Not only did these employees not know they were supposed to wear gear,
but they went back into the community immediately after being exposed to
the dangerous virus.
If it seemed like Tuesday night’s debate audience was a little hostile to certain candidates, that’s because it was. The debate audience was packed with the wealthy elite and high-dollar donors, with tickets ranging from $1,700 to more than $3,000.
Average Americans were shut out of the debate, allowing the wealthy to make their voices heard to those on stage. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains the impact this had on the debate.
It started as a stupid joke, as these things do. I watched a video that Donald Trump had posted to his Twitter account where he was talking directly to the camera right outside the White House. He's done a bunch of these, and they have the air of a needy vlogger desperate for likes (which, to be fair, is what Trump was before resident).
I was struck by how it was filmed, making it look like he was missing something, so I tweeted the dumb joke "Where's your fucking neck?" That's a Rocky Horror reference for you young'uns reading this, from when it was a midnight movie staple and we'd shout things at the screen. Give us a break. We didn't have the internet, and porn took some effort to obtain. We'd yell the neck line any time the narrator appeared.
That was it. That was what I meant.
Then eagle-eyed reader Al Petterson took me more literally (as did several others) and said, "Watch that neckline. The body is not the head. This is two videos blue-screened together." So I did and, holy crap, that's exactly what it looked like. Or, more precisely, it looked like someone had digitally removed Trump's pronounced neck wattle, the prominent flesh sag that, when pinched together by a collar and tie, has the quality of a puffy vulva. Sometimes, it does lop over his collar but certainly not smoothly.
I took a screenshot which, sorry, I'll share:
Look at the smoothing on his neck. Wanna see it closer? No? Too bad.
I haven't touched it up. Look at the line between the collar and "neck." When you watch the video, you see it the digitized line (or whatever the term of art is) even more clearly. In fact, the aforementioned Al Petterson took it on himself to put together this video that focuses in on the neck area as it moves and, gotta say, it's freaky:
Other videos, some recorded at the sametime as the first one here, have the same effect. It's seemingly there in more videos posted by Trump or the White House. But weirdly, it's not in a video from a couple of months ago where he's doing the same thing, speaking outside the White House.
The wattle camel toe is clear.
Look, there are way, way more important things going on. And I don't think anyone is gonna be surprised if he does demand he's turkey skin be airbrushed out. But the man is incredibly vain, and going at his vanity is one way to screw with his deranged brain as we approach the general election.
And if #Wattlegate gets under his digitally-tightened skin, so much the better.
(Credit where it's due: Twitterizer Ralph of Nazareth came up with "Wattlegate." And it's awesome.)
A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the resident, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
American
intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President
Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia
was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get resident Trump
re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to
Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use
it against him.
The day after the
Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the
outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to
take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the
presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the
California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a
particular irritant.
During the
briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies
challenged the conclusions, arguing that he has been tough on Russia and
strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the
briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered
the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have
avoided angering the Republicans.
That
intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who
has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The resident announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with
Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively
vocal Trump supporter.
Though
some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have
played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in
recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two
administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell
had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new
roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr.
Maguire.
Spokeswomen for the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office
declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
A Democratic
House intelligence committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an
important update about “the integrity of our upcoming elections” and
said that members of both parties attended, including Representative
Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.
Image
Joseph
Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is planning to
leave government, according to an American official.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr.
Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of
Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep-state” conspiracy
intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence
officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, where
their work became subject of intense political debate and is now a
focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Part
of the resident’s anger over the intelligence briefing stemmed from
the administration’s reluctance to provide sensitive information to Mr.
Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly
investigating Russian election interference and later leading the
impeachment inquiry into the resident’s dealings with Ukraine.
After
asking about the briefing that the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and other agencies gave to the House, Mr. Trump complained
that Mr. Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s
support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And
he was angry that no one had told him sooner about the briefing, the
person said.
Mr. Trump has fixated on
Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with
insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. At one point in
October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional
intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he
did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the
matter.
Mr. Trump did not erupt at Mr.
Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the
person. But the message was unmistakable: He was displeased by what took
place.
Ms. Pierson, officials said,
was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her
own opinion. The Washington Post first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire.
The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered
an influence campaign in the previous year’s election and developed “a
clear preference for resident-elect Trump.” But Republicans have long
argued that Moscow’s campaign was designed to sow chaos, not aid Mr.
Trump specifically.
And some
Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr.
Trump, but intelligence officials reject those allegations. They
fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to
ensure its validity.
At
the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who
has been considered for the director’s post, was among the Republicans
who challenged the conclusion about Russia’s support for the resident.
Mr. Stewart insisted that Mr. Trump has aggressively confronted Moscow,
providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against
Russian-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new
resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Mr.
Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no
reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the resident’s work to
confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy
independence from Moscow. “I’d challenge anyone to give me a real-world
argument where Putin would rather have resident Trump and not Bernie
Sanders,” the nominal Democratic primary front-runner, Mr. Stewart said
in an interview.
Mr.
Trump believes that Russian efforts to get him elected in 2016 have
cast doubts about the legitimacy of his campaign victory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Under
Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought broadly to sow chaos
among adversaries around the world. The United States and key allies on
Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible
for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a cyber-attack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television
broadcasts.
Though intelligence
officials have previously informed lawmakers that Russia’s interference
campaign was ongoing, last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to
be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the
ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.
They
have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather
than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are
working to get Americans to repeat disinformation to get around social
media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
And
they are working from servers located in the United States, rather than
abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from
operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of
Homeland Security can, with aid from the intelligence agencies.)
Russian
hackers have also infiltrated Iran’s cyber-warfare unit, perhaps with
the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming
from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.
Some
officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could
use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local
governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration
databases.
Still, much of the Russian
aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: Search for
issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various
methods to stoke division.
One of
Moscow’s main goals is undermining confidence in American election
systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow
doubts over close elections and recounts. Confronting those Russian
efforts is difficult, officials have said, because they want to maintain
American confidence in voting systems.
Both
Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over
the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again
is favoring Mr. Trump’s election.
How
soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since
the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials
navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount
of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are
required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.
While
Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not
doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current
and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a
similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about
election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.
The
aftermath of last week’s briefing prompted some intelligence officials
to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election
security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national
intelligence: the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.
And
some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr.
Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of
information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about
Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr.
Grenell’s appointment, said the Democratic House committee official,
who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign
interference.
Mr. Trump, former
officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference
briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such
intelligence with the resident.
“The
biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not
forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next
election,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official
now with the Center for New American Security. “It is really concerning
that this is happening in the run-up to an election.”
Mr.
Grenell’s unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may
not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult
decisions about what to brief to the resident and Congress, Ms.
Kendall-Taylor said.
“Trump is trying
to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia’s involvement in the
election,” she said. “Grenell’s appointment suggests he is really
serious about that.”
The
acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on
Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place
his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office’s
principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous
deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.
Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT
Julian
E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering
the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote
about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes•Facebook
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015
as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer
Prize in 2018 for reporting on resident Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
Nicholas
Fandos is a national reporter based in the Washington bureau. He has
covered Congress since 2017 and is part of a team of reporters who have
chronicled investigations by the Justice Department and Congress into residentt Trump and his administration. @npfandos
"resident Donald Trump on Tuesday granted clemency to 11 people, including several convicted felons who are either Fox News regulars or have been championed by the resident’s favorite cable-news network. And in another case, the family of one pardon recipient dished out massive contributions to the resident’s re-election campaign just months before Trump’s clemency spree.
Among those granted pardons or sentence commutations were former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat; former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was sentenced to four years in 2010 for tax fraud and lying to the feds; and Michael Milken, the “junk-bonds king” whose early-90's insider-trading conviction made him a poster boy of white-collar crime."
Similar to Trump's destruction of the Republican Party, Michael Bloomberg's take over of the DNC Rules will destroy whatever's left of the Democratic Party.
George Zimmerman is suing Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren
for defamation over tweets they posted about the shooting death of
unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman's lawsuit accuses them
of "maliciously publishing false and misleading" tweets about the case
in order to "garner votes in the black community."
Zimmerman filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Florida, seeking $265 million "for loss of good will and reputation" and financial damages.
In 2012, Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Martin when
he encountered the teen walking to his father's home nearby. Zimmerman
was later acquitted after his lawyers argued he was acting in
self-defense, provoking widespread protests.
Both Democratic candidates published the tweets on February 5, which would have been Trayvon Martin's 25th birthday.
"My
heart goes out to [Martin's mother] @SybrinaFulton and Trayvon's family
and friends. He should still be with us today. We need to end gun
violence and racism. And we need to build a world where all of our
children-especially young Black boys-can grow up safe and free,"
Elizabeth Warren tweeted to her 3.7 million followers.
My heart goes out to @SybrinaFulton and Trayvon's family and friends. He should still be with us today.
We
need to end gun violence and racism. And we need to build a world where
all of our children—especially young Black boys—can grow up safe and
free. https://t.co/9lXXlRnvzL
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 6, 2020
"Trayvon Martin would have been 25 today. How many 25th
birthdays have been stolen from us by white supremacy, gun violence,
prejudice, and fear?" Pete Buttigieg said in his tweet.
Trayvon Martin would have been 25 today.
How many 25th birthdays have been stolen from us by white supremacy, gun violence, prejudice, and fear?#BlackLivesMatter
— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) February 5, 2020
In his lawsuit, Zimmerman claims the tweets defame him by
suggesting to millions of followers that his actions were a result of
"white supremacy, gun violence, prejudice, and fear" of Martin's skin
color. George Zimmerman in court in 2013.
Getty
"Defendant Warren's use of the
word 'racism' as having caused the death of Trayvon Martin is a smear
that disparages and defames Zimmerman, a man who is Hispanic, a minority
advocate, and an Obama supporter," the lawsuit reads. "...Defendant
Warren knows that as established in the 2013 trial and in the media,
that Zimmerman fired a single shot only because he believed he might go
unconscious and die."
The lawsuit claims Buttigieg's and Warren's
"preconceived plan to discredit and destroy Zimmerman" was part of their
political strategy to gain black votes. Polls have shown the two candidates lagging in support among African American voters.
But
CBSN legal contributor Keir Dougall, a former federal prosecutor and
trial lawyer, says Zimmerman would face an "uphill climb" trying to
prove his case in court.
Because Zimmerman is a public figure, to win his claim he "would have
to prove that the statements were knowingly false or reckless to the
truth," Dougall explained. That's a high bar. And at the same time, the
First Amendment offers a great deal of protection to Warren and
Buttigieg to exercise their right to free speech.
"One of the core
types of speech the First Amendment protects is political speech, and
you've got two presidential candidates tweeting in their campaigns —
that's obviously political speech," Dougall said. "The First Amendment
would be at its strongest in protecting this particular type of speech."
In 2014, a Florida judge threw out a libel suit
Zimmerman filed against a news organization on the grounds that he was a
public figure and could not prove the outlet acted with reckless
disregard for the truth.
CBS News has reached out to the Buttigieg and Warren campaigns for comment and will update this story if they provide responses.
Rob Reiner
✔
@robreiner
Today’s revelation of Trump’s bribe of Assange is further evidence
of what we all know to be true: Trump colluded with Russia to steal the
2016 election. He’s trying to do it again. That’s what Criminals do.
Whoa if true. Julian Assange is in court
in England today and the claim that he was offered a pardon to cover up
Russian involvement in the DNC hack is going to blow up the news.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told a British court on Tuesday that
he had been promised a pardon by people close to resident Donald
Trump.
Assange made the remarks while appearing at a pretrial hearing via teleconference.
Courtroom reporter James Doleman broke the news on Twitter. According
to Doleman, Assange said that the pardon was conditional on him publicly announcing that Russia had nothing to do with the attack on the 2016 election.
Breaking, at
pre-trial hearing for Julian Assange a court has heard that he will be
calling a witness who will allege he was offered a pardon by the US
government, if he would say Russia was not involved in the leak of DNC
documents during the 2006 election.
Julian Assange
court appearance today- His lawyer mentioned a statement, that alleges
former US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange, saying he was
there on behalf of the President, offering a pardon if JA would say
Russia had nothing to do with DNC leaks. @SBSNews
In 2017, a The Wall Street Journal report said that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attempted to broker a deal for a pardon or clemency between the White House and Assange.
Assange is wanted in the United States on 18 counts of violating espionage laws and conspiring to hack government computers.
According to Julian Assange’s lawyers, Assange was promised a presidential pardon by a Trump associate if he was willing to lie about the Russian involvement in the DNC hack. We know that the hack originated from Russia, and Trump knew that this information would make him look bad, so he allegedly wanted Assange to lie about the source. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
Former congressman Dana Rohrabacher confirms he dangled a Trump pardon to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the reporter with whom Rohrabacher spoke shares the details. Aired on 02/20/20.
In the latest installment of “Opening Arguments”, former Acting U.S. Solicitor General, Neal Katyal discusses Trump’s “lawless” and “unprecedented” pardon of his “friends” and “campaign contributors.” Katyal argues while Trump has “gotten away with so much” the “law is going to come after him,” adding America’s “courts will bring him to justice.”
NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray shares a sobering story on “The Beat with Ari Melber” about her students “jaded and cynical” reaction to the “prospect of justice.”
Former New York City mayor and billionaire prick Michael Bloomberg barely
won his last election. In 2009, after he rammed through an exception to
the city's term limit for mayors, he ran for a third term as a
Republican and spent nearly $100 million on his reelection. While that's
sofa cushion money for Bloomberg, it was unheard of in a local race,
and he outspent his Democratic rival Bill Thompson 14 to 1. Yet, after
supposedly having had two successful terms to run on, after dropping all
that coin fluffing his own public image like an aging porn star
injecting his dick for the third time in a day on the set, all Mayor
Mike managed to get was 50.7% of the vote. Enough to win, sure, but
Thompson still got over 46%.
The point here is that a hundred million bucks bought Bloomberg a just
eked-through victory. There is certainly no guarantee that the $400
million and counting he's spending on the Democratic nomination will do
more than give him a brief novelty surge that dies down as soon as
everyone remembers "Oh, right, he's that prick."
And it's so easy to find Bloomberg being the goddamndest asshole all the time. Between the odious sustained assault on non-whites in New York City that was "Stop-and-Frisk" to his completely demeaning treatment of women
in his circle, Bloomberg has left a trail of bullshit that's visible
from miles away. Then there's the strongman tactics that he used as
mayor to break up Occupy Wall Street, which involved a violent raid on
the protesters camped out in Zuccotti Park in defiance of a court order.
I was there in the aftermath,
and I saw kids slammed to the ground by cops and listened as Wall
Street fucks laughed about the arrested getting raped at Riker's Island.
I'd bet anything they were Bloomberg voters. The thing about Bloomberg
is that, until he apologized, he seemed to get off on this shit.
It's so simple to find a fucked-up quote from Bloomberg. Here he is in
2010 after then-Gov. David Paterson signed a law that prevented police
departments from keeping the data they got from every single
stop-and-frisk suspect, including those where nothing was found.
Bloomberg scoffed,
"And what's wrong with keeping the data? We have data on everything.
You wait until we have facial recognition software, and somebody's going
to have a record of every person that walks down by your house. You
just point a camera at them, the software will do it. That's coming. I
mean, these days of, we put license plates on your car. You can read
those by computer now, and we know where you're driving." He wasn't
wrong about the technology, but his enthusiasm sure makes it seem like
he may misuse the larger data collection capabilities of, say, the NSA.
Ask the Muslim community of New York how that surveillance ended up.
I'm attacking Bloomberg in a way that, frankly, I haven't attacked the
other Democrats for the simple reason that Bloomberg isn't a Democrat.
Unlike Bernie Sanders, most of Bloomberg's views throughout his career
have never really lined up with the Democratic Party platform. He spoke
at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, but, prior to that, he
spoke at the 2004 Republican Convention, which was being held in New
York City (with protests that were met with their own overzealous response from the NYPD).
Basically, until a couple of years ago, Mike Bloomberg is what we used
to call a "moderate Republican," back when such political creatures
existed in the wilds of the GOP. The best way to define "moderate" was
someone who was conservative on financial shit but was sane on guns,
gays, and abortion and understood that climate change is real. In other
words, a Republican who believed in science and medicine. He should have
run as a Republican and used his billions to force Trump into spending
his war chest fending off a primary opponent. He might have actually
been able to drag the GOP back to having a toe on the sane side of the
line of demarcation between sanity and madness. And he would have
significantly weakened Trump.
But, alas, instead, Bloomberg, with his authoritarian impulses and his
record of racism, sexism, and violence, has decided to be the turd in
the Democratic punch bowl, plopping into the election to ruin the thing
for everyone who's been there. Already in second in national polling,
with way too many people who should know better accepting his apology
for Stop and Frisk, he has a real chance at the nomination. And way too
many people are champing at the bit for the Democrats to have their own
douchebag billionaire to face down the worse douchebag "billionaire" in
the White House. Jesus, you know how fucked a nation that makes us?
To be fair, Bloomberg's website is filled with Democratic kibble in its
section on his plans, so he's still better than Trump in the way that a
rotting cheese sandwich is better than Trump, but it's still a rotting
cheese sandwich. You'd rather toss it in the garbage than see it
inaugurated. But if that's all we got...
I could see this going another way, too. That same national
poll showed that Bernie Sanders has opened up a 12-point lead on second
place, with 31% choosing him, his biggest margin yet. Faced with the
possibility of Bloomberg, progressive Democrats and those who are just
fuckin' skeeved out by Mayor Mike might be moving towards Sanders as a
way of getting this goddamned thing over with before a just
recently-converted former Republican buys the nomination.
Let's hope that Bloomberg is chewed up and spit out at the Democratic
debate tomorrow night, making him spend his billions where he should if
he's so goddamned concerned about 2020: on the Senate races.
(CNN) More than 2,003 former Justice Department officials who served in Republican as well as Democratic administrations posted a statement Sunday calling on Attorney General Bill Barr to resign.
"Mr.
Barr's actions in doing the resident's personal bidding unfortunately
speak louder than his words. Those actions, and the damage they have
done to the Department of Justice's reputation for integrity and the
rule of law, require Mr. Barr to resign. But because we have little
expectation he will do so, it falls to the Department's career officials
to take appropriate action to uphold their oaths of office and defend
nonpartisan, apolitical justice," the officials wrote in a statement.
The rare statement from the officials -- mostly former career prosecutors,
but also some former political appointees -- came in the wake of an
extraordinary week at the Justice Department. In just one week, career
prosecutors withdrew from a case after Barr overruled their sentencing
recommendation, the attorney general pushed back against the resident
in an unusual interview and separately ordered an examination of politically charged cases involving those close to resident Donald Trump.
The
statement went on to say career attorneys should report any troubling
actions they see to the department's Inspector General.
The
Justice Department declined to comment when reached by CNN Sunday. Barr
has so far not given any indication that he is considering stepping
down from his current role.
The
upheaval at the Justice Department began when all four federal
prosecutors who took the case against Roger Stone to trial withdrew from
the case Tuesday afternoon after Barr overruled their sentencing
recommendation hours after the resident criticized it on Twitter.
Barr on Thursday claimed he couldn't do his job
with Trump publicly commenting on sensitive investigations, but
insisted the Justice Department had acted appropriately, and, without
explanation, suggested prosecutors' recommended sentence for Stone was
too harsh.
In an interview with ABC News, Barr defended the department's rank and file.
"I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me," the attorney general said.
In
an unusual move on Sunday, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is overseeing
Stone's case, called for a "scheduling" conference call with attorneys
in the case on Tuesday, ahead of the sentencing hearing set for later
this week, according to court documents.
The
court did not provide additional details on what would be discussed on
the call, and Jackson has not yet formally acknowledged the withdrawals.
At the time, Barr ordered a re-examination of several high-profile cases, including that of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, US officials briefed on the matter say. The move could bring fresh scrutiny of the political motives behind actions at the Justice Department.
Prosecutors across the country have been incensed and worried about what some perceive as growing political directives coming from Washington.
On the West Coast, one federal prosecutor said there was an overwhelming sense of "outrage" felt in his office.
A
prosecutor on the East Coast voiced concern about the potential impact
of political interference on juries and judges, who could perceive that
cases aren't being brought objectively.
And
a former prosecutor said his clients have expressed concern about
cooperating with investigations out of fear that the Justice Department
could interfere improperly in a case, putting them in jeopardy.
'That's just not normal'
Marc
Short, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, said Sunday that
Barr "does enjoy the support" of Trump, telling CNN's Dana Bash on
"State of the Union" that he doesn't think "it's impossible (for Barr)
to do his job."
"In fact, I think
that Attorney General Barr is doing a great job," he added. "I think he
has a lot of confidence inside the White House. I think that the resident's frustration is one that a lot of Americans have, which feels
like the scales of justice are not balancing."
But
several Democratic senators, including presidential candidates Bernie
Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, last week also called for Barr to resign.
Democratic
presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar echoed that call Sunday on "State
of the Union," but added she does not expect Barr to step down.
"Sure,
I'd be glad if he resigned. I just don't think that is realistic," the
Minnesota senator said, adding, "But what I think is realistic is that
he is now going to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
I'd also like him to come to the Senate. And, along with my colleagues, I
have asked him to do that, so we can probe him on the role of the resident in trying to influence decisions in the Department of Justice,
in particular the (Roger) Stone decision."
Klobuchar told Bash that Barr's involvement in the case is "just not normal."
"I
just think it's outrageous, knowing how hard these career prosecutors
work to do the right thing, how hard they worked on a case like Roger
Stone's, got him convicted, and then get undermined when it comes to the
sentencing," she said. "That's just not normal."
In the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, Democrats made a concerted
effort to fortify their party’s pro-democracy and anti-corruption bona
fides. Their opening salvo in the 2018 midterm campaign was the “Better Deal Agenda,”
a suite of policies aimed at combating concentrated corporate power and
the “armies of lobbyists” that had given big money a “stranglehold on
Washington.” The first bill Nancy Pelosi’s majority passed upon taking
the House was a package of voting-rights expansions and campaign-finance
reforms designed to ensure that our “government works for the public
interest, the people’s interest, not the special interest.” And
throughout the Trump era, Democrats have hammered the resident for
helping the super-rich translate their economic power into the political
variety.
But the party may let a megabillionaire openly purchase its 2020 nomination anyway.
Mike
Bloomberg has offered blue America a Faustian bargain: Forfeit all
credibility on the issues of money in politics and democratic reform,
and he will spend whatever it takes to make the bad man in the White
House go away. The market for what Bloomberg is selling is large and
growing, thanks in no small part to the $300 million
he’s already spent advertising it. Many rank-and-file Democrats — like
so many disillusioned voters in democracies the world over — like the
idea of hiring a no-nonsense, post-political businessman to fix their
broken government (just, you know, a less ostentatiously racist one than America’s current CEO). Meanwhile, many Democratic elites see
Bloomberg as a (slightly unsavory) savior who can single-handedly stop
the party from nominating a supposedly unelectable socialist, provide
its vulnerable first-term suburban House members with an ideal
standard-bearer, and liberate the party from all resource constraints
and fundraising headaches as it rides a rising tide of billionaire bucks
back into power.
Lou Hobbs is furious that Bill Barr would say anything against Trump. John Iadarola, Cenk Uygur, and Jayar Jackson, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.
Dobbs seems super angry at Bill Barr for speaking a negative word about Trump that one time.
Trump's Roy Cohn Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News that Trump's tweeting has made it impossible to do his job.
Now, that might seem kind of difficult to parse if you have more than
two synapses to rub together. Was Barr simply saying the quiet part out
loud?
What Bill Barr MEANT to say was "it's tough to do the sneaky, slimy, illegal stuff when trump says the quiet part out loud." #ResignBarrhttps://t.co/WHw7GeMWhl
Was he trying to make stupid people believe the pretzel-logic of his
actual explanation? (That he'd decided to intervene before Trump
tweeted, and the tweet put Barr in the uncomfortable position of having
to decide between intervening, which would make it seem like he was
doing it because Trump made him, or not intervening which would be wrong
because he'd already decided it was the right thing to do — are you
still with me?)
Keep your eye on the ball - Bill Barr’s purported reasoning is nothing more than a shell game to deceive the public.
Fortunately, we're talking about Lou Dobbs, here, and he does NOT
have two synapses to rub together, so THIS was his interpretation of
Bill Barr's interview with ABC News:
DOBBS: He [Trump] is keeping his promise as candidate for the office
that he holds. He is also expressing himself fully, freely, and directly
to the American people, without going through the sage intermediaries
of the national left-wing media. And, it's just, I guess I am so
disappointed in Bill Barr, I have to say this. You know, it's a damn
shame when he doesn't get what this president has gone through, and what
the American people have gone through, and what his charge is as
attorney general. And by god, if he's gonna complain, I just want to
endorse everything you've said. Those are all things to complain about.
But where the HELL is the report? Where the HELL are the indictments
against the corrupt, the politically corrupt Deep State within the
Justice Department, the FBI, and why in the HELL aren't we hearing
apologies from someone in that rancid, corrupt department about what
they permitted?
Because they had to have enablers by the dozens to pull
off what they did. The 26 names that we can go through on the FBI and
the Justice Department. But then, to hear this attorney general complain
about this president, who's fighting every one of those damn people to
do the right thing and to get this country straightened out, and it's
his mission to do so. Not to carp about about his boss.
And by the way, I don't want to hear any CRAP about an
independent Justice Department! This Justice Department, as does
everyone, works for the president. It is part of the Executive Branch.
Did we catch that, kids? Oh, Dobbs is hopping mad at that mean AG
dared speaketh a harsh word about his lord and savior Donald Trump. He's
so angry that he, Dobbs, HIMSELF said the quiet part out loud.
"I don't want to hear any CRAP about an independent Justice Department!"
Welp. There it is. I mean, the Deep State conspiracy tin foil hat
spizzola is old hat already, but now we're getting somewhere.
Independent Justice Department? Who needs it? You get on your knees
pronto before Dear Leader, or else.
Mind you, this is all theater, too.
Barr had permission to "act" upset about Trump's tweets, and Dobbs and
Barr are on exactly the same page. They're all just playing their roles
in the ways they think will best keep all the gears turning in the
direction they want until they've achieved their ultimate goal.
Unilateral, consolidated control under the Executive Branch.
We talk all the time about What Donald Trump Wants as resident because
it's plainly obvious that "improving life for all Americans" is not
really on his radar, and "keeping the nation safe" is pretty low down
the list. There is the obvious greed - from the access his children have
to overseas investors to the open graft of the government paying tax
money to his properties. There is the ego burnishing, which you'd expect
from someone whose grievances include not getting an Emmy for his
reality show and not being praised enough for being resident. There is
very likely the wholesale paying off debts owed to various Russians,
Saudis, Azerbaijanis, Iranians, and who knows who else. And much, much more.
But one of his primary goals has been simple: Donald Trump wants to
erase Barack Obama from the recent history of the country. He has been
insidiously resetting the clock and rewriting history since he first
gaslit his way to the national political stage by embracing the whole
birther lie. Most other Republicans want to wipe out the New Deal and
the Great Society and other progressive accomplishments, and Trump is
fine doing that as long as it achieves this central objective of
eliminating the black president and all his black deeds.
Trump regularly brags about all the Obama-era regulations and
initiatives that he's tossed in the garbage can, some that have even
left the industries affected scratching their heads at why. Just look at
the environmental
regulations Trump has reversed or wiped out. In one case, Trump had his
EPA roll back "limits on carbon emissions from coal- and gas-fired
power plants," which has led states from California to North Carolina to
sue because it will lead to more air pollution in general. When Trump
rolled back rules on auto emissions from the Obama administration, automakers were not overjoyed at the change because of the confusion it put into the marketplace.
In each case, Trump or some lackey from his administration crowed about
how they were getting rid of "burdensome" regulations that Obama put in
place that were preventing the economy from growing. Except here's the
problem with that: Those regulations weren't preventing the economy from
expanding. It was expanding just fine under Obama post-2010 while the
nation was still doing at least something minimal to slow down climate
change.
And that leads to the biggest lie that Trump tells constantly. Trump has
essentially colonized Barack Obama's economy and claimed it as his own.
It's oldest, whitest trick in the book. "Oh, hey," Christopher Columbus
said, "I've discovered a New World" as he looked at all the people who
had been there long before he ever bumbled his way to the Bahamas (and
then he enslaved and tortured those people because Columbus was a
monster).
Every chance he has, Trump decries Obama's presidency as a time of great
economic tribulation that he alone came along to fix. In the State of
the Union speech
last week, he said, "The years of economic decay are over...Gone are
the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant
excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige. In
just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American
decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s
destiny....From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the
U.S. economy."
That's absolutely false. Like factually false by nearly every measure.
All that's mostly happened to the economy overall since Trump came to
office has been a continuation of the trends that started several years
before Trump ever rode his golden escalator to the nomination. He was
handed a growing economy by Barack Obama and the only thing that he did
was exploit it for his own gain while completely, willfully, cruelly
erasing Obama from the narrative of why things are going pretty well.
It's mind-blowing that anyone can hear Trump brag about the low
unemployment rate as if he's responsible for more than a point or two of
its decline, as if Obama's policies didn't take care of 80% or more of
the improvement since 2010-11. Trump can say that the recent job numbers
are incredible, but it's not better than many, many months under Obama.
In fact, Trump could have taken Obama's economy and said, "Yeah, that
was all well and good, but we need to get people better jobs and better
pay." He could have built on it and crowed about any improvements he
made. But he couldn't because if he did, he'd have to admit that he's
just the guy who didn't screw up Obama's achievements yet. He'd have to
admit that Obama did something right. Instead, Trump has made it so that
his voters believe as an article of absolute faith that Obama did
nothing but damage the country and Trump came along to rescue us, the
white savior riding in to save the nation from the savage Negro. And all
those white people at Trump's rallies are eager to believe it's true.
Of course, these are the same people who believe that the Affordable
Care Act is a "disaster," as Trump says repeatedly. Even if they have
benefited from it, they act like they despise it because they themselves
would have to admit Obama did something to help them. The Supreme
Court, with its Trump-installed, McConnell-enabled conservative
majority, could come close to finishing the erasure of Barack Obama if
it overturns the ACA and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy
(you know, DACA). If those two unabashedly positive steps towards a
saner nation are gone, Trump will have finally gotten back at Obama for
insulting him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011 and for
daring to president while black.
Some Democrats are defending Obama's legacy, like Nancy Pelosi did in
her press conference after the State of the Union and, obviously, like
Joe Biden is on the campaign trail. But it seems like Trump's lies about
Obama ought to be front and center, at least as a reminder that a
Democratic president didn't screw things up. In fact, the job of a
Democratic president since Clinton has been to clean up the wreckage
left by the Republicans.
Trump's making a hell of a mess. Let's not allow him to throw President Obama into the trash heap of history.
(Note 1: I know that Columbus never said the phrase "New World" as far
as we know. That was Amerigo Vespucci, which is also a great porn name
if you pronounce the last name a little differently.)
(Note 2: You're right. There's more Obama could have done. But
considering he had a Congress that wouldn't work with him, well, we're
lucky we got as far as we did.)
(Note 3: Yes, you're very smart to bring up drone missile murders and
the expansion of fracking under Obama, but if you don't think an Obama
presidency is better than a Trump presidency, you're an idiot.)
(Note 4: White supremacists are emboldened by this effort to erase the
first black president's accomplishments. Debasing him justifies their
existence. It's one way Trump enables those groups.)
Dr. Jason Johnson gets mopped by Bernie Sanders National Co-Chair Live on Air.
Jesse Dollemore plays and then talks about a clip from MSNBC where Nina Turner and Jason Johnson argue over her labeling Michael Bloomberg an oligarch. Johnson insists there is no difference between Bernie and Bloomberg... that they are both just "rich guys" and "one-percenters."
Jesse describes just how MUCH RICHER Bloomberg is than Bernie Sanders, and the difference might shock you!
