Richard Nixon
The first Republican to announce a GOP 2020 primary challenge to President Donald Trump says “we would be much better off with a President Mike Pence.”
“For the good of the country, if he had the self-awareness that Richard Nixon had, sense of shame is too strong a word, but self-awareness is probably too soft a word, he would resign,” former Massachusetts Gov. Weld told MSNBC’s “The Last Word” on Tuesday night. “The truth is: We would be much better off with a President Mike Pence than a President Donald Trump.”
Weld warned against Democrats impeaching President Trump, because “those boils over at the White House are dying to have impeachment proceedings initiated so that Mr. Trump can scream like a stuffed pig.”
“It’s just going to give him such a delicious talking point the last few months before the election,” Weld told host Lawrence O’Donnell.
Weld is ready to challenge President Trump in a Republican primary for the 2020 presidential candidacy, although Ohio Republican John Kasich and Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan are weighing a run as well.
Weld admitted he will not bother campaigning in the deep red southern states, but he will focus on the northeast, mid-Atlantic, and California.
“It is time to return to the principles of Lincoln — equality, dignity, and opportunity for all,” he said at the time. “There is no greater cause on earth than to preserve what truly makes America great. I am ready to lead that fight.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
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WASHINGTON — It may not have been his intention, but special counsel Robert Mueller has forced a momentous choice on the Democrats who control the House of Representatives. How they navigate the next several months will matter not only to politics but, more importantly, to whether the rule of law prevails.
If we lived in a normal time with a normal president, a normal Republican Party and a normal attorney general, none of this would be so difficult. Mueller’s report is devastating. It portrays a lying, lawless president who pressured aides to obstruct the probe and was happy — “Russia, if you’re listening … ” — to win office with the help of a hostile foreign power. It also, by the way, shows him to be weak and hapless. His aides ignored his orders, and he regularly pandered to a Russian dictator.
Mueller’s catalogue of infamy might have led Republicans of another day to say: Enough. But the GOP’s new standard seems to be that a president is great as long as he’s unindicted.
And never mind that the failure to charge Donald Trump stemmed not from his innocence but from a Justice Department legal opinion saying that a sitting president can’t be indicted. Mueller explained he had “fairness concerns” — a truly charming qualm in light of the thuggishness described in the rest of the report — because the no-indictment rule meant there could be no trial. The president would lack an “adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.”
And perhaps Mueller did not reckon with an attorney general so eager to become the president’s personal lawyer and chief propagandist. William Barr sat on the document for 27 days and mischaracterized it in his March 24 letter. He mischaracterized it again just an hour before it was released.
This leaves Democrats furious — and on their own. Unfortunately, it is not news that this party has a nasty habit of dividing into hostile camps. On the one side, the cautious; on the other side, the aggressive. The prudent ones say that members of the hit-for-the-fences crowd don’t understand the political constraints. The pugnacious ones say their circumspect colleagues are timid sellouts.
Sometimes these fights are relatively harmless, but not this time. Holding Trump accountable for behavior that makes Richard Nixon look like George Washington matters, for the present, and for the future.
Those demanding impeachment are right to say that Mueller’s report can’t just be filed away and ignored. But being tough and determined is not enough. The House also needs to be sober and responsible.
This needle needs to be threaded not just for show, or for narrow electoral reasons. Trump and Barr have begun a battle for the minds and hearts of that small number of Americans who are not already locked into their positions. Barr’s calculated sloth in making the report public gave the president and his AG side-kick an opportunity to pre-shape how its findings would be received. The uncommitted now need to see the full horror of what Mueller revealed about this president. A resolute but deliberate approach is more likely to persuade them.
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joins her caucus on a conference call on Monday, she will reiterate her “one step at a time” strategy. The bottom line is that rushing into impeachment and ruling it out are equally foolish. What this means is that the House Judiciary, Intelligence, and Oversight and Reform Committees should and will begin inquiries immediately. Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler took the first step on Friday by subpoenaing the full, unredacted Mueller report. Mueller himself has already been asked to appear before both Judiciary and Intelligence.
Nothing is gained by labelling these initial hearings and document-requests as part of an “impeachment” process. But impeachment should remain on the table. Since Trump and Barr will resist all accountability, preserving the right to take formal steps toward impeachment will strengthen the Democrats’ legal arguments that they have a right to information that Trump would prefer to deep six.
Of course, Trump is not the only issue in politics. Democratic presidential candidates are already out there focusing on health care, climate, economic justice and political reform. The House can continue other work while the investigators do their jobs.
In an ideal world, the corruption and deceitfulness Mueller catalogued would already have Trump flying off to one of his golf resorts for good. But we do not live in such a world. Defending democratic values and republican government requires fearlessness. It also takes patience.
(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group
While the Mueller report conclusions fell short of Rep. Adam Schiff’s, D-Calif., promise of provable conspiracy with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, the House Intelligence Committee chairman still calls the findings “far worse” than Watergate.
“The obstruction of justice, in particular, in this case is far worse than anything that Richard Nixon did – the break in by the Russians of Democratic institutions, a foreign adversary, far more significant than the plumbers breaking into the Democratic headquarters – so, yes, I would say in every way this is more significant than Watergate,” Schiff told ABC News’ “This Week.”
While “Mueller made it abundantly clear he felt he could not indict the president,” Rep. Schiff admitted, the special counsel’s report gave a roadmap for Congress to pursue impeachment from the president’s actions.
“The fact that a candidate for president and now president of the United States would not only not stand up and resist Russian interference in our election, but would welcome it, goes well beyond anything Nixon did,” Schiff told anchor Martha Raddatz. “The fact that the president of the United States would take Putin’s side over his own intelligence agencies, goes well beyond anything Richard Nixon did.
“So, yes, I think it is far more serious than Watergate.”
Regardless of Rep. Schiff’s own confidence, he remains skeptical impeachment would be the right political move for his party.
“We are, unfortunately, in an environment today where the GOP leadership, people like [Rep.] Kevin McCarthy [R-Calif.], are willing to carry the president’s water no matter how corrupt or unethical or dishonest the president’s conduct may be,” Schiff told Raddatz. “And in those kind of circumstances, when [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell will not stand up to the president either, it means that an impeachment is likely to be unsuccessful.
“Now it may be that we undertake an impeachment nonetheless.”
After years of aggressively pursing criminal charges against the Trump campaign, if not the president himself, only to be let down by the Mueller conclusions, Rep. Schiff is now preaching caution.
“I think what we’re going to have to decide as a caucus is what is the best thing for the country,” Schiff said. “Is the best thing for the country to take up an impeachment proceeding, because to do otherwise sends a message that this conduct is somehow compatible with office. Or is it in the best interest of the country not to take up an impeachment that we know will not be successful in the Senate because the Republican leadership will not do its duty?
“That’s a very tough question and I think is one we ought not to make overnight.”
Source: NewsMax Politics
The Mueller Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election is pictured in New York, New York, U.S., April 18, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri
April 19, 2019
By Doina Chiacu and David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congressional Democrats on Friday took legal action to get hold of all of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s evidence from his inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as the probe’s findings hit President Donald Trump’s poll ratings.
The number of Americans who approve of Trump dropped by 3 percentage points to the lowest level of the year following the release of a redacted version of Mueller’s report on Thursday, according to a Reuters/Ipsos online opinion poll.
Mueller did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians but did find “multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations.”
While Mueller ultimately decided not to charge Trump with a crime such as obstruction of justice, he also said that the investigation did not exonerate the president, either.
U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, issued a subpoena to the Justice Department to hand over the full Mueller report and other relevant evidence by May 1.
“My committee needs and is entitled to the full version of the report and the underlying evidence consistent with past practice. The redactions appear to be significant. We have so far seen none of the actual evidence that the Special Counsel developed to make this case,” Nadler said in a statement.
The report provided extensive details on Trump’s efforts to thwart Mueller’s investigation, giving Democrats plenty of political ammunition against the Republican president but no consensus on how to use it.
The document has blacked out sections to hide details about secret grand jury information, U.S. intelligence gathering and active criminal cases as well as potentially damaging information about peripheral players who were not charged.
Democratic leaders played down talk of impeachment of Trump just 18 months before the 2020 presidential election, even as some prominent members of the party’s progressive wing, notably U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, promised to push the idea.
‘CRAZY MUELLER REPORT’
Trump, who has repeatedly called the Mueller probe a political witch hunt, lashed out again on Friday.
“Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report…which are fabricated & totally untrue,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
He seemed to be referring to former White House counsel Don McGahn who was cited in the report as having annoyed Trump by taking notes of his conversations with the president.
“Watch out for people that take so-called “notes,” when the notes never existed until needed.” Trump wrote, “it was not necessary for me to respond to statements made in the “Report” about me, some of which are total bullshit & only given to make the other person look good (or me to look bad).”
Phone conversations between the president and McGahn in June 2017 were a central part of Mueller’s depiction of Trump as trying to derail the Russia inquiry. The report said Trump told McGahn to instruct the Justice Department to fire Mueller. McGahn did not carry out the order.
In analyzing whether Trump obstructed justice, Mueller revealed details about how the president tried to fire him and limit his investigation, kept details of a June 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and a Russian under wraps, and possibly dangled a pardon to a former adviser.
According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,005 adults conducted Thursday afternoon to Friday morning, 37 percent of people approve of Trump’s performance in office – down from 40 percent in a similar poll conducted on April 15 and matches the lowest level of the year. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.
Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the Democrats’ subpoena “is wildly overbroad” and would jeopardize a grand jury’s investigations.
The Mueller inquiry laid bare what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as a Russian campaign of hacking and propaganda to sow discord in the United States, denigrate 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost Trump.
Russia said on Friday that Mueller’s report did not contain any evidence that Moscow had meddled. “We, as before, do not accept such allegations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Asked on Friday about Russian interference in 2016, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Washington that “we will make very clear to them that this is not acceptable behavior.”
Trump has tried to cultivate good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and came under heavy criticism in Washington last year for saying after meeting Putin that he accepted his denial of election meddling, over the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Half a dozen former Trump aides, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, were charged by Mueller’s office or convicted of crimes during his 22-month-long investigation. The Mueller inquiry spawned a number of other criminal probes by federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere.
OBSTRUCTION
One reason it would be difficult to charge Trump is that the Justice Department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president should not be indicted, although the U.S. Constitution is silent on whether a president can face criminal prosecution in court.
A paragraph in the report is at the heart of whether Mueller, a former FBI director, intended Congress to pursue further action against Trump.
“The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law,” Mueller wrote.
Republican Collins said Democrats had misconstrued that section of the report to suit their anti-Trump agenda.
“There seems to be some confusion…This isn’t a matter of legal interpretation; it’s reading comprehension,” Collins wrote on Twitter.
“The report doesn’t say Congress should investigate obstruction now. It says Congress can make laws about obstruction under Article I powers,” Collins said.
Nadler told reporters on Thursday that Mueller probably wrote the report with the intent of providing Congress a road map for future action against the president, but the Democratic congressman said it was too early to talk about impeachment.
House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer on Thursday advised against an immediate attempt to impeach Trump. “Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgment,” Hoyer told CNN.
But the House Oversight Committee’s Democratic chairman, Elijah Cummings, said impeachment was not ruled out.
“A lot of people keep asking about the question of impeachment … We may very well come to that very soon, but right now let’s make sure we understand what Mueller was doing, understand what Barr was doing, and see the report in an unredacted form and all of the underlying documents,” he told MSNBC.
Short of attempting impeachment, Democratic lawmakers can use the details of Mueller’s report to fuel other inquiries already underway by congressional committees.
Only two U.S. presidents have been impeached: Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 after firing his secretary of war in the tumultuous aftermath of the American Civil War. Both were acquitted by the Senate and stayed in office.
In 1974, a House committee approved articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal but he resigned before the full House voted on impeachment.
(For a graphic on ‘Link to Mueller report’ click https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-TRUMP-RUSSIA/010091HX27V/report.pdf)
(For a graphic on ‘A closer look at Mueller report redactions’ click https://tmsnrt.rs/2VSx7HZ)
(Reporting by David Morgan and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Karen Freifeld, Nathan Layne, Sarah N. Lynch and Andy Sullivan; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Grant McCool)
Source: OANN
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election was “more damning” to President Donald Trump than the Watergate report was to former President Richard Nixon, according to former White House counsel John Dean.
In an interview on CNN’s “The Lead,” Dean said Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the Mueller report was “very disappointing.”
“One of the post-Watergate norms was that attorney generals did not serve as the president’s personal counsel,” he said, adding: “And Mr. Barr today violated all the norms that have been established post-Watergate and took us back into Nixonian-type operations.”
Dean said called the Mueller report “devastating.”
“I looked on my shelf for the Senate Watergate Committee report. I looked at the Iran/Contra Report,” he said. “I also looked at the Ken Starr report . . . I’ve read all of those. And in 400 words, this report from the special counsel is more damning than all those reports about a president. This is really a devastating report.”
And while the Justice Department concluded evidence in the report was insufficient to establish obstruction of justice, Dean said he thought the violation was clear.
“This is clear obstruction,” Dean declared. “The obstruction statute is an endeavor statute, as well as actual overt action. If you endeavor to obstruct – and there is much evidence here of endeavor – you violated the obstruction statue.”
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The Federal Reserve Board building on Constitution Avenue is pictured in Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo/File Photo/File Photo
April 14, 2019
By Howard Schneider
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As a financial crisis spread across the globe in September of 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve gathered in an emergency atmosphere as requests flooded in from other central banks for access to dollars.
The “swap lines” that the Fed quickly approved helped ease intense financial stress in foreign markets, but also showed the U.S. central bank was prepared to stand behind the global system.
Would an “America First” Fed do the same?
The question is suddenly relevant for global economic officials and central bankers after moves by President Donald Trump to put two strong partisans on the Federal Reserve board.
Both economic commentator Stephen Moore and businessman Herman Cain have been critical of Fed policies, and Moore in particular has opposed the extraordinary measures employed to stabilize the economy through the deepest crisis since the Great Depression.
Should Trump shape a Fed that answers first to his politics, it could roil the landscape for other central banks, and for a dollar-dependent world financial system whose fortunes can swing dramatically based on Fed decisions.
“I’m certainly worried about central bank independence in other countries, especially … in the most important jurisdiction in the world,” said European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, in Washington for spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
SENSITIVE MOMENT
Trump’s decision to consider close political allies for the central bank comes at a sensitive moment for the world economy and the IMF. Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde last week asked member countries to strive to “do no harm,” yet its largest shareholder, the United States, has become a concern.
Trump’s ongoing trade battles have been cited as a reason global growth is slowing, and the idea of a Fed stacked with officials looking first at the U.S. political calendar has overseas central bankers nervous.
The IMF has commended the steady evolution of Fed policy under chairman Jerome Powell, but Trump has demanded he cut rates and Moore has endorsed the idea.
The actions of one central bank often impacts the economies of other nations. But the rule of thumb is to set policy as much as possible on the basis of detached analysis, not to gain a short-term trade or political advantage.
If the Fed were to cut rates to counter a U.S. slowdown, it would be one thing. But juicing a mostly healthy economy to make Trump look good would send a bad signal – and hurt countries that are grappling with their own economic problems.
Lower rates could weaken the dollar, boosting U.S. exports and appealing to a core Trump campaign aim of expanding U.S. manufacturing jobs. But it would make it harder for the Bank of Japan to follow its own strategy of targeting specific levels for long-term bond yields, and undercut growth in Europe that the European Central Bank is trying to support. Emerging markets could see destablizing capital flows.
“Can a politicized Fed be relied on to do what it did in 2008, when it was lender of last resort for the world? You would really have to worry about this – that rather than be the strongest proponent of stability, the Fed all of a sudden becomes an agent of instability,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Already some of Trump’s policies have European financial leaders thinking about ways to boost the euro as a reserve currency on views the oversized influence of the dollar in global markets leaves Europe vulnerable to U.S. political decisions.
POOR HISTORY FOR POLITICIZED FED
Both Moore and Cain have yet to be nominated formally, and Cain’s prospects look bleak. Fed governors must be approved by the U.S. Senate, and enough Republican lawmakers have come out against Cain to scuttle his chances.
Moore, meanwhile, has sent mixed signals about his policies, but in general has criticized the Fed flooding markets with dollars during the crisis and its aftermath. He has favored tying the Fed to a strict rule, based on commodity prices. Critics of rule-based monetary policy cite its lack of flexibility to respond to unexpected events.
The Fed has had deeply political governors before, perhaps most notably in the 1980s when a group loyal to then-President Ronald Reagan opposed policy set by then-Chairman Paul Volcker, said William English, the former head of the Fed’s monetary affairs division and now a professor at Yale.
They didn’t succeed, English said, evidence of the influence of a strong Fed chair and of the limits an individual governor has in an institution with a strong technocratic bent, and on a policy panel that at peak strength includes 19 people. Twelve of them, moreover, are appointed by regional banks outside the president’s reach.
But before Volcker, he said, the Fed did mold policy around the demands of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and arguably contributed to the runaway inflation of the 1970s.
“We did that experiment…The outcome was bad,” he said.
For the IMF and other global institutions, there’s a broader issue if the world’s dominant economy steers away from the norms recommended for other countries, as the Trump administration has already done on trade. Whether it is the potential for unhindered government borrowing or a politicized central bank, the United States may be writing a script that other, less resilient countries, may be tempted to follow.
“The Fund likes to live in a world….where all of its members are treated evenhandedly,” said Nathan Sheets, former under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs and now chief economist at PGIM Fixed Income. If the United States starts opening the Fed to partisan politics or shifting away from other norms, “that is a risk for them.”
(Additional reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Source: OANN
A top House Democrat on Saturday ratcheted up his demand for access to President Donald Trump’s tax returns, telling the IRS that the law clearly gives Congress a right to them. The government’s failure to respond by an April 23 deadline could send the dispute into federal court.
Trump’s treasury chief, who oversees the IRS, cited “complicated legal issues” and bemoaned “an arbitrary deadline” set by Congress, while saying he would answer in that time frame.
A new letter by Rep. Richard Neal, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, comes after the Trump administration asked for more time to consider his initial request last week. Neal had requested six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns.
Neal, D-Mass., argues that a 1920-era law saying the IRS “shall furnish” any tax return requested by Congress “is unambiguous and raises no complicated legal issues” and that the Treasury Department’s objections lack merit.
The letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig is the latest exchange in a tug of war over Trump’s returns, which would give lawmakers far greater insight into the president’s business dealings and potential conflicts of interest as it exercises its oversight role.
Asked about the letter Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he would respond to within the new deadline set by Neal but he did not promise to produce Trump’s tax returns by that time. Mnuchin is the Cabinet secretary that oversees the IRS.
Mnuchin took issue with Neal’s characterization of the dispute as a straightforward issue in light of the law governing the matter.
“These are complicated legal issues and I think it is more important to the American taxpayers that we get this right than we hit an arbitrary deadline,” Mnuchin told reporters. “I would just emphasize this is a decision that has enormous precedence in terms of potentially weaponizing the IRS.”
Mnuchin said that Treasury Department lawyers have been working “diligently” to research the issues involved and have been in contact with Justice Department attorneys. But he said he has not personally discussed the issue with Attorney General William Barr.
Mnuchin said he thought Neal was just picking arbitrary deadline and he refused to speculate how the administration would proceed if the issue goes to court.
Trump declined to provide his tax information as a candidate in 2016 and as president, something party nominees have traditionally done in the name of the transparency. By withholding his tax returns, Trump has not followed the standard followed by presidents since Richard Nixon started the practice in 1969.
During the campaign, Trump said he wanted to release his returns but said because he was under a routine audit, “I can’t.” Being under audit is no legal bar to anyone releasing his or her returns. And after the November midterm elections, Trump claimed at a news conference that the filings were too complex for people to understand.
Asked repeatedly at a House hearing Tuesday whether any regulation prohibited a taxpayer from disclosing returns when under audit, Rettig responded “no.”
The issue appears sure to end up in federal court. With an eye to a legal challenge, Neal told Rettig that he has two weeks to respond — by 5 p.m. on April 23. If Rettig fails to do so, Neal said he will interpret as denying the request, which could pave the way for a court battle. Neal also could seek the returns through a subpoena.
Mnuchin had told Neal this past week that he needs more time to consider the unprecedented demand for Trump’s returns and needs to consult with the Justice Department about it.
At congressional hearings, Mnuchin accused lawmakers of seeking Trump’s returns for political reasons. But he also acknowledged his “statutory responsibilities” and that he respects congressional oversight. Some Treasury-watchers observe that Mnuchin’s decision to consult with the Justice Department could suggest that Treasury lawyers believe Neal has a legal right to Trump’s returns.
Neal said Saturday that the administration has no right “to question or second guess” his motivations.
Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, has said Democrats will “never” see the returns, “nor should they,” and “they know it.” Mulvaney has tried to frame the issue of the president’s taxes as old news, saying it was “already litigated during the election” and the American people “elected him anyway.”
William Consovoy, whose firm was retained by Trump to represent him on the matter, has written the Treasury’s general counsel and said the congressional request “would set a dangerous precedent” if granted and that the IRS cannot legally divulge the information.
Source: NewsMax Politics
MSNBC host Chris Matthews said President Trump could be re-elected in a landslide much like the 1972 election if the Democrats shift to the far left.
The host suggested that many prominent Democrats are pushing too many issues all at once, each of which would lead to a drastic change in American life that will likely be seen as too sudden for most voters.
In particular, Matthews said:
What if the Democrats nominated a candidate who supports the key progressive issues of today, getting rid of the Electoral College, increasing the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, creating a government-run, national health system, paying a significant chunk of college tuition, liberalizing abortion laws, especially late in term and presenting immigration policies that would allow interpretation as open borders, including socialists, by the way, in the Democratic coalition?
Suppose the candidate, she or he, carrying all those positions is the one picked to go up against Donald Trump.
How will this choice strike the voters in such electoral swing states as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, even Virginia and North Carolina?
What’s hard is to identify a leading candidate that is resisting the move to the left.
Very hard because all seem determined to hold their own among those young, strongly progressive, often minority voters expected to make up the voting base in the early states.
I have a strong memory of how this pattern of Democratic Party behavior worked out the last time the party went hard to the left. It was 1972.
During the 1972 campaign, George McGovern won the Democratic Party’s nomination, yet he lost 49 states to incumbent Richard Nixon.
His stinging loss led to the phrase “McGovernism.”
“Once again politicians – mostly Republicans, but some Democrats, too – are using his name as a synonym for presidential campaigns that are laughable and out of touch with the American people,” wrote the Chicago Tribune’s Bob Greene in 1992.
Alex Jones presents a video of Maxine Waters conducting an interview with Extra TV where she defends and forgives Jussie Smollett for his actions.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s signature is seen on a copy of his letter to U.S. lawmakers stating that the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been concluded and that Mueller has submitted his report to the Attorney General in Washington, U.S. March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo
April 2, 2019
By Jan Wolfe
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the House of Representatives are gearing up to issue subpoenas to try to obtain Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s full report on Russia’s role in the 2016 U.S. election and President Donald Trump’s actions related to the inquiry.
The question is: how successful will they be?
Attorney General William Barr, who has broad authority under Justice Department regulations to decide how much of Mueller’s report to release, sent lawmakers a four-page letter on March 24 explaining Mueller’s “principal conclusions” and has promised to release the nearly 400-page report by the middle of this month, with some parts blacked out, or “redacted.”
That has not satisfied Democrats, who control the House. The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Wednesday to authorize a subpoena to compel the Justice Department to hand over the complete report, without redactions, as well as underlying evidence.
Here is an explanation of the legal hurdles Democrats must clear in their subpoena effort, important judicial precedents and Barr’s rationale for keeping parts of the report confidential.
CAN CONGRESS SUBPOENA DOCUMENTS FROM THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH?
Yes. Committees of the House and Senate possess the power to issues subpoenas for documents held by the executive branch or other subjects in investigations. Under the U.S. Constitution, Congress is a co-equal branch of the federal government alongside the executive branch and judiciary.
If Barr refuses to comply with a Judiciary Committee subpoena to obtain the full report and underlying investigative material, the House could vote to hold him “in contempt” and turn to the courts to enforce the subpoena. Legal experts said that process could take years.
Barr’s “principal conclusions” letter said Mueller’s inquiry did not establish that Trump’s campaign team conspired with Russia. Barr also said Mueller did not reach a conclusion on whether the Republican president committed obstruction of justice but also did not exonerate him. Barr subsequently concluded that Trump had not engaged in criminal obstruction.
The letter provided scant details of the findings, though Trump immediately claimed “complete and total exoneration.” The Mueller investigation has cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency. House Democrats have launched a series of investigations into Trump, who is seeking re-election in 2020.
A situation analogous to the current subpoena fight unfolded during the presidency of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. In 2012, the House, then controlled by Republicans, subpoenaed internal Justice Department documents related to a failed federal law enforcement operation to track illegal gun sales, dubbed “Fast and Furious.” Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, refused to comply. The House voted to hold him in contempt, marking the first time in U.S. history that Congress took such action against a sitting member of a president’s Cabinet.
The Justice Department later turned over thousands of pages of documents but the matter was not resolved until after Obama left office, with a settlement reached in 2018.
WHY DID BARR NOT SIMPLY RELEASE THE WHOLE REPORT?
Barr told lawmakers in a March 29 letter that he was making “redactions that are required” before releasing the Mueller report. He cited four reasons for redactions: protecting secret grand jury proceedings; safeguarding intelligence-gathering sources and methods; shielding material that could affect ongoing investigations; and protecting information that would unduly infringe on personal privacy and reputations.
Grand juries are groups of citizens who meet in secret and decide whether to authorize criminal indictments or demands for evidence sought by prosecutors. U.S. law generally requires that information obtained from grand jury proceedings be kept secret, though there are exceptions that let Congress, and even the general public, see it.
Barr also could redact information by citing a legal doctrine called executive privilege, which allows the president to withhold information about internal executive branch deliberations from other branches of government.
WHAT LAWS AND HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS APPLY?
Federal law and judicial precedent could play a role in the subpoena fight.
Under U.S. law, grand jury testimony generally must be kept secret. But if a grand jury matter involves “grave hostile acts of a foreign power” or other intelligence information, the information can be shared with appropriate government officials. The law also lets a judge release grand jury information when strong public interest is at stake.
A 1974 court decision involving Republican President Richard Nixon gives Democrats strong ammunition to argue that they are entitled to any grand jury information redacted by Barr. Leon Jaworski, a special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, produced a report that relied on evidence from grand jury proceedings.
H.R. Haldeman, who had served Nixon as White House chief of staff, sought to block that information from Congress, citing the same grand jury secrecy provision mentioned by Barr. The dispute ended up before a panel of federal appeals court judges in Washington, which ruled 5-1 against Haldeman. The court said Congress clearly needed the material to conduct an effective impeachment investigation, and noted that the Democratic-led House Judiciary committee had taken “elaborate precautions to insure against unnecessary and inappropriate disclosure of these materials.” The committee approved articles of impeachment against Nixon as Congress began the process of trying to remove him from office. Nixon resigned before the full House could vote on impeachment.
If Barr were to cite executive privilege in redacting material, a 1974 Supreme Court ruling could come into play. Nixon withheld tape recordings and other material subpoenaed by Jaworski, citing executive privilege. The high court then ordered him to give the material to a federal district court, saying the president’s interest in keeping his communications secret was outweighed by the judiciary’s need for evidence.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham and Noeleen Walder)
Source: OANN
Democrats say they want "all of the underlying evidence" in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. But what is all of that evidence?
Mueller's team issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants and interviewed more than 500 witnesses. That means the special counsel likely compiled thousands, if not millions, of documents and pieces of evidence. Material collected ranges from a $15,000 ostrich jacket worn by President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman to emails and encrypted text messages to hard drives and laptops. It could even include tax returns, if Mueller sought them.
In one Mueller case, that of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, the government said it had turned over 9 terabytes of discovery — an amount so large that Stone's lawyers said if it were on paper, it would pile as high as the Washington Monument, twice.
If all of that was delivered to Congress, the House Judiciary Committee might need to invest in a larger office space. But lawmakers say what they really want is documentation of everything — and an idea of how that evidence guided Mueller's conclusions.
"We don't need to see Paul Manafort's ostrich jacket, but we do need to know that it's there," says Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the Judiciary panel.
The requests for underlying evidence are central to Democrats' demands for Mueller's full report. They say that they need all that information to make their own conclusions, and to ensure that Mueller's findings are not filtered by Attorney General William Barr, who Trump picked for the job. While they may not need every single personal item seized by Mueller — like Manafort's jacket, meant to show his lavish lifestyle, or the contents of Stone's hard drive — they do want as much information as possible that is relevant to his decisions.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., one of several committee chairmen asking for the full report and underlying evidence, says what he is principally interested in is documentation that supports the report. He says the committees will fight for grand jury material, including witness interviews, that is normally off limits but can be obtained in court.
Schiff said he expects negotiations with the Justice Department over the scope and breadth of what is turned over to Congress.
"It will be a product of negotiation," Schiff said. "What we won't accept is, 'No, we're not going to give you anything.'"
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., has also said Democrats will fight for grand jury material. He said he talked to Barr on Wednesday and Barr wouldn't commit to releasing it.
"A judge would have to release those and we would hope a judge would," Nadler said.
As part of his investigation, Mueller charged 34 people, including Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and three Russian companies. Manafort was convicted in Washington and Virginia of crimes related to years of Ukrainian political consulting work, and Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In total, five Trump aides pleaded guilty and a sixth, Stone, is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to Congress and engaged in witness tampering.
In a four-page summary of Mueller's report released Sunday, Barr said the special counsel did not find that Trump's campaign "conspired or coordinated" with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. It also said that Mueller reached no conclusion on whether Trump obstructed the federal investigation, instead setting out "evidence on both sides" of the question. Democrats say they want to know much more about both conclusions.
It's not clear what evidence the Justice Department might be prepared to release, but documents of enormous public interest would be summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses in the case. The FBI released similar records following the conclusion of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, including a write-up of the interview agents did with Clinton herself.
In Mueller's case, disclosure of witness interviews would almost certainly yield vivid, first-hand accounts from some of Trump's closest aides and advisers — among them former White House officials Hope Hicks and Don McGahn — of the many episodes Mueller and his team scrutinized for potential obstruction of justice. Those include the firing of James Comey as FBI director and the constant browbeating of Jeff Sessions, Trump's first attorney general.
There are whole other categories of information that less likely to be released. Those include grand jury testimony; negative information about people who were investigated but not charged; and details about ongoing investigations. Though grand jury testimony is historically not released, those records were made public after the Whitewater investigation into former President Bill Clinton and during an investigation into President Richard Nixon before he resigned.
Schiff and other Democrats are leaning heavily on those precedents, along with the Justice Department's recent release of hundreds of thousands of documents last year relating to the Hillary Clinton investigation and also the origins of the Russia investigation, which was ongoing at the time. Republicans sought those documents when they were in the majority; Democrats say the department can't possibly deny them similar information now that they control the House.
Republicans, meanwhile, have been deferential to Barr. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday urged caution so as not to "throw innocent people who've not been charged under the bus." He didn't elaborate.
Barr appears to be moving forward on sending Congress an additional, redacted report. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Wednesday that Barr told him he was combing through Mueller's report and removing classified, grand jury and other information in hopes of releasing it in April.
Democrats say that won't be enough. "We're not happy about it, to put it mildly," Nadler said after his own call with Barr.
Source: NewsMax Politics
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