Month: January 2020

Hoops Talk

It’s still too soon to tell what the US Senate will do regarding the Trial of Donald Trump.  The critical vote will probably come today, when they will determine whether to seek evidence and witnesses.  That vote is, as reporters put it, “a jump ball”.  From here, it feels a lot like the Kavanaugh nomination, a “jump ball” where the refs will tip it to a pre-determined team.  And just like Kavanaugh, don’t depend on Susan Collins to be a tower of moral strength.

But even if the outcome is predestined, the Senate Republicans should “jump through the hoop” of listening to John Bolton’s testimony.  Regardless of their final decision of exoneration, the voters of the United States deserve the right to hear what the former National Security Advisor has to say.  

The Fix 

It’s not likely to happen.  Senate Republicans don’t want to hear that the President, their President, did exactly what the House of Representatives said he did.  They absolutely refuse to know that Donald Trump used the taxpayer supplied and Congressionally mandated funds of the United States to try to extort Ukraine for political dirt on Joe Biden.  And they certainly don’t want to hear about it first hand from John Bolton.  They’d rather read it in his book next month, when they can wring their hands and use the ultimate insult to their old friend:  disgruntled employee.

For them, it’s all well and good that “the fix” is in.  They know it’s fixed; they don’t want their Senatorial noses rubbed in it by Bolton.

I keep waiting for the “profile in courage”, that Republican Senator who casts political considerations aside and makes a morally right decision.  But alas, it’s not an era of courage.  It seems that Senate Republican courage was buried at Annapolis alongside John McCain.  Mitt Romney, by the way, isn’t that profile either.  He has as safe a seat as exists there in Utah, in fact, he has a Republican constituency that is as morally appalled by Donald Trump as most Democrats.  Still, it’s good to have him there.

Profile of Fear

The biggest disappointment is that I truly believe most Republican Senators (and many “normal” Republicans) are disgusted by the President’s actions.  They are choosing to ignore their “better angels”.  Senators fear the President, the impact his single tweet could have on their career. They fear the Republican Party mechanisms that the Trump Campaign wholly controls, taking the financial support of their own Party.  And they dread being “primaried” by other Republicans more loyal to Trump.

They rationalize:  “…if I stand up for this, I will be left alone, out of office, and the next Senator might well be worse for the country”.   That next Senator might be a Trumper, but it might just as well be a Democrat.  Ask the people of South Carolina House District 1, who “primaried” conservative Republican Mark Sanford out of office after a Trump tweet, and then lost the general election to a Democrat.   Professor Dershowitz, for all the nonsense he spouted in the past couple of days, managed to make one clear, correct point in his dissertation.  Most politicians truly believe what’s in their best is also in the nations’ best interest.  

Take the Shot

Speaker Pelosi didn’t want to move on impeachment.  In her thinking, if the President’s actions outlined in the Mueller Report didn’t create national outrage, then Democrats were better sticking to their positive agenda of health care, reducing income stratification, and improving voting rights.  That was how they won the House in 2018. 

But what drove her to allow the process to begin was Trump’s obvious determination to “fix” the 2020 election.   The Muller Investigation didn’t stop him; in fact, it emboldened him to extort Ukrainian President Zelenskiy.  That was the plan:  Trump couldn’t allow the election of 2020 to be on a level playing field.  He had to find a way to make Joe Biden as negative and ugly as he was.  He had to cheat to win.  

Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Schiff entered impeachment with their eyes wide open.  Even though the evidence of the President’s actions and obstructions was overwhelming, so was his control of the Republican Party and the mind numbing power of Fox News.  But impeachment and the Senate trial was the only way to place the evidence in front of the American voters.  They had to “take the shot”. 

To the People 

The President’s attorney Pat Cipillone calls for Senators to “…leave it to the people of the United States”.   Whether he believes it or not, Democrats recognized that was the probable outcome of the trial as well.  What the Trial does, is lay out the case to the voters.  It has also laid bare the stranglehold the President has taken over his own political party.  No witnesses, no evidence, no subpoenas:  the American people know what a real trial is, and “this ain’t it”.

Democrats have taken their best shot.  The Republicans in the Senate have “rigged” the game so that the President cannot be touched.  Now it is up to the American voters in 2020. Unlike the Republican Senators so afraid of the truth, they are willing to vote for the kind of America they want, even if the election process is still slanted in Trump’s favor.

When the trial ends, the people have the ball.

Con Law 101

I spent yesterday listening to Alan Dershowitz lecture in the Trial of Donald Trump.  As the youngest tenured law professor in Harvard University history, Dershowitz is a fifty-year veteran of law school classrooms.   One consistent pattern of all law school pedagogy is to follow a legal principle to its logical extreme.  It starts as a reasonable legal precept, like Presidents should legally act in the nation’s best interest.  And that’s where Professor Dershowitz began.  

But then he chased the idea to its extreme, reaching a point when he said that whatever a President does to get re-elected, that President believes it’s in the best interest of the country, so it’s legal.  Anything he does.  Dershowitz might have missed the blank check for any Presidential action he was promoting; but no one else in the room, not even his own legal compatriots, were willing to climb out on that limb.

In part of that slide to the extreme, Dershowitz mentioned Abraham Lincoln.  He claims that the actions Lincoln took in the crisis of the Civil War were Constitutional, and if those were, certainly the “quid pro quo” action of Donald Trump was.  

To Hell

I am now going to history “Hell”.  

Abraham Lincoln is arguably our most revered leader.  While George Washington established the process and structure of the Federal Government, it was Lincoln who established “the heart” of the American experiment.  He didn’t allow legal structure or even long held traditions to prevent him from saving the Union.  He did whatever he had to do.

It wasn’t legal.  Abraham Lincoln violated the text and spirit of the US Constitution time and time again.  When Dershowitz used Lincoln as an excuse for Trump, he made one mistake.  Lincoln could have been impeached.

I know, your eighth grade history teacher never, ever, ever said that; even if it was me.

Violating the Constitution

But let’s look at what Lincoln did.  In the first few weeks of his Presidency, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland and summarily imprisoned a state government official. The US Army held John Merryman, a state legislator, imprisoned in Fort McHenry. Merryman’s attorney went to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, for a writ of habeas corpus releasing him from custody.  Taney granted the writ, but Lincoln defied the ruling and kept Merryman in jail.

This wasn’t the only action Lincoln took that could have resulted in impeachment.  On a purely legal basis, the Civil War itself could be viewed as a huge expansion of Presidential power.  But more specifically, Lincoln took property away from private citizens; property protected by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v Sanford.  We see it as a heroic measure in US History, the Emancipation Proclamation, but it clearly went against legal precedent.

It was never tested in Court, but Lincoln and the Congress recognized that it would not hold by itself.  While Lincoln was no longer around after the Civil War, the Congress “post-dated” the action by passing the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation.  

Rigged Election

And finally to Professor Dershowitz’s story.  Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, made no secret that he wanted the Army to support Lincoln for President against his popular Democratic opponent George McClellan in the election of 1864.  Army units that were Republican were sent home to vote, those that were Democrat were faced with duty on the front lines.  Army officers who spoke out for McClellan were actually dismissed from service.  Cadets at the Military Academy at West Point, who attended a Democratic meeting, were forced to dig a live sewer line from the Superintendent’s home.  

General Sherman complained that he needed the troops for battle, but Lincoln made it clear that their Republican votes were more important.   As Professor Dershowitz pointed out, Lincoln saw his re-election as furthering the nation’s goals, and used the votes of his troops to get it done.

For the Union

Ok, stop writing that nasty comment on this post.  I don’t think Lincoln should have been impeached.  Lincoln defended the Union, and saw that as his highest calling, even above defending the Constitution.  While he didn’t write the phrase, Lincoln did understand that the Constitution wasn’t a “suicide pact” that the nation should blindly follow into oblivion.  He did what he needed to do to assure that “…government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth”.

That doesn’t mean that Donald Trump should get a pass.  Lincoln’s actions were in a moment of national extremis, when the very existence of the United States was at risk.  Trump extorting Ukraine for “dirt” on Joe Biden can hardly be seen in the same light.  And that’s the ultimate flaw in Professor Dershowitz’s analysis.  We can’t compare today’s crisis to the Civil War.  

But we certainly all can agree:  Donald Trump is no Abraham Lincoln.

The United States Department of Justice stands for enforcing the law and protecting the Constitution.  It’s multiple parts; from the FBI and DEA, to the Civil Rights and Anti-Trust Divisions, have often stood for the “good” done by the United States government.  

But Justice is also a part of the executive branch, and subject to the whims and the desires of the leader of that branch, the President of the United States.  The career employees of Justice are often placed in an awkward balance.  They are a law enforcement agency, dedicated to balancing justice with “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur”emblazoned on their seal (who prosecutes on behalf of justice).  But they are led by a political appointee, and are an arm of the Presidency.

Blind Justice

And it is this balance between “blind justice” and politics that has been the story of Justice for the past fifty years.    The modern story begins with the infamous Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover.  He ran the Bureau with an iron hand, using its information gathering skills to get “dirt” on national figures and extort control of them.  It worked, and Hoover was left as a dictatorial authority in his agency for forty-eight years, from the roaring twenties into the 1970’s.  

To balance Hoover’s power, in 1961 newly elected President John Kennedy placed his brother, Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General.  Bobby was his brother’s closest confidant, his campaign manager, and the legendary Kennedy family “hatchet man”.  The President might be glib and smiling; Bobby was the one who said who was fired.

Bobby took the Justice Department in the direction of promoting civil rights, much to Hoover’s dismay.  While Bobby was sending US Attorneys in to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members, Hoover was wiretapping Martin Luther King Jr, spreading rumors of Communism and marital infidelity.  Hoover was too powerful to remove, but Kennedy served as a check against him. 

After the President was assassinated, and Lyndon Johnson took over, Bobby Kennedy soon left leadership of the Department.  But, his successors continued Johnson’s dedication to civil rights. Hoover also remained, using his extraordinary powers to attack the anti-Vietnam War movement.  

Watergate

It was in the middle of the Vietnam Crisis that Richard Nixon won the Presidency.  Nixon followed Kennedy’s lead, putting his campaign manager John Mitchell in as Attorney General.  Mitchell was focused on one thing, keeping Richard Nixon in power as President.  And as Nixon’s political philosophy and Hoover’s were much more compatible, the FBI became a part of the Nixon machine.

Nixon’s fall in the Watergate Crisis was much more than just a minor break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices.  Millions of dollars of campaign funds were spent on illegal actions, a White House “team” pursued Nixon’s agenda with illegal acts, and most of these actions fully involved the White House, the President, and the Attorney General.  By Nixon’s resignation, the country saw a Justice Department fully co-opted into illegal politics.  Mitchell went to jail, along with much of Nixon’s senior staff.

Independent Justice

After Watergate, the Justice Department, including the FBI (Hoover retired under a scandal of his own making) distanced itself from politics.  No longer was the Attorney General an extension of the Presidential campaign, and the Directors of the FBI were chosen for ten-year terms.   The Department took an apolitical stand, with the connection to the Executive solely at the senior level.  Perhaps this was most famously seen with President Clinton’s Attorney General Janet Reno, who remained clear of an Independent Counsel investigation of her boss.  That investigation, led by Ken Starr, resulted in the Clinton’s impeachment.

George W. Bush brought in a more political leader, John Ashcroft, and later Alberto Gonzales.  Barack Obama also tried to split the difference, with Eric Holder still asserting independence while serving the President’s agenda.  

My Roy Cohn

But Donald Trump made it clear from the beginning that he wanted an Attorney General to “have his back”.  Jeff Sessions got the job, but made a fatal mistake by following Department guidelines and recusing himself from the Russia investigation.  He left Trump undefended, and  Trump made Sessions’ life miserable, constantly deriding him even as Sessions tried to fulfill the rest of the Trump agenda.  

And when Sessions finally resigned, Trump found exactly what he was looking for, his own Bobby Kennedy or John Mitchell:  he found Bill Barr.  Barr auditioned for the job by writing an unsolicited twenty-page memo in support of the President, and immediately began to make the Justice Department into his own image.

Justice and the White House

One of the most powerful forces Barr has used is the internal Department legal evaluator, the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).  The OLC writes the legal opinions for the Justice Department, and with Barr’s ascension, began to author a series of memos that backed Barr’s extreme view of executive power.  Those opinions become the “opinion” of the Executive Branch, and, short of a Federal Court opinion, has much of the force of law.

So when the OLC opined that the “Whistleblower Report” did not require Congress to be notified, or even Federal investigation, it became the basis for the White House defense of their actions.  And when the President’s lawyers in the Senate trial for impeachment quote the OLC as defining opinions, it’s should be no surprise that they back the President.

It took forty years for the Department of Justice to revert back to an arm of the White House after Watergate.  When the Trump era is finally over, it will take action by both the Congress and the new President to return to some semblance of impartiality again.  

Until then, it is impartial justice denied.

Script Rejected

If you wrote it in a Hollywood script – no one would buy it.  No one would buy the impeachment of the President, rocked by the secret book laying bare the criminal actions of the President himself.  They wouldn’t buy Lev and Igor (that’s not Boris and Natasha), spending dollars like water in the Ukraine, working for “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani, but financed by a Russian oligarch.

No one would believe an entire television network, not just dedicated to protecting the President, but supplying his spokespeople, his staff, and even his legal defense team.  And who could imagine that the lawyers who got the most infamous child sex purveyor of the century a sweetheart prison deal, would appear in the “well” of the Senate to intone solemn legal defenses for the President.

No, no one would buy it.  It’s not believable the producers would say, it couldn’t happen.  Yet here we are.  By the way, while all of this is going on, the President himself is announcing his son-in-law’s new Middle East Peace Plan, with the criminally indicted Prime Minister of Israel at his side.  Yeah, it wouldn’t even make it as a comedy.

Can’t Shoot Straight

They defense team can’t shoot straight.  Monday, their “big day” in front of the American people, they buried the lead. They started off with a long lecture by Ken Starr, the man who drove the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about a blowjob.  Starr lamented the “frequency” and “pettiness” of recent impeachments, as if he had nothing to do with it.  His performance was like a blanket and a warm fireplace:  it made it hard to stay awake.

And if they were smart, they would have spent the rest of the afternoon on Constitutional issues.  But they dropped their “bomb” a four in the afternoon, instead of saving it for “prime time”.  They launched their attack on Joe Biden, the leading Democratic candidate for President, while America was finishing up work and heading home to dinner.

After all, this is what the entire crisis is about.  Trump wanted to attack Biden, and he wanted the President of Ukraine, Zelenskiy, to do it.  Trump was willing to leverage American national security to get a Ukrainian investigation into imagined Biden corruption there.  

And even though Trump got caught and couldn’t get that exposure, he had a second chance.  It was yesterday, when the former Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi, dressed provocatively in what looked like a prototype “Space Force” uniform, launched her attack on Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Not Ready for Prime Time

It should have been in prime time.  If you’re taking the shot; then take it, don’t hide it.  But they blew that chance.  Instead of trashing Joe Biden in front of the a watching nation, they gave the prime time slot to wizened Alan Dershowitz, former legal prodigy and Harvard Law Professor.  Dershowitz dropped us all into a lecture from his old classroom, Constitutional Law 506.  You know you’ve got your audience when you are describing the legal acumen of the Justice who dissented to the Dred Scott Case in 1857.  That, for sure, cements the deal with the American people.

Oh yeah, did I forget the guy who wanted to go back and impeach President Obama?  He was after “Space Force” woman and before dinner.  I don’t think he earned much respect from the Senators, or the American people.

So here we are today, the last chance for the “gang that can’t shoot straight”.  What looked like a sure “win” for them, with a Senate majority firmly behind the President, is now getting shaky.  Senators know that President Trump can damage them politically, they know their “…heads could end up on a pike” if they cross him.  But they also know that the truth is out there, in the pages of John Bolton’s new book, in the SDNY evidence for Lev and Igor, and in the unspoken testimonies of Pompeo, Mulvaney, and the rest. 

Naked and Afraid

The President’s defenders have spent their time handing out “fig leaves” for Republican Senators to hide behind, giving them cover to vote to end the Trial.  But those same Senators can see the future, and that future will make them look naked and foolish.  The defenders will have to give them a “bigger leaf” today, if they want the trial to end this week.

Of course if you are a “swing” Republican Senator, there are no good choices to make.  If you vote with the President, you keep a core base, but lose the middle.  If you vote against the President, even just to allow witness testimony in the trial, you risk a Trumpian attack that takes you base.  And the Democrats in your state aren’t going to thank you with their votes; no matter what you do they are voting for someone else.

The most improbable ending:  Bolton testifies, twenty Republican Senators are moved, and the removal of Donald John Trump from the Presidency becomes a real possibility.  But don’t hold your breath for that.

It couldn’t even happen in a Hollywood script.

Today the President’s defense begins in earnest.  Starting at 1 pm in the Senate Chamber, the lawyers representing Donald John Trump will explain why he shouldn’t be removed from office.  

Defending Trump

I expect this afternoon we will hear from the academics. Alan Dershowitz will proclaim his wildly aberrant views on the US Constitution. Ken Starr will promulgate his belief that the House Managers have usurped the powers of the Justice Department.  Their arguments will add up to:  Article II of the Constitution gives the President near unlimited power including total control of the Justice Department.  And the Justice Department is the only agency in the government that can investigate the President.

The President would have to investigate himself, and recommend his own impeachment to fit into the Constitutional model the two will create. It leaves no real way to counter Presidential misconduct.

A Favor, Though

But tonight is when the real show begins, in prime time presented to Fox News viewers for the first time unfettered by commentary.  Tonight Donald Trump will achieve what he failed to get from the Ukrainian government:  Joe Biden’s name dragged through the mud.  

In the end, this is all about the 2020 election.  Trump beat Clinton because they both had record high negative ratings among voters.  For Trump to win in 2020, he has to replicate that scenario, including the improbably narrow popular vote victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  His opponent has to be smeared, right or wrong. Trump has to find a way to make them equally “dirty”. 

Joe Biden doesn’t carry those negatives, even with a political “tail” that stretches back into the 1970’s.  If Biden wins the Democratic nomination, Trump must reduce him to this lowest common denominator to be successful.  That’s what made the Zelenskiy phone call so important, and what will make tonight so ugly.  It’s the Trump Campaign’s best shot to build the “stench of corruption,” around Biden, undeserved after fifty years of public service.  

So expect that Attorneys Cipillone and Sekulow will be serving in a campaign capacity rather than a legal one tonight.

The Fates

In the ancient Greek tragedies, there was always a chorus of “Fates” chanting in the background.  They foretold the future, and that future was always bleak.  The best acts of man were doomed to fail; it was the Gods that determined the course of events, not men.

Republicans in the Senate might well feel the same as those mere mortals in Greek tragedy.  They hope to control their fate, shutting off witnesses, evidence, and discussion by ending the Trump trial.  They are desperately trying to control their future, the President’s future, and the fate of the Republican Party.  

But just as the chorus chanted in the background in the Greek Amphitheatre, the media is foretelling events today.  Republicans are rushing the process to keep information out, but the steady drip of evidence not heard in the trial continues.

Last night the New York Times published a glimpse into former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s new book.  In it, Bolton testifies that President Trump specifically ordered military aid withheld from Ukraine to leverage their government investigation into Biden.  For the Republicans in the Senate, claiming only circumstantial evidence of Presidential misconduct, it’s a “nail in the coffin”.

The Drip of Truth

They cannot hear Bolton testify in the Senate, without being forced to acknowledge the President’s offenses.  And Bolton wants his say, and his profit.  The American people will hear him whether he testifies in the Senate or not.  And that will leave the Republicans caught outright in their cover-up of the President’s actions.

And if Bolton weren’t enough, we get to hear directly from the President, telling Parnas and Fruman that he will “take out” Ambassador Yovanovitch.  Why Fruman recorded an hour and more of a dinner party it’s difficult to say, but we can listen to it all today, even if the Senate Republicans will not.

The real story will keep coming out, drip by drip.  Before the conventions, perhaps even before the end of the primaries, all America will know exactly what President Trump did.  We will likely find that the House Managers were right, and that McConnell and his comrades willfully allowed a rogue Presidency.

Like the Greek Gods, the electorate will determine the fate, not only of President Trump, but also of the Republican Party as a whole.  While the Republicans may control the moment in the Senate, the power of facts will ultimately be revealed.  Let’s hope the voters will show the wisdom of Olympians.

In the classic movie about the Watergate era, All the President’s Men, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein discuss the dilemma of “proof”.  Their argument:  if you go to bed and there’s no snow on the ground, and you wake up and there’s snow on the ground, can you factually say it snowed in the night?  Or is it just circumstantial evidence?  Can it be reported in the paper, or does there need to be a first-hand witness to the snowfall?

The Trial

We are entering the second week of the Trial of Donald John Trump, President of the United States.  The first day, and night, and part of the next morning of the trial were consumed with political wrangling.  Democratic Senators wanted to hear witnesses and subpoena evidence, Republican Senators voted item after item down, putting off that decision until after the cases were presented.  

The House Managers, what would be the “prosecutors” of the case in a criminal court, took three days to present an exhaustive case against the President.  Their overarching theme:  the President used the power of his office, the structures of the government, and the money appropriated by Congress to further his own political goals.  He not only did it before, but he was still doing it now, and there was no reason to believe he won’t do it again if he’s not stopped.

Even more, the President was willing to risk the national security of the United States to pursue his own personal political goals.  He was willing to abandon our allies, and give aid and support to our enemies.  Without using the word, the House Managers raised the specter of treasonous behavior.

Stonewall Defense

But there is an unavoidable flaw in the House Managers’ presentation.  No matter how many facts they marshal, no matter how eloquent their appeals to justice and fairness, no matter the mountains of “snow” they find on the ground.  They don’t have the “direct” connection.

President Trump has mounted the ultimate “stonewall” defense.  He has, in an unprecedented act, ordered the entire Executive Branch to refuse cooperation with the House investigation.  The President ordered all witnesses to refuse to testify, to even appear in front of the investigators.  He has withheld every shred of paper evidence.  And he is getting away with it.

My Roy Cohn

The President’s apologists in the Senate default to the past impeachment of President Clinton, when the House sent over literal truckloads of evidence gathered by the four year Justice Department investigation led by Ken Starr.  They argue that the House didn’t do the “due diligence” required in an impeachment investigation, that the Democrats “don’t have it”.

Of course, that’s a specious argument.  This President, unlike Clinton, or Nixon, or even Reagan in the Iran-Contra investigation, has an iron-lock on the Justice Department.  His “Roy Cohn,” Attorney General Bill Barr, has not allowed the Justice Department to enter into the investigation.  In fact, it may well be that the Department is withholding pertinent information.  Recently revealed texts and phone calls from the case against Lev Parnas in the Southern District of New York further damn the President’s case, but were only released from Parnas’ attorney, held back for months by the Justice Department team.

So the key witnesses to this critical national crime, National Security Advisor Bolton, Chief of Staff Mulvaney, the executives at the Office of Management and Budget who held the money, all remain silent.  The House Managers are forced to build powerful bridges of evidence, but they fall one section short of completing the crossing.

The Jury

Speaker Pelosi argues that the criticality of the timing required the House to impeach.  She maintains the risk to the 2020 election posed by Trump’s actions required them to take the evidence they have and move on.  The Speaker could not allow the “stonewall” strategy and the co-opting of the Justice Department to cover-up the crimes.

The President’s attorneys are not presenting a case.  It is all about obfuscation, of clouding the facts with wild theories of Ukrainian attacks on the 2016 election, and Trump’s “deep concern” about corruption.  Their job is as “fig leaf weavers”.  They need to give just the smallest cover to the naked subservience of the Republican Senators.  And they will.

But the House effort is not in vain.  Early on, the House Managers recognized that the real jury in this trial is not the Senate, but the American people.  And while the “Fifth Avenue” Trump supporters remain at his back, the majority of Americans already get it.  

It snowed last night.

For only the third time in American history, the President of the United States is on trial in front of the Senate.  At stake: the Presidency itself.  Should a two-thirds majority find Donald John Trump guilty, he will be removed from office, and likely banned from running again.  

As the trial progresses we are hearing commentators and experts drawing analogies between the “impeachment trial” and more familiar criminal law.  While those analogies might be helpful in explaining some procedures, in the end the two are not the same at all.

We’ve Impeached

Impeachment is already over.  Donald Trump is an “impeached” President, joining the list of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.  Impeachment was the House of Representatives bringing charges for trial in front of the Senate.  It is analogous to what an indictment does in the criminal process.  And, much like a criminal indictment, there are few “due process” protections for the “defendant”.

That reality belies the complaints of the President, demanding representation and bemoaning the unfairness of things.  The President is now getting his rights: they’re coming up next week when his “dream team” gets three uninterrupted days on the floor of the Senate.  And besides, you can only hope that if you are investigated for a criminal indictment, that almost half of the investigators are your friends and supporters, like Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and the rest (though I’d rather have friends who actually tried to influence the outcome rather than just disrupt it).

It’s Not a Crime

And the “trial” itself, though it has the trappings of a court drama, is really very different.  First of all, there is a judge, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; but he has little influence over the proceedings.  The Senators are both judges and jurors: a simple majority determines the rules of the proceeding.  The usual fairness we would expect in a trial, hearing witnesses and seeing evidence, are not a given.  They are a “grant” of the majority.

The trial from impeachment is rather a mix of legislature, criminal law and civil law.  There is no “standard” of guilt, such as the “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal bar, or even the “preponderance of the evidence” of a civil case.  The Senator/Jurors get to not only decide the facts of what happened, but whether those facts violate the Constitution, and whether those violations are so egregious that the President should be removed.  As jurors they determine the facts, as judges they evaluate the law. 

But removal from office (and baring from future office) is not a criminal penalty, and the Trial from Impeachment is not a criminal case.  The rights we assume in the criminal system are not enforced.  If the President is removed for criminal reasons, then the he would get criminal rights in a criminal court, after he is out of office.  

There are none of the Constitutionally mandated legal criminal protections that we are so used to.  Certainly the President could refuse to present evidence and testimony, “taking the Fifth” so to speak.  But unlike criminal action, the Senator/Jurors are allowed to infer guilt from his failure.   And the Constitution does not require a particular level of “guilt”.  If two-thirds believe the President should be removed, he is.

High Crimes

The term “high crime” is a “term of art” as used in the United States Constitution.  A high crime to the Founding Fathers, was a crime against the state, the Constitution itself, not a “big” crime or felony as we think of in criminal law today.  High crimes are acts against the State, but not necessarily against statutory criminal law.  

The current 1^st Article of Impeachment is for Abuse of Power, a term that is a “high crime” but not analogous to any individual Federal statute.  Under “abuse of power” there are contained various Federal crimes: misuse of public funds, violation of the impoundment act, offering bribes to foreign officials, encouraging foreign intervention in US elections.  But those are all “common” crimes, it is only when committed together by the President that they become a  “high” crime, a crime against the Constitution.

And the 2^nd Article of Impeachment, obstruction of Congress, is wholly outside the Federal Criminal Statutes.  The “high” crime is in preventing Congress from exercising its Constitutional Article I powers of oversight. The President claims a flawed theory of total blanket Executive immunity. He has completely refused all Congressional requests for information.  It is a Constitutional question, to be decided above the level of mere Federal law.

Clock and a Calendar

The Republican Congressman from Georgia, Doug Collins, made a huge fuss about the House Democrats rush to impeachment.  He didn’t understand the hurry, and kept saying that “…a clock and a calendar” drove them, as if that was some insult.

He wasn’t wrong, but not for the reason he thought.  Democrats did feel the pressure of time in the impeachment action.  The President, through his actions in Ukraine, made it clear that he would ask for and accept foreign aid to help him win election in 2020.  Those elections are now mere months away. To prevent the President from cheating, something had to be done. 

The “clock and the calendar” are still running.  This President began the Ukraine crisis literally the day after he was “cleared” by the Mueller Report.  Who knows what will happen the day after this trial is over. 

Perhaps Impeachment and Trial will serve as a check on his future actions, even if he’s not removed from office.  Perhaps it will not. If the Senate fails to be remove him, we will find out soon enough.

This is part of a series about ongoing political issues called “The Briefing Book.”

Driver’s License

 I went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles the other day, to get a new driver’s license.  In Pataskala, Ohio, that’s not such a big deal.  The BMV is located in the old Post Office building by the railroad tracks in the center of town, about a half a mile from the house.  If you go at the end or beginning of the month you might have to wait for a while, but if you hit the middle there’s not such a big line. 

It’s set up like a deli.  There’s the “number” machine, where you take one, and a series of folding chairs where you can wait it out.  You usually find someone that you know in line to have a conversation with.   This time, it was the Russian woman who works at Kroger, and a kid I suspended from school a dozen years ago.

When you get to the counter, the worker there rapidly goes through the list of items you need to get your license or ID.  If you get the one that’s not acceptable for airlines and such, it used to be your old ID is enough.   Now with all the added security, or if it’s your first ID (let’s see, for me that was my first passport at three years old), they require:

• Birth Certificate – with original seal
• Social Security Card (or SSA printout)
• A document showing Ohio Residency
  • Current Insurance Bill
  • Current Utility Bill,
• And $10.

Social Bias

There’s a story teacher’s use to explain the concept of “social bias” in testing.  It’s a math problem:  

Joey mows grass, and he can cut three houses in two hours.  Unfortunately he ran out of gas, and was delayed by two hours.  He has six houses left to finish before it rains, how long will it take?

For kids in the suburbs there are really only two answers to the question.  The first, he’ll need another four hours to get the grass cut.  The second, it doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t have any gas.

But for kids growing up in the city, where the backyards are asphalt and mowing grass isn’t a thing kids do, this question sounds like:

Arthur was participating in the South Bay Regatta.  His ketch was caught crosswind while tacking across the sound, and lost sail.  How will Arthur return his ketch to the dock?

If you don’t know what a Regatta, a bay, a dock or a ketch is, you won’t be able to answer the question.  A city kid may not have ever seen a push mower, not had to ever buy gasoline, nor seen six houses with lawns to be mowed.  Need another example:  ask a suburban kid what a “transfer” is.  Odds are, they won’t have a clue. 

Now on Facebook

It’s driven on social media today. “Democrats want open borders, and Democrats are against Voter ID, so Democrats must want illegal immigrants to vote,” the memes say in one way or another.  And for some of those living here in Pataskala or in other suburbs, it seems right.  Getting an ID is easy, why would anyone be against requiring having an ID to vote?  After all, we need ID for so many other transactions in life, voting shouldn’t be an issue.

But it’s a lot like trying to explain the whole regatta thing.  Either you know it and understand it, or you don’t.  To suburban America it’s difficult to understand how getting an ID is a big deal.

Your Papers Please

Let’s just start with the paper work and  the whole “sealed” birth certificate thing.  In a world where apartments change rapidly, and stuff gets lost, how likely is it that you have an “original” or “sealed” birth certificate.  And if you don’t have one, who has the time to go to the County Courthouse, stand in line, and try to prove that you are you.

And then there’s the “residency” thing.  

Back at the founding of the “Republic,” the “right” to vote was only granted to property owners.  It was only later on that the ownership provisions were dropped, until today the term “citizen” is enough of a qualification.  But here’s the rub:  if you can’t prove “residency” you can’t register to vote.   It’s not just homeless people, it’s “squatters” that are living in situations that aren’t exactly “legal,” sub-letting or “crashing” at someone else’s place.  How can you get a utility or insurance bill in your name?

In America we say every citizen gets to vote.  But that’s not really true; the “paperwork” restricts voting to those who can legally prove residence.  And in a society where the divide between the “haves” and the “have not’s” is growing, the chasm between those that can vote and those that cannot is growing as well.

Right to Vote

Demand for Voter ID is a “social bias” kind of thing.  For those who have access to all of their paperwork, who have transportation, and who have $10 to spend on a government form:  it’s no big deal.  In short, if you live in the suburbs, have all “your papers” in order, a car to drive to the BMV, and a job that gets you time off at a time when the BMV is open, then getting an ID, or a License is easy.  Since those voters tend to be Republican, it should be no surprise that the GOP supports voter ID.

 Not everyone lives that way or has life is so “well ordered.”  But convenience, order, and financial stability are not “criteria” for earning the “right to vote”.  A right is a right, and democracy should make sure that citizens are enabled to vote, not restricted from it.

The Trial

The Trial of Donald John Trump continues in the US Senate.  Last night’s session went deep into the early morning hours, as Democrats forced the Republican controlled Senate to vote down each piece of new evidence and each possible witness. Their strategy caught the President’s “Team” unprepared, their pants beyond even down; they forgot to bring them.  But they managed to come back with echoes of the House Republicans, even Jim Jordan’s four part litany made its appearance.  

Surely the Republican Senators were squirming through the night, both because of the votes now on the record, and the national contrast between the sharp and articulate House Managers and the buffoonish “Team”.  But technically that didn’t matter:  in the end, Mitch McConnell has blocked new evidence and witnesses, at least for the moment.  

We’ll probably get to do the whole thing over again in a couple of weeks.

Polls

Today’s latest polls for the early Democratic Primaries (courtesy of RealClearPolitics):

• National – Biden 27, Sanders 20, Warren 19, Buttigieg 7, Bloomberg 5, everyone else ≤ 3 (1/18/20)
• Iowa – Biden 24, Warren 18, Buttigieg 16, Sanders 14, Klobuchar 11, everyone else ≤ 4% (1/20/20)
• New Hampshire – Sanders 16, Biden 15, Buttigieg 12, Warren 10, Yang 6, everyone else ≤5  (1/21/20)
• South Carolina – Biden 36, Steyer 15, Sanders 14, Warren 10, everyone else  ≤ 4 (1/10/20).

Polls are a lot like a picture of a scene taken from a car speeding down the interstate.  For a split second, the moment is captured forever “on film”.  What happens the next moment, or hour, may completely change the story.  But you have the snapshot.

Joe Biden

So looking at the “snapshots” above, Joe Biden seems to be in a good position. He is strongly ahead in the national poll.  And in the more significant local polls, Joe is somewhat ahead in Iowa, within a percentage of New Hampshire, and outdistancing the field in South Carolina.

And yet, Democrats are not at all sure about banking the future on the former Vice President.  In part, that’s because they feel one “outstanding gaffe” from Biden himself changing the entire scenario.  He’s made a political career of those gaffes, and every time he speaks, we are on the cusp of another (Biden’s Gaffes through history).  

Biden may be the Democratic “lowest common denominator” that all sides can get to, and he may be the surest chance of beating Donald Trump in November.   But he has to keep it together, and he needs to gain support from all wings of the Democratic Party.

Winds of Change

So the Democratic nomination is not “wrapped” up.  There is a strong force on the “left” wing of the Party, Democrats who want a sea change in America’s economy and corporate structures.  And they are split between two candidates:  Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  

For the purest in the Social Democratic set, Bernie Sanders is the gold standard.  He has led the cause for more than thirty years.  He stood so long for his independent brand of “Democrat-ism” that he is the icon, the symbol of radical change.  Elizabeth Warren grew under his shade and protection.   Her campaign must seem a bit more than “ungrateful” to Bernie’s supporters.  They must feel that it’s Bernie’s turn.

There is a simple calculation that makes Warren’s candidacy even more difficult for Bernie’s supporters to swallow.  The math is pretty simple, subtract Warren from the race and add her votes to Sanders.  It puts him ahead nationally, and everywhere else except for South Carolina.  Warren dilutes the field, leaving it open for Biden to sweep in and take over.  

This is politics, not tidily-winks, and all things are fair in politics and war.  Warren didn’t have to get anyone’s permission to run for President, and her supporters would say that it’s Bernie that is diluting the race.  And we now know that Warren and Sanders had serious discussions about this problem two years ago. Part of that discussion certainly had to be how to get one of them to NOT run.  Whether the question of a woman running came up, and what either said about that isn’t the point, though that issue is now a serious concern on the campaign trail.  

Clinton’s Attack

At least one person sees a path to the nomination for Bernie Sanders.  Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the 2020 election campaign, using a “Hulu Documentary” to attack him.  Unable to run herself, she is loath to allow Sanders the nomination.  There are probably several reasons for this.  There was no love lost between Sanders and Clinton in 2016, and her mathematical calculations probably conclude that Sanders cost her the Presidency.  Secretary Clinton may simply be getting paybacks.

But there are two other factors that might be influencing the former candidate.  One is the close ties the Clinton’s have to Wall Street.  The term “Republican lite” was defined for Bill Clinton’s Presidency, and if nothing else, Sanders presents a threat to America’s investment houses.

Snapshots

Or, like many moderate Democrats, Hillary may have reached the conclusion that Sanders might be able to win the nomination, but could never win the Presidency.  Even against an impeachment-wounded Donald Trump, Sanders would be painted as a “radical, socialist, communist,” an image that could be fatal.  Unlike Clinton herself, or Biden, or other seasoned candidates; no one has gone “full negative” against Bernie Sanders.  Democrats haven’t, because they needed Sanders’ support and his supporters, just as Clinton did in 2016.  So no one has even tipped over “the rock” of Sander’s career as a “millionaire socialist”.

So today, as we stand at the edge of the Democratic primaries, we wait.  Wait to see if the Bernie supporters have really found a font of political support in the young.  Wait to see if somehow Warren/Sanders becomes one movement.  And, we still wait for Joe Biden to “drop the ball” once again.  

Elections are snapshots too.  Few Democrats in America believed that the Trump snapshot taken in November of 2016 could happen.  But it did; now Democrats are haunted by the possibility it could happen again. And, unlike polls, those election snapshots have consequences.

Today, a day that will live on in American history, the third removal trial of an American President begins. However you feel about Donald Trump, it is a momentous time.

Many will say this is “the tipping point” in the future of our nation. Will we either be a nation of narcissism or compassion, World responsibility or selfishness, on the arc for justice, or against the curve. It is time to decide.

The tipping point is not just today, or even what ever happens in this trial. The “point” is much wider, extending to November and America’s choice for our future.

But make no mistake about it: we are at that point in history. We, the People, have the opportunity and obligation to choose what that future will be. The trial in the Senate may not give us the answer to that choice, but 2020 will.

It is hard to imagine a more critical turning point. Perhaps the election of 1800, when the Federalists grudgingly left the government in the lawfully elected hands of their bitter ideological rivals, the Jeffersonians.

Trump, if he understood history, could draw a contrast with the election of 2016, demanding that the Democrats did not fulfill the Federalist precedent and allow him to govern. He’s not altogether wrong.

But their is a critical difference between the time when John and Abigail Adams got in the carriage and left Washington before Jefferson was sworn in, and when the Obamas gracefully lifted off the Capitol lawn in a helicopter, no longer Marine One. While Adam’s barely lost to Jefferson by seven votes in the Electoral College, Jefferson carried the national popular vote by over 60%. American government may have been narrowly divided, but the people were not.

In 2016 Trump won the electoral college by a narrow but comfortable margin. But the People’s vote went for his opponent. That does not mean his election was illegitimate – but it did demand some recognition of the majority’s thwarted will.

But from the Inauguration Day three years ago, Mr. Trump willfully delegitimatized his opposition. “It was the greatest election landslide in history,” “the largest inaugural crowd ever,” and the “votes against him the fraudulent and illegal,” were the opening gambits in his campaign of “America First”.

To Mr. Trump, the winner, no matter how narrow or conflicted, got the spoils. And so he began a campaign of altering America’s government and values. Now, three years in, we have a clear vision of what that campaign will yield.

What will Trump’s America look like in 2021? Make no mistake, if you are rich, you are likely to get richer. If you profit from polluting our air, water and land; your profits will expand. If you are a white man aggrieved at the loss of prior privilege, you may find your advantages reinstated.

And if you want your personal religious beliefs enforced as law in women’s health, education, and as American societal norms, than “four more years” is your goal.

All of that, no matter where you politically stand, might be the outcome of a fair election. The loser could get in their carriage or helicopter and fly away. But the Trial today isn’t about any of that.

Today’s trial is about the President and his henchmen trying to alter the very fabric of Constitutional government. George Washington was most aware of the powers he could not use, and the actions he should not take. As our first President, unanimously chosen by the People and the Electors, he could have done most anything. But he recognized that his most important role wasn’t just to lead, but to teach. It is little surprise that the words precedent and President are confused; Washington was most aware of presiding so as not to abuse his authority.

To quote the musical “Hamilton,” “History had its eyes on him.” And he governed with that in mind, even teaching us, “How to Say Goodbye.”

Now, 232 years later, we have a President who ignores Washington’s precedents and obligations for the sake of power and control. For that, not the results of 2016, he is being tried before the Senate today.

What we do here, and November, will unalterably change the world.

History has its eyes on us.

The trial of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, begins Tuesday. All 100 members of the Senate have been sworn in, pledging to be fair and impartial in the matter before them.

That may last through Chief Justice Roberts’ formal call to order. But after that —all bets are off.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s goal is to have the trial as over as quickly as possible with an overwhelming “exoneration” for the President. Anything that gets in the way of that goal, including the truth, is expendable.

McConnell is even considering sandwiching 48 hours of presentations, split evenly between the House Managers and The President’s defense team, into four days. That’s twelve hours a day of speeches. That might seem a laudable goal: Senators working hard sitting in silent “jurydom” from 1 pm to 1 am. But it’s not about work – it’s about burying the discussion from the American people.

A more traditional schedule, 1 pm to 9 pm for six days would allow millions more citizens to see what’s going on. Sure some will make the midnight show anyway – but most would be left out. For McConnell that’s all to the good.

Less public exposure means less public pressure on his vulnerable members: Gardner of Colorado, Collins of Maine, McSally from Arizona. And even less pressure for McConnell from Kentucky, who is facing the strongest opponent in his career, and one of the lowest approval ratings in the country.

For the House Managers public pressure is what it’s all about. Public pressure on wavering Republicans to consider hearing witnesses: John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and the OMB executives who were told to hold the Ukraine money. Those witnesses would allow the American people to hear directly what the President did. Even if it doesn’t convince twenty Republican Senators to remove, the number needed to crossover – it will give the American citizens more information for their vote in November.

But McConnell’s goal is to hear less, see less, and wrap up the trial as soon as possible.

And don’t hang your hopes on John Roberts for a fair trial. He is dedicated to procedural fairness — but he’s also dedicated to his mentor, Bill Rehnquist’s words from when he presided at the Clinton impeachment: “I did very little and I did it very well.”

Roberts will certainly stay in his lane.

So it’s process tomorrow, and the House Managers for the next two or three days. Then the President’s team gets the same amount.

So sometime next week we will reach the crisis: can the House Managers call witnesses? If so, will the President’s team? And if witnesses are allowed will the President try to blanket them with “executive privilege”? Will the Chief Justice and Senate allow him to get away with it?

Odds are we’ll never get to hear witnesses, or at least that’s what the majority of Senate Republicans want us to believe. If they have their way, the coverup will begin.

The President announced his “dream team” to defend him in the Senate.  Their job is to convince Senators that the President did not commit a crime.  If that doesn’t work, then whatever crime he did commit, it doesn’t fit the Constitutional definition of “treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors”.  And if all that fails, then the team will try to show that the process was so flawed, that even a President who abused his power should not be removed.

Judge Starr

It’s “have it my way” anyway you look at it.  Two stellar attorneys lead the “team”.  First is Ken Starr, the man who left the bench to serve as Solicitor General under President Bush (41).  He then became Justice Department Special Counsel, and began the investigations of Bill and Hillary Clinton soon after they entered the White House.  Starr trundled through their financial, social, and finally personal lives, and after four years, finally hit pay dirt.  Big Bill had a sexual relationship with “that woman” Monica Lewinsky, a twenty-one year old .

It’s About Sex  

It was a national scandal, and Clinton compounded it by testifying in a court-ordered deposition. He tried to split legal hairs about the nature of oral sex.  It didn’t work, and a Court found he committed perjury.  And for that, Starr convinced Congress to impeach him.  The Senate never came close to removing him from office.

Starr’s career continued to representation of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in his 2006 sex scandal with underage girls in Florida.  Starr helped Epstein get a “sweetheart deal” with South Florida US Attorney Alexander Acosta.  Afterwards, Acosta became Secretary of Labor under the Trump Administration, but resigned when the Epstein scandal broke out once again less than a year ago.  Epstein, of course, was re-arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial, where he died under questionable circumstances.   

After a stop as Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Starr landed in Waco, Texas, for a six-year stint as President of Baylor University.  Sexual abuse came back to haunt him once again. Members of the football team and a fraternity president were convicted of multiple sexual assaults.  The coach and athletic department tried to coverup the crimes. In the end Starr lost his job, along with the coach and athletic director.

So now he’s got plenty of time to represent the President.

Professor Dershowitz

Then there’s the redoubtable professor of Constitutional law from Harvard, Alan Dershowitz.  The Professor has spent a career defending the infamous: from Claus von Bulow’s murder case to the OJ Simpson “dream team”.   He is currently involved in defending movie producer Harvey Weinstein in his sexual abuse trial. Dershowitz claims to be a life-long liberal Democrat, and says he voted for Hillary Clinton.  He also has been a die-hard supporter of Zionism and Israel, which might explain some of his ongoing defense of Donald Trump.  

Dershowitz was also on the 2006 Epstein team, and has been implicated in some of Epstein’s sexual improprieties.  Dershowitz claims his only sex was with his wife. His statement, that he was never was “out of his underwear,” is contested by multiple girls who claim that he was involved in “massage” activities and more.

Besides the Epstein connection, the Trump legal team has one other strong bond:  commentating for Fox News.  Starr, Dershowitz, Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, former Florida Attorney General Pam Biondi, and Starr’s successor as Special Counsel Robert Ray are all part of the team, and all passed the apparent “try-outs” in their Fox News appearances. 

So what arguments can we anticipate from the Trump “Epstein/Fox News” Team?

Unitary Executive

From the beginning of the Trump Administration, Professor Dershowitz has taken a consistent view.  He advocates the Constitutional theory of the “unitary executive”, an argument that states that all actions of the executive are direct outgrowths of Presidential power.  The Professor argues that the President wouldn’t “investigate himself” and therefore the Justice Department has no jurisdiction over Presidential actions.  

Dershowitz saw the Mueller investigation as unconstitutional, and that the President had the authority to fire Mueller at any time for any reason.  His argument that “the President cannot obstruct himself” gives Mr. Trump total leeway to prevent any investigation of his administration’s actions.

In addition, Professor Dershowitz reads the US Constitution as giving the President near absolute powers in the area of foreign policy, thus making many of the accused actions in the Ukraine affair perhaps scandalous, but not illegal.  And finally, Dershowitz reads the impeachment powers in the Constitution as extremely limited to the strict reading of the words, “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors”.  Since the President hasn’t been indicted or convicted of any Federal crimes, he cannot be impeached.

Federal Indictment

Judge Starr is likely to make his argument based on his work as Special Counsel.  He will claim that the House of Representatives exceeded their authority be opening the investigation of the President, a job he sees defined as a job for the Justice Department.  He will argue that the U-Haul truck load of evidence he passed to Congress in 1998 was that kind of investigation, and that the four month House Intelligence Committee inquiry is unacceptable.

So Starr will argue that unless the President is facing Federal Criminal charges, he cannot be impeached.  And Dershowitz will argue that the Justice Department cannot investigate or charge the President.  The sum of their position:  “heads I win, tails you lose”. 

Back to Law School

Others will argue that the House “process” denied the President due process rights.  And somewhere, someone, probably Jay Sekulow, will recite the famous Jim Jordan litany.  It has four stanzas:

• The phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy was “perfect”
• Zelenskiy has stated there was no pressure
• There was on “quid pro quo” since Ukrainians didn’t know the money was held up
• The money was eventually paid anyway.

It’s already been used in the “teams” official response to the Impeachment notice.

Another famous Harvard Constitutional Professor, Lawrence Tribe, describes the Dershowitz position as “alternate law” (as opposed to “alternate facts”).  Adam Schiff is likely to make the same case on the floor of the Senate.

It probably won’t make for great television for most Americans.  Not too many folks are fascinated with explanations and legal interpretations of the US Constitution.  But as someone who enjoyed sitting in law school classes (no, I didn’t get my degree) I am clearing my schedule. 

This week, I’m going back to school!

If you read my posts enough, you know that I try not to let The Rachel Maddow Show drive my topics too much.  I am a constant viewer, and Rachel does an outstanding job of prepping and analyzing issues, problems, and events.  She always gets the viewer thinking, and I don’t want to try to compete with all of that.  

But her interview of Lev Parnas on Wednesday and Thursday nights is too good to pass up.

Transmission 

Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the two Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial.  Pelosi created a great deal of controversy. She held the Articles after their passage in the House on December 19^th.  The actually “transmission” of those Articles via hand delivery to the Senate Chamber took place on January 15^th.  The Congress was out of session, gone to Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever, from December 20^th to January 6^th. That didn’t seem to matter to Pelosi’s critics.

But the delay worked in the Speaker’s favor.  While they were out, key witness John Bolton signaled that he would be willing to testify.  Emails from the Office of Management of Budget and the Defense Department (released not to the House Committees but to the media through a Freedom of Information Act request) further confirmed the President’s orders to withhold money from Ukraine.  And this week, the General Accounting Office ruled that holding the Ukraine funds was against the law.

  In addition, the Courts ordered the Justice Department to return documents and cell phones to Lev Parnas. He was the “button man” in the Rudy Giuliani pressure campaign in Ukraine.  Parnas and his attorney then turned that information over to the House Intelligence Committee, who released a lot of it to the public.  It also went into the package of evidence going to the Senate.

New Evidence

That evidence included a letter from Giuliani to newly elected Ukrainian President Zelenskiy. That letter confirmed that Giuliani was acting as private counsel to Donald Trump, President of the United States.  There were also notes from phone calls, confirming that “the deal” was to get Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.

Parnas also had a series of recovered text messages confirming much of his work in Ukraine.  There were also disturbing texts from Republican Congressional candidate Robert Hyde. They implied that Hyde was following US Ambassador Yovanovitch and even hinting that “…if you want her out” it could be arranged.

Lev Speaks

But the big reveal came in Rachel’s interview.  Parnas laid out the following points.

1. From the beginning Giuliani’s plan was to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens, not Ukrainian corruption. And President Trump knew every move.
2. Giuliani and Parnas were empowered to speak for the President of the United States.
3. When Ambassador Sondland testified, “…everybody was in the loop,” that included not just Trump and Mulvaney, but Bolton and Vice President Pence as well.
4. The Giuliani “team” included not just Parnas and Fruman, but also “Fox Attorneys” Joe DiGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing. Congressman Devin Nunes and his staff, and Attorney General Bill Barr were involved as well.
5. One of their goals was to strike a deal with then Ukrainian Prosecutor Lutsenko.  He wanted Ambassador Yovanovitch removed in exchange for dirt on Biden.  Yovanovitch was removed.
6. That when Lutsenko failed to give them the dirt and was removed by Zelenskiy, they needed to cut a new “deal”.
7. Money for Ukrainian defense and perhaps even more importantly US recognition was what Ukraine wanted.  That was the “quid” for the Biden investigation “quo”, and everybody on the team and in the loop, knew it.
8. That Parnas was trying to cut a deal with oligarch Dimitry Firtash.   US charges against Firtash would be dropped, if Firtash would help get “Biden Dirt”. And everyone, DiGenova, Toensing, and Parnas would make a whole lot of money in the process.

Ignore at Your Peril

It’s pretty damning testimony – and information that the Republican Senate doesn’t seem to want to hear.  There are some caveats however.  Parnas is accused of a felony, illegal campaign contributions. These are  similar to the charges that put Trump attorney Michael Cohen in prison for three years.  That raises the bar on questions about his credibility.  And some of his accusations, like a lot of the House Intelligence Committee testimony, is second hand. “Rudy said the President said” and “Victoria and Joe said Attorney General Barr said”; are definitely one step away from first hand information.

But it all fills in gaps in an overall tale. The President looked for dirt on Joe Biden and used the powers of the Presidency to try to get it.  The Senate needs to hear this obvious story.  If they don’t, then they are like little kids, sticking fingers in their ears and yelling “♫ La, La, La, La, La ♫” so they can’t hear the truth.  

There will be a price to pay for such intentional ignorance.  If it doesn’t happen in the hallowed Senate hall, then it may well happen at the ballot box on November 3^rd.

Tuesday and Wednesday have been stark contrasts in the possible future of the United States of America.  Tuesday night, we heard a spirited debate by six of the remaining candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination.  Wednesday, we saw the solemn procession of the House Managers as they marched the formal Articles of Impeachment of Donald John Trump, President of the United States, across the Capitol to the Senate.

Presidential Debate

The debate was spirited, with even billionaire Tom Steyer getting involved in the discussion.  While the general outlines on issues for all the Democrats are similar, Tuesday highlighted the differences.  In foreign policy the divide was over withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, or not.  In health insurance the choices were Medicare for All, soon or now; Medicare for some and private insurance for the rest; or Medicare stays the same with a public health option added on to an extended Obamacare, and private insurance.  Everyone gets covered and prescription prices go down.

And everyone wants to deal with the environment.  The difference in the discussion was how high a priority it must be.  My concern is that it seemed like a side-discussion, thrown in as part of the debate about President Trump’s new North American trade deal.  It didn’t have the legs to go out on its own, except with Tom Steyer.  You know, it should be Pete Buttigieg’s issue; he’s the only one of the six who will be around to deal with the effects.  Maybe he’s afraid the issue highlights his youth, as if being thirty-seven on a stage with a bunch of seventy year olds (sorry Senator Klobuchar, you’re not) isn’t clear enough. 

It’s not just splitting hairs:  it’s all-important stuff.  But no matter which Democratic candidate wins the nomination, we can be assured that we will reduce troops in the Middle East, expand health care to somehow include everyone, and push a panic button on climate change.    

Absent Voices

I will admit I missed some voices in the fray.  Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are gone from the competition.  It’s not just the absence of a black candidate in a Party that depends on the black vote: they brought dignity, strength, and differing views that “the six” can’t duplicate.  Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet, still running, did not qualify.  Yang brings a refreshing outsider view to the discussion, while Bennet offers a carefully thought out program of unifying the nation. 

Note:  I was surprised to see James Carville, architect of the Bill Clinton Presidential Campaign, come out and endorse Bennet.  Carville is no ideologue.  He works for winners, money, or both.  He’s always got an angle, and coming into what looks like a campaign on life support seems more than a surprise.  He knows a lot, so maybe we will find out what we don’t know about the Bennet Campaign. 

I can’t say I miss Marianne Williamson, though I’m sure Saturday Night Live will.  

Inside and Outside

And then there’s the “outlier,” Mike Bloomberg.  He can’t be in the debates; his billionaire self-financing won’t meet the qualifications.  But he’s out there, spending more money than anyone, even Trump himself.  He offers an even more moderate alternative to the Democratic base.  The good news is, whether he gets the nomination or not, he has committed his money to defeat Donald Trump.  So has Tom Steyer.

You can’t mention this week’s debates without at least giving a nod to the internecine battle of “the left” between Senators Sanders and Warren.  It’s nothing if not personal.  In 2018, Warren and Sanders had a private conversation about their running for President.  In the course of the conversation, Warren says Sanders said a woman couldn’t win.  

Now, less than a month before the Iowa caucuses and with Sanders ahead of Warren in the polls, the conversation has come up.  Sanders flat denies he made the statement, Warren says he did, then pivots to why women make better candidates.  After this last debate, they had a standoff on the debate stage where Warren told Sanders he called her a liar.  Well, he did.  I guess friendships can’t survive the crucible of Presidential politics.

Scoring the Future

The debate score:  Klobuchar sounded good and so did Buttigieg.  Warren and Sanders did fine other than the little tiff, but they don’t surprise anyone with anything different.  Biden did fine, though I would argue the bar has lowered for his performance.  But he passes on the “he’ll do” test, which seems to be enough.  Steyer still seems like the guest at the dinner that will go home afterwards.

So now it will be an “eternity” until the good Democrats of Iowa gather in school gyms and churches to walk around the room, find their candidate, and go through the arcane process of “caucusing”.  It’s an oddity of our democracy that such a small number of voters will have such an enormous impact on our choices.  

And who knows what they will be thinking.  Events overtake the best-laid plans of any candidate.  A Presidential impeachment trial, the third in the nation’s history, will begin next week.  The “Pelosi delay” strategy has already paid off.   Lev Parnas threw an entire tank of gasoline on the fire in his interview last night.  I don’t expect twenty Republicans in the Senate to vote for removal; in fact I’d be surprised if there are four who want witnesses.  But Democrats will hang a “rigged trial” around Republican necks in the election like those burning tires in South Africa.  And in this era, when modern history was last week and ancient history last month:  who knows what comes next?

“Hunter Biden promises Dad’s protection to Burisma for $50000 a month”.  It’ll be next October’s headlines in the New York Times, fresh from the latest Wikileaks dump of Burisma emails.  “We are serving mankind by revealing information,” Wikileaks will arrogantly claim, though the one piece of information they won’t reveal is who hacked the emails.  “We don’t reveal our sources”.  It all echoes 2016:  if only FBI Director Chris Wray would open an investigation.

It could happen.  

GRU Hacking

We will never know whether it’s real or not, whether those emails were written by Hunter Biden, or by a young lieutenant in a St. Petersburg GRU facility.  The first step has already occurred.  The GRU – Russian Military Intelligence, hacked the Burisma Company computers.  They used the same “spear fishing” technique that worked so well on the Democratic National Committee, convincing employees that they were confirming passwords on a fake site.  A US computer security company announced the crime this week.

We don’t know what was taken.  But it really doesn’t matter.   The GRU is good at hacking, but they are just as good at creative writing.  Look how they manipulate social media to get Americans to believe that Democrats are mourning Iranian General Soleimani.  How hard would it be to dump hundreds of emails to Wikileaks, and bury in the pile a few that are a products of their imagination. 

Truth and the Media 

The mainstream media here in the United States only casually recognizes their impact on the 2016 election.  Clinton and DNC emails and other Clinton “scandals” dominated the headlines through the fall of 2016.  Meanwhile, the known scandals of Donald Trump, from porn stars to the Trump Foundation, seemed to go quietly under the radar.  In an election decided by 0.06% of the vote, it had a determining impact.

But like a junkie to a dealer, the media will go right back to the source in 2020.  If Wikileaks offers up “Burisma emails,” don’t think that anyone will pass them up.  “Well it’s already out there,” they’ll say, “people will read them on the internet”.  But the headlines will be trumpeted as “BREAKING NEWS” on the CNN and MSNBC chyrons.  It will be impossible to verify, and Hunter Biden will claim they are faked.  “We will leave it to the public to decide,” will be the high and mighty media claim.

Trump Re-Election Plan

It’s all a part of the Trump re-election strategy.  We know that, it’s what Rudy Giuliani has been doing for the past two years.  Rudy’s been searching for Hunter Biden dirt, asking already compromised Ukrainian politicians to “be honest”.  Honesty can be purchased for the price of a visa to the US. 

And now the Giuliani operation seems a little darker, as evidence reveals that US Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch was under surveillance by a Trump minion.  She stood in the way of Giuliani’s plan.  Evidence now shows that Robert Hyde messaged Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas, “…if you want her out, they are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” and “guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money … is what I was told.”

New evidence also reveals that another fired prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, offered “dirt” on Hunter Biden if Ambassador Yovanovitch was removed.   Giuliani responded that “No. 1” was involved.  Yovanovitch was soon summarily ordered to leave Ukraine and return to Washington.

Everyone’s Involved

Giuliani’s plotting may all sound like some comedic spy story, a kind of “Get Smart goes to the Ukraine”.  But it all gets more serious when the GRU, already involved in feeding the CrowdStrike 2016 election conspiracy, hacks into Burisma.  And there’s a Washington angle to all of this as well.  

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stood against witnesses testifying in the Senate Impeachment trial.  But if he’s forced to hear John Bolton and the others, there’s always a fall back plan.  Bring Hunter Biden in.  No matter what he says, or what he doesn’t say, it will keep his name on  “above the fold” on the front page.  

All ready for next October’s headlines.

All the Rhetoric

We’ve heard from both “sides”.  One side claims that the Obama Administration gave $150 Billion to Iran to finance terrorists around the world.  The other side cries that the Trump Administration is impulsively risking all-out war in the Middle East to destroy Iran. The reality is that both Presidents have a clear view of how they wanted to handle the “Iran Problem”.  

Let’s clear a couple of the issues up.  The Trump Administration didn’t act “impulsively”.  We just recently learned that Iranian General Soleimani was targeted months ago by the top Administration leadership, led by then National Security Advisor John Bolton.  Rather than an “impulse” decision by the President, it was a decision already made, simply waiting for the opportunity to be implemented.

And the Obama Administration didn’t “pay” Iran $150 Billion.  Iran did get $1.7 Billion from the United States, much of it in cash, as Iran was banned from the world banking system.  That money was principal and interest on $400 million in Iranian money, already paid by the Iranian government to the United States for weapons before the 1979 regime change. The weapons were never delivered.  Iran also got access to their assets frozen throughout the world banking system by American sanctions.  That Administration at the time estimated that amount to be about $56 Billion. 

Iranian Action

Iran has been a “bad actor” on the world stage for the past thirty years. Shia religious leaders overthrew the US backed regime, led by Shah Reza Pahlavi, in 1979.  Those leaders, called Mullahs, believed in a strict view of Shia Islam, and wanted to see Shia’s throughout the Middle East empowered. 

One of their first actions was to encourage Shia revolts in Iraq.  Shias are the majority in Iraq, but the dominant governing party was Sunni, led by Saddam Hussein.  From 1979 to 1989 Iran and Iraq fought a conventional war, costing half a million lives.  After the end of that war the Iranians opposed US intervention in the Middle East, starting with the Persian Gulf War in 1991.  

Direct opposition to the United States was difficult.  Conventional war, when troops meet in traditional battles, was a losing proposition for the Iranians.  Instead they chose to encourage “asymmetric” attacks, financing local militias throughout the Middle East to further their interests against the US, Israel, and the Sunni stronghold of Saudi Arabia.  Hezbollah in Iraq and Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Yemeni rebel forces are all financed and supplied by the Iranian regime.

But Iran also wanted to have a more conventional base of military power.  The Mullahs wanted nuclear weapons, and in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s made a lot of scientific advances in pursuit of a “bomb”.  Iran is in many ways a modern nation, with a strong base of educated scientists.  Iran not only worked in nuclear issues, but also became adept in the new battlefield of cyber warfare.

Carrots and Sticks 

The Obama Administration divided Iran’s conduct into two parts.  They determined that the first part, building a nuclear weapon, was the most immediate threat to world stability.  So the Obama Administration worked to get Iran to delay their nuclear development.  It was a two-pronged approach:  the world sanctioned Iran, making it difficult for Iran to get goods in, or sell their main product, oil.  This strangled the Iranian economy, and also limited the amount of materials they could get to further their nuclear goals.

With that “stick”, the Administration offered a “carrot” to the Mullahs.  Come to the table and negotiate over nuclear development and there was the possibility that the sanctions might be lifted, and Iran could participate in the world economy.  From the Iranian side, this was an important “carrot”.  Iran continued to have a modern society despite the draconian theocratic regime.  Iranians wanted a modern economy with modern goods.  

So for two years the United States, China, Russia, United Kingdom, France and Germany negotiated with Iran.  In 2015 they reached an agreement, the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”.  In return for delaying nuclear research and development for at least ten years, Iran was allowed partially back into the world economy.  Part of that deal was the controversial financial payment made by the US government.

In the meantime the US and Iran actually cooperated in defeating a threat to both:  ISIS.  Using the philosophy of  “…the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” both Iranian backed militias and US backed forces allied to stop the ISIS Caliphate incursions into Iraq, and ultimately to destroy its base in Syria.

The JCPOA was never seen as a final document.  It was the first step in a three-step process.  The second phase would address the “asymmetric” military actions of the Iranian government and their support of the various militias.  The third phase would be a final resolution ending Iran’s nuclear possibilities.

But the Obama Administration was over before the second or third phases began.

Maximum Pressure

The Trump Administration came in with a totally different concept.  They had no desire to “deal” with Iran on a co-equal basis.  Instead, they wanted to apply “maximum pressure” on Iran, first through increasing economic sanctions, then through indirect military pressure.  Their belief is that the Iranian people will not continue to support the theocratic regime if they are forced to suffer under draconian sanctions.  

The first move was to withdraw from the JCPOA, and institute even stricter sanctions.  In addition, the US began to increase support for Saudi Arabia’s fight in Yemen, pitting Saudi’s surrogates in battle against Iranian surrogates.  And the United States doubled-down on support for Israel, backing harsh Israeli actions against Hamas protests in Gaza, further Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and moving the symbolic US Embassy to Jerusalem.

It was all part of the plan, to pressure Iran economically, and force them to defend all of their far-flung militia-allies throughout the Middle East.  The US hope was that either the Mullahs would come to the negotiating table again, this time in a much weaker position.  Or, even better, the Iranians would overthrow the current regime.

Seen in this light, the assassination of the Iranian General in charge of the entire militia program is not quite such an aberration.  It’s just one more increase in the pressure.

Who’s Right?

It’s hard to figure which strategy will work.  It took two years to negotiate the JCPOA, only the first step in a long process.  On the other hand, the “maximum pressure” strategy has raised world tensions, and allowed Iran to begin nuclear development again.  

But both strategies are more than just “knee-jerk” reactions, and both ultimately have the same goal:  to end Iranian nuclear development and support for extremist militias.  The election of 2020 will determine who gets to find out if their plan works.

Apple Pie

We live in a age of divisions.  That’s as American as “apple pie”.  I grew up in such an age.  That was the time when our hard working parents who won World War II, what Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation,” ran right into their children unwilling to accept their life choices.  It was about Civil Rights and Vietnam, but it was also about the value of life over economic and social success.  The children wanted to satisfy the spirit rather than the wallet.  

Sure it was the “Age of Aquarius” (cue the Fifth Dimension) and we all remember the pictures of kids dancing in the mud at Woodstock.  But it was also about the Greatest Generation’s commitment.  They first sacrificed in World War II, and then many changed that into sacrificing for the all-mighty dollar.  Their children wanted more than that.

Model Family

I grew up in that family.  My parents were both veterans of the War.  They came back to the United States to start a life together.  Mom was from London; she came home with Dad to Cincinnati. They first went into business for themselves, bottling soda pop with an imperious name:  The United States Bottling Company.  It was just the two of them, Mom mixing syrup in giant vats for the bottling machine, Dad going from store to store marketing the product.  

Their hard work was ended by the Ohio River, flooding out the “plant” and ruining the pop.  All that was left was the paper shares of stock.  Dad decided to take his sales skills into a new industry, television. Mom decided to stay home and take care of what turned out to be three children.

Climbing the Ladder

They climbed “the ladder” together.  Dad went from local salesman at WLW-T in Cincinnati to national salesman for Ziv Productions.  Then it was sales manager, and then station manager at WLW-D in Dayton.  By the 60’s they were doing well; a house in suburban Kettering, kids in the play, sports, and music at the local school, two cars in the driveway.

Mom and Dad were still involved in the world.  Mom was always finding ways to help people, volunteering for different community projects.  And Dad, a suit and tie businessman, allowed WLW-D to lead the way in discussing the controversial issues of the day in Dayton.  They were concerned about making the world a better place.

Like any family we had our issues.  But in the end, that Greatest Generation couple produced a surgeon, an artist, and a teacher.  All three children went into professions serving the community in one way or another.  I guess that was rebellion, no one followed Dad in business. But it was rebelling with full support from our parents.

The Next Generation

Now we are those folks:  “OK – Boomer”. 

Divisions in our society are nothing new.  But today, we face a different kind of generational division.  Our children look at us “Boomers” as failing.  We have brought them the age of “Trump”, of “Red and Blue” so divided that it shakes the very foundations of our country.  

And we have committed the ultimate sin.  We are literally leaving the world, the earth, in a perilous state and facing irrevocable change.  It only takes a look in the paper (which our children would never do) to see Australia burning, Venice drowning, Greenland melting, and drought in the jungles of Central America.  It’s not what we’ve done; it’s what we have failed to do to stop this procession.

Old White Guys

We “Boomers” have allowed truth itself to become a tennis ball bouncing back in forth in the game of political rhetoric, so much so that the evidence of our own eyes isn’t enough.  Somehow, we allow the “deniers” to stop every attempt to fix the problem.

And it’s not that the next generations, the Millennials and Generation Z, don’t understand money.  In fact, we have made then incredibly aware of costs and cash, letting them be strapped with the financial burdens of their education so they will spend their twenties in “servitude” to the debt.  It’s not surprising that we don’t hear a lot of thanks from them.  As one Millennial I know says:  “…we’ll have to fix things after the ‘old white guys’ are dead”.  While as an ‘old white guy’ myself I might resent it, that statement carries a lot of truth.

We who have let our political divisions threaten our world still have a last obligation to fix the problem.  Perhaps we will, though that makes 2020 the last, best chance for us.  But if we fail, our children will put down their cell phones, pull out their ear-buds, and get to work.  Their faith is that technology can lead us out of the crisis. 

I want to believe they’re right.

“He looked at me like I was stupid, I’m not stupid” – from Hamilton the Musical 

There’s a lot of misinformation and outright lies in politics today.  Whether we call it “business as usual” or “fake news,” it often makes it feel like there is no way to discover the truth.  But some tales are so fabulous, so ridiculous, that they aren’t really attempts at misinformation.  They are just insults.

CrowdStrike

Lets start with the fundamental conspiracy of the “Giuliani” set.  It states that Hillary Clinton, through the Democratic National Committee, organized Ukrainian officials to attack the US elections and get her elected President.  This is based on the tenuous connection of a co-founder of the computer protection company CrowdStrike, Dimitri Alperovitch. He was born in Russia (not Ukraine).  Supposedly he was connected to a Ukrainian oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk.  That connection:  Aperovitch, along with his role at CrowdStrike, is also a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council, a global think tank.  Pinchuk is a major donor to the Atlantic Council. 

That’s the entire link.  According to Giuliani, Pinchuk used his financial influence (that he doesn’t have) to get CrowdStrike and the DNC to attack the US elections, hack the DNC, and leak the DNC emails in the 2016 election.  He then says that CrowdStrike “spoofed” evidence that Russia hacked the American election.

Not only is Giuliani pushing this idea, but so is Russian Intelligence.  It not only creates confusion that benefits the Trump Administration, but it lets Russia off the hook for interfering in the 2016 elections.

Ukrainian View

In addition, Giuliani points to the Clinton “support” of the Ukrainian government during the election as evidence of this conspiracy.  Of course the facts for Ukraine are different. Hillary Clinton took a much stronger stand against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and theft of the Crimean Province. Donald Trump seemed to be willing to allow Russia to maintain possession of that strategic location.  Ukrainian leaders would certainly support the candidate that opposed Russia’s invasion.

Add that to Giuliani’s characterization of the US Embassy in Kyiv as the “Clinton Headquarters – Kyiv” because of embassy cooperation with a US citizen and former DNC attorney with the hunger-inducing name of Alexandra Chalupa.  Chalupa helped get evidence of Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s corrupt activity to the US media.  When the press asked the Embassy about that evidence, they were directed to Chalupa. That’s it.  But Giuliani uses that cooperation as proof that the Embassy was biased, and at the heart of the Ukraine conspiracy against Trump.

Defying Logic

The social media campaign waged in the 2016 campaign clearly benefited Donald Trump’s candidacy.  The concept that the DNC arranged to hack itself, and then drip out it’s own emails to the demise of the Clinton campaign, is ludicrous.  

I’m a Democrat.  We Democrats are capable of doing foolish things.  I was a Democrat when Senator Gary Hart, leading the race for the Presidential nomination, dared the press to find out about his illicit affair.  They did.  I was also a Democrat when Bill Clinton had sex with an intern in the halls of the White House. 

But while I can point to Democrats who made incredibly poor personal choices, I don’t think the Democratic National Committee would wage war against itself in the middle of the 2016 campaign. I can believe that the DNC was biased against the Bernie Sanders candidacy in 2016, but I don’t think it hacked itself and leaked it’s own emails to destroy the Clinton candidacy.  It not only defies logic:  but we aren’t that stupid.

Insurance Policy

The second conspiracy theory is that the FBI conspired to destroy the Trump Campaign and insure a Clinton victory in 2016.  This hallucination is based on the private text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and Department of Justice Attorney Lisa Page.

Strzok was the agent in charge of the FBI’s investigation into contacts between Russian Intelligence and the Trump Campaign, called “Crossfire Hurricane”. The FBI was warned by the Australian Ambassador to the UK that a Trump operative, George Papadopoulos, had prior knowledge of the DNC hacking and the Clinton emails.  

Papadopoulos got this information from Paul Mifsud, a known Russian operative.  In addition the FBI was getting information about Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, also linked with Russian intelligence.  And finally a third Trump advisor, Carter Page, had already been connected to a Russian “spy ring” in New York.

Crossfire Hurricane

“Crossfire Hurricane,” was vetted to the highest levels of the FBI, including Director Comey and Assistant Director McCabe.  The Clinton email investigation was publicly announced, both when Comey determined that there was no crime committed, and then when he reopened the investigation two weeks before the election.  But the FBI made no mention of “Crossfire Hurricane” either during the election or afterwards.  It didn’t come out until Congressional hearings in March of 2017.

Strzok did have an “insurance policy,” the existence of “Crossfire Hurricane”.  A single leak to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or CNN would have had a dramatic impact on the 2016 election, a choice determined by less than 78,000 votes out of almost 130 million.  He didn’t use it.  Comey could have stood in front of the press, as he did with the Clinton investigation in July of 2016, and announced the investigation.  He didn’t either.

If Strzok, Comey and McCabe conspired to stop the Trump candidacy, they had everything they needed to do it.  But they didn’t.  So when they accused of having “the insurance policy” there is that fatal flaw.  They didn’t use it.

Angry Democrats

And then there were the thirteen, or seventeen, or eighteen “Angry Democrats,” the lawyers on the Mueller investigation team.  Trump supporters claim that those lawyers were biased against the President, and therefore the Mueller Report was unfair towards him.

But reality again pushes back against this “theory”.  First, Mueller himself was apolitical, even though he was a registered Republican.  And second, you have the top prosecutors in the nation, all “Angry Democrats,” investigating for almost two years.  They didn’t “close the deal” of Trump/Russian conspiracy, despite all of the evidence showing that it occurred.  They had to settle for the Trump argument that the campaign wasn’t organized enough, good enough if you will, to conspire with anyone.

If they were “Angry Democrats,” they set aside their political biases to do a solid investigation.  If they erred, the did so in favor of the President, Donald Trump.  At several critical decision points, the investigation didn’t act like “Angry Democrats,” but like cautious Federal lawyers investigating the President of the United States.  

Not Stupid

So Democrats attacked social media and hacked their own computers to rig the 2016 election for their candidate. The FBI rigged a counter-intelligence investigation to prevent Donald Trump from winning the election. And when he did win, despite these efforts, thirteen or seventeen or eighteen of our finest Democratic Prosecutors spent two years trying to impeach Donald Trump.

And none of it worked.  So if you follow all of the conspiracy theories against the Presidency of Donald J Trump, you must reach the following conclusion:  Democrats are really, really stupid.

We’re not.  And if you fall for this nonsense and buy into these fabrications, you should ask another question. 

How stupid are you?

Limbo

We are in “Impeachment limbo,” caught between the House and the Senate, waiting for someone to blink.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding onto the Impeachment Articles, waiting for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to outline the Senate’s trial procedures.  McConnell is refusing to budge, saying send the Articles, or don’t.

What the Speaker wants is a commitment from Leader McConnell to hear witnesses in the trial.  McConnell is refusing to commit to anything, standing on his power to control the majority in the Senate.  It might seem like a classic power standoff between the two Houses, but it’s really much more than that.

Here’s what’s at stake.  McConnell wants to get Impeachment over, the President acquitted, and move onto the Presidential elections of 2020.  He knows that there is no where near the sixty-seven Senators needed to remove the President, so let’s get it over with.  From a Republican standpoint, an uninspiring and dry presentation of already known information with “no new news” and a quick acquittal that would allow the President to declare “exoneration” is the goal.

Controlling the Trial

The Republican leader doesn’t want to hear witnesses, voices that could change the voting equation in the Senate, or more importantly, in the 2020 election.  So he stands firm in his “stare-down” with the Speaker.  His only problem: can he keep an “antsy” President, desperate to get the trial on and over, under control.  That isn’t easy.  The President is pressing for his counsel to be the “screamers” from the House: Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, and John Radcliffe.  Trump would like a replay of the House proceedings, with the Democrats presenting facts, and the Republicans attacking the process.  It’s not the boring, quiet, and sleep-inducing procedure McConnell wants.  Trump wants a circus; McConnell wants spiritless droning.

I anticipate that Speaker Pelosi will allow the President to build a little more pressure on McConnell, and then transmit the Articles.  Leader McConnell will then begin impeachment proceedings with no witnesses, and, after the opening presentations, the Senate will go through a series of votes on whether witnesses will be heard.  McConnell may be boring, old and seemingly lifeless.  But he knows how to count votes in the Senate, and right now, he has the fifty-one votes to control it. 

The likelihood is that President Trump will get his acquittal.  And it will be in large part because of two men:  Mitch McConnell in the Senate, and Attorney General Bill Barr.  McConnell because he is using all of his acumen to control the proceedings, and Bill Barr because he used all of the powers of the Attorney General to stifle investigations of the President.

Investigating the President

Let’s look back at the last two Presidents who faced Impeachment.  Two different Independent Prosecutors in the Department of Justice investigated Nixon for almost two years.  Every possible witness was deposed and then questioned in front of the Grand Jury.  The House Judiciary Committee was presenting with volumes of evidence, testimony, and dozens of witnesses.  Nixon was an “unindicted co-conspirator” in indictments brought by his own Department of Justice.  

In the case of Bill Clinton, another Special Prosecutor, Ken Starr, spent almost four years investigating.  It took a U-Haul truck to get all of the Starr evidence, Grand Jury testimony, and video evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, including a damning video deposition by the President himself (“…it depends what the meaning of the word is, is…”).  And even with all of that evidence already available, in the Clinton Trial the Senate still heard from witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky.

In both the Nixon and Clinton cases, the Department of Justice did their job of investigating potential crimes.  Even though the Attorney Generals, the leaders of the Department, were political appointees, they saw a higher duty as the chief law enforcement officers of the United States.  Nixon’s Attorney General Eliot Richardson, resigned rather than fire his Independent Prosecutor.  Janet Reno, Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, made it clear that the investigations were protected from Presidential interference.  

When the Congress considered impeachment in both Nixon’s and Clinton’s cases, all of the potential witnesses were already on the record.  Nixon and Clinton both allowed the subordinates to be questioned.  While Nixon tried to use executive privilege to shield some evidence, it was his own Justice Department that took him to Court to pry the White House tapes loose.

A Loyal Servant

Bill Barr seems to have chosen loyalty to the Trump over dedication to justice.  We saw it from the beginning, when the Mueller Report was held up while Barr peddled false conclusions.  In those conclusions, we saw that Barr examined at least ten indictable charges of Trump’s obstruction of justice, and waived them all.  And we now know that Barr limited the scope of the investigation.  Donald Trump was all but named in the Federal indictment of Michael Cohen (individual one) but Mueller was barred from that part of the investigation.

And when the “Whistleblower’s Report” came to the Department of Justice, it was disregarded without investigation.  There was no FBI referral, simply a Department statement clearing the behavior.  “These aren’t the droids your looking for, move along.”  It hard to imagine that Bill Barr’s hand wasn’t in that decision.

So for the President’s actions with Ukraine, there was no existing body of evidence, no volumes coming over in a U-Haul, no video depositions to see.  The House was required to do all of that investigation themselves, all under the pressure of time, and the disruption of the Republican “screamers”.  Remember young Congressman Matt Gaetz’s storming of the secure ‘SCIF’, the closed hearing room?

Obstruction

And all of Barr’s actions allowed witnesses to avoid testimony.  The key figures in the Ukraine story, Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffy and Giuliani have not been heard.  

Witnesses heard Bolton call the pressure on Ukraine a “drug deal”.  Duffy’s emails show that the funds for Ukraine were held on order from “POTUS” (President of the United States).  Mulvaney has publicly said that the funds were withheld.  And Giuliani, well, he’s still seems to be trying to get “the deal” done.

Whether the Senate would remove the President or not, it seems likely that the testimony of these witnesses would serve as damning proof of Presidential abuse of power.  And that’s something that Mitch McConnell doesn’t want.  

He, and Donald Trump, can thank Bill Barr for giving them the choice. 

Wyoming Wrestling

As a sophomore in high school, I was a wrestler.  Of course I ran track in the spring, and later track would become my predominant sport, but in 1972 I trained for wrestling all fall, even running distance to get ready.  Our Coach, “Tink” Miller was a young, new teacher, just out of the University of Cincinnati wrestling program.  He was a dynamic leader, who could take you onto the mat and show you what he needed you to do.  

We wrestled in the middle school, the “old” high school in Wyoming, Ohio.  The program shunned the facilities in the brand new high school.  That balcony above the gym couldn’t get hot enough.  Coach Miller wanted the steam heat in the old school, he wanted to test us, and make us sweat.  We practiced six days a week, the day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve, and the days after Christmas.  We were a tough, smelly, and dedicated crew.

So it surprised me that Coach Miller allowed the seniors to miss practice on February 2nd.  There was no excuse for missing Wyoming wrestling practice, and the seniors led the way enforcing attendance.  But that day, they were all gone.

Vietnam

When I was growing up, the Vietnam War went on and on and on.  The United States first started major combat operations in 1964, when I was eight.  By the time I was eleven in 1967, there were almost half a million American forces there.  Not only did the conflict rage in Southeast Asia, by 1967 protests against the war here at home were growing.  The Presidential election of 1968 was fought over Vietnam, with the winner, Republican Richard Nixon, promising a secret peace plan.

But by 1972 when I was fourteen, we figured out that the “peace plan” was to gradually withdraw and let the South Vietnamese take over, “Vietnamization”.  Americans were still going to Vietnam, and unlike today, it wasn’t an “all volunteer” Army.  Most of the US soldiers in the jungles were drafted, required to serve whether they wanted to or not.  

Conscription

The “Draft” was nothing new in American life.  The Continental Congress asked the states to conscript men for their militias during the Revolutionary War, and both the North and the South required men to serve during the Civil War.  In World War I men eighteen to forty-five were required to register for service, and almost half of the total army, 2.8 million men were required to serve.

But the draft that we knew it began in 1940, in the lead up to World War II.  The system was set so that when you turned 18 you registered with the Selective Service System.  You were required to take a physical, and then your “status” was determined.  If you were healthy and didn’t have an “exemption” from service, you were certified 1-A, ready to go.

There were a series of exemptions that could keep you out of the Army.  If you weren’t physically able to serve, you were classified 4-F.  If you were in a job that was too important to leave, you were 2-A.  There were other exceptions as well, but the US military had to fill the quotas for numbers.  In World War II, ten million American men were drafted out of the sixteen million who served.

The Draft was a universal experience for American men.  After World War II was over, the US government decided to continue the system.  My Dad, drafted in 1941, served until 1946.  But he had friends who served in World War II and then were re-called to fight again in the Korean War in 1949.

The system went on through the 1950’s and 60’s.  Elvis Presley was drafted and served in the Army in Europe about the year I was born.  The heavyweight-boxing champion, Mohammad Ali, went to jail rather than be drafted to go to Vietnam. 

Dodging Service

The draft system had some big flaws.  If you could stay in college, you could get a deferment.  If you stayed long enough, you might avoid being “called up” – drafted for service.  And if you were in a religious group that banned fighting, Amish or Quaker for example, you could be a “conscientious objector”.  You still might get drafted, but you would be in a non-fighting role.  That didn’t mean you were safe, you might be a combat medic, in the middle of the fight.

But the biggest flaw was that if your family was wealthy, there were ways to avoid the draft.  Stay in school, get a doctor to say you were medically unfit, or get hired in the right job, and you could avoid going to war.

Making the Draft Fair

In the protests in 1968, that was one of the biggest arguments; that the draft was unfair.  So in 1969 the government switched to a lottery system.  It was like a big “bingo” machine, with every day of the year in the hopper.  The birthdates of men born eighteen years before were pulled out and announced.  Born on September 14, 1951?  In 1969 you were number 1, the first group of eighteen year olds to go.  While religious and medical exemptions continued, the rest were done.  As the song goes – “…and it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?  Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam!” (Country Joe and the Fish).

The Lottery

So February 2^nd, 1972, my senior wrestling teammates were all together, watching television, and waiting to find out what their lives were going to be like.  For some, they got good news.  Their birthdates were “pulled” late.  If you had a “number” of 125 or higher, you weren’t likely to be drafted.  You could go on planning for college, and life.  But if you had a low number, you needed to prepare:  you were likely to go to war.

The seniors came into practice late.  Most were pretty excited, and jumped into the drills to pound on us younger and tired wrestlers.  But for a few, there were long faces and long conversations with Coach Miller, then back into the practice fray.  The draft was looming, but the Harrison Invitational was this weekend.  Back to work, got to make the weight.

By the end of 1973, the Vietnam War was winding down.  No one after that was drafted, though you still had to “go downtown,” register, and get your draft card.  And they still pulled the numbers, just in case they needed to re-start the draft again.  I was in the last group pulled, in 1975.  It was a “good” number, my birthdate, September 14, 1956 came out 343^rd.  Even if they did start drafting, I would be a long way down the list.

Today

They soon stopped even issuing draft cards, and for a few years didn’t even register folks.  It wasn’t long though, in 1980 President Carter ordered the Selective Service to begin collecting registrations again.  So every eighteen-year old man is required to register with the Selective Service, even today.  

The US military has been an all-volunteer force since the end of Vietnam in 1975.  When men and women join up, it’s for four years or more, not the two years of active service of the draft years.  We avoided the kind of wars that require long-term service of large numbers of ground troops, the kind of situation that calls for draftees.  But if that comes up again, the Selective Service has the lists and is ready to go.  And the “bingo hopper” still works.