bus, and then threatened to fire Robert Mueller unless he steered the investigation away from Trump family finances.  This is about as clear a sign as possible that Trump has finally realized that he’s in deep doodoo. 

I suspect that Trump hopes he can humiliate Sessions into resigning so that he can appoint someone with the authority to fire Mueller.  In the meantime, he hopes that threatening Mueller will convince the Special Counsel to scale back the scope of the investigation.

There are a few problems with this strategy, if you can call it that.  First, it’s dumb as hell.  Even if Sessions resigns, Trump would have to find someone who was willing to serve as Attorney General, and then the nominee would have to be confirmed by the Senate. 

Joining Trump’s Cabinet at this point would be like signing on as a crew member of the Titanic right after it hit the iceberg.  Maybe there are people that stupid.  But would any of them have the credentials to win the approval of a majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee (where the nominee would surely be asked to go on record about his or her willingness to fire Mueller), and then a majority of the full Senate?  

That may be a bridge too far, even for the sleazy cohort of congressional Republicans currently in power.  What’s worse for Trump is that even a successful nomination fight could take weeks, by which time Mueller’s team may have handed down indictments.  A “Saturday Night Massacre” scenario would be faster, but speed is its only advantage.  It would be widely interpreted as an admission of guilt.  And it wouldn’t stop the legal firestorm that is swiftly bearing down on the Trump family. 

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was working on money laundering and other RICO charges against the Trump organization until he decided to step back and let Robert Mueller have a clear field.  Mueller’s team would find ways to give Schneiderman the evidence they’ve gathered, and the New York AG can’t be fired by the president.  New York has laws against what they call “enterprise corruption” that include civil asset forfeiture under certain conditions (and only after the case has been proven, of course).  That should send a shiver down the spines of the Trump gang, since most of their assets are in New York.  Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President.

Trump’s last remaining hole card would be issuing preemptive pardons to his entire family, and perhaps even to himself.  Could he get away with that?  Maybe.  That would create enormous pressure on Congress to initiate impeachment hearings.  Would enough House Republicans be sufficiently disgusted to join Democrats in voting for impeachment?  If not, would national disgust be enough to give Democrats majorities in the House and Senate after the 2018 election?

An alternative for Republicans who don’t have the stomach for impeachment hearings is simply to declare Donald Trump “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” under the 25th Amendment and make Mike Pence Acting President for the remainder of Trump’s term.  I have no respect for Pence, but he doesn’t appear to be insane, or in thrall to Vladimir Putin.  That’s a pretty low bar, but at this point, I’d settle for getting rid of the madman as soon as possible and working like hell to elect Democrats in 2018 and 2020.

One last thing.  On July 19, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Donald Trump Jr., asking him to produce all correspondence to, from, or about a long list of people.  Most of them are Russians; a few are Trump advisors.  The name that jumps out at you, though, is Jill Stein.  Isn’t that interesting?

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

Or, two weeks without Donald Trump and indoor plumbing.  Vicki and I have returned from our two week meditation retreat on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada.  It seems as though things are more like they are now than they’ve ever been before. 

After two weeks of silence and a short ferry ride back to Vancouver Island, I was actually debating whether or not to check my email, Twitter feed, and dive headfirst back into politics south of the 49th parallel.  But the decision was made for me when we walked into the lobby of the Sidney Waterfront Inn on Victoria Island, where we were overnighting in preparation for a Sunday morning flight back to Tucson.

The TV in the lobby was tuned to a Canadian news station.  The sound was off, but the chiron was “Firestorm Rages Over Donald Trump Jr. Meeting With Russian Lawyer.”  I’m still not sure what that means, but any firestorm raging around the Trump family seems like a positive development.  It’ll probably take me a day or three to catch up on developments since July 1, but in the meantime, if you’re interested in a summary of the trip, read on.

We left Tucson on Saturday afternoon, July 2, taking Alaska Airlines to Seattle and catching a 24 minute flight from there to Victoria, on Vancouver Island.  We spent the night in the Sidney Waterfront Inn and got up early to catch the 9:00 am ferry to Salt Spring Island, where we hooked up with a few other retreatants and bounced up a bumpy dirt road to the top of Mt. Tuam and the KDOL (Kunzang Dechen Ozel Ling) retreat center, founded in 1976. 

It’s a sprawling place, designed for extended retreats with Spartan accommodations to minimize distractions.  We stayed in a cabin in a lovely pine forest and great views of the Strait of Georgia.  When we were there in March, 2016, it rained constantly.  This time it was bright and sunny, with highs in the 60s or 70s and lows cool enough to warrant the use of comforters at night.  Our cabin had electricity and a sink with a cold water tap, but no toilet or shower.  I’m not much of a woodsman, but I got used to the outhouse pretty quickly.  My Facebook timeline has a few photos, including one of the outhouse.  Check that out if you want some pictures of the scenery.

The retreat began on July 2, and is scheduled to last until the end of the month.  The retreat’s leader is Doug Veenhof, and our cook was a woman my age named Judith, who lives at KDOL most of the year.  There are/were a shifting group of 12-15 attendees at any one time, with people staying as long as their circumstances permitted.  Some of them were old friends.  There was also a herd of friendly black tailed deer that hung around looking for handouts, which they often received.

The teachings we studied fall under the heading of Dzogchen (again, try Wikipedia if you want an explanation).  We went into silence on Day 2, and everyone was pretty good about observing the no talking rule.  Each day began at 6:30 with three rounds of meditation before breakfast.

Today, we divide a day up into 24 units of 60 minutes each.  In medieval India, they reversed those numbers, creating a day that consisted of 60 units of 24 minutes each, called ghatikas.  Our meditation periods, then, consisted of 24 minutes, followed by a 6 minute break to stretch, grab some water, or run to the nearest outhouse. 

There were 90 minute breaks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and there were three 90 minute teaching sessions during the day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening (the teacher talked; if we had questions, submitted them in writing).  The last session ended between 8:00-8:30 pm.  The island is on daylight savings time, and the sun didn’t set until around 9:30 pm.  I was almost always asleep by the time it got dark.

Doug is a nice guy in addition to being a great teacher, and his philosophy is, “It’s your retreat.  Do what you need to do to make the most of it.”  In other words, sleep late if you need to, go for a walk in the woods, take naps, do some yoga – whatever it takes to come back to your meditation cushion with a clear, fresh mind. 

I took him up on that proposition, but I still found the retreat physically challenging.  At 70, I have arthritis in my hips and neck.  I could ease the pressure on my hips by varying positions – sitting cross-legged, sitting in a chair, and even standing.  But holding my head still for 24 minutes aggravated my arthritic neck.  Towards the end of our stay, my dear friend and teacher Jarret rigged up a fortress of props that allowed me to lean back into a neck support that finally took the pressure off.

The only advantage of this “fortress” was that it was sometimes conducive to drowsiness.  We were trying to achieve a state that combined relaxation and alertness.  I was pretty good at the former, but often struggled with the latter.   We often associate relaxation with sleep, and when we let go of agitation, distraction, and worry, it’s easy to toggle straight into a siesta. 

I know people who have done silent solitary retreats for three years.  They say their teachers told them to make sure they had no unfinished emotional business with anyone, because they’d take those issues into retreat with them, mentally rehashing old arguments that the other party may have long since forgotten. 

Two weeks isn’t three years, but I was concerned that I’d spend the retreat writing blog posts about what Donald Trump might be doing.  Oddly enough, that didn’t happen.  It was surprisingly easy to let go of politics for two weeks.  Instead of surfing the web on Saturday evening, I luxuriated in our shower and flush toilet.  We flew home on Sunday, arriving just in time for a big monsoon storm that evening. 

It was good to have done the retreat, and it’s good to be back.  My usual blather will resume shortly.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN, BUT

Friends, this is a heads up that I won’t be posting for the next couple of weeks.  My wife and I leave this afternoon for Canada, where we’ll be attending a silent meditation retreat on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.  After the first day, everyone but the teacher will avoid talking.  We’ll have electricity and running water, but no toilets.  Luckily, our cabin is near one of the best outhouses on the property.  We were there last year in March, when it was chilly and rainy.  The forecast for early July is that the highs will be in the upper 60s, with lows in the upper 50s.  That will be a welcome change of pace from the ridiculous 115 degree highs we’ve had in Tucson lately.

When I tell people about this trip, reactions are mixed.  Most folks are polite but skeptical.  Others are a bit envious.  The envious ones are usually mothers of young children

We’ll be in a media-free zone – no TV, no radio, no internet, and no cell phone service.  I won’t have a clue about what’s happening with Donald Trump, with the Republican health care bill, or anything else for the next two weeks.  I’ll start to catch up on July 15 when we get to Victoria, B.C., where we’ll spend the night before flying home on the 16th.   If things have taken a turn for the worse, we may ask for political asylum. 

What would be really great is if you guys could arrange for Donald Trump to leave office before we get back. 

In the meantime, happy Canada Day, happy Independence Day, and happy birthday to anyone who’s having one during the first half of July, and here are some inspirational quotes to tide you over.

Marshall McLuhan:  "World War III [will be] a guerrilla information war with no division between military & civilian participation.

Mort Sahl (the guy who single-handedly revived political comedy during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years):  “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.”

Jim Wright (Stonekettle Station blog):  “This is what happens when religion and political ideology alike are based on the simple selfish principle of ‘Fuck you, I got mine.’  This is what happens when you elect billionaires to office and believe them when they try to sell you magic unicorns.  If you can't pay, you die.”

Octavia Butler (Parable of the Talents, 1998):  “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.  To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.  To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.  To be led by a thief is to offer up the most precious treasures to be stolen.  To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.  To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

BLOOD AND IRON

BLOOD AND IRON: Republicans now control all three branches of government, having attained the White House with the help of Vladimir Putin. They have majorities in both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. You might think they’d relax and have fun making America great again. But no. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

It becomes more obvious every day that Donald Trump is mentally impaired. His tweets and off the cuff remarks provide a window into his unfiltered id. Lately he has returned to the topic of women’s blood. When he was feuding with Megyn Kelly last year, he told CNN that “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Recently, he’s turned his attention to Mika Brzezinski, claiming that she approached him at a party “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”

Apart from blood, Trump enjoys describing women as unattractive, stupid, crazy, and old. Those adjectives fit Trump himself so perfectly that you have to wonder if he has a bleeding problem of some sort. But his obsession with blood is also of a piece with his phobias about other bodily fluids, so who knows? Whatever is going on with his body, he has a sick mind.

And speaking of sick minds, the National Rifle Association has released an over-the-top recruiting video featuring an angry woman calling for NRA member to have their shootin’ irons ready. It’s time, she said, to use the “clenched fist of truth” against Democrats.

Why this? Why now? I suppose they’re looking for money. Barack Obama is no longer president, and his presumptive heir, Hillary Clinton, lost to the Trump-Putin coalition. They have to find a new bogeyman. The NRA has painted itself into a rhetorical corner. Unless they keep upping the ante, its members will get their fix of crazy somewhere else.

The NRA used to be about teaching marksmanship and gun safety. Nowadays marksmanship takes a backseat to firepower. Get yourself an automatic weapon and just keep pulling that trigger. You’re bound to hit something. And anyone who talks about gun safety probably just wants to confiscate your arsenal.

For the record, I don’t own a firearm. If you do, as long as you use it responsibly, it’s fine with me. But I can’t for the life of me imagine why a sane gun owner would join the NRA. Those people are crazy.

EVERY LITTLE BREEZE SEEMS TO WHISPER

A couple of readers have expressed skepticism about Louise Mensch, and I appreciate their comments.  I thought it would be worthwhile to explain why I cite her work, and why I believe it contains value.  To begin with, I try to be transparent about the sources I use to write my posts.  If one of those sources is a little iffy – and Louise Mensch sometimes strays into iffy territory – I try to flag it for my readers.

With that out of the way, I’ll tackle the complicated Louise Mensch phenomenon.  I think it’s important to understand that her work is comprised of several parts.  I value some of them, and others not so much.

What I like about Mensch’s work is her basic content, which is information from American and international intelligence communities about Donald Trump and his associates.  Anyone can claim access to secret intelligence, but because Mensch is a former Member of Parliament in the UK, it strikes me as plausible that she made connections in the international intelligence committee during that period.  Those agencies have agendas of their own, and may well be using Mensch (among others) to advance those agendas.  But the important point, from my perspective, is that much of what Mensch has published based on those sources has turned out to be accurate.  Mainstream media outlets have confirmed her reports, usually weeks later and without crediting her for breaking the story. 

Perhaps the MSM’s connections in the intelligence community aren’t as extensive as Mensch’s.  They certainly operate under much more stringent requirements about confirming leaks and rumors before going public with them.  But Mensch doesn’t claim to be a “journalist,” and she’s not obliged to follow MSM’s rules.  The MSM justifiably worries about getting a story wrong by publishing inaccurate information.  But they can also get a story wrong by sitting on good information simply because they aren’t able to confirm it with enough independent sources.  Getting it right is what counts, whether you’ve got one source or twenty. 

Mensch’s Twitter feed drives a lot of people crazy, and I feel their pain.  She has referred to herself as ADHD; I don’t know if that’s a clinical diagnosis or just an attempt at humor, but if you follow her on Twitter, you can expect dozens of tweets each day, most of them repetitive.  She spends a lot of time and energy bantering with her followers and insulting trolls.  It’s her account and her time, but it can be exhausting to try to keep up.  She is also overly quick to label her critics as tools of Vladimir Putin.  Fortunately, her Patribotics blog posts usually avoid those excesses.    

In my view, Mensch also tends to overestimate the impact that her revelations will have once they are confirmed and made public.  Here are two examples.  She has predicted that not only Trump, but also Mike Pence and Paul Ryan, will be forced out of office as a result of this scandal, leaving Utah Senator Orrin Hatch as the next President of the United States.  She has also suggested that because Trump was elected illegally (which is yet to be proved, but is a distinct possibility), the Supreme Court will declare his presidency null and void. 

It’s possible in theory that Trump will be impeached and convicted by Congress, but it’s still a big stretch for me to imagine that our gutless Republican congressional majorities would do that, no matter what the evidence. Of course, if Democrats take back the House and Senate in 2018 and impeachment is still in play, it would be a different story.

Maybe you could talk yourself into believing that the Russian election hack constituted an invasion, and that Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution (“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”) empowers the Supreme Court to nullify the results of a presidential election.  But I wouldn’t bet money on it. 

So there you have it.  My bottom line is that I believe Mensch’s batting average is good enough to take her work seriously, with the caveats I’ve listed.  Your mileage may vary, and I respect that.  Thanks for reading.

THE NOOSE AROUND US IS SLOWLY TIGHTENING

Josh Marshall says it’s misleading to frame the Russiagate scandal as an attack on our democratic process.  That’s accurate, but it’s also way too general.  Russia deliberately and illegally helped elect Donald Trump, a man with a history of financial ties to shady Russian oligarchs and mobsters.  Republican congressional leaders were presented with evidence of these facts prior to the election, and refused President Obama’s request to join him in a bipartisan rejection of Russian interference in our electoral process. 

The question before Congress, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and the American public is not WHETHER this happened, but HOW it happened, and what laws were broken in the process.

Trump sycophants have largely abandon their claims that no Russian collusion took place, and have adopted the fallback position that even if the Trump campaign did work with Russian agents, it wasn’t illegal.  Where’s the crime, they ask.  Why haven’t all the investigations turned up any evidence of wrongdoing?

First of all, it’s not true that no evidence of wrongdoing has been found.  There is clear evidence of perjury on the part of Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Jeff Sessions.  The investigations would be further along if Trump hadn’t repeatedly fired people (Preet Bharara, Sally Yates, James Comey) leading some of those investigations; and if Republicans like Devin Nunes and Jason Chaffetz hadn’t done everything in their power to derail the work of their oversight committees.

Special Counsel Mueller was appointed in mid-May.  He has recruited a team of investigators whose reputations are impeccable, and Trump is clearly spooked.  Mueller is known to be methodical and meticulous.  This is a complicated case, and I’d rather he get it done right than get it done fast.  The Watergate investigation lasted over two years.  My guess is that Mueller won’t take that long.

Moving to the question of what part of all this is actually illegal, here are some possibilities. 

We know that Russia hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee, and that Wikileaks released those emails (some of which were fakes, written by Russian agents).  We also know that Trump associates Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone bragged about having advanced knowledge of the impending release of the hacked emails.  These two points are a matter of public record.  The crime:  Email hacking violates laws against computer fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft.  If two or more people were involved in committing these crimes, they would also carry a charge of conspiracy.

It is also illegal to solicit campaign aid (in the form of money or any other type of assistance) from foreign nationals.  Russians are foreign nationals, and they obviously assisted Trump’s campaign.  Was any of that assistance solicited?  Trump’s famous “Russia, if you’re listening” speech sure sounds like solicitation.  It also suggests that he knew that his campaign was working closely with Russia. 

On the financial side, there’s also the question of whether Trump, Kushner, or even the Republican National Committee itself engaged in money laundering – for instance, accepting money from mobbed up Russian oligarchs and running it through a series of dummy corporations to disguise its origins.  Real estate moguls and casino operators in New York and Florida have ample opportunities to engage in money laundering.  The Miami Herald has covered the curious tendency of Russians to wildly overpay Donald Trump for his Florida properties.  Trump’s Taj Mahal casino violated money laundering laws over a hundred times in the 1990s alone. 

Other potential crimes include obstruction of justice and witness intimidation.  Like for instance, hypothetically trying to persuade the FBI and the National Security Agency to shut down its investigations of your friends, or firing investigators when they refused to cooperate.  

And then there’s espionage.  That sounds melodramatic, until you remember that some of Donald Trump’s associates – including Mike Flynn (National Security Advisor) and Paul Manafort (campaign manager) – have admitted that they failed to register as paid agents of foreign governments.  Both men – as well as Jared Kushner – are known to have been in contact with Russian agents in the United States and overseas.  Robert Mueller is undoubtedly curious about whether one or more of them spoke with Donald Trump about their adventures.  

I get the sense that another shoe is about to drop in this investigation, because Trump and his pals have spent the week issuing increasingly hysterical attacks on the media.  On Wednesday morning, Donald Trump tweeted “The #AmazonWashingtonPost, sometimes referred to as the guardian of Amazon not paying internet taxes (which they should) is FAKE NEWS!” 

There’s so much weirdness in that statement that I couldn’t decipher it without help.  The consensus is that Trump was trying to say that the Washington Post is somehow helping Amazon avoid paying taxes on its internet sales.  Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and the Post, but doesn’t appear to exert any editorial control of the paper.  Amazon collects the all taxes it’s legally obligated to collect, and not a penny more, which seems perfectly sensible to me.   

If Trump wants to ask Congress for a law mandating new internet taxes, all he has to do is propose one – although creating new taxes hasn’t been a winning issue in the Republican Party since it turned on George H.W. Bush for breaking his “read my lips” pledge in 1990.  I’m a guy who doesn’t mind paying taxes, but Trump’s internet tax would annoy me.

(I can’t resist sharing a couple of fun facts about Amazon.  More people subscribe to Amazon Prime than voted for Donald Trump in 2016.  And in Kentucky, more people work for Amazon than work in the coal industry.) 

Trump’s attack on the Post is one of several barrages against major national news outlets this week.  He also blasted the New York Times as “A Fake News Joke!” on Wednesday, and reached peak Trump pettiness on Thursday morning with a bizarrely personal attack against MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.  He and his pal Sean Hannity have also relentlessly attacked CNN. 

What this suggests to me is that Trump is expecting more bad news in the near future.  Of course, bad news for Trump is almost guaranteed to be good news for the country. 

What might that bad news be?  There are so many possibilities.  At the end of this post, I’ll include a link to a recent blog entry from Louise Mensch, outlining what she claims to know about who did what, what the evidence is, and where it came from   Remember that many people, including most of mainstream media, think she’s crazy.  She’s definitely eccentric, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong.  She has contacts among American and international intelligence agencies, and she has scooped the national press on Russiagate several times already this year. 

This post has been long, even by my standards, but I urge you to check out the link.  If even ten percent of what she says is true, Trump and his associates are going down hard. 

https://patribotics.blog/2017/06/29/exclusive-reince-wanted-to-run-nato-sigint-on-trumps-treasonweasels/

JUST CALL ME CLEOPATRA, 'CAUSE I'M THE QUEEN OF

JUST CALL ME CLEOPATRA, ‘CAUSE I’M THE QUEEN OF:  Perhaps you’ve noticed that Republicans are going through various stages of denial about Russia’s successful attempt to elect Donald Trump President.  Just as there are said to be five stages of grief, we have now reached five stages of denial about Trump’s complicity in the Russian election hack.

If you’re keeping score at home, here are stages one through four.

1.       There was no Russian interference in the election.

2.       OK, it’s possible that Russia interfered in the election, but there was no connection between the Russians and the Trump campaign itself.

3.       OK, maybe minor campaign figures colluded with Russia, but no one close to Trump was involved.

4.       OK, maybe people close to Trump colluded with Russia, but Trump himself was not involved in this collusion.

Late last week, the usual suspects began floating their latest trial balloon on behalf of the Dear Leader.  The fifth stage of denial amounts to “Yeah, he did it.  So what?”  Here are some excerpts from the choir, practicing their harmonies. 

Fox’s Brit Hume:  “Collusion, while it would be obviously alarming and highly inappropriate for the Trump campaign, of which there is no evidence by the way, of colluding with the Russians. It's not a crime.”

Fox’s Sean Hannity:  “What was the collusion? That maybe somebody in the Trump campaign talked to somebody in Russia … Is that a crime, to say ‘release it?’”

Newt Gingrich:  “Technically, the President of the United States cannot obstruct justice.”  In case you’ve forgotten, Newt voted to impeach Bill Clinton for obstruction of justice back in 1998.  Perhaps what he meant to say was “Technically, a Republican President of the United States cannot obstruct justice.”  Newt is harkening back to Richard Nixon’s post-resignation claim that “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

We’re approaching the anniversary of the day the Supreme Court called bullshit on Nixon’s claim that a president is above the law.  On July 24, 1974, the Court unanimously rejected Nixon's assertion that he had an "absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances."

Last week, the last surviving member of the Senate Watergate Committee, Connecticut Republican Lowell Weicker, Jr., published an op-ed in the New York Times.  Weicker said, “The Constitution was framed to protect us from criminality and abuse of power by government officials, but it requires men and women with grit and ability to withstand political and personal vilification. There are no guarantees.  At the outset of the Watergate hearings, there was a strong measure of bipartisan commitment to the truth in Congress. When I listen to tapes of our sessions, I am struck by how difficult it can be to distinguish between a Republican and a Democratic questioner.  But our Constitution is only as powerful as the will of our people to enforce it.”

You don’t have any trouble distinguishing between Republican and Democratic questioners in either the House or Senate hearings now. 

Weicker was talking about Congress, but his point applies to the Supreme Court as well.  Before this is over, Trump’s attorneys are likely to ask the Court to reconsider the “Nixon defense” – if the president does it, it’s not illegal.  We’ll see whether today’s justices have the grit and the ability to withstand political and personal vilification that the Burger Court had 43 years ago.

UNTIL TOMORROW, BUT THAT'S JUST ANOTHER TIME

Donald Trump now says “I have no idea whether there are “tapes” or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.”  Gosh, where would anyone have gotten the crazy idea that Trump was recording his White House conversations?

There’s only one logical conclusion.  When Trump tweeted “James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations”) he was attempting to intimidate Comey as a witness against him.  I’m no lawyer, but that looks like “Obstruction of Justice – Witness Tampering Through Intimidation, Threats, or Corrupt Persuasion” to me. 

A few weeks ago, an attorney on Twitter (@PopeHat) wrote this.  “Seriously, Trump's recent behavior highlights the importance of a defense attorney with good client control.  People accused of things feel an overpowering urge to DO something, to SAY something, to take ACTION, to GET IN FRONT OF IT.  It is freakishly common that doing something/saying something is what sinks them -- supplies crucial evidence or a new crime.”  Good luck with client control when your client is Donald Trump.

We can add this episode to Trump’s already long list of high crimes and misdemeanors.  We can also add it to the long list of reasons why foreign leaders – allies and adversaries alike – see us as unreliable.  Our president will say any ridiculous thing, make any false claim, if he thinks it helps him in the moment.  And then deny it the next day, and act outraged if anyone questions either statement.

MUST BE THE SEASON OF THE WITCH

We, the unworthy citizens of a once proud nation, are a never ending source of disappointment to our President.  We are, it seems, a stiffnecked people, unwilling to do the bidding of our leige lord, who is accustomed to unquestioning deference.  Even worse, the crooked media is now engaging in “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” 

I’ve been sharing summaries of the work of some “citizen journalists” (i.e. amateurs whose work appears on twitter and personal blogs rather than in the respectable press).  In reporting on the Trump-Russia scandal, they have sources inside the intelligence and legal communities that mainstream journalists don’t, and they’re not bound by the same rules and conventions that the mainstream press plays by.  This sometimes annoys journalists who are obliged to follow those rules.

But it has often happened that, after a few days or weeks pass, those wild-eyed conspiracy theories promulgated by irresponsible citizen journalists wind up being confirmed by the national press.  Today, for instance, Newsweek published a story confirming (because a Senator was willing to go on record) that Mike Flynn is cooperating with the FBI, which several citizen journalists reported a month ago. 

With that as prologue, here are a few crazy rumors that may become tomorrow’s headlines.   I report, you decide

Why did Donald Trump choose to spend this past weekend at Camp David for the first time in his presidency?  Especially since Trump once described Camp David as “very rustic. It's nice, you'd like it.  You know how long you'd like it? For about 30 minutes."  The rumor:  his inner circle put him under lockdown – no appointments and no tweeting – to isolate him from people who were encouraging him to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  Could it be that at least a few people in his inner circle are beginning to grasp the seriousness of the situation?  Sure enough, the weekend came and went with Mueller still on the job.  Although with Trump, an explosion could come at any minute. 

Why has Ivanka Trump’s name suddenly been removed from the records of some holding companies mentioned in Donald Trump’s financial disclosures?  The rumor:  Investigators have linked many of Trump’s companies to Russian hackers, and people close to Ivanka are scrambling to cover up her involvement.    

How many memos did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein write about the performance of FBI Director James Comey?  We know of one, which was generally negative, although it stopped short of recommending dismissal.  The rumor:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Rosenstein to write two separate memos about Comey, one positive and one negative.  Sessions, the rumor goes, showed only the negative memo to Donald Trump (who later said it wouldn’t have mattered what Rosenstein wrote).  If this is true, Sessions violated his recusal, and both Sessions and Trump were trying to throw Rosenstein under the bus.

What’s up with Steve Bannon these days?  The rumor:  He’s freaking out about the investigation of Brad Parscale, the director of Trump’s digital presidential campaign.  Why might that worry Bannon?  The rumor:  Parscale has been linked to Russian hackers, and Bannon worked with Parscale on the digital campaign project. 

What’s up with those “tapes” that Donald Trump used to try to intimidate FBI Director James Comey?  In his Senate testimony, Comey seemed to relish the prospect of a recording of his conversations with Trump.  As he said to Senator Diane Feinstein, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”  The rumor:  Lordy, there are tapes!  Not necessarily the “tapes” from inside the White House that Trump cited in a tweet, which may or may not exist.  But Comey installed a recording device on his own cell phone – legally, with court approval – over a year ago, as part of the FBI investigation into the Russian election hack.  Comey shut the “wiretap” down on the day he was fired, but everything Donald Trump said to Comey in calls to that phone is now in the hands of the FBI.   (Fun fact:  Two days before he was fired, Comey questioned Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. about a Russian botnet on a server in Trump Tower.  Could that have been the impetus for his firing?)

Here’s something that is NOT a rumor.  If the whole Trump-Russia thing was nothing but fake news, you wouldn’t think that it’d be necessary to lawyer up so heavily.  But that’s what people in the White House are doing.  Today brings the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has hired a lawyer.   Donald Trump has built a legal team of his own, but he’s relying on a couple of minor league fixers rather than competent attorneys to protect him against the witch hunt. 

Jay Sekulow and Michael Cohen are a lot like Trump.  They can’t shut up, and the more they talk, the deeper the hole they dig.  Sekulow, the newest member of the team, was even mocked by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.  If Trump loses Fox News, his goose is cooked.  Longtime Trump lawyer Cohen has now hired an attorney of his own.  The latest Twitter joke is that MAGA stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.”

Meanwhile, allegedly conservative magazine The National Review has done us all a favor by making it explicit that American conservatism has no moral center.  Its only interest is in maintaining power.  During the Republican primaries, the magazine was solidly “Anybody But Trump.”  But when Trump surprised everyone by winning, TNR transitioned to an anti-anti-Trump stance, not always defending Trump, but saving their harshest criticism for his opponents. 

Finally, in a June 16 editorial, editor Rich Lowry has admitted that the fates of Donald Trump and the Republican Party are joined at the hip.  He argues implicitly that conservatives have no choice but to be Republicans, and explicitly that Republicans have no choice but to support Trump in order to save the party.  Lowry doesn’t try to defend Trump’s philosophy; in fact, he pretty much admits that Trump has no philosophy, apart from arrogance and greed.  He simply asserts that criticizing Trump will jeopardize the Republican tax cutting agenda and hurt the GOP in the 2018 midterm elections. 

The Republican Party motto is now “party over principle.”  As the GOP’s uber-cynical approach to health care policy demonstrates, conservative philosophy has been reduced to one thing: “tax cuts for the rich.”  Everything else is expendable.  They’ve sold whatever ideals they once may have had to the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer, et al, who have poured billions of dollars into Republican campaign chests.  Congressional Republicans will be rich, no matter what happens to their constituents.

That’s why we can’t count on congressional Republicans to care about the millions of people who will be hurt when they replace Obamacare with “WhoCares?”  It’s why we can’t count on congressional Republicans to keep the oath they took to “support and defend the Constitution” against all enemies (including Donald Trump and his cronies).  Their cynicism is staggering, but it’s good to have it out in the open. 

I'll say it again.  Everything Trump touches turns to shit.  The Republican Party is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

NO WAY TO DELAY THAT TROUBLE COMIN' EVERY DAY

Tomorrow is the 45th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which has now been relegated to second place in the pantheon of bizarre American political scandals.  And it’s still early days in the Trump-Russia scandal.  Better yet, new champ isn’t resting on his laurels. 

Things took an odd turn on Thursday evening, when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a press release:  “Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous officials, particularly when they do not identify the country – let alone the branch or agency of government – with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated.” 

OK, sure.  Exercise caution.  Caution is good, and so is exercise.  But why this memo, and why now?  My Twitter feed was full of smart people trying to crack the code. 

Some suggested that Rosenstein’s memo was a pre-emptive strike against a story that’s about to break.  Perhaps the White House got a call from a journalist asking for comment on a story based on a tip from a foreign intelligence agency and Trump insisted that Rosenstein issue some sort of statement attacking its credibility.  If that’s the case, we’ll find out soon.

Others argued that it was a reference to yesterday’s Washington Post story, which confirmed that Special Counsel Mueller was investigating Jared Kushner’s financial dealings, “according to officials familiar with the matter.”  But I didn’t see anything in the Post story that suggested the information might have come from a foreign government.  Ditto for the Post story that Mueller was investigating Donald Trump for obstruction of justice.

But the clearest indication that something is about to break is that Donald Trump has been raging on Twitter.  As usual, he barked at his favorite targets – Democrats, Hillary Clinton, and the failed media.  But he also tweeted this:  “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt.” 

That looks like a swipe at Rod Rosenstein, which is odd because it’s quite clear that Trump had decided to fire James Comey days before he asked Rosenstein to write a memo critical of Comey to give him a little cover.  We know this because Trump himself said so on national TV.  He also brought two Russian spies into the Oval Office the next day and told them the same story. 

Ironically, it was Jared Kushner who argued most strongly for Comey’s firing.  Now Kushner is in trouble on two fronts – shady financial dealings as well as cozying up to Russian spies during the transition.  He is truly a man for all seasons.

Oh, and Mike Pence is lawyering up.  He’s retained the services of a high powered criminal defense attorney.  Wonder what that’s about?

Good times.