lindsey graham 2 bak

619 capt

see main

long time to save bak 10 22 --> wait 7 23

quite the devolution? hangs on to trump post election

not exactly chickenhawk? AF lawyer, exaggerated/lied?

prolly some neglect

was it him on tri-partisan bill? spooked off by fox and aea?

c street family?

note this comes as he looks like toast? joni or desantis?

cf heg pix in cty dude blk suit fruity

12 24 an

One-half of the country duo Big & Rich laid into Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Wednesday evening over the senator's comments about Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump's embattled pick for Pentagon chief.

John Rich, a vocal supporter of Trump — and vehement opponent of Joe Biden who once mocked the president as "Sniffy" over his sniffles — took to the social media site X to voice his displeasure with Republicans waffling on Hegseth's nomination.

"The pro-war RINO's are all against @PeteHegseth and that tells you all you need to know," wrote Rich. "Pete is a threat to the war machine. Recess appointments?"

He added in a separate post, "Don't Kavanaugh our Hegseth," referring to the tough confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination was dogged by a sexual assault allegation and protests.

Rich then set his sights on Graham, who has called the allegations against Hegseth "disturbing."

"I think some of these articles are very disturbing. He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is it's going to be difficult..." Graham told CBS News.

Rich unleashed a series of posts on X targeting Graham, including at least two that used a homophobic reference.

"Who do you trust more? (repost for maximum results and hilarious responses:)" Rich asked his followers, providing just two responses: Santa Claus and Lindsey Graham.

"I sat across from Lindsey Graham at dinner with DJT a while back. As I was answering a direct question from POTUS, Lindsey twirled his Chardonnay (pinkies up) and told Trump I was a raging conspiracy theorist. I gave him a look that would hairlip the devil, then dismantled him," Rich later posted.

He added: "I've seen tougher guys at Starbucks."

Rich didn't stop there. He shared Graham's office number to his followers and urged them to let him know their feelings about confirming Hegseth.

"This better have 5k reposts before I go to bed," he challenged his followers.

Within an hour, the post had thousands of reposts.

"Welp, that didn't take long," he followed up.

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AN 11 24

COMM DR

Government watchdogs on Wednesday said they are "not going anywhere" and will continue pushing for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to face accountability for his 34 felony counts and other alleged crimes, even as the Republican and his allies threatened the special counsel who has been prosecuting him.

"Trump will still be sentenced for the 34 felony counts on which he has been convicted, and other pending legal proceedings must

also move forward," saidRobert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which spent Trump's first term exposing corruption and unethical profiteering in his administration.

The group pledged to "mobilize Americans to resist Trump's agenda of cruelty and corruption" as it was reported that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who was appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Trump's alleged mishandling of classified documents and his role in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was in talks with the DOJ to wind down the federal prosecutions.

Under DOJ policy, a sitting president cannot face prosecution while in office.

Smith filed charges against Trump over the allegations, but the cases were thrown into uncertainty by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in July that held presidents have legal immunity for "official acts" while in office.

In legal filings that were unsealed last month, Smith argued Trump should not be entitled to immunity from prosecution because he "resorted to crimes" when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election results.

Trump said in recent weeks that he would fire Smith "within two seconds" if he won the presidency.

His allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), have also demanded an end to what they call "lawfare" against Trump, with Scalise sayingWednesday that the election results proved American voters want federal and state officials in to "immediately terminate the politically motivated prosecutions of President Donald Trump."

Graham wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday, addressing Smith and his team, that "it is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall."

Trump was convicted of 34 state felony counts in New York for falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He is currently scheduled to be sentenced on November 26, but his lawyers are likely to ask for an indefinite delay. There's also state case in Georgia stemming from Trump's attempts to reverse his 2020 loss.

The work of ensuring Trump is "not about the law," said Weissman and Gilbert, "will continue in earnest [and] will be more important in 2025 than ever before."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said Trump's victory "is making the urgency of accountability and checks on the presidency clearer than ever before."

"We're going to keep standing up against corruption and authoritarianism," said CREW, "as we have been for years."

Public Citizen was among more than 200 groups that announced a virtual eventcalled "Making Meaning of the Moment," planned for November 7 at 8:00 pm. More than 20,000 people had registered as of Wednesday evening.

POST ELECTION 11 24 AN

Lindsey Graham berates Jack Smith following Trump victory: 'Americans deserve a refund'

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no lnx

'Beyond sad' that 'embarrassing sycophant' Lindsey Graham won’t leave Trump’s side: former senator

Maya Boddie July 05, 2023

United States Senator Lindsey Graham's (R-South Carolina) loyalty to former President Donald Trump has proven to be fickle since the 2024 MAGA hopeful fueled the Jan. 6 Capitol attack in 2021.

According to The Washington Post, immediately following the insurrection, Graham criticized Trump saying, "Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh, my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president. But today, the first thing you'll see, all I can say is count me out. Enough is enough."

However, earlier this year, the GOP senator, once again, endorsed Trump for president, Newsweek reports, over two other Republican candidates — both of whom have ties to South Carolina — former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina).

READ MORE: 'They booed him': Lindsey Graham taunted by South Carolina Trump rally crowd

According to Newsweek's report, in April, CNN host Dana Bash asked the senator why he chose to back Trump over Haley and Scott, to which he replied, "The reason I'm with President Trump is I thought he was a good president on the things that mattered the most. We had a secure border. We destroyed the Caliphate. We had energy independence. I think he's the right person to fix the problems that we face."

Despite his continued loyalty, Graham has not received the same support from the former president in return.

During Wednesday's segment of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Willie Geist spoke with former Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) about Trump's recent South Carolina rally, where the crowd loudly booed the Republican senator.

After playing a clip from the rally, Geist said, "South Carolina Senator Linsey Graham, in his home state, booed mercilessly over the weekend by a crowd of Republicans with Donald Trump there doing very little to defend him, and instead goading his supporters into booing Senator Graham, even more."

READ MORE: Lindsey Graham’s 'effectiveness in question' after Trump’s 'backhanded slap'

He continued, "Claire, it's almost hard to watch, at this point — a man who just subjects himself again and again and again to this humiliation and to defend Donald Trump, and that's what he gets in return for it. Remember he went out for a brief moment on Jan. 6 and said 'I'm done with Donald Trump,' bumps into some people at the airport in Washington who call him a traitor and he literally flips. He's been on TV in the last few months, literally weeping, for people to give money to Donald Trump's campaign, and this is what he gets in return. You know the man, you worked alongside him, humiliation seems like an understatement."

McCaskill replied, "Yeah, I don't think humiliation is a strong enough word. Everybody needs to keep context here. This is his hometown. He lives 15 miles away. These are supposed to be his people. Now, one thing it does show is, I do believe there are probably a lot of people — and I've met these people — who travel around the country to see Donald Trump. It's a little but like the Grateful Dead for people who are weird. They go on the road to see Donald Trump."

She continued, "In Lindsey's defense, there's probably a good chunk of this audience that's not South Carolina. But the humiliation here is not what the crowd did, it's what Donald Trump did. He treated him like he was a piece of dirt under his shoe. And I've got a real shot to Lindsey: Lindsey, it's not working. You cannot put aside your convictions and your character to support this man. It will not work.He knows this guy is trouble to the United States of America, and another place he's split with Trump is over Ukraine. So, Lindsey, find yourself in this moment. Use this as a teaching moment. You need to be Lindsey, not some embarrassing sycophant that has attached yourself like a leech to the side of this man. I would say to the backside of this man. And it is just beyond sad and depressing, and if it wasn't Lindsey's own fault — it's his fault — so I can't feel sorry for him. But he doesn't appear ready or willing or capable of correcting this problem."

"It's hard to imagine him leaving Donald Trump at this point, but as you say, that was in Pickens, South Carolina, not far from Lindsey Graham's hometown, in his home state. As Claire says, that should be his crowd. And going on TV and literally weeping for Donald Trump is not even enough there so why do you sell your soul? It remains one of the great mysteries of our modern politics."

READ MORE: Lindsey Graham 'has no shame': GOP insider nails senator's 'full-tilt' surrender to Donald Trump

Watch MSNBC's video below at this link.

The Washington Post's full report is available at this link (subscription required). Newsweek's report is here.

READ MORE: 'Where did he go to law school?' Prosecutor destroys Lindsey Graham’s defense of Trump

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

A Fox host throws Lindsey Graham under the bus as he struggles to keep his Senate seat ›

Lindsey Graham 'has no shame': GOP insider nails senator's 'full-tilt' surrender to Donald Trump ›

'Lindsey Graham is not well': Senator mocked for deflecting to Hillary Clinton in off-the-rails ABC interview ›

Denied': Lindsey Graham loses emergency appeal to delay testifying in Georgia election investigation

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

October 20, 2022

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has lost in federal appeals court and will have to given a deposition under oath in Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’ special grand jury investigation into Donald Trump’s and h...

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/lindsey-graham-states-should-decide/

loser issue but not in SC gop?

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pro putin ukr

~ biden

https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/lindsay-graham/

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wh spx says backs biden semi-fascist

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/shame-if-anything-happened-graham/

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judge blocks

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/lindsey-graham-2657893530/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/lindsey-graham/

gotta appear

===

fighting fulton cty GA subpoena 7 22

graham's subpoena calls for him to be available to appear before the special grand jury in less than three weeks, on Aug. 2. In issuing a stay of the subpoena Wednesday, Judge Henry Herlong Jr. set up a rapid schedule for arguments. Willis' office has until the end of the day on July 18 to respond to Graham's motion. Graham's reply to Willis is due on July 19, and the first hearing in the matter is schedule for July 20,

Prosecutors alleged in Graham's subpoena that he spoke to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election and questioned him "about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome" for Trump.

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born in Washington, D.C., Herlong received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Clemson University in 1967 and a Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1970. He was in the United States Army from 1967 to 1973, achieving the rank of Reserve Captain. He was a legislative assistant to United States Senator Strom Thurmond from 1970 to 1972. He was an Assistant United States Attorney of the Criminal Division in Greenville, South Carolina from 1972 to 1976. He was in private practice in Edgefield, South Carolina from 1976 to 1983. He was an Assistant United States Attorney of the Civil Division in Columbia, South Carolina from 1983 to 1986.^[1]

Federal judicial service[

Herlong became a United States Magistrate Judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina in 1986, serving in this capacity until 1991. On April 9, 1991, Herlong was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to a new seat on the United States District Court for the District of South Carolinacreated by 104 Stat. 5089. Herlong was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 9, 1991, and received his commission on May 14, 1991. He assumed senior status on June 1, 2009.^[1]

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an 7 22

no lnx

When Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona famously told President Richard Nixon, during the Watergate scandal in 1974, that he could not count on his support, it was obvious that he prioritized country over party — and Goldwater was by no means the only conservative Republican who felt that way. Nixon, realizing that both Republicans and Democrats were likely to remove him from office if an impeachment trial were held in the U.S. Senate, resigned; Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president on August 9, 1974.

But much has changed in the Republican Party since 1974. Even after the January 6, 2021 insurrection, countless Republicans remain loyal to former President Donald Trump — including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. And journalist Mark Leibovich slams them as examples of pathetic careerists in a scathing article published by The Atlantic on July 7.

The article’s headline is not subtle: “The Most Pathetic Men in America,” and Leibovich makes no effort to hide his disdain for Trump’s army of enablers in the Republican Party.

Leibovich recalls seeing Graham and McCarthy in public places in Washington, D.C. during Trump’s presidency, noting, “I would sometimes see them around the lobby or steakhouse or function rooms, skipping from table to table and getting thanked for all the wonderful things they were doing to help our president. They had long been among the most supplicant super-careerists ever to play in a city known for the breed, and proved themselves to be essential lapdogs in Trump’s kennel.”

READ MORE: Are we supposed to believe Republicans were duped?

The journalist adds, “McCarthy is a good bet to become the next speaker of the House in the likely event that Republicans win a majority in November. Graham remains perhaps Trump’s closest collaborator in the Senate, a frequent golf partner and nuanced handler of the presidential ego.”

Leibovich slams Graham and McCarthy as examples of “the slavishly devoted Republicans whom Trump drew to his side,” stressing that they were hardly alone in that regard.

“It’s been said before, but can never be emphasized enough: Without the complicity of the Republican Party, Donald Trump would be just a glorified geriatric Fox-watching golfer,” Leibovich writes. “I’ve interviewed scores of these collaborators, trying to understand why they did what they did and how they could live with it. These were the McCarthys and the Grahams and all the other busy parasitic suck-ups who made the Trump era work for them, who humored and indulged him all the way down to the last, exhausted strains of American democracy.”

Leibovich applauds the “handful of brave Republicans” who have been “willing to speak the truth about Trump in public,” including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. But he laments that they are the exception rather than the rule and predicts that Trump will have no shortage of sycophants if he runs for president in 2024.

READ MORE: Conservative insider denounces Republicans who wanted Trump to provide pardons for their involvement in his election scheme

“McCarthy will not be winning any Profile in Courage Award anytime soon,” Leibovich writes. “In fairness, that could make him a good fit for the cowardly caucus he is so eager to lead. Soon enough, 2024 will not be a long way away, and Trump is well-positioned to claim his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination. Again, Trump will do as he pleases and take what he can take. Because really, who’s going to stop him?”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/republicans-guns-ads-posts/

no lnx

Guns are all over GOP ads and social media, prompting some criticism

The images have in recent years become more prevalent, and intentionally provocative, in Republican advertising, holiday greetings and other forms of communication with the public

Image without a caption

By Colby Itkowitz

May 31, 2022

audio: Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, posted a campaign ad addressing his support for the Second Amendment on April 29. (DoctorOz/Youtube)

Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick first shoots the hunting rifle he says he used as a teenager. Pow. Next, he cocks the rifle he says he used at the U.S. Military Academy and fires. Pow. Then he points a semiautomatic assault rifle like one he says he used in Iraq at a faraway target. Pow. Pow. Pow. Pow.

Former television personality and surgeon Mehmet Oz loads a shotgun and shoots. “When people say I don’t support guns? They’re dead wrong,” Oz says. The camera then zooms in on Oz locking a magazine onto an AR-15 style rifle.

McCormick and Oz, the finalists in a high-stakes Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania that has gone to a recount, have spent months trying to showcase their conservative bona fides to GOP base voters and head off skepticism of their elite backgrounds on Wall Street and in Hollywood, respectively. Part of that strategy involved commercials showing them shooting guns.

On April 29 Republican Pennsylvania senate candidate Mehmet Oz posted a campaign ad addressing his support for the 2nd Amendment. (Video: DoctorOz | YouTube)

Although candidates in both parties have long used guns as a campaign prop, the images have in recent years become more prevalent, and intentionally provocative, in Republican advertising, holidays greetings and other forms of communication with the public. Such placements convey a cultural and political solidarity with conservatives more powerfully than most anything else, according to Republican strategists and aides.

“It is a very visual example. It’s an illustration of where both sides are in that the more the right feels they are going to lose their Second Amendment rights, the further they’re going to go to defend them,” said Terry Sullivan, a veteran Republican strategist.

But as the nation reckons with a pair of deadly mass shootings at a Buffalo grocery store and a Texas elementary school, some are warning that these photos and videos are harmful and glorify the use and ownership of firearms designed to kill.

“These ads create a dangerous impression that firearms, and assault-style firearms specifically, are casual tools rather than dangerous weapons,” said Kris Brown, the president of Brady, a gun violence prevention organization. “To use them to grandstand and to provocate is dangerous.”

Some Republicans rejected that position, arguing they are promoting safe and legal gun use.

Last Christmas season, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) posted a holiday photo on social media showing him and his family posed in front of a Christmas tree, all clutching military-style firearms.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who has built her political brand in large measure around her devotion to guns, responded to Massie’s tweet with a photo of her and her sons holding similar assault rifles with a message to her colleague: “The Boeberts have your six” — military jargon for having someone’s back.

While most representatives of the elected officials and candidates cited in this report did not immediately respond to a request for comment, John Kennedy, communications director for Massie, defended his boss’s decision to promote his photograph and said it did not send a dangerous message.

“Rep. Massie’s photo was so popular with his Kentucky constituents that the most commonly heard complaint we received was that this photo was not released as the actual Christmas card,” Kennedy said.

Over the past several election cycles, Democrats running in rural, conservative-leaning states have also featured guns in their ads. In 2010, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) famously shot a gun at a Democratic environmental and energy proposal bill in a campaign ad, and eight years later, he released another one shooting at a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.

Democrats in recent years have outpaced Republican spending on gun-related ads, a signal of the party’s increasing inclination to campaign for stricter gun laws. But so far this year, Republicans have aired dozens more ads about guns than Democrats, according to data analyzed by AdImpact. The media-tracking firm identified 121 Republican ads dealing with guns and just 18 Democratic ones that are gun-related.

Sullivan said Republicans who highlight gun imagery in primaries where the competition for GOP base voters is intense might pay a political price in the general election. Others took a similar view.

“It seems to be a rite of passage now for Republicans in primaries to prove how tough they are protecting the Second Amendment,” said Neil Oxman, a Democratic communications strategist in Pennsylvania. “It is their calling card to tell Republican voters that they are conservative, and by doing that, you don’t really have to do anything else.By doing that, that’s enough for the Republican primary voters who have gone further and further to the right.”

Olivia Troye, who was a homeland security adviser to former vice president Mike Pence and worked on mass shootings and domestic terrorism issues, warned that the promotion of guns and violence by Republican candidates and elected officials has far reaching implications, in part by “normalizing and mainstreaming a weapon that is designed and meant to kill.”

Ron Filipkowski, a lifelong Republican who also broke with the party over former president Donald Trump and now tracks right-wing messaging, said he first noticed the uptick in gun-related GOP ads in August when he kept seeing Republican candidates sharing images of themselves with assault-style firearms and decided to tally them. He said he got to about a dozen before they became too frequent to keep up with in real-time.

“It’s really become a cultural thing now. It used to be a cultural thing as hunting goes, but these guys aren’t hunting … I’m talking about running around playing warrior. They view that as a sport now, and to participate in that sport, you need assault weapons,” Filipkowski said. “It’s the posing with them in pictures to say, ‘Hey, I’m a tough guy. I’m a badass. Come and take this away.' ”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.)recently sent a mailer to constituents that showed her clutching an AR-15-style weapon in one picture and shooting a handgun in another. Kevin Knoth, Hartzler’s spokesman, said in an email that the mail was approved May 12 and sent for delivery May 13 before the deadly mass shootings at supermarket in Buffalo and an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex.

Knoth did not respond directly when asked if Hartzler regrets that some of her constituents received the mailer after those tragedies, saying only that the congresswoman “is praying for all those lost and their loved ones” and is urging support for legislation to allow off-duty and retired law enforcement personnel to carry concealed firearms on school grounds.

Mark and Patricia McCloskey pointed guns at protesters in St. Louis who were marching to call for the resignation of Mayor Lyda Krewson on June 28, 2020. (Video: Daniel Shular via Storyful)

Mark McCloskey, who once pointed a gun at Black Lives Matter protesters and is now running in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Missouri, has images of assault weapons all over his social media. “Firearms are the ultimate equalizer,” one post says, over a photo of him holding a gun. On his campaign website, he boasts that his story “has empowered thousands of new gun owners across the country to purchase a firearm and learn how to defend themselves.”

This year, an Arizona Republican running to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly released an ad that portrayed him as a sheriff and showed him in an old Western-style standoff with actors playing Kelly, President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

In the ad, the GOP candidate, businessman Jim Lamon, says: “The good people of Arizona have had enough of you. It’s time for a showdown.” The three Democrats draw their weapons. Lamon points his gun and shoots the weapons out of their hands. The Kelly, Biden and Pelosi characters run away. The ad drew some criticism, including from Republican rivals.

Last spring, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.)posted a video on Twitter of himself shooting an AR-15 in a gun range. “Now, why would anybody need to own an AR-15?” Graham asked in a follow-up post. “If there is a breakdown of law and order, and that can happen … it’s not impossible to find yourself in the modern world without any police protection, because that’s just the way the times are in which we live in.”

“Senator Graham is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment,” Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said, when asked about the senator’s social media posts.

Political campaigns and organizations have held contests gifting military-assault weapons to supporters. In Georgia, Josh Clark, a Republican Senate candidate who recently lost the primary to former football star Herschel Walker, said in March that he planned togive away an AR-15 every weekuntil the election. His goal, he said, was to “advance” the use of AR-15 rifles, which he said “should be one of the most commonly owned firearms across America.”

Last fall, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) gave supporters a chance to win a 50-caliber rifle she used in an ad to blow up a Toyota Prius with the word “socialism” emblazoned on its side.The footage showed the massive explosion from various angles and directed viewers to a website that allowed them to enter to win Greene’s rifle.

“This is the same type of gun that TRIGGERS theFake News Media and Democratsall across the country,” Greene’s webpage read. “And it’s the same type of gun the hate-America gun-grabbers in DC would love to BAN if they ever get the votes.”

In January, Greene posted a photo with the contest recipient, both smiling as he cradled the massive weapon.

===

...

US Congress passes resolution in support of Ukraine

The US House of Representatives approved a resolution "steadfastly, staunchly, proudly and fervently" in support of Ukraine. Many in Congress urged that more be done to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against Ukraine.

Only three members of the House voted against the resolution: Republicans Paul Gosar of Arizona, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Matt Rosendale of Montana.

US Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, is introducing a similar resolution in the Senate, the upper chamber....

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222

finally end of bromance? // cawthorne?

'Poor Linds': Lindsey Graham brutally trolled on social media after being abandoned by the former president

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina speaking at the Iowa GOP's Growth and Opportunity Party in Des Moines, Iowa on October 31, 2015 ,Gage Skidmore

Meaghan Ellis February 02, 2022

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is being mocked on social media following former President Donald Trump's recent interview condemning him.

It's no secret the Republican lawmaker has long been an avid supporter of former President Donald Trump often justifying his actions even when he is blatantly wrong. However, his support of Trump appears to have backfired. The latest debacle stems from Trump's recent rally in Conroe, Texas.

At one point during the rally, Trump told his supporters he would pardon those facing charges in connection with the insurrection on the U.S. Capitol.

"If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly," Trump told rallygoers. "If it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly."

The following day, Graham shared his opinion of those remarks describing pardons for Capitol rioters as "inappropriate." Apparently, Graham's remarks did not sit well with the former president.

Speaking to Newsmax's Rob Schmitt on Tuesday, February 1, Trump reflected on the series of events that unfolded on Jan. 6 as he shared his opinion of Graham's reaction to his rally remarks. “Lindsey Graham is wrong,” Trump said during the interview. “I mean, Lindsey is a nice guy, but he’s a RINO. Lindsey’s wrong.”

Trump also insisted that his supporters who stormed the Capitol “are not guilty” and said Graham “doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.”

As footage of the interview began circulating on social media, Twitter users quickly shared their reaction to Trump turning on Graham. The Pro-Trump senator is now being relentlessly mocked for blindly following a former president who wasted no time abandoning him when it suited him.

"Imagine how upsetting it must be for Lindsey Graham to hear this while barnacled to the inside of Trump’s rectum," one Twitter user wrote. Then, another echoed those remarks tweeting, "Lindsey Graham sold out his soul for this guy only to get thrown under the bus like he's nothing."..no twt]

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/lindsey-graham-jan-6/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/lindsey-graham/

ritics blast 'disgusting fraud' Lindsey Graham for accusing Biden of politicizing the insurrection

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

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819 DN

...And then, finally, perhaps most importantly, Koch has built a nationwide activist network calledAmericans for Prosperity. And what this is is a boots-on-the-ground operation. So, Americans for Prosperity has chapters around the country. They can activate people to go knock on doors, take petitions. They will charter busesfrom West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, you name it. They will getbuses of angry voters[pseudo-populist trigger anti-gubmint] to come to Washington, D.C., and then go visit congressional offices that have been specifically identified by that big corporate lobbying shop we talked about, where they can pressure lawmakers.

And Koch put this political machine into full force in 2009 and 2010, when it looked like the United States was going to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. You know, back then, there really was bipartisan support to do something on climate change. The Republican, John McCain,ran on doing something about climate change. But Koch Industries intervened, and, I think more than even Exxon or other companies, it sort of — it politicized this issue of climate change. And Koch went after any moderate Republicans who acknowledged that climate change was real, who supported any effort to put a price on carbon. And Koch helped to drive those people out of office. So it played a vitally important role in making it clear to Republicans that they could not support any effort on climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: The Kochtopus? Elaborate further.

CHRISTOPHER LEONARD: The Kochtopus, here’s a great example. In 2009, when we were debating climate change, my book shows that Koch secretly funded a think tank report from this group called the American Council [for] Capital Formation. And this report said that if we regulate climate change, it will be a disaster for the American economy. Then another Koch-funded think tank called the American Energy Alliance took the findings from that report, made political ads and targeted those ads at Republican politicians, like Lindsey Graham, who supported climate change legislation, so now Lindsey Graham has got these horrible campaign spots running back home. And then the corporate lobbyists from Koch will be visiting the offices of Lindsey Graham and explaining why they can’t support climate change bill.

So, the Kochtopus is this remarkably effective 360-degree machine that affects the public debate around issues like this, that has lobbyists who work on issues like this, and that can, finally, bring voters in. You know, Americans for Prosperity will — I’ve been at these events where they bus voters into Washington, D.C. They give them glossy printed protest signs. They feed them a boxed lunch. They take them to the congressional offices. And they can stoke what appears to be a real public revolt against legislation like this....

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/lindsey-graham-immigration/

40k gucci bags brazil

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badge wedge issue

lind graham

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/absolutely-bizarre-lindsey-graham-torched-for-declaring-he-will-go-to-war-for-what-chick-fil-a-stands-for/

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1021 ah

As much as there is to criticize about Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the right-wing Republican senator made perfect sense when he recommended getting vaccinated for COVID-19 during a recent speech at a GOP event in his state. But anti-vaxxers in the crowd responded by booing, jeering and heckling him, and liberal Washington Post opinion writer Eugene Robinson — discussing that embarrassing incident in his October 8 column — poses the question, "How dumb can a nation get and still survive?"

It's a perfectly legitimate question in light of the fact that Graham, in August, was infected with COVID-19 — which, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has killed more than 4.8 million people worldwide, including over 710,000 in the United States. Graham had been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 but was infected anyway; he was an example of what medical experts call a "breakthrough" case. However, it wasn't a really serious or life-threatening infection; the senator didn't need to be hospitalized and was never on a ventilator — andduring his speech in South Carolina, he attributed the vaccine to the fact that his case of COVID-19 wasn't more serious.

But anti-vaxxer wingnuts didn't want to hear that, and they responded by booing him loudly.

Robinson writes, "COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease that has killed more than 700,000 Americans over the past 20 months. The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines all but guarantee that recipients will not die from COVID. I have, or had, an acquaintance who refused to get vaccinated, despite pleas from his adult children to protect himself. He got COVID-19, and it killed him. Most of the deaths the nation has suffered during the current Delta variant wave of the disease — deaths of the unvaccinated — have been similarly needless and senseless."

The Post columnist points out that Graham, unlike his unvaccinated acquaintance, is still very much alive — and he slams the booing of Graham by anti-vaxxer Republicans as "just plain stupid."

Robinson writes, "How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb? Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?"

The booing of Graham isn't the only example of "droolingly stupid" behavior by Republicans that Robinson calls out in his column — he also slams Republicans who play "frequent games of chicken" with the United States' debt ceiling, obsess over Critical Race Theory and promote the Big Lie.

"Conservatives in state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation to halt the teaching of 'Critical Race Theory' in public schools," Robinson explains. "I put the term in quotes because genuine Critical Race Theory, a dry and esoteric set of ideas debated in obscure academic journals, is not actually being taught in those schools at all. What's being taught instead — and squelched — is American history, which happens to include slavery, Jim Crow repression and structural racism."

Robinson adds, "I get it. The GOP has become the party of white racial grievance, and this battle against an imaginary enemy stirs the base. But the whole charade involves Republican officials — many of them educated at the nation's top schools — betting that their constituents are too dumb to know they're being lied to. So far, the bet is paying off.And then, of course, there's the whole 'stolen election' farce, which led to the tragedy of January 6."

===

incoherent "next meal"?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/stephanie-grisham/

===

at least they recycle grift

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/newt-gingrich-trump/

In 1994, when President Bill Clinton was serving his first term, then-House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich unveiled his Contract With America — a hard-right Republican legislative agenda that Gingrich's critics slammed as the Contract On America. Republicans recaptured the House in the 1994 midterms, and Gingrich became House speaker in January 1995.Now, in the Biden era, Gingrich is a major ally of former President Donald Trump — and according to Politico reporter Meridith McGraw, Gingrich and Trump are joining forces for a new version of the Contract With America for the 2022 midterms. But the 2022 version, McGraw reports, will have a much more Trumpian focus.

"With an eye toward winning back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party," McGraw reports. "His template is the 1994 'Contract With America,' a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton's first term. And as a cherry on top, he's teaming up with its main architect — Gingrich — to do it."

McGraw adds that according to a Politico source, Trump recently met with Gingrich, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida to "begin crafting the document." twt]

"The group is still just beginning to hammer out the details of what a Trumpified Contract might look like," McGraw explains. "But it is likely to take an 'America first' policy approach on everything from trade to immigration. The source described it as 'a policy priority for 2022 and beyond.' Its construction has been teased and talked about for weeks, but the fact that the principals are beginning to put it together underscores Trump's continued interest in trying to shape the Republican Party."

The 77-year-old Gingrich, however, told Politico that he doesn't expect the 2022 plan to be finalized "anytime soon." When Politico asked him to outline some policy priorities that it may include, the former House speaker responded, "It should be positive. School choice, teaching American history for real, abolishing the '1619 Project,' eliminating critical race theory and what the Texas legislature is doing. We should say, 'Bring it on.'"

Like Barack Obama, Clinton went down in history as a president who was decisively reelected but suffered a major setback at the midterms. 1996 was a great year for Clinton, who was reelected with 379 electoral votes compared to only 159 for Republican nominee Bob Dole. But Democrats suffered a major pounding in the 1994 midterms.

"The original 'Contract with America' was credited with helping Republicans gain their first majority in four decades after the party picked up 52 seats in 1994 in the House and nine seats in the Senate," McGraw recalls. "Republicans have used it as a template in elections since."

The Politico reporter continues, "In 2010, the so-called Republican 'Young Guns,' led by Reps. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, introduced a much longer version of Gingrich's contract with a 224-page publication outlining policy goals ahead of the midterm elections. And Graham, who was one of the Contract's signatories when he first ran for a House seat in 1994, has frequently advocated for Republicans to adopt Contract-style declarations to unify the party during election years."

===

various obstruct biden? impeach? merrick garland

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/lindsey-graham-2650261965/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/lindsey-graham-2649982880/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/lindsey-graham-2649982660/

===

party divided: Lindsey Graham slams Mitch McConnell

Meaghan Ellis

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is pushing back against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over his adamant refusal to bring a vote to the Senate floor for $2,000 direct

You used MAGA!': Trump supporters turn on Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton for breaking with GOP election challenge

Igor Derysh Salon

January 04, 2021

Two of President Donald Trump's closest Senate allies pushed back on their colleagues' futile plans to challenge the Electoral College results on Wednesday, quickly drawing attacks from the president's supporters.

===

tried to get GA sos to toss ballots?

Legal experts demand Lindsey Graham be investigated

===

occupation a big deal?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/graham-receives-more-donations-from-donors-who-lack-full-disclosure-than-any-other-senator-in-2020/

===

chair acb? bs on 10b$ stolen from SC by big 3 dem states via obamacare

dems boycott acb no quorum

===

1020 trump dumps? an

1020 an kos

In May 2019, Democrat Jaime Harrison formally launched a U.S. Senate campaign in South Carolina to challenge incumbent Lindsey Graham, a man who is simultaneously one of the most powerful people in government and one of the most despised politicians in the country.

From the start, Harrison has faced an uphill battle in South Carolina. Challenging the head of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee in a state that falls in the deeply red column isn't for the faint of heart. No doubt Lindsey Graham and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell thought his reelection was in the bag and they could focus on other battleground races. But Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell underestimated just how angry the actual silent majority truly is after four years of watching Lindsey Graham act like Donald Trump's lap dog, protecting Trump from criminal investigations and stealing three Supreme Court seats along the way.

In short, Graham and McConnell underestimated YOU and our collective rage.

In the past year, Jaime Harrison received a tsunami of small donations, flooding the Harrison campaign with record-breaking donations that have topped $86 million, forcing Graham to appear almost nightly on Fox News to beg Sean Hannity's audience for money. He even used the Senate Judiciary Committee pulpit during a hearing on Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination to complain about all the money, issuing a plea from inside the Senate building (a big no-no) to ask for donations to help him because he was delivering the Barrett nomination to the Senate, despite the public outcry. It was not only pathetic, but it might have run afoul of the law, which "prohibits soliciting or receiving campaign contributions on federal property."

In fact, Graham is so upset at the record donations that came into the South Carolina race that he has indicated he wants an investigation after the election.

In an interview with The Hill, Graham whined, "Where's all this money coming from ActBlue coming from? How easy would it be to just have a bunch of pre-paid credit cards?"

Yes, Lindsey Graham, I suppose it is entirely possible a shadowy, powerful Black Lives Matter foundation with secret billions in the bank loaded up pre-paid 'antifa' cards and made tens of thousands of $37 donations (the average Harrison donation), one at a time, to unseat you.

Why can't Lindsey Graham just accept that not only is he personally deeply unpopular, but so is the Republican agenda? It isn't like we didn't try to tell him. We called his offices. We showed up at town halls. We showed up in Washington, D.C. We even chased him in airports when we he refused to hear us anywhere else. But he will hear us at the ballot box on Nov. 3 and so will his corrupted colleagues. And even if Lindsey Graham survives this challenge, we will be back for the next. You can take that to the bank.

In the meantime, let's keep pissing off Lindsey Graham with our small donations. Our Daily Kos Elections team has compiled a list of 17 state legislative candidates from Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and Michigan who need the most help as we head down the final stretch. Sure it feels good to donate to Lindsey's demise, but these races are every bit as critical or even more so than South Carolina's because these state legislatures control the boundaries of congressional districts, something Republicans have successfully used to slice and dice our blue districts, gerrymandering our states into Republican-controlled havens that give people like Lindsey Graham undue power over the majority.

Afterward, you can send Lindsey Graham a copy of your donation as evidence for his "investigation" at campaign@lindseygraham.com. Bless his heart

===

The McSally notices illustrate this point. The contribution history of one single recurring donor, Bruce P. Bengtson, accounts for more than 10 full pages, or 25% of the list. Other donors take up multiple pages, such as Bill Deaton, whose name appears on 215 line items in one letter.

Deaton, founder of a Kentucky-based data-processing company, was fined $1 million and sentenced to a year of home detention in a federal fraud case in 2010. FEC records show he has contributed $6,706 to McSally this year. The individual limit for a full election cycle is $5,600.

The Graham campaign also appears to have erred in some of its bookkeeping, according to the FEC, and the Harrison campaign needs to explain several donors with foreign addresses and three sources identified as "possible prohibited entities." (While the letter does not elaborate on the latter, one of the names — PCCC, LLC — appears to have been identified as a difficult-to-trace entity in a Center for Public Integrity analysis of 2016 donations to Hillary Clinton.)

One of the over-limit donors to Graham, who has taken to begging for campaign cash in recent Fox News appearances, was Washington attorney Ty Cobb,formerly a lawyer for Trump during the Russia investigations. Cobb has given Graham $1,000 above the $2,800 general election maximum.

A handful of names, however, are on the lists for both Graham and McSally. All those people, according to FEC searches, appear to be retirees. A closed-quote Google search of these donors brings up something unusual: Their names also appear in the headlines of what look like online news articles announcing their donations.

For instance, a man namedHenry L. Collins III gave $4,350 to Graham's campaign between April 30 and June 30, in a series of dozens of donations between $50 and $500. During that same period, he gave $4,425 to McSally. FEC records show that as of July 15, Collins had contributed a total $14,745 to McSally, nearly $10,000 above the individual limit, and as of June 30 had given about $8,400 to Graham, an excess of $2,800.

On July 1, Collins' name was featured in a headline for an article in something calling itself PHX Reporter that read: "Martha McSally's campaign committee receives $2,705 from Henry L. Collins III."

But PHX Reporter is identical to another site called Western South Dakota News, which on July 14 announced Collins' $500 contribution to Liz Marty May, a Republican congressional candidate. (Collins did not reply to Salon's request for comment.)

For that matter, Western South Dakota News looks exactly like the Treasure Coast Sun, which looks like the Columbia Standard — a site that published stories about individual contributions to both Graham and Harrison. Collins' name appears in a list of top donors for the month of May on a Columbia Standard article — and three other donors on the list appear to have exceeded the legal limit with contributions from that month alone.

These sites are part of a larger network of what could fairly be described as fake news sites — webpages that publish algorithm-driven content, much of it anonymous and automated, targeted at hyper-local audiences. Those networks of sites — dubbed "pink slime," a play on "yellow journalism" — have tripled in size as Election Day approaches. And they're part of an even larger network, connected to a conservative PAC.

That network, however, also appears to publish campaign refunds at times. One repeat McSally donor who spoke with Salon said that he had been refunded money multiple times over the last year, most recently last week, after the McSally campaign's most recent FEC letter. Earlier refunds made it into the pink slime headlines. The latest news apparently has yet to break.

The McSally, Graham and Harrison campaigns declined to comment for this article.

===

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03092020/senate-2020-south-carolina-climate-change-lindsey-graham-jaime-harrison

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/propaganda-experts-blast-trump-dni-for-declassifying-unverified-anti-clinton-russian-disinformation

no lnx

Director of National Intelligence, pro-Trump former MAGA congressman John Ratcliffe, has just declassified and released what is being described as "unverified" Russian chatter and "disinformation" that suggests Hillary Clinton may have been in touch with the Russians in an attempt to help her 2016 presidential campaign.

Ratcliffe, just hours before Tuesday night's presidential debate, sent a letter toRepublican Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, who is facing his own major re-election challenge.

The letter claims in 2016 "U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians; hacking of the Democratic National Committee."

The DNI's letter then clearly says the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect fabrication."

The Director of National Intelligence heads all 17 U.S. intel agencies and offices.

(Ratcliffe's installation as Director of National Intelligence was, according to some, illegal. Congress passed a law requiring the DNI to have prior "extensive national security expertise," which Ratcliffe, like his two predecessors, lacks.)

It took the President's son, Donald Trump Jr., no time to try to weaponize it:

OMG??????JUST DECLASSIFIED: The Russia hoax was Hillary’s plan, and the Obama-Biden White House was briefed on it. https://t.co/ytquclKKg1

— Donald Trump Jr. (@Donald Trump Jr.)1601407501.0

Intelligence experts and reporters are furious that Ratcliffe would declassify and release what they see as unverified Russian propaganda.

Intelligence analyst Eric Garland:

THE RATCLIFFE DOSSIER: Unverified, except obvious propaganda, no tradecraft, and less pee-pee. https://t.co/qLI2fk2lhA

— Eric Garland (@Eric Garland)1601407092.0

CNN national security reporter Jeremy Herb:

The latest declassification from Ratcliffe to Senate GOP: Russian intelligence that the Clinton campaign planned to… https://t.co/Vm55rnROmJ

— Jeremy Herb (@Jeremy Herb)1601406864.0

U.S. intel and terrorism expert Malcolm Nance:

Trump crony Ratcliffe sends a letter declassifying Russian intel report. It’s full of statements intended to look l… https://t.co/QRJRV9YWFq

— Malcolm Nance (@Malcolm Nance)1601407085.0

Politico Congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio:

To recap: The country’s top intelligence official just declassified a Russian intel assessment that he acknowledges… https://t.co/wpdJHhcEQF

— Andrew Desiderio (@Andrew Desiderio)1601405922.0

Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko:

Even for Ratcliffe, this is shocking. https://t.co/DDlGSg3sTy

— Adam Parkhomenko (@Adam Parkhomenko)1601406638.0

Former U.S. intelligence officer, current NBC News national security and intelligence analyst Ned Price:

This is less about tonight and more about tomorrow, when Comey will appear before Graham's Committee. Ratcliffe is… https://t.co/NmewLaUnPh

— Ned Price (@Ned Price)1601407273.0

===

They’re breaking democracy’: Lindsey Graham slammed for declaring Supreme Court ‘will decide’ who wins election

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 25, 2020

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is facing new outrage from voters across the country for yet another comment he made that’s causing concern. Fresh off the heels of him promising…

an 920

They hate my guts’: Lindsey Graham is freaking out and sounding desperate

Alex Henderson

As deep red as South Carolina is — President Donald Trump carried the state by 14% in 2016 — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is fighting a surprisingly tough reelection battle…

Rubber stamp’ Lindsey Graham scorched for announcing ‘we’ve got the votes to confirm’ unnamed Trump SCOTUS nominee

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement September 22, 2020

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham is under fire for announcing he has enough votes to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court – days before the president…

proto-furies? // mcconn

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/early-morning-protest-erupts-outside-lindsey-grahams-home-he-told-us-to-use-his-words-against-him/

Carlson tries to throw Lindsey Graham under the bus for Trump’s disastrous interviews with Bob Woodward

Roger Sollenberger / Salon September 10, 2020

Fox News host Tucker Carlson blamed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Wednesday for urging President Donald Trump to participate in taped interviews with Bob Woodward for the veteran journalist’s new book “Rage.” Earlier that day, recordings of Trump privately acknowledging the severe “deadly” threat posed by the…

Lincoln Project ad targets ‘parasite’ Lindsay Graham with extremely disturbing images

Travis Gettys / Raw Story September 9, 2020

The Lincoln Project took aim at Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a new ad comparing him to a parasite. The ad uses graphic imagery of infestation and decay to castigate…

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https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510818-trump-yates-either-lying-or-grossly-incompetent

no lnx vod

trump: Yates either lying or grossly incompetent

BY MORGAN GSTALTER - 08/06/20 08:16 AM EDT 1,747

President Trump on Thursday accused former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates of “either lying” or being “grossly incompetent” after her testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Justice Department investigations into election interference in 2016.

“It is not possible she could have known so little about Dirty Cop James Comey (and others) from her high position in the Department of 'Justice,'" the president tweeted early Thursday. “Thepolitical Crime of the Century, [// fox hanty tucker rhet on obamagate]and she had no idea what they were doing?”

Yates told the committee that the FBI, under the leadership of then-Director James Comey, in January 2017 interviewed incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn without her authorization or advanced knowledge.

"I was upset that Director Comey didn't coordinate that with us and acted unilaterally," Yates said.

"Did Comey go rogue?" Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked.

"You could use that term, yes," Yates responded.

Despite her criticism of Comey’s handling of the process, Yates defended the FBI’s need to interview Flynn due to his conversations with the then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak after the November 2016 election.

"Interviewing General Flynn was really right at the core of the FBI's investigation at this point to try to discern, what are the ties between the Trump administration and the Russians?" she said during her testimony.

Flynn was fired in 2017 for misleading Vice President Pence about those conversations. He had initially entered into an agreement in 2017 to cooperate with the Department of Justice and pleaded guilty, but he subsequently withdrew from the plea agreement and was fighting the charges.

The Justice Department decided earlier this year to drop the case against Flynn, a decision that sparked outrage among Democrats, who claimed Attorney General William Barr was politicizing the agency.

Yates, asked about the decision to drop those charges on Wednesday, said she thought it was “highly irregular.”

Prior to her testimony,Trump lashed out at Yates and tweeted that she has “zero credibility.”

“She was a part of the greatest political crime of the Century, and ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING! Sally Yates leaked the General Flynn conversation? Ask her under oath. Republicans should start playing the Democrats game!” Trump tweeted.

Trump fired Yates in January 2017, while she was serving as acting attorney general, after she refused to defend his controversial travel ban

When asked if she doesn’t like Trump, Yates told senators, "I don't respect the manner in which he has carried out the presidency."

[Trump attacks Cuomo after his Democratic convention speech

Roger Stone drops appeal of felony convictions]

“You despise Donald Trump, don’t you?” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) shot back.

“I don't despise anyone, senator,” Yates added.

The GOP is ramping up their Obama-era investigations and Graham is centering his efforts around the origins of of the FBI’s investigation into Russia's election interference and the Trump campaign as well as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s subsequent probe.

820

Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have spent decades in the U.S. Senate — McConnell was first elected in 1984, Graham in 2002 — and the southern Republicans are both up for reelection this year. Democratic voters would love to see both of them voted out of office, but according to new polls, Graham is by far the more vulnerable of the two.

According to a new Morning Consult poll, Graham is leading his Democratic challenger, Jaime Harrison, by only 1% in South Carolina — which, factoring in the poll’s margin of error, makes that race a dead heat. But in Kentucky, Morning Consult found that McConnell is ahead of Amy McGrath — the centrist Democrat who is challenging him — by 17%.

720 an

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/lindsey-grahams-campaign-gets-caught-using-racist-imagery-in-ad-against-his-democratic-challenger/

720 an

according to a report at the Daily Beast, some Republicans, as well as advisors to Donald Trump, are questioning Sen. Lindsey Graham’s decision to relitigate the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump administration’s connections to Russia so close to the election saying it could come back to haunt both the president and Graham himself.

Last week Graham, who heads up the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated that he was willing to call Mueller back to testify again about his investigation and that has some conservatives nervous.

In an interview with the Beast this week, Graham admitted, “I was reluctant to call him because it was hard to watch [him testify] in the House. I just think, if he decided to comment on the Stone case… OK, let’s hear what you’ve got to say.”

While the White House has been silent about Graham’s plans, some Trump allies –including one of the president’s former attorneys –are wondering if it is not all a big mistake.

AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER

“Republicans and even prominent figures in pro-Trump media are split, not just as to whether Mueller should be called back to the Hill but whether it’s a good idea at all to re-litigate his probe at a time when the president is struggling both to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and with his re-election bid against former Vice President Joe Biden,” the report states, adding that Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, a confidant of the president thinks Grahams needs to back off of his plans.

“In a recent episode, Carlson decried how many GOP bigwigs, including some on-air at his own network, were so intensely focused on Russiagate at the expense of policies that could affect millions of Americans,” the Beast reports, quoting Carlson saying, “Who cares how many Benghazi hearings we have? We are supposed to care, but why should we? How did Peter Strzok’s text messages become more important than saving American jobs from foreign nationals who are taking them? It is lunacy! We fall for it every time.”

Add former Trump attorney John Dowd to the list of critics of the recalling of Mueller, saying he’s not sure Graham is up to the job of pressing the former special counsel.

“I don’t quite understand Sen. Graham… I’m never quite sure what he’s up to,” he told the Beast. “When he called [Rod] Rosenstein, he didn’t even ask him… ‘What was the factual basis to appoint a special counsel?’ So, I’m not sure how reliable any [hearing of his] would be…I’m not sure what he’s about. But I thought his examination of Rosenstein was poor.”

“I read in the paper that the Democrats want to hear from Mueller [again, too]. I thought Graham was a Republican! I don’t understand what the guy’s doing! So what if the Democrats want [Mueller]. He’s the Republican chairman of the judiciary committee,” he continued. “[Why do it just] because the Democrats want it?”

The report also notes that Graham that some Republicans feel Graham needs to focus on his own re-election where he faces a stiff challenge from Democrat Jaime Harrison, who has amassed a $29 million campaign chest.

You can read more here.

an 620

Lindsey Graham among GOP candidates who took money from alleged racist

Roger Sollenberger

A number of Republican candidates for Senate and Congress accepted recent campaign donations from Timothy Mellon, a GOP megadonor and heir to the Mellon family fortune, who used derogatory stereotypes…

mma 520

Following the 2018 midterms, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Sean Hannity that if the Democrats launched investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, he would launch retaliation investigations, inquiring into whether there was “political bias” involved in the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe. Journalists should take him at his word and treat the pending Judiciary Committee hearings as an abuse of power intended as political payback.

From the outset, the Trump administration and right-wing media have relied heavily on the “Deep State” conspiracy theory, which has now been reimagined as “Obamagate,” as a catchall way to insinuate wrongdoing by holdover government officials from the Obama administration. However, now as the 2020 presidential election is heating up, the Trump administration and right-wing media have several public officials doing their work for them, including Graham, Attorney General William Barr, and Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

This week, even Hannity recognized the political nature of the pending investigations. “Buckle up all of you deep state saboteurs that are there,” Hannity said during a Tuesday night monologue, as an on-screen graphic displayed a scrolling list of the officials Graham plans to subpoena. “This will be summer camp with your lawyers. You're going to have to spend a lot of time with them in air-conditioned offices. Hope you like a lot of coffee.”

It appears that Hannity and Fox News’ dreams of retaliation investigations are becoming a reality. The only question is whether mainstream journalists will legitimize them.

vs jeff s?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/can-lindsey-graham-win-reelection-as-a-trump-enabler/

Ex-Michelin chairman who backed Lindsey Graham drops support for the GOP senator — and now advocates for his Democratic challenger

Sky Palma / Raw Story

The former chairman and president of Michelin’s South Carolina-based operations, Richard Wilkerson, was once a supporter of Lindsey Graham (R-SC), but now he’s decided to throw his support behind Graham’s Democratic…

4/20

punish china for covid?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/did-lindsey-graham-just-violate-the-14th-amendment-during-an-appearance-on-fox-news/

no lnx

Did Lindsey Graham just violate the 14th Amendment during an appearance on Fox News?

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina addresses the National Guard Association of the United States 138th General Conference, Baltimore, Md., Sept. 11, 2016. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jim Greenhill)

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story April 10, 2020

On Fox News Thursday in discussion with Sean Hannity, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made an extraordinary statement: That he wants the United States to “cancel” some of the national debt held by the Chinese government as punishment for allowing the coronavirus to spread beyond its borders.

“I want to get the medical supply chain back in the United States, and I want to start canceling some debt that we owe to China, because they should be paying us, not us paying China,” said Graham. “So I think you’re going to see a bipartisan pushback against China to punish them so severely to deter them in the future.”

Putting aside the thorny legal question of whether a foreign country can be legally held at fault for the spread of a deadly disease, there is a big problem with what Graham is proposing: the 14th Amendment.

The amendment, one of the three “Reconstruction Amendments” passed in the wake of the Civil War, contained a clause at the end that was designed to prevent Southern politicians — who historically wielded outsized power in Congress — from canceling the U.S. war debt, which could have shielded the white landowners who led the war effort from having to pay taxes: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

At a bare minimum, this amendment would appear to make it unconstitutional to “cancel” Treasury bonds held by the Chinese government or businesses. But it might go even further than that — some have interpreted the phrase “shall not be questioned” more literally, to mean that public officials are bound not to say anything that would make creditors “question” the validity of the public debt. If that is the case, then Graham would have violated the Constitution simply by saying he wants debt held by China to be canceled.

Either way, far from the “bipartisan pushback” Graham is predicting, his idea will go nowhere.

Watch below:

Acyn Torabi

@Acyn

Lindsey Graham says he’s going to push to cancel some of the US debt to China

Embedded video

still sucking up

320 an

lindsey Graham attacks ‘disgusting’ Nancy Pelosi after she says Trump contributes to ‘people dying’

David Edwards / Raw Story March 29, 2020

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday lashed out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) after she suggested that President Donald Trump’s handling of the global COVID-19 pandemic will likely mean more…

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nyt

no lnx

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/opinion/lindsey-grahams-curious-military-career.html

Opinion

EDITORIAL

Lindsey Graham’s Curious Military Career

By The Editorial Board

Aug. 4, 2015

By all accounts, including his own, Senator Lindsey Graham was a good military lawyer during the six and a half years he spent on active duty in the Air Force before he entered politics.

Since leaving active duty in 1989 and joining the Air Force Reserve, Mr. Graham, a Republican from South Carolina who is running for president, appears to have performed very little substantive work for the Air Force. Yet, he rose in rank to colonel and remained in the service until his retirement in June, which entitles him to a monthly $2,773 pension.

An article by Craig Whitlock of The Washington Post shows that though Mr. Graham did very little in the reserve, it was a mutually beneficial arrangement: He was able to keep the honor of the uniform intertwined with his political life and the Air Force got to keep a lawmaker in its ranks who had stature and sway on Capitol Hill. Mr. Graham, a conservative hawk, sits on the Senate appropriations, armed services, budget and judiciary committees.

ImageSenator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at his military retirement ceremony in June.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at his military retirement ceremony in June.

Credit...Matt McClain/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

The senator has peddled an embellished, and at times inaccurate, narrative of his service in the reserve. A campaign video, which features several photos of Mr. Graham in uniform, says he “served as a reserve duty officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.” In fact, Mr. Graham’s war zone tours consisted of specially arranged stints that lasted a few days and coincided with trips he made as part of congressional delegations.

Until early this year, Mr. Graham’s official biographies said he had served as senior instructor at the Judge Advocate General’s School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. In fact, Mr. Graham told The Post he never set foot at the base or taught there. “I never took time to change it,” he said of the biographies. “I probably should have.”

It was not a one-time lapse. In 1998, Mr. Graham was criticized for claiming to be a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, even though he never deployed as part of that campaign. The Post also found that from 1995 to 2005, he put in 108 hours of training, less than a day and a half each year, on average.

There is nothing wrong with lawmakers serving as reservists, but there is no reason they should be treated differently from other reservists. The extraordinary arrangement Mr. Graham enjoyed calls into question his ability as a member of Congress to carry out oversight of the military.

https://time.com/4025406/lindsey-graham-iran-deal-obama/

no lnx vid

graham Nuclear Deal...

Know Right Now: Democrats Secure 41 Votes for Iran Deal

Senate Democrats rallied 41 votes in support of the Iran Nuclear Deal

BY PHILIP ELLIOTT SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

Sen. Lindsey Graham blamed President Obama’s pursuit of an Iranian nuclear deal for everything from Russian’s invasion of Ukraine to Chinese cyber-attacks and the collapse of Yemen’s government.

In a scathing speech Tuesday, the Republican presidential contender argued that Obama was willing to overlook festering international problems in order to get cooperation on the Iranian agreement.

“He has neither the will nor the understanding of the Middle East,” Graham said at an appearance at the National Press Club. “Evil is doing well on his watch and he has been a poor champion of freedom.”

The South Carolina Republican, a longtime foreign policy hawk, faces an uphill climb to his party’s presidential nomination. But he is in broad agreement with many in his party on the deal with Iran, which now has enough support in the Senate to overcome Republican opposition.

“The only way to reset the table is to get a new President,” Graham said.

In a rare scripted speech, Graham said rival nations took advantage of the United States during the negotiations. He said Russia went into Ukraine, largely unchecked, because it saw Washington as unwilling to intervene. China, too, has been aggressive in its cyber warfare because the United States needed Beijing’s cooperation for an Iran deal, he argued. “They’re getting away with almost everything,” Graham said.

Meanwhile, Iranian-backed Houthi militants toppled the pro-American government of Yemen, and Tehran has also expanded its influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Graham chided. He called Syrian President Bashir al-Assad a “puppet” of Iran.

China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States negotiated the nuclear deal, under which Iran will get relief from sanctions and regain access to international oil markets. That is expected to bring it a windfall of about $100 billion to Iran.In exchange, Iran must dispose of most of its low-enriched uranium, stop efforts to produce or acquire more nuclear fuel and consent to inspections.

Republicans in Congress are trying to block the deal, although they lack the votes to derail it. “We don’t have the votes to do that,” Graham acknowledged Tuesday. But, he added, even the deal’s supporters should allow at least an open debate on the floor of the Senate when it convenes on Wednesday. “What the hell are we here for, if not to talk about this?” Graham asked.

WRITE TO PHILIP ELLIOTT AT PHILIP.ELLIOTT@TIME.CO

ww.lgraham.senate.gov › public › index.cfm › graham-statement-on...

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:{May 8, 2018 - WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (R-South Carolina) today ... President Trump's decision to withdraw from the :{Iran nuclear deal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: pcoa ‎| Must include:pcoa

Lindsey Graham: Obama's Iran Deal to Blame for Global Woes ...

time.com › Politics › Lindsey Graham

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:{Sep 8, 2015 - :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: blamed President Obama's pursuit of an :{Iranian nuclear deal:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: for everything from Russian's invasion of Ukraine to Chinese ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: pcoa ‎| Must include:pcoa

Sen. Lindsey Graham: Nuclear Deal With Iran 'Has To Include ...

www.npr.org › 2015/07/15 › sen-lindsey-graham-nuclear-deal-with-iran...

Jul 15, 2015 - NPR's Robert Siegel speaks with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham about the Iran nuclear agreement. He says a deal should have been ...

Missing: pcoa ‎| Must include: pcoa

Lindsey Graham Rails Against Iran Nuclear Deal ... - Observer

observer.com › 2015/09 › lindsey-graham-rails-against-iran-nuclear-d...

:{:(style="border-color:#3c4043;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Sep 1, 2015 - :{Lindsay Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: labeled Ali Khamenei a "religious Nazi," and slammed Barack Obama and Kirsten Gillibrand.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Missing: pcoa ‎| Must include:pcoa

an 220

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/civil-libertarians-explain-why-lindsey-grahams-new-internet-bill-is-a-nightmare-that-would-empower-bill-barr/

an 220 vengeance

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/lindsey-graham-says-barr-has-process-for-biden-probe-russian-investigators-going-to-jail/

Lindsey Graham faces revolt from Republican colleagues over plan to investigate whistleblower: WaPo reporter

Some Republican lawmakers are balking at a plan by Sen.…

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Search Results

Web results

Opinion | Lindsey Graham's Curious Military Career - The New ...

www.nytimes.com › 2015/08/04 › lindsey-grahams-curious-military-c...

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:{Aug 4, 2015 - Senator :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: has drawn plenty of attention to his military ... Mr. Graham, a conservative :{hawk:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, sits on the Senate appropriations, ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Lindsey Graham, warmonger, chickenhawk.

www.dataspheric.com › work › allison › index1

:{:(style="border-color:#3c4043;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{:{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: Facts: an political infographic of a neocon :{chickenhawk:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: warmonger.:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

The 5 worst chicken hawks in the GOP | Salon.com

www.salon.com › 2015/06/06 › 5_gop_chicken_hawks_who_want_t...

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:{Jun 6, 2015 - What follows are profiles of five candidates who are :{chicken hawks:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:. ... :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: also is calling for 10,000 ground troops, but he served ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

The New Chickenhawks – Foreign Policy

foreignpolicy.com › 2015/09/16 › the-new-chickenhawks-peace-deba...

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:{Sep 16, 2015 - This election cycle, only two of the 16 Republican contenders — Texas Gov. Rick Perry and South Carolina Senator :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: — have a ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

Lindsey Graham: 'I would literally use the military to keep ...

reason.com › 2015/03/11 › lindsey-graham-i-would-literally-use-the

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:{Mar 11, 2015 - In other news about grotesque Republican authoritarianism, Sen. :{Lindsey Graham:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: (R-S.C.), the candidate no one outside of John McCain's ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

https://www.mediamatters.org/maria-bartiromo/pressed-fox-anchor-lindsey-graham-asks-chair-foreign-relations-committee

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Schumer this morning signaling that the Democrats will not accept an acquittal as legitimate. Nancy Pelosi hinting that she is going to call Bolton in the House. John Bolton. What's the Dems next move? And how are you going to get anything done, senator, if you actually got the other side constantly pushing to find out dirt on Donald Trump?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Well, the president has been successful in spite of all of this. I hope we can turn the page as a nation and focus on issues important. But as Nancy Pelosi calls Bolton, here is what I would say. They're impeaching the president for suspension of aid that was eventually received, trying to leverage an investigation that never happened. This is ridiculous. Mueller broke their heart. They won't let it go. They hate this man. Pelosi is no longer speaker of the House. Just in name only. I don't know if they will ever let it go. But here is what I'm going to do. If they talk to Bolton, I will bring in State Department officials and ask them why didn't you do something about the obvious conflict of interest Joe Biden had? Joe Biden's effort to combat corruption in the Ukraine became a joke, when Joe Biden got before the Ukrainian parliament talking about sweetheart deals and reforming the energy sector, I can only imagine how they were laughing under their breath. What about your son, Vice President Biden, sitting on the most corrupt board in Ukraine, Burisma, receiving $3 million dollars. I can only imagine if a Republican done what Biden had done. But we're going to get to the bottom of this. And I can prove beyond any doubt that Joe Biden's effort in the Ukraine to root out corruption was undercut because he let his son sit on the board of the most corrupt company in the Ukraine, and we're not give him a pass on that.

BARTIROMO: So you’re not going to give him a pass. How are you going to get to the bottom of it? Should we expect your committee to call to testify Hunter Biden, the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, all of those names you've been talking about. Is this going to happen this upcoming week, then?

GRAHAM: It’s going to happen in the coming weeks. Jim Risch is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. Jim, if you're watching the show, I hope you are, we need to call the chief of staff to John Kerry who was told about the conflict of interest with Hunter Biden being on Burisma's board early on. Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, was a business partner of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. And he told the State Department, I'm not part of this deal. I don't think it is right. George Kent told the State Department it would be a conflict for Hunter Biden to be on Burisma's board. Let's start there. Let's call these people in. Eventually, we'll get to Hunter Biden. And I want to know why the Obama administration did nothing about this obvious conflict of interest. Joe Biden should have given up the Ukrainian portfolio or Hunter Biden should have been taken off the board. Because they ruined America's ability to effectively deal with corruption in the Ukraine by having Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma. That is just a fact, and we're going to get to the bottom of it.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/republicans-dont-even-pretend-to-care-about-laws-now-what-they-unleash-after-impeachment-will-be-really-ugly/

no lnx

Republicans don’t even pretend to care about laws now. What they unleash after impeachment will be really ugly

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon December 16, 2019

In the past, despite their differences, our political leaders were in agreement that to at least preserve the ideals behind our democratic system it was important to pay lip service to the spirit of the law. For instance, during the Iraq war, the Bush administration committed war crimes. But officials didn’t come right out and say, “Yes, we torture people. What are you going to do about it?” There were consequences to openly defying the law, which they knew could get quite serious down the road. They understood that to openly endorse war crimes was to let an ugly, dangerous genie out of the bottle. So they claimed it wasn’t actually torture and pretended that they believed torture was wrong, insisting they would never do such a thing.

The old-fashioned trope that describes this is, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.” It’s certainly not an ideal way for leaders to behave. They should follow the law and the Constitution, and if they don’t they should be held accountable. But declaring war on virtue all together and embracing vice as your organizing principle is what mobsters and tyrants do. That’s what’s happening under President Trump.

During the 2016 campaign, he proudly declared that he meant to torture, kill civilians and “take the spoils” of war if he wanted to. Today, he’s pardoning war criminals and bringing them up on stage at political events. While he does lie profusely and conspires with his henchmen, much of his alleged criminal behavior in the White House has been done right out in the open. He admitted he fired former FBI Director James Comey because Comey was investigating him. He dangled pardons and intimidated witnesses in public statements. Most recently he released a transcript of a phone call in which he tried to coerce a foreign leader to smear his political rival, calling it “perfect.”

Now Republican leaders are following his lead. They don’t bother to pretend that they are following rules anymore, or make arguments based on a common understanding of what the Constitution requires. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced he has no plans to even feign seriousness with the Senate impeachment trial of Trump. He has said right out in the open that he planned to follow the president’s lead and do whatever Trump wants him to do.

But it’s Trump’s most ardent sycophant, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is really letting it all hang out:

Graham was in Qatar this past weekend for that nation’s annual international forum, looking for every camera he could find to flagrantly defy the oath he will take before he sits as a juror in the Senate trial. He told CNN, “This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly.” When asked if he thought that was an appropriate thing to say under the circumstances, he replied, “Well, I must think so because I’m doing it. I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here. What I see coming, happening today, is just partisan nonsense.”

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Graham, of all people, knows this. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was a House manager during Bill Clinton’s impeachment. There are dozens of YouTube clips floating around that show Graham arguing for open-minded fairness in that trial. Let’s just say that if Graham’s a hypocrite, which he is, it’s not in service of any virtue. It’s in service to Donald Trump, the Republican Party and himself.

Graham does seem to have a strategy with all this loose talk. The argument between the White House and the senators who want to put this behind them as quickly as possible continues to rage over whether or not to hold a full trial with witnesses called by both sides or a pro forma process that takes the reports offered by the House Judiciary Committee and simply votes up or down on whether to convict. The president signaled on Friday that he was open to either approach but reports keep surfacing that he wants to put on a big show and leading Senate Republicans are having a hard time talking him out of it.

I suspect that Graham and McConnell have cooked up a deal with Trump for the perfunctory proceeding and a quick acquittal, with the promise that they will pursue the Ukraine charges against Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the Senate after the trial is over. Graham has been promising investigations ever since he took the gavel in January, but hasn’t managed to get any of it done yet.

Trump may hold him to his latest promise. He might agree to a short trial, but he wants his pound of flesh. So does his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the former hero of 9/11 who is now staring down the barrel of a federal indictment.

Giuliani just returned from Ukraine where he’s been “gathering evidence” on a couple of brand new scandals allegedly involving Adam Schiff, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. He’s been tweeting about some of it and it all sounds absolutely bonkers.

Giuliani has met with the president to tell him all about this stuff and you can be sure that, acquittal or not, Trump will not let it go.

Graham told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found, I’ll be glad to talk to you. We can look at what Rudy’s got on Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and anything else you want to look at after impeachment. But if Rudy wants to come to the Judiciary Committee and testify about what he found, he’s welcome to do so.”

After that we’ll have Bill Barr’s extravaganza starring his hand-picked special counsel, John Durham next summer., just in time for the conventions. And who knows what Trump’s foreign friends have on tap?

It’s clear that impeachment is just a bump in the road for Trump and the Republicans. Once it’s over, they plan to continue with the lies and smears and betrayals without even taking a breath. The main lesson they have learned from his leadership is that it’s a waste of time to even pretend to care about the rule of law or the Constitution unless it serves their partisan political needs. That ugly genie is out of the bottle now, and I don’t know what it will take to put it back in.

Heather Digby Parton, also known as “Digby,” is a contributing writer to Salon. She was the winner of the 2014 Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.

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an 1219

lindsey Graham explodes in anger — demands to know why FBI ‘didn’t tell Trump’ his campaign was under investigation

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham exploded in anger as he questioned Inspector General Michael Horowitz, demanding to know why the FBI did not notify then-candidate Donald Trump about the investigation into his campaign.

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russia timeline july 16, 2018

https://www.newsandguts.com/trump-russia/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/impeachment-endgame-buckle-up-its-gonna-get-uglier/

no lnx

...So it looks like it’s going to be up to Republican members on the committee to make his case for him. Judging from what we’ve heard from various prominent Republicans over the weekend, we can expect that this next phase will see a ratcheting up of resistance to the proceedings and more antics from the backbenchers on the Judiciary Committee. They have some real characters who are ready to turn this into a wild and crazy trip down the rabbit hole.

We don’t yet know how Nadler plans to run the hearings but I think everyone hopes he follows Schiff’s example. A draft of possible impeachment proceedings from September indicates that Nadler plans to allow committee staffers “designated by the chairman and ranking member” to “ask questions of witnesses for a total of one hour, equally divided across the parties (in addition to the normal questions from members),” so it’s likely that the hearings will at least have an hour or so of meaningful exchanges.

But that’s going to be tough. This committee is one of the most rancorous in the House and it has twice as many members as the Intelligence Committee. Many of them are showboating egomaniacs on a good day. Both Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, who were highly combative during the Intelligence Committee hearings, also sit on Judiciary, so we can expect more of their red-meat performances. And we can be sure that Trump’s most loyal guard dog, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, along with borderline crackpot Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, will be looking for ways to upend the proceedings.

As Judiciary member Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Fox News on Sunday, “it’s a bunch of brawlers sometimes on the Judiciary Committee, so it should get pretty hot and under the collar as we go along. I don’t think things have been done the way they’ve been done in the past, Mike, and so it causes some rancor and it should be pretty — much more feisty, I would say than the Intel Committee was.”

Nadler has his hands full, to say the least. But if anyone thinks that the circus atmosphere will be over once the House votes on impeachment and it moves to the more staid and dignified Senate, they should think again. Republican senators are behaving little better than Gaetz and Gohmert.Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has vowed to call Hunter Biden to testify on the premise that “we’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated.” (Which must have made Bill Clinton shake his head in wonderment, considering that Graham was one of the House managers of his impeachment trial.)

But Graham has to battle another Southern senator for the role of most outrageous Trump defender. That would be Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who has been currying favor with Trump by appearing on the Sunday shows making rash claims about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

Ben Rhodes

@brhodes

Republicans literally spreading Russian disinformation manufactured on some troll farm. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1201183435554992129 …

Aaron Rupar

@atrupar

.@SenJohnKennedy: Dr Hill is entitled to her opinion

TODD: When does opinion become fact?

K: I believe reports Poroshenko worked for Clinton

T: My goodness, you just did exactly what the Russian op is trying to get Americans to do! Are you worried you've been duped?

K: No.

Embedded video

This is crazy talk, but it’s very likely where the impeachment process is headed both in the House and the Senate. The most sober and dignified part of the process is probably behind us, unfortunately.

Heather Digby

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see bak

How Lindsey Graham Went From Trump Skeptic to Trump ...

https://www.nytimes.com › 2019/02/25 › magazine › lindsey-graham-what-...

Feb 25, 2019 - For those of you playing along at home, Lindsey Olin Graham grew up .... in which Graham called the future president a “kook,” “crazy” and ... re-elected to a fourth Senate term in South Carolina, where Trump .... He's misjudging Putin. ..... “Meet the Press,” there is a framed photo of McCain and Graham ...

an 1119

Lindsey Graham just gave Trump what he wanted all along: An investigation into Biden Cody

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omg ct packing #1 guy

One of Trump’s worst judicial nominees yet, Steven Menashi, was just voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a straight party-line vote.

What’s worse,Judiciary Committee Chair– and infamous Trump lackey – Lindsey Graham rammed Menashi through committee right on the heels of a New York Times report that, when he was serving as Sec. Betsy DeVos’s right-hand man at the Dept. of Education, Menashi helped construct an elaborate and ILLEGAL scheme to deny debt relief for thousands of students swindled by a for-profit college!

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/dont-sleep-on-the-gop-strategy-republican-attacks-on-impeachment-process-have-a-clear-goal-in-mind/

no lnx

Don’t sleep on the GOP strategy: Republican attacks on impeachment ‘process’ have a clear goal in mind

Written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon October 28, 2019

President Trump left the safe bubble of his properties and his rallies to venture out into a world where people don’t cheer ecstatically whenever he appears. He attended the fifth game of the World Series on Sunday night at Nationals Park in Washington, and was lustily booed by the crowd, some of whom also held up impeachment banners and chanted “Lock him up.” Trump is not used to that sort of thing and he had a hard time hiding his discomfort.

Look how Trump’s face changes when he realizes an entire stadium is booing him pic.twitter.com/E46rzbzmbl

— Arlen Parsa (@arlenparsa) October 28, 2019

He probably thought he was going to be received as a hero since earlier in the day he’d announced that U.S. Special Forces had staged a raid in Syria that led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. (Who has been declared dead several times before, to be fair.) No doubt he was gravely disappointed to turn on the TV and see that the impeachment inquiry that is bedeviling him remains at the top of the news. If he had it in his head that wagging the (“beautiful, talented”) dog would tamp down impeachment talk, by the time he got into his jammies on Sunday night he must have realized that it didn’t work.

Last week we saw the absurd protest staged by Trump’s favorite court jester, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and several dozen other GOP members of Congress who stormed the secure facility where witness depositions are taken in private session. They made a big show of claiming that the process is being used improperly by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif,, because Republicans like Gaetz are not allowed in the room to ask questions and transcripts are not being released to the public.

This is ridiculous, of course, since all members of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, of both parties, are allowed to participate and ask questions. According to the Washington Post, Republicans, led by Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., have been quite active during these long depositions. Mostly they seem to be trying to find out the name of the CIA whistleblower, and to further conspiracy theories about Ukraine supposedly working with Hillary Clinton to sabotage Trump in the 2016 election. They also want to know if these witnesses are loyal to Trump because, as we know, anyone who fails to declare fealty to him cannot be trusted to tell the truth. With his usual dignity and grace, Trump recently suggested that at least some of these witnesses were “human scum.”

Meanwhile, we had Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., fatuously declaring that the impeachment inquiry is unfair and offering a resolution to condemn it in the Senate. That was a meaningless gesture, more or less designed as a test vote to reassure the president that he doesn’t have to worry about being convicted in an impeachment trial. As of Sunday, only three Senate Republicans had failed to sign on.

But some of them have gone even further, such as Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he believes Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi want to give Trump “a fair and impartial firing squad.” (Kennedy sees himself as a clever and colorful character.)

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas just went for it:

What if, just what if, the Obama administration, including the leadership of the Justice Department and FBI unlawfully coordinated with the DNC and the Clinton campaign to “go after” an opposing presidential campaign? No problemo?

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) October 25, 2019

That’s odd, considering that Cornyn signed the recent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence findings confirming that Russia was behind the 2016 election interference. So he knows better. But he’s up for re-election in Texas next year and is playing to the big rube in the White House, who was no doubt pleased.

new denounced trump on abandon kurds; he met them? xian?

but then...

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule

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Bill Barr’s alternate universe ‘investigation’ has a goal: Right-wing authoritarian rule

Written by Heather DigbyParton October 25, 2019

Students of the modern conservative movement often date the recent supercharged radicalization of the Republican Party to the rise of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution in the early 1990s. It’s true that the GOP went seriously off the rails during that period and the craziness has been picking up speed ever since. But in reality, the conservative movement has been radical from its beginnings, starting with the anti-communist crusade after World War II all the way through Goldwater to Reagan, Gingrich and now Trump. Now it has finally shed all trappings of a sophisticated political ideology, culminating in this surreal parody of a presidency in 2019. The conservative “three legged stool” of small government, traditional values and global military leadership has completely disintegrated.

But one aspect of that earlier conservative movement has continued to chug along with its long-term project to transform the U.S. into an undemocratic, quasi-authoritarian plutocracy. That would be the group of far-right lawyers who started the Federalist Society,with the goal of packing the judiciary with true believers, along with a certain group of Reagan-era legal wunderkinds who came to believe that the GOP could dominate the presidency for decades to come. They developed the theory of the “unitary executive,” originally advanced by Reagan’s odious attorney general Ed Meese ( recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom)which holds that massive, unaccountable power is vested in the president of the United States.

Attorney General William Barr was one of those lawyers, along with White House counsel Pat Cipollone, former appeals court judge Michael Luttig and others who encouraged Barr to take the job, particularly after his famous memo declaring that what any normal person would see as obstruction of justice doesn’t apply to the president. (In a nutshell, Barr agrees with former President Richard Nixon, who said, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”)

Barr is described as supremely confident in his beliefs, which is to say that his overweening arrogance is not an act put on someone who is overcompensating to hide insecurity. He believes in this theory and when it became obvious that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was not long for the job, Barr and his legal cabal appear to have seen the clueless and corrupt Donald Trump as a perfect instrument to test their theory, and perhaps set legal precedents that would enable future right-wing presidents to use the full power of the presidency to dominate American politics without regard to democratic norms or congressional checks and balances.Indeed, they had been setting the stage for such a man for decades.

It’s also obviously the case that Barr, and perhaps his Reaganite cronies as well, are suffering from the malady known as Fox News Brain Rot, the symptoms of which are an extreme susceptibility to absurd right-wing conspiracy theories and an inability to believe anything that contradicts them. (Barr once said that there was more evidence for the bogus Uranium One charges than the Russian interference in the 2016 election, which confirms the diagnosis.)

That is the toxic combination of views has the Attorney General of the United States running all over the world seeking evidence to back up a ridiculous conspiracy theory in which Ukraine, the “deep state,” the Intelligence agencies of Italy, the U.K. and Australia, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee all conspired to frame Russia and Donald Trump in the 2016 election. They call this an investigation into the “origins” of the Russia investigation, which is also being handled by the Department of Justice’s inspector general and special counsel John Durham, appointed by Barr.

Barr’s personal intervention is outside the boundaries of the normal procedures, but that is yet another example of his “unitary executive” theory: He works for the president and the president has the power to assign him to any task, including being an international man of mystery. So far, Barr appears to be coming up goose eggs with the foreign intelligence services. The Wall Street Journal reported that he is “sparking discord in several foreign capitals, going outside usual channels to seek help from allies in reviewing the origins of a U.S. counterintelligence investigation begun during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

On Thursday night the Times set the political world aflame with a report that Durham has officially opened a criminal investigation into the matter.No one is sure what basis there is for this, but reports over the past week or so suggest Durham’s team is focusing intently on the people Donald Trump often rails against in his public statements, including former FBI agent Peter Strzok and possibly high-level intelligence community personnel such as former CIA chief John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper.

The timing of the story is obviously designed to counter the very bad news coming out of the House impeachment investigation in the House on a daily basis. This isn’t surprising. We’ve been expecting that Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., would hold parallel hearings into the origins of the Russia investigation, as promised. Graham is now balking because the Senate rules would require that he allow Democratic participation. (The fact that the Senate Intelligence Committee has released two substantial reports on the 2016 election, making clear that they came to the same conclusions as the FBI and the intelligence community regarding Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, also complicates matters for him.)

So Graham has been reduced to introducing a meaningless resolution saying that the House is being unfair, obviously hoping to appease Trump and keep his homegrown followers happy. According to the Daily Beast, it’s not working. In fact, TrumpWorld wants Graham to call House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff to testify before Graham’s Senate committee, which would be a serious violation of congressional norms. He seems reluctant for the moment, but who knows what he’ll be willing to do as time goes on?

So for the moment the task of bringing the Fox News alternate-universe conspiracy theory to the mainstream falls to Barr and Durham. They have both reportedly been to Ukraine in recent weeks, presumably searching for that elusive “DNC server” that Trump constantly babbles about. Maybe they will manage to delight the Trump base by trying to prosecute some FBI and CIA personnel. Barr seems willing to push the boundaries beyond anything we could have imagined, so that’s not as outrageous as it sounds.

The only remedy for this is for Congress to reassert its own prerogatives and impeach the president and, if necessary, his henchmen. If they fail to hold him accountable for the vast abuse of power and corruption of his office, the precedents will be set and the “unitary executive” will become the working model for all Republican presidents, just as Barr intends. The next one will no doubt be more efficient at using it than Donald Trump.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/lindsey-graham-turns-on-trump-over-syria-withdrawal-isis-is-not-defeated-this-is-the-biggest-lie-being-told-by-this-administration/

graham (R-SC) took to Fox News on Monday morning to harshly criticize President Donald Trump’s decisions to pull U.S. military forces out of Syria putting America’s Kurdish allies at risk of being slaughtered by Turkish forces.

Graham began by making a statement on Twitter, writing, “I don’t know all the details regarding President Trump’s decision in northern Syria. In process of setting up phone call with Secretary Pompeo. If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making, ” before adding, “Also, if this plan goes forward will introduce Senate resolution opposing and asking for reversal of this decision. Expect it will receive strong bipartisan support...

beware wishful think. break w/ djt //

1019

What a disaster’: Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade battles his co-hosts after they defend Trump’s decision to ‘abandon our allies’ in Syria

Brian Kilmeade, a co-host of “Fox & Friends,” on Monday…

And then, finally, perhaps most importantly, Koch has built a nationwide activist network called Americans for Prosperity. And what this is is a boots-on-the-ground operation. So, Americans for Prosperity has chapters around the country. They can activate people to go knock on doors, take petitions. They will charter busesfrom West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, you name it. They will get buses of angry voters[pseudo-populist trigger anti-gubmint] to come to Washington, D.C., and then go visit congressional offices that have been specifically identified by that big corporate lobbying shop we talked about, where they can pressure lawmakers.

And Koch put this political machine into full force in 2009 and 2010, when it looked like the United States was going to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for the first time. You know, back then, there really was bipartisan support to do something on climate change. The Republican, John McCain,ran on doing something about climate change. But Koch Industries intervened, and, I think more than even Exxon or other companies, it sort of — it politicized this issue of climate change. And Koch went after any moderate Republicans who acknowledged that climate change was real, who supported any effort to put a price on carbon. And Koch helped to drive those people out of office. So it played a vitally important role in making it clear to Republicans that they could not support any effort on climate change.

AMY GOODMAN: The Kochtopus? Elaborate further.

CHRISTOPHER LEONARD: The Kochtopus, here’s a great example. In 2009, when we were debating climate change, my book shows that Koch secretly funded a think tank report from this group called the American Council [for] Capital Formation. And this report said that if we regulate climate change, it will be a disaster for the American economy. Then another Koch-funded think tank called the American Energy Alliance took the findings from that report, made political ads and targeted those ads at Republican politicians, like Lindsey Graham, who supported climate change legislation, so now Lindsey Graham has got these horrible campaign spots running back home. And then the corporate lobbyists from Koch will be visiting the offices of Lindsey Graham and explaining why they can’t support climate change bill.

719

. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) raised more money in this year’s second fundraising quarter than he, or any other GOP Senate candidate in South Carolina, ever has before in the same time frame. Nearly 550 South Carolina donors, contributed more than $264,000 — or 14%. **Read More**

‘Full-on Klan’: Internet stomps Lindsey Graham for backing Trump’s racism and calling Democratic congresswomen ‘anti-America’

Tom Boggioni / Raw StoryJuly 15, 2019

Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to have it both ways while Trump’s racist comments about four Democratic lawmakers who the president thinks should go back where they came from.

===

new

Senator Lindsey Graham Betrays Congress Over the Wall - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/lindsey-graham-wall/581500/

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Instead of protecting Congress's power, is urging Trump to undermine it in his pursuit of a wall.Jan 29, 2019 - Lindsey Graham

Missing: ‎| ‎Must include: ‎sourcewatchsourcewatch

How Lindsey Graham Went From Trump Skeptic to Trump Sidekick ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/25/.../lindsey-graham-what-happened-trump.html

Feb 25, 2019 - As the luncheon dishes were placed down, the master of ceremonies kicked off a boisterous round of Lindsey Graham trivia. “What is the ...

Missing: sourcewatch ‎| ‎Must include: ‎sourcewatch

===

2007

https://www.prwatch.org/news/2007/07/6262/bushs-pro-war-front-group-vets-freedom-rallies-republican-senators

Bush's Pro-War Front Group, 'Vets for Freedom', Rallies with Republican Senators

Submitted by John Stauber on July 17, 2007 - 10:28am

Vets for Freedom (VFF), the well-funded pro-war lobby group, is cranking-up its PR campaign on behalf of President Bush's war in Iraq with a news conference held July 17th in the US Capitol. A slate of pro-war Republican Senators including Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham, along with former Democratic (now independent) Senator Joe Lieberman, all participated with Pete Hegseth and other VFF lobbyists.

In June 2006, I reported that:

Citizen journalists on SourceWatch have been investigating and exposing the many Republican connections and the partisan pro-war political agenda behind Vets for Freedom,

a new organization with mysterious funding and a flashy website designed by Campaign Solutions, part of the Donatelli Group. Vets for Freedom's hollow claim of "non-partisanship" took another blow Sunday, June 25, when the Buffalo News published a front page story by Jerry Zremski, their Washington correspondent, linking Vets for Freedom to the Bush White House.

Describing Vets for Freedom as a "pro-war group with deep Republican ties," the Buffalo News revealed that Taylor Gross, who until last year worked as a spokesman for President Bush under White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, is conducting PR work for Veterans for Freedom. Gross attempted to convince the Buffalo News and other papers that two decorated military veterans with the group, Wade Zirkle and David Bellavia, could report cheaply for the newspapers from Iraq while embedded with the US military.

VFF is today a powerful, well-funded pro-war lobby, essentially a front group for Bush policies in Iraq that is often treated with kid gloves by reporters unfamiliar with its funding and connections, journalists who often depict the lobby group as simply another military veterans organization. In fact, the group's sole mission is to lobby on behalf of Bush's global war on terror.

Republican funders and PR experts have created and bankrolled astroturf pro-war groups including Vets for Freedom and Move America Forward. However, there is a genuine grassroots movement of Iraq war veterans, but it doesn't have the budget or political backing of pro-war lobby groups like VFF, and it is truly non-partisan, criticizing both Republicans and Democrats for failing to end the US occupation of Iraq.

The group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was begun by current and former soldiers putting themselves on the line, speaking out, blogging, demonstrating (often in uniform), and rallying to stop the war.

On Sunday, July 15 the New York Times reported on page one regarding the growing opposition of soldiers and their families to the war, noting that:

Iraq Veterans Against the War, started in July 2004, has grown to 500 members, with 100 joining in the past two months. The Appeal for Redress Project, which since last September has been advising active duty military members and reservists on how to write to their representatives in Congress expressing their opposition to the war, has about 2,000 members, almost half of whom have joined in the past six months.

No wonder the pro-war Republicans are cranking-up their PR machine and holding news conferences with Vets for Freedom. The real story is that, as in Vietnam, the troops themselves are taking charge and moving out, leading the ever growing, majority opposition to the war in Iraq.

BAK

primary on brett k, evil pending, many tags 9/18

abandon principle and went far right, once briefly tri-lat climate bill

capt 916

never trumper?

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/hawks-pushing-trump-toward-war-can-it-be-stopped/

digby AN no lnx twt

right and early Thursday morning, President Trump angrily declared on Twitter: “Iran made a very big mistake!” He had obviously heard the news that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had shot down a very expensive American unmanned drone over international waters. (You know how he feels about money.) It was obviously some kind of threat but not too much later he met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and told the assembled press corps that he had “a feeling … that it was a mistake made by somebody,” giving the impression that he either knew this wasn’t an act ordered by the top Iranian brass or was just trying to offer them a way out.

Later in the evening, this happened:

Peter Baker

@peterbakernyt

Trump approved a strike on Iran to be launched tonight in retaliation for drone shutdown but then abruptly changed his mind and pulled back. @shearm @EricSchmittNYT @michaelcrowley @maggieNYT https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/20/world/middleeast/iran-us-drone.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage …

“Let’s see what happens,” President Trump said Thursday after Iran shot down an American surveillance drone.

Trump Approves Strikes on Iran, but Then Abruptly Pulls Back

Military and diplomatic officials still expected a strike as of 7 p.m. Thursday in retaliation for Iran shooting down an unmanned American drone.

nytimes.com

Peter Baker

@peterbakernyt

As late as 7 p.m., military and diplomatic officials were expecting the strike. The president had approved attacks on a handful of Iranian targets, like radar and missile batteries. But then he pulled back, at least for now.

According to the New York Times, the operation was already underway with planes in the air and ships in position to fire missiles just before dawn on Friday. As of this writing nobody seems sure what prompted Trump to pull back when he did. There’s no word on whether or not it was due to a change in the situation or simply another of his impulsive actions. The fact that the news media found out about it so quickly argues for the latter. People don’t leak something like that unless they are shocked by what went down.

Considering Trump’s behavior on Thursday, it’s possible he is simply playing out some elaborate “Madman” kabuki. But I’m afraid it’s even more likely that he was watching Tucker Carlson, who argued on his Fox News show that war with Iran wouldn’t be popular with the Republican base. (If so: Thank you, Tucker.)

Whatever the case, we very nearly went to war on Thursday night. And yes, this is 100% Trump’s fault. He and his team have been putting what they call “maximum pressure” on Iran and this is the result. Evidently, Trump thought the Iranians would immediately start sending him “beautiful letters” but they are trying a different tack.

You’ll recall that during the early months of the 2016 campaign, when asked about the Iran deal, Trump told “Meet the Press” that he expected Iran to get nuclear weapons and bring on a nuclear holocaust. He nonetheless said he wouldn’t violate the non-proliferation agreement because “it’s very hard to say, ‘We’re ripping it up.’” As the campaign unfolded he changed his mind but until he fired former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and hired John Bolton, the most fanatical anti-Iran hawk in America, he had been persuaded to stick with the nuclear deal.

When Bolton joined the team, the agreement was quickly abrogated and the inevitable escalation began. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was able to keep Bolton on a short leash for a while but when fellow Iran hawk Mike Pompeo became secretary of state and Mattis resigned (to be replaced by a player to be named later) all bets were off.

Ever since, the administration has been more and more provocative, hitting Iran with crippling sanctions, designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization (against the advice of the State Department) and letting Bolton run his mouth with ever more belligerent rhetoric, daring the Iranians to respond. Meanwhile, Trump dithers,pretending that his inability to understand the situation or make a decision is actually a conscious strategy of being “unpredictable.”

Trump’s credibility is nonexistent around the globe so nobody believes him no matter what he says. Russia, North Korea, China and Iran are all starting to circle, flex their muscles and poke at the beast to see what it will do. And here we are.

Jacob Heilbrun, writing in the Spectator USA, points out that Trump really doesn’t want war with Iran but observes that he’s unknowingly assembled a war Cabinet:

If Trump stumbled into war, he would resemble Kaiser Wilhelm during World War I, who backed Austria, only to be sidelined by his generals once the conflict began.Trump would be utterly at sea in trying to preside over a war in the Persian Gulf that could easily spiral out of control. If Trump can’t even appoint a permanent defense secretary, why would anyone imagine he has the competence to conduct a war against Tehran?

It’s very unclear if his war hawks are any more competent than he is. Heilbrun notes that Pompeo has even been advancing “loopy theories, reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration’s folderol on the eve of the second Gulf War, that the Iranians are in cahoots with al-Qaeda.”

In response to that fatuous argument, which was clearly designed to make the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al-Qaida apply to these planned military strikes, the House voted to end the AUMF. (That legislation will die in the Senate, of course.) But Pompeo should have checked with the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Attorney General William Barr, who would have told him there’s never any need for congressional authorization for military action. That’s what he told President George H.W. Bush when he was contemplating launching the first Gulf War. (In Bush’s defense, he didn’t buy it, asked the Congress and the UN for a vote and pulled together a global coalition.)

As many of you no doubt remember, back during the crazed days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, these arguments were flying all over the place. George W. Bush got a vote in Congress with no problem but couldn’t get global buy-in because his rationale for invading Iraq was nonsensical and everyone knew it. It was well known that certain hard-right war hawks were hoping that it would be just the first step. As Paul Krugman noted at the time:

It’s a matter of public record that thiswar with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek:”Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran.” In February 2003, according to Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper,Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would ”deal with” Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Remember, allegedly reluctant warrior Donald Trump is the one who hired that guy to be his national security adviser. He also hired Pompeo. And he is almost certainly listening to his good buddy,Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who’s been advising him that he needs to get “points on the board,” meaning he must use military force somewhere in order to be taken seriously. (Graham was pushing for a Venezuela invasion, but Trump has lost interest in that one, so Iran will have to do.)

I suspect that argument carries some weight. But Trump really only cares about one thing: re-election. If they want to convince him to let the bombs fly to prove he’s got brass, his hawks are going to have to convince him that his base will love it. They will, of course. They are America’s most fervent supporters of military action and if Trump does it they’ll love him all the more.

Shh. Don’t anybody tell him about Republican voters’ love of war. His ignorance of that fact is the only thing keeping the peace.

===

see distraction

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/trio-of-republican-senators-demand-doj-hand-over-information-on-clinton-email-probe-as-ag-barr-prepares-for-release-of-redacted-mueller-report/

As Attorney General William Barr prepares the release of a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is reportedly recruiting other Republican senators help with a separate endeavor. As MSNBC reports, “a trio of top Republican senators” are demanding the Justice Department “hand over information on the handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.”

Graham, along with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Barr on Tuesday requesting documents pertaining to the department’s investigation of the former secretary of state.

The document request comes despite federal investigators clearing Clinton of criminal wrongdoing, and a separate Justice Department inspector general examination that reviewed the department’s probe. According to Politico, the trio of senators have requested a “classified briefing on steps the Justice Department plans to take in light of its inspector general’s 2018 report,” according to Politico.

“Now that the Special Counsel’s investigation has concluded, we are unaware of any legitimate basis upon which the Department can refuse to answer the Judiciary Committee’s inquiries,” Graham, Johnson and Grassley — who chair the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and Senate Finance Committee, respectively — wrote in their letter to Barr.

The lawmakers also claimed a portion of the inspector general’s report “raises significant issues associated with the FBI’s failure to review certain highly classified information in support of its Midyear investigation.”

As Politico notes, Graham has likewise pledged to investigate whether the DOJ and FBI attempted to influence the 2016 to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

dmn no lnx chart

GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia

FILED UNDERCOMMENTARY AT AUG 2017 SHARE

Profile image for Ruth May

Ruth May, Contributor

Connect with Ruth May Email

Editor's note: Ruth May wrote this column in August 2017. Click here for an extensive update.

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

How Putin's proxies helped funnel millions into GOP campaigns

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.

How some evangelical Christians are complicit in the cruelty of politics

Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.

Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.

Cyprus is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump

Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.

Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.

Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.

VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.

Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower. Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.

Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay

CORRECTION, 12:11 p.m., August 7: The headline on an earlier version of this column incorrectly said Blavatnik is Russian. He was born in Urkraine during the Soviet era.

An earlier version of this column used the name Leonid "Len" Blavatnik. He changed his first name to Leonard.

The column has also been updated to remove language describing the online presentation of a press release about Blavatnik resigning from the RUSAL board because it lacked context.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/lindsey-grahams-shameful-descent-how-a-maverick-turned-into-a-trump-sycophant/

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Lindsey Graham’s shameful descent: How a maverick turned into a Trump sycophant

Lindsey Graham’s shameful descent: How a maverick turned into a Trump sycophant

written by Heather Digby Parton / Salon February 1, 2019

Once John McCain's BFF and a harsh Trump critic, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair now wants to pursue Hillary.

Two new TrumpWorld books were published this week, one by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the other by an unknown former White House staffer by the name of Cliff Sims. The only interesting parts of Christie’s book concern his thirst for revenge against Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a beef that goes back years to when Christie put Kushner’s father in prison for a sordid blackmail and fraud scheme. The other book, however, is a bit more revealing. Sims was on the campaign and then spent 15 months in the White House as a trusted Trump confidant. He took notes.

Sims appeared on the “Late Show” with Steven Colbert and made a comment that struck me as particularly observant:

“One of the things I try to do in this book is help people understand what makes Donald Trump tick. And one thing that never goes out of style in the Trump White House is someone who’s willing to go on TV and just fight it out with somebody. He knows [Kellyanne Conway] will go out there on any show and defend him.”

“So private loyalty doesn’t matter, but public loyalty on television is more important?” Colbert asked.

Sims replied, “I think there’s no doubt that public loyalty to the president is of utmost importance to him.”

The comment made me think about the weird dynamic between Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of Trump’s fiercest defenders these days. Everyone knows it wasn’t always that way. Back during the campaign, when Graham was running against Trump, and for some time afterward (when Graham dropped out but supported Jeb Bush), he was scathing in his assessment.

Graham called Trump a kook and a race-baiting bigot, among other things. According to this New York magazine profile by Lisa Miller, during the transition, Graham and his mentor, the late Sen. John McCain, plotted to lead a “brave Republican resistance.” But McCain became terminally ill and Graham opportunistically shifted his loyalty to the president.

Miller writes that it all happened over lunch one day when “Graham and Trump discovered their mutual love for bro-ish trash talk and golf.” She quotes a friend saying that Graham sees himself as the adult in the room and that “there’s something about, I’m not going to say innocence, but the president’s affability as well as his naïveté that Lindsey is drawn to.”

In other words, Graham thinks he’s able to manipulate Trump into doing his bidding. Indeed, according to a friend who knew Graham’s thinking, he literally made that cynical calculation:

Graham understood that “all Trump really cares about is being celebrated,” this person said. By genuflecting to Trump, Graham could seem to be in collaboration with him — the impression probably most important to the president — and “move mountains behind closed doors.”

Whether Graham “moves mountains” is debatable but I think that strategy has been obvious for a while. What’s interesting to me is how he’s going about it. Someone who has the president’s ear is in a powerful position, and today Graham is closer to Trump than any other senator. This scene was memorialized on Twitter just this week:

Benny

@bennyjohnson

Had dinner next to President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin & his COS.

Their table had a lively conversation.

Lindsey spoke on his flip phone a lot.

Trump had shrimp, French fries & steak (well-done) & Diet Coke

?? ?? ??

4,567

5:55 PM - Jan 28, 2019

2,314 people are talking about this

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Graham has betrayed his alleged principles and maverick reputation across the board, even as he makes half-hearted efforts to present himself to the press as an independent thinker who breaks with the president when he disagrees with him. He often falls back on his traditional conservative hawk credentials on foreign policy, coming before the cameras and sighing deeply when Trump makes one of his impulsive, ill-informed national security decisions which the GOP establishment perceives as a bridge too far. Graham will say he thinks it’s a mistake and promises to talk to the president about it. Once in a while he’ll feel compelled to weakly criticize Trump’s crude behavior or blatant racism.

As Cliff Sims pointed out in that interview, that’s obviously not something Trump ever wants to hear. He wants people to publicly defend him, no matter what. So Graham is walking a fine line and has to go beyond flattery to stay in the president’s good graces. It appears he’s discovered the best way to do that is to become a vicious, conspiracy-mongering attack dog. Trump will forgive almost anything if someone goes after his enemies with the same fervor he does.

We all watched Graham turn into a feral animal during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings and he has frequently appeared on Trump’s favorite shows, “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity,” performing for an audience of one and warning the Democrats that he’s coming for them:

You know, to my Democratic friends, if you want to look backwards, we are all going to look backwards. I want to know why the FBI reached the conclusion, along with the Department of Justice, that Hillary Clinton didn’t commit a crime. Was it because of political bias? … I intend to look at it. I’m going to look at it. If you are going to keep plowing everything up in 2016, count me in. If you want to look for it, I will look for it.

From his position as chair of the Judiciary Committee, Graham has the ability to deliver some real red meat to the president and his followers. Last week Igor Derysh reported for Salon on Graham’s plans to investigate Hillary Clinton, something I’ve been predicting for more than a year. All you have to do is watch Fox News for any 10-minute interval and you’ll see that their Clinton obsession burns even hotter than it did in 2016. Now Graham is prepared to throw fuel on the fire.

This week in the latest episode of phony handwringing from the newly anointed civil libertarians of the Republican Party, they are all bellowing about how the FBI treated the self-aggrandizing dirty trickster Roger Stone — which was the same way it would treat any other accused criminal. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said the FBI had staged “what was, in effect, a military assault on Roger Stone.” Andrew Napolitano lamented, “This is jackboots in America, and there is no place for that in American life!”

Here’s onetime Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, rending his garments over the inhumanity of it all, and being schooled by journalist Radley Balko, an expert on militarized law enforcement excesses:

Radley Balko

@radleybalko

Arpaio once sent 40 SWAT cops, a bomb robot, K9 units, and Steven Seagal to arrest a man suspected of cockfighting. Seagal drove an APC into the man's living room. They destroyed the guy's house with explosives, then filmed it all for a reality TV show. https://twitter.com/RealSheriffJoe/status/1090314139451285504 …

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

@RealSheriffJoe

Sheriff Joe on FBI's Roger Stone Raid: Ive Been Busting Down Doors for 50 Years &; Ive Never Sent That Many Units to the Baddest Murderer https://www.westernjournal.com/sheriff-joe-fbis-roger-stone-raid-busting-doors-50-years-never-sent-many-units-baddest-murderer/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons …

33.5K

2:03 PM - Jan 29, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

13.2K people are talking about this

Yes, the people who gleefully shout “Lock her up!” are suddenly very concerned about due process.

And Lindsey Graham, the man who has previously argued that the government should be able to imprison people for life without trial, has dutifully joined the chorus, using his powerful chairmanship to demand that the FBI explain itself.

Donald Trump is no doubt very pleased to see Graham sticking up for his friend and going after his enemies publicly on TV. But a word of caution: Graham’s ego is getting pretty inflated and he might just slip up and forget who’s the leader and who’s the sycophant. There is a long line of discarded toadies in Trump’s wake.

Of course, if that happens Graham can always write a book.

PO'd on no cia testimony?

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/lindsey-graham-openly-admits-he-will-let-trump-officials-get-away-blatant

Lindsey Graham has dedicated himself to finding who he believes are the real villains uncovered during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings -- the Democrats.

On ABC news' "This Week," Graham continued his defiant response presented during the hearing, vowing to "do a wholesale, full scale investigation of what I think was a despicable process to deter it from happening again."

Said Graham, "The FBI will do a supplemental background investigation, then I'm going to call for an investigation of what happened in this committee. Who betrayed Dr. Ford's trust? Who in Feinstein's office recommended Katz as a lawyer? Why did Ms. Ford not know that the committee was willing to go to California?"

Graham has also suggested that there is no need for the FBI to do any sort of investigation into Brett Kavanaugh, disputing host George Stephanopoulos on the relevancy of looking into witnesses who may contradict his testimony.

"He's had six FBI background checks. He's been on the political stage for 26 years. He's not a stumbling, bumbling drunk," said Graham. "I don't believe that he could have accomplished what he's accomplished to have been a serial rapist in high school and stop it for the rest of your life"

Graham contends that the allegations against Kavanaugh are political in nature.

"All I can tell you is it came from somebody with a political motive. There were three people who had the letter, people in Feinstein's office, the congresswoman from California, and Ms. Katz and the legal team," said Graham. "No friend would do this to Dr. Ford. I believe her when she said she wanted to remain anonymous."

View the full transcript.

Graham: From ‘John McCain’s Wingman to Donald Trump’s Carnival Barker’

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet

Although Graham reached a new low on September 27, this wasn’t the first time he has been over-the-top in his support of Kavanaugh and President Donald J. Trump. READ MORE»

===

Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is actively blocking his own committee’s investigation, refusing to subpoena Trump’s financial records or compel new testimony from key witnesses like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump Jr, despite new information emerging.

Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham are doing the White House’s bidding by calling for a criminal investigation -- not against those who worked with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election, but against a whistleblower who compiled a research document exposing that interference.

4 gop green sen

https://thinkprogress.org/these-4-republican-senators-are-forming-a-group-to-tackle-climate-change-dc667e9f8eb5#.lb11aa1tc

bit of a wild card? pal of kyl

~ trump and stuck to it

~ TP

tri-party climate bill?

http://grist.org/climate-energy/these-two-republican-presidential-candidates-defended-climate-science-during-debate/

http://ecowatch.com/2015/08/07/fox-debate-graham-climate-change/

Fox News Asks Sen. Graham: How Can Republicans ‘Trust’ You After Working on Climate Bill?

During yesterday’s 5 p.m. ET Fox News Republican presidential debate, moderator Bill Hemmer asked Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) how Republicans could “trust” him after his “extremely unpopular” collaboration with Democrats on a cap-and-trade bill to address climate change. Graham reportedly warned Democrats at the time that they needed to accelerate negotiations on the bill as quickly as possible, “before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process.” The network would go on to make a deliberate effort to undermine efforts to pass climate legislation.

During the debate, Hemmer asked Graham, “you worked with Democrats and President Obama when it came to climate change, something you know is extremely unpopular with conservative Republicans. How can they trust you based on that record?”

[vid]

Ryan Lizza reported in The New Yorker that during 2010 negotiations on that climate bill, Graham urged fellow senators to move quickly on legislation before Fox found out about it (emphasis added):

At a climate change conference in South Carolina on January 5, 2010, Graham started to sound a little like Al Gore. “I have come to conclude that greenhouse gases and carbon pollution” are “not a good thing,” Graham said. He insisted that nobody could convince him that “all the cars and trucks and plants that have been in existence since the Industrial Revolution, spewing out carbon day in and day out,” could be “a good thing for your children and the future of the planet.” Environmentalists swooned. “Graham was the most inspirational part of that triumvirate throughout the fall and winter,” Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said. “He was advocating for strong action on climate change from an ethical and a moral perspective.”

But, back in Washington, Graham warned Lieberman and Kerry that they needed to get as far as they could in negotiating the bill “before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process,” one of the people involved in the negotiations said. “He would say, ‘The second they focus on us, it’s gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time and it’s gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves.We have to move this along as quickly as possible.'”

Fox News hosts and guests would go on to viciously attack the bill, which never came to a vote in the Senate. Graham ultimately withdrew from the bipartisan climateefforts, subsequently claiming that he didn’t believe human-caused emissions “are contributing overwhelmingly to global climate change.”

Media Matters later obtained an email from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to Fox journalists instructing them in the midst of the 2010 climate bill debate on Capitol Hill to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without immediately pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.” Sammon has since been identified as the “secret weapon” helping Fox journalists “craft the questions” for the evening debate.

kerry-lib-lindsy g

fox story scuttled LG?

===

ecoW

Lindsey Graham probably won’t be getting any money from the billionaire Koch brothers either. He’s acknowledged that all the climate denial going on in the GOP might not be healthy for them.

“I think there will be a political problem for the Republican Party going into 2016 if we don’t define what we are for the environment,” he said late last year. “I don’t know what the environmental policy of the Republican Party is.”

As for his own position, he said he accepts that humans are driving climate change but rejects cap-and-trade as a solution and claims that Al Gore has turned it into a “religion.”

“I’m for finding oil and gas that we own,” he said on Fox News last month. “I’m for clean coal, I’m for natural gas, but I would like a lower carbon economy over time. Clean up the air and create jobs in the process.”

http://grist.org/politics/the-tea-party-cant-stand-this-presidential-hopeful/

This story was originally published byMother Jonesand is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Tea Party hates South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and the feeling is mutual. It attacked the Republican lawmaker mercilessly during his Senate reelection campaign in 2014, but Graham held his seat with 55 percent of the vote. “Kicking the crap out of the Tea Party is the most fun Senator Lindsey Graham has ever had,” wrote Molly Ball for The Atlantic last June after interviewing the South Carolina Republican on the eve of his primary election victory, when he faced six no-name challengers, one of them a Tea Party pick, in his deep red state’s Republican primary.

On June 1, Graham plans to join the crowded GOP 2016 field, according to his preannouncement on Monday. And his soon-to-be presidential campaign raises the question: How will the Graham/Tea Party feud continue?

The animosity between this three-term senator and Tea Partiers began before his 2014 reelection campaign, triggered in part by Graham’s intermittent attempts to work with Democrats in the Senate. Such moves have enraged staunch conservatives. The Greenville GOP compiled a list of 29 offensesthat they “strongly disapprove of and hold to be fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of the South Carolina Republican Party.” Right-wing blogs have nicknamedhim “Flimsy Lindsey” and“Grahmnesty” because he disagreed with his party on climate change, immigration reform, and a few other hot-button Republican issues.

Climate change triggered the first Tea Party salvos against Graham. In the fall of 2009, Tea Partiers in South Carolina and beyond bashed Graham for his support of energy legislation that aimed at reducing carbon emissions. In an editorial titled “Graham’s Dalliance WithCap-And-Trade Crowd a Bad Move,” Michael Costello of the Idaho’sLewiston Tribune wrote, “If Republicans really want to completely alienate this crowd and give birth to a third party, they should follow the lead of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). [He] has thrown his lot in with John Kerry (D-Mass) to push one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history, the carbon cap-and-trade bill.”

Soon after that, as Politico reported, the conflict between Graham and Tea Partiers “sparked a mutiny back home” in South Carolina. The Charleston County Republican Party, in a written resolution, slammed Graham for stabbing Republicans in the back and undercutting “Republican leadership and party solidarity for his own benefit.” Politico noted that “bubbling” conservative discontent blew up because of the climate change bill but was also fueled by Graham’s support for immigration reform and changes at the U.S. detention facility Guantanamo Bay. Graham, a hawk who often criticizes President Barack Obama’s national security policies, didn’t try to make peace with his conservative critics. Instead, he called detractors of immigration reform “bigots” and refused to disavow or stop his occasional bipartisan efforts.

“I’m making that a Tea Party goal to get scoundrels like Lindsey Graham out of office,” Greg Deitz, a Charleston Tea Party organizer, told *Politico*.

In 2010, about 100 Tea Party activists gathered outside Graham’s office in Greenville, S.C., to protest his support for the bipartisan climate bill. “No cap-and-trade,” they chanted. Two different countywide GOP organizations in South Carolina voted to censure Grahamnoting that “in the name of bipartisanship — [he] continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.”

Tea Party activists routinely booed him when he spoke at town hall meetings. At one gathering at the Bluffton Library in June 2010, activists in the audience interrupted Graham with angry questions and accusations when he asked what the biggest problems facing the world were. One audience member, according to the Beaufort Gazette, told Graham to “be conservative and quit reaching across the aisle.”

Graham further upset the Tea Party by meeting with Obama several times to discuss working together on various issues, such as “closing Guantánamo Bay and bringing terror suspects to justice,” according to Newsweek. Graham was a former military prosecutor who served on the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, and Joe Biden invited him over to his home for a steak dinner to discuss Afghanistan.

In July of 2010, Graham toldthe New York Times that the Tea Party would “die out” because “they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country.”

A few months later, though, Graham tried to mend a few fences. In September, during a private meeting with Tea Party organizers in North Charleston, he attempted to address Tea Partiers’ concerns. Later, he praised the movement in interviews, including one with Politico where he said Tea Partyactivists “[came] to Washington talking about reducing spending. Thank God they’re here.” He even tried to get the Senate’s two Tea Party caucus founders, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, to help him push legislation on Social Security in 2011, which would raise the retirement age to 70 and cut retirement benefits for the wealthy. By August 2011, around the second time he asked for a private meeting with local Tea Party leaders, Graham bragged to the Associated Press that his new push for fiscally conservative policies had united him with the conservative right.

The détente did not hold. When Graham was up for reelection in 2014, Tea Partiers were chomping at the bit to defeat him. The only thing they lacked was a candidate who could win in a Republican primary, where Graham needed 50 percent of the vote to avoid a run off.

“There was speculation that he would face severe Tea Party resistance,” says Robert Wislinski, a political strategist based in South Carolina. “[But] that never really materialized.” Graham raised $13 million for the primary race, and mobilized a powerful campaign. Five challengers who were seeking their first elected office, and one incumbant state senator, ran against him, but their combined campaign war chest was only about $2 million. The Republican opposition was split, and Graham’s opponents weren’t particularly well known. Nor did the opposition get any help from national Tea Party activists like Sarah Palin, who remained silent on the race. “The conservative opposition could not unify for the singular purpose of defeating Graham,” wrote the conservative blog RedState in January, and Graham won with 56 percent of the vote.

So Graham beat the Tea Party and went on to win easily the general election. But will his presidential bid give Tea Partiers another chance to cause him political pain?

So far, the Tea Party has been silent on his campaign. The South Carolina Tea Party convention did not respond to request for comment, and neither did multiple national Tea Party organizations.

Either way, Graham’s hawkish rhetoric and lack of national popularity make his chances for election pretty low. If the Tea Party has their way, those chances might be even lower.

===

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lindsey_Graham

Lindsey Olin Graham is the Senior Senator for the state of South Carolina. He is a Republican and was first elected in 2002.(map)

Contents [hide]

Record and controversies

General information about important bills and votes for can be found in Congresspedia's articles on legislation. You can add information you find on how Lindsey Graham voted by clicking the "[edit]" link to the right and typing it in. Remember to cite your sources!

Iraq War

For more information see the chart of U.S. House of Representatives votes on the Iraq War.

Graham voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 that started the Iraq War.^[1]

In February 2007, Graham called the Democrats' attempt to bring a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop "surge" in Iraq to a floor vote a “stupid political game,” said Democrats were “afraid” to vote on funding for the war.

Main article: Congressional actions regarding President Bush’s 2007 proposed troop “surge” in Iraq

Subjection of civilians to military law

In a provision earmarked to a spending bill towards the end of the 109th Congress, Graham pushed for the jurisdiction of military courts martial over U.S. civilian contractors in Iraq. The provision was introduced in order to "bring uniformity to the commander's ability to control the behavior of people representing our country." The alleged need for such a provision became apparent amidst several instances of accused U.S. civilian contractor misconduct in Iraq that went unpunished. [5]

See Congresspedia page on laws covering military contractors in Iraq.

Iran

On September 20, 2007, Sens. Joe Lieberman, Jon Kyl, Norman Coleman, and Lindsey Graham filed a "Sense of the Senate" resolution as Amendment No. 3017^[2] to the FY 2008 Defense Authorization bill "that the U.S. should 'combat, contain, and roll back' Iran’s 'violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq.' It counsels doing so 'through the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of [U.S. power], including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments.' It also urges the administration to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization."^[3]

Stepping stone to war

On 16 February 2012, Senator Graham together with Senators Robert Casey, Joe Lieberman and Richard Blumenthal, introduced Senate Resolution 380, requiring the US government to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.^[4] Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, states about this resolution:

They and the other senators have presented their proposal in a particularly deceptive fashion, asserting that they are actually supporting the White House position, which they are not. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repeated on Feb. 16 that Iran does not have and is not currently building a nuclear device. Before Christmas, he stated clearly that the “red line” for the United States is actual Iranian possession of a nuclear weapon. Even Israel’s intelligence services agree that Iran is not building a bomb. What we are seeing play out in Congress is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) position, which is that Iran has already crossed a “red line.” The AIPAC argument will no doubt be spelled out in more detail next month at the group’s annual convention in the nation’s capital, a meeting that will be addressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and will attract nearly all of Washington’s power brokers.^[5]

MJ Rosenberg, the former AIPAC staffer and current commentator, states the same thing. The resolution amounts to the first step to a US war against Iran.^[6] Rosenberg concludes:^[6]

As noble as their professed concern for Israel may be, the United States is supposed to come first for United States senators. McCain and Graham ought to be ashamed for standing in a foreign country and blatantly placing its government's interests before ours.

But, hey, it's politics, and what could be more important than nailing down support for the next election?

Environmental record

For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal

Controversy

Gang of 14- Judicial filibuster

On May 23, 2005, Graham was one of the Gang of 14 senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called "nuclear option". Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William H. Pryor, Jr.) would receive a vote by the full Senate. Despite being one of the Senate's more conservative members, he worked on the deal with seven other Democrats to prevent the "nuclear option" from occurring. This has led to anger among the GOP conservative base in his home state.

Graham has suggested that the Gang of 14 could be a valuable coaltion to pass Social Security reform. He told Chris Matthews on Hardball in May 2005, "Watch this group of 14 to come out with some deal for Social Security." Graham later "clarified that Social Security reform was not broached during the negotiations that led to the deal that forestalled the 'nuclear option.'"[6]

Guantanamo and Graham Amendment

It was Graham, the former Judge Advocate, who uncovered previously classified memos showing that military lawyers opposed as illegal the George W. Bush White House's orders to use harsh methods to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Graham's request produced the declassification and release of the memos in July 2005. One of the memoranda, authored by the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, said several of the "more extreme interrogation techniques, on their face, amount to violations of domestic criminal law" as well as military law, according to the New York Times.[7] Rives also wrote that executing the White House's orders "puts the interrogators and the chain of command at risk of criminal accusations abroad."

More recently, Graham authored an amendment to a Department of Defense Authorization Act restricting the authority of American courts to review applications of habeas corpus by "enemy combatants,"[8] effectively nullifying a June 2004 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing detainees to file habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detentions.(Read Graham's Commentary in the Washington Post ) The amendment passed by a vote of 49-42 in the Senate, sparking outrage among many human rights groups and legal scholars. ^[7]

High-profile legal scholars including Judith Resnik of Yale Law School, David Shapiro and Frank Michelman of Harvard Law School, and Burt Neuborne of New York University Law School circulated a letter describing the legislation in the starkest of terms:^[8]

"The Graham amendment embodies an effort to alter fundamental precepts of our constitutional order. It consigns the protection of fundamental human liberties to unilateral executive determination."

Terror detainee treatment legislation

In September 2006, Graham drew attention when he joined with fellow Republicans John Warner (R-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) to oppose legislation backed by the Bush Administration that would have given the government wide freedoms in the treatment, interrogation and prosecution of terror detainees. In addition, the legislation would have included a reinterpretation of the U.S. duties under the Geneva convention. The three senators proposed their own, more moderate legislation dealing with the same issue. ^[9]

On September 21, the three dissenting senators reached a compromise with the White House which included many of the provisions from the administration's initial bill, but eliminated the use of secret evidence unavailable to the defense during terror trials and any explicit reinterpretation of the Geneva Convention. ^[10]

Alito Confirmation Hearings

During the Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito for a seat on the United States Supreme Court, Graham was accused by Democrats of having coached Alito before the hearings, having sat on a "moot court" at the White House before the hearings.[9] The Village Voice went so far as to state, "Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, may very well have irreparably compromised himself." [10] According to Think Progess, a project of the American Progress Action Fund, "Coaching a judicial nominee behind-the-scenes is not the proper role for a Judiciary Committee member who must subsequently sit in judgment on that nominee," writes Think Progress, . "It could be a violation of the ethical duties of a senator." [11]

Judge rules against service as a military judge

On September 22, 2006, a military court ruled that it is unconstitutional for Graham to serve simultaneously as a military judge. The court never passed on the question of whether Sen. Graham could continue to serve as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

In a statement, the U.S. Court of Appeals said, “One of the purposes served by the separation of powers is that a military accused will not be judged by a member of Congress.” The Air Force announced that it would consider appealing the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Air Force also noted that Graham has been reassigned to a position in the Air Force Administrative Law Division of the Pentagon. [12]

Biography

Background

Graham was born July 9, 1955 in Central, South Carolina. He graduated from the University of South Carolina at Columbia with a B.A. in Psychology in 1977, and from its school of law with a J.D. in 1981. In 1988, Graham went into private law practice.[13]

Graham served in the United States Air Force (1982-88) as a lawyer, and then in the South Carolina Air National Guard and as an Air Force reservist. During the Gulf War, he was recalled to active duty, serving as a Judge Advocate at McIntire Air National Guard Station in Eastover, South Carolina, where he helped brief pilots on the law of armed conflict, prepared legal documents for deploying troops, and provided legal services for family members of the South Carolina Air National Guard. He received a commendation medal for his service at McEntire. In 2004, Graham received a promotion to Colonel in the US Air Force Reserves at a White House ceremony by President George W. Bush along with Steve Buyer, who was promoted to Colonel in the US Army Reserves. Graham is the only U.S. Senator currently serving in the Guard or Reserves. He is assigned as a Reserve Judge to the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals.[14]

In the House

In 1992, Senator Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and in 1994 to the U.S. House of Representatives. Graham, "like 32 other Republican signatories of the Contract With America, swept into Washington on the coattails of Newt Gingrich," though he later became disillusioned with Gingrich and was a key member in the 1997 efforts to oust Gingrich. [15]

Upon joining the House, Graham became a member of the powerfulJudiciary Committee. He rose to prominence during the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Graham opposed one article of impeachment in committee vote, making him the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to vote against any of the four articles.[16] In January and February of 1999, after two impeachment articles had been passed by the full House, he was one of the managers who brought the House's case to Clinton's trial in the Senate. Though the Senate did not convict Clinton, Graham became nationally known.

Graham was reelected to the House in 1996, 1998 and 2000.

Senate Career

In 2002, upon the retirement of the long-serving Senator Strom Thurmond, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Alex Sanders for Thurmond's seat.

Washington Monthly writes, "Lindsey Graham is no moderate. He came to Washington as a Newt Gingrich acolyte, served as a House manager of President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, and is pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-tax cut. According to the standard-bearing American Conservative Union, Graham has voted for the conservative position 91 percent of the time since coming to Congress in 1995, identical to the rating with which Strom Thurmond retired. Neither is Graham a maverick like John McCain " [17]

Though his stances are often conservative, he has gained a reputation for speaking out against or criticizing the party line, as well as being open to making compromises. Graham's Senate biography states, "Graham is known as a leader who never abandons his independence or strays from the conservative reform agenda. He has fought to balance the federal budget, provide tax relief to all taxpayers, keep our military adequately funded and prepared, return control of education back to parents and teachers, and ensure the government keeps its promises to America's greatest generation." [18]

Graham has recently been working on bipartisan Social Security Reform with unlikely ally, Hillary Clinton. [19]

Money in politics

This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases. cid=N00009975&cycle=2006

Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.	Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.	Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.
Fundraising profile:	2006 election cycle	Career totals
Top contributors by organization/corporation:	2006 election cycle	Career totals
Top contributors by industry:	2006 election cycle	Career totals

Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.

Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.

Links to more campaign contribution information for Lindsey Graham

from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org site.

Fundraising profile:

2006 election cycle

Career totals

Top contributors by organization/corporation:

2006 election cycle

Career totals

Top contributors by industry:

2006 election cycle

Career totals

Revolving door profile for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
2006 privately funded travel profile for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
Personal finance profile for Lindsey Graham from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.

---

FIRST ELECTED:1994

Leadership PAC (1):

Fund for America's Future

Career Fundraising

1993 - 2014 Total Receipts:	$29,250,993
1993 - 2014 Total Spent:	$19,237,888
Debts:	$0
Last Report:	Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Top 5 Contributors, 1993 - 2014

Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs
Nelson, Mullins et al	$198,233	$180,583	$17,650
Scana Corp	$171,855	$134,130	$37,725
Edens & Avant	$81,250	$81,250	$0
EnergySolutions Inc	$76,600	$55,600	$21,000
Blue Cross/Blue Shield	$72,673	$50,173	$22,500

...view more data

Top 5 Industries, 1993 - 2014

Industry	Total	Indivs	PACs
Lawyers/Law Firms	$2,918,397	$2,701,555	$216,842
Retired	$1,335,746	$1,335,746	$0
Real Estate	$1,099,385	$1,047,885	$51,500
Health Professionals	$794,590	$561,668	$232,922
Securities & Investment	$789,015	$706,533	$82,482

...view more data

Source of Funds

Individual Contributions | $20,528,730 | (70%) || | PAC Contributions | $6,689,341 | (23%) |

	Candidate self-financing	$180,722	(1%)
	Other	$1,852,200	(6%)

---

Committees and Affiliations

Committees

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
- Subcommittee on Energy, Science and Technology
- Subcommittee on Domestic & Foreign Marketing, Inspection, & Plant & Animal Health - Ranking Member
- Subcommittee on Rural Revitalization, Conservation, Forestry and Credit
Senate Committee on the Budget
Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs
Senate Committee on Armed Services
- Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
- Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
- Subcommittee on Personnel - Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
- Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
- Subcommittee on the Constitution
- Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs
- Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law

Committee assignments in the 109th Congress (2005-2006)

Senate Committee on Armed Services
- Subcommittee on Airland
- Subcommittee on Personnel - Chair
- Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
- Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
Senate Committee on the Budget
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
- Subcommittee on Antitrust Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
- Subcommittee on the Constitution Civil Rights and Property Rights
- Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs - Chair
- Subcommittee on Intellectual Property
- Subcommittee on Technology Terrorism and Homeland Security
Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs

More Background Data

Background information on Lindsey Graham from Project Vote Smart

Interest group scorecard ratings for Lindsey Graham from Project Vote Smart

Voting record for Lindsey Graham from the Washington Post database

Information on Lindsey Graham from Congress Merge

Wikipedia also has an article on Lindsey Graham. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.

See how you compare to Lindsey Graham

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Nelson, Mullins et al	$198,233	$180,583	$17,650
Scana Corp	$171,855	$134,130	$37,725
Edens & Avant	$81,250	$81,250	$0
EnergySolutions Inc	$76,600	$55,600	$21,000
Blue Cross/Blue Shield	$72,673	$50,173	$22,500
Boeing Co	$65,943	$42,193	$23,750
Harrison, White et al	$63,450	$63,450	$0
General Electric	$61,100	$33,600	$27,500
Milliken & Co	$56,115	$56,115	$0
Time Warner	$55,192	$32,200	$22,992
Fluor Corp	$54,200	$28,700	$25,500
Duke Energy	$53,275	$11,150	$42,125
National Rural Electric Cooperative Assn	$52,050	$22,050	$30,000
Lockheed Martin	$50,600	$15,100	$35,500
Nix, Patterson & Roach	$50,000	$50,000	$0
AT&T Inc	$49,572	$16,072	$33,500
Motley Rice LLC	$48,500	$48,500	$0
Southern Co	$48,000	$8,000	$40,000
BB&T Corp	$47,072	$29,572	$17,500
National Rifle Assn	$46,850	$250	$46,600

Lawyers/Law Firms	$2,918,397
Retired	$1,335,746
Real Estate	$1,099,385
Health Professionals	$794,590
Securities & Investment	$789,015
Electric Utilities	$788,478
Leadership PACs	$660,337
Lobbyists	$539,866
General Contractors	$483,339
Insurance	$449,799
Misc Manufacturing & Distributing	$432,208
Business Services	$421,479
Commercial Banks	$347,709
Misc Finance	$293,827
TV/Movies/Music	$288,965
Hospitals/Nursing Homes	$276,573
Retail Sales	$268,848
Textiles	$265,190
Pro-Israel	$263,365
Pharmaceuticals/Health Products	$239,302

Sector Totals

Sector	Total	PACs	Indivs
Agribusiness	$952,661	$459,715	$492,946
Communications/Electronics	$787,274	$407,541	$379,733
Construction	$1,076,729	$284,300	$792,429
Defense	$445,156	$340,747	$104,409
Energy & Natural Resources	$1,229,487	$572,899	$656,588
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate	$3,321,700	$771,356	$2,550,344
Health	$1,441,739	$533,937	$907,802
Lawyers & Lobbyists	$3,458,263	$233,136	$3,225,127
Transportation	$622,828	$322,400	$300,428
Misc Business	$2,500,067	$787,432	$1,712,635
Labor	$47,100	$47,100	$0
Ideological/Single-Issue	$1,249,072	$1,005,993	$243,079
Other	$1,664,487	$23,250	$1,641,237

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WH Opposes Higher Gas Taxes Floated by S.C. GOP Sen. Graham in Emerging Senate Energy Bill

by | April 15, 2010

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/04/15/wh-opposes-higher-gas-taxes-floated-sc-gop-sen-graham-emerging-senate-energy-bill

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, "Both senators from eight states of the 'Toxic 20' states -- Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi -- supported a resolution by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to repeal the health-protective mercury and air toxics standard." nrdc

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nyer

worried about being outed on Fox for carbon tax

n October 28, 2009, Graham was eating dinner at the Capital Grille, an expense-account steakhouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, with Fred Krupp, the president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and Rick Davis, a Republican consultant who had managed McCain’s two Presidential campaigns. The E.D.F., virtually alone among green groups in trying to form bonds with Republicans, prides itself on being the most politically sophisticated environmental organization in Washington. Krupp, who has short gray hair and a Brooks Brothers look that announces his disdain for hemp-wearing environmental activists, had helped to educate McCain on climate change, and the two men became close. Now he wanted to do the same for Graham. He called Davis, who was an E.D.F. board member, and arranged the dinner.

Graham came to the issue strictly as a dealmaker. He saw the Democrats’ interest in capping carbon emissions as an opportunity to boost the nuclear industry and to expand oil drilling. But now Krupp explained the basics of global-warming science and policy: how carbon trading worked, how farmers could use offsets to earn an income from growing trees, and how different lobbyists would affect the debate. Krupp told Graham that the crucial feature of the policy was the hard cap on emissions. The House bill required American carbon emissions to be seventeen per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. As long as that number held, environmentalists would show flexibility on most other issues. The dinner lasted three hours. The next day, Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman held their first meeting as the triumvirate that became known to everyone following the debate as K.G.L....

Just after noon, Rimkunas, Graham’s climate-policy adviser, sent Rosengarten an e-mail. The subject was “Go to Fox website and look at gas tax article asap.” She clicked on Foxnews.com: “WH Opposes Higher Gas Taxes Floated by S.C. GOP Sen. Graham in Emerging Senate Energy Bill.” The White House double-crossed us, she thought. The report, by Major Garrett, then the Fox News White House correspondent, cited “senior administration sources” and said that the “Obama White House opposes a move in the Senate, led by South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, to raise federal gasoline taxes within still-developing legislation to reduce green house gas emissions.” Including two updates to his original story, Garrett used the word “tax” thirty-four times.

“This is horrific,” Rosengarten e-mailed Rimkunas.

“It needs to be fixed,” he responded. “Never seen lg this pissed.”

“We’re calling Schiliro and getting the WH to publicly correct.”

Graham was “screaming profanities,” one of the K.G.L. staffers said. In addition to climate change, he was working with Democrats on immigration and on resolving the status of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He was one of only nine Republicans to vote for Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Now Obama aides were accusing him of backing a gas tax, which wasn’t his idea and wasn’t even in the draft bill. Worst of all, the leakers went to Fox News, a move which they knew would cause Graham the most damage. He called one of his policy advisers that day and asked, “Did you see what they just did to me?” The adviser said, “It made him question, ‘Do they really want to get this done or are they just posturing here? Because why would they do something like this if they wanted to get it done?’ It was more than an attempt to kill the idea. It was also an attempt to tag him with the idea, and, if you want him to be an ally on the issue, why would you do that?” Graham’s legislative director, Jennifer Olson, argued that he should withdraw from K.G.L. that day.

Kerry called Browner and yelled, “It wasn’t his idea!” He added, “It’s not a gas tax. You’ve got to defend our guy. We’ve been negotiating in good faith, and how can you go and turn on him like this?” After talking to Graham, Lieberman walked into the office of his legislative director, Todd Stein. “If we don’t fix this,” the Senator said, “this could be the death of the bill.”

On April 17th, two days after the Fox story, an activist named William Gheen, speaking at a Tea Party event in Greenville, South Carolina, told the crowd, “I’m a tolerant person. I don’t care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. senator I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it.” The question, with its false assertion that Graham is gay, turned into a viral video on the Web. Then Newt Gingrich’s group, American Solutions, whose largest donors include coal and electric-utility interests, began targeting Graham with a flurry of online articles about the “Kerry-Graham-Lieberman gas tax bill.” That week, the group launched a campaign in South Carolina urging conservatives to call Graham’s office “and ask him not to introduce new gas taxes.”

Kerry and Lieberman spent hours alone with Graham, trying to placate him. They forced the White House to issue a statement, which said that “the Senators don’t support a gas tax.” Graham had talked to Emanuel and was satisfied that the chief of staff wasn’t the source of the leak. Eventually, the people involved believed that they had mollified him. By the time Graham showed up at the conference table in Emanuel’s White House office on April 20th, he had calmed down. But, if he was going to suffer a ferocious backlash back home, he needed the White House to be as committed as he was. He was not encouraged when Axelrod, speaking about Democrats in Congress, noted, “The horse has been ridden hard this year and just wants to go back to the barn.”

That evening, hours after the meeting ended, a bubble of methane gas blasted out of a well of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, in the Gulf of Mexico, setting the rig on fire and killing eleven men. At the time, it seemed like a tragic accident, far away and of little consequence.

Kerry and Lieberman were desperate to accommodate Graham’s every request. The dynamics within the group changed. Aides marvelled at how Kerry and Lieberman would walk down the hallway with their arms around each other, while Lieberman and Graham’s relationship was tested by Graham’s escalating demands. The day after the White House meeting, the three senators and their aides gathered to discuss the status of the bill.

After the Fox News leak, a rumor had circulated that Congress wouldn’t pass a highway bill because of the Lindsey Graham gas-tax hike; Graham had to appease truckers in South Carolina. Now he insisted on eight billion dollars for the Highway Trust Fund, saying it was his price for staying. Frangione, Kerry’s aide, was “heartbroken,” a colleague said. It was an enormous amount of money within the confines of the bill, and spending anything on highways increased greenhouse-gas emissions. “Senator, please, just give me five minutes,” Rosengarten told Graham. “I’ll find your eight billion!” She and another Lieberman aide retrieved a spreadsheet they used to track all the spending and revenues in the bill. They fiddled with some numbers and—presto!—Graham had his money. (Later that day, Lieberman figured that, if they were going to spend eight billion dollars on highways, he might as well get some credit, too. He called the American Trucking Association to tell its officials the good news. They responded that they wanted twice that amount.)

Kerry, Lieberman, and their aides needed to keep Graham satisfied for five more days. If they persuaded him to attend the press conference unveiling the bill, he wouldn’t be able to turn back. All the other pieces were falling into place. The legislators met with the Chamber of Commerce to be sure that it would support the bill. Donohue, the Chamber president, said that he wouldn’t stand up with them at the press conference but that the Chamber wouldn’t oppose them, either.

Heckled at home, Graham began to enjoy a new life as a Beltway macher. “Every lobbyist working on the issue wanted time with him, because suddenly it became clear that he could be the central person in the process,” Krupp recalled. All sectors of the economy would be affected by putting a price on carbon, and Graham’s campaign account started to grow. In 2009, he raised nothing from the electric-utility PACs and just fourteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars from all PACs. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, the utilities sent him forty-nine thousand dollars. Krupp introduced Graham to donors in New York connected to the E.D.F. On December 7th, Julian Robertson, an E.D.F. board member and a hedge-fund billionaire, hosted Graham at a small gathering in his Manhattan apartment. Some New York guests gave money directly to Graham’s campaign account. Others, at Krupp’s suggestion, donated to a new group called South Carolina Conservatives for Energy Independence, which ran ads praising Graham in his home state.

For years, Graham had lived in McCain’s shadow. But, as the rebellious politics of 2010 transformed McCain into a harsh partisan, Graham adopted McCain’s old identity as the Senate’s happy moderate. To Graham’s delight, on December 23rd Time posted an online article headlined “LINDSEY GRAHAM: NEW GOP MAVERICK IN THE SENATE.” The photograph showed Graham standing at a lectern with Lieberman and Kerry.

...?

McCain, worried about his reëlection, had been throwing rocks from the sidelines as the cap-and-trade debate progressed. When Waxman-Markey passed, he Tweeted that it was a “1400 page monstrosity.” A month after K.G.L. was formed, McCain told Politico, “Their start has been horrendous. Obviously, they’re going nowhere.” After the Time piece appeared, he was enraged. Graham told colleagues that McCain had called him and yelled at him, incensed that he was stealing the maverick mantle. “After that Graham story came out, McCain completely stopped talking to me,” Jay Newton-Small, the author of the Time piece, said.

Other Republican colleagues taunted Graham. “Hey, Lindsey,” they would ask, “how many times have you talked to Rahm today?,” and the criticisms in South Carolina became more intense. But Graham gave every indication to Lieberman and Kerry that he could deal with the pressure. He wasn’t up for reëlection until 2014, and his conversations with them, and with Krupp, the White House, and the Manhattan environmentalists, seemed to be having an impact. At a climate-change conference in South Carolina on January 5, 2010, Graham started to sound a little like Al Gore. “I have come to conclude that greenhouse gases and carbon pollution” are “not a good thing,” Graham said. He insisted that nobody could convince him that “all the cars and trucks and plants that have been in existence since the Industrial Revolution, spewing out carbon day in and day out,” could be “a good thing for your children and the future of the planet.” Environmentalists swooned. “Graham was the most inspirational part of that triumvirate throughout the fall and winter,” Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said. “He was advocating for strong action on climate change from an ethical and a moral perspective.”

But, back in Washington, Graham warned Lieberman and Kerry that they needed to get as far as they could in negotiating the bill “before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process,” one of the people involved in the negotiations said. “He would say, ‘The second they focus on us, it’s gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it’s gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves. We have to move this along as quickly as possible.’ ”

...

All the other pieces were falling into place. The legislators met with the Chamber of Commerce to be sure that it would support the bill. Donohue, the Chamber president, said that he wouldn’t stand up with them at the press conference but that the Chamber wouldn’t oppose them, either.

...

What became known as the Dayenu meeting took place on Thursday, April 22nd, Earth Day. A few hours before the meeting, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had sunk to the bottom of the Gulf. The spill began to spread; soon it would show signs of becoming one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Then, suddenly, there was a new problem:, the Senate Majority Leader, said that he wanted to pass immigration reform before the climate-change bill. It was a cynical ploy. Everyone in the Senate knew that there was no immigration bill. Reid was in a tough reëlection, and immigration activists, influential in his home state of Nevada, were pressuring him.**Harry Reid**

Senior aides at the White House were shocked by Reid’s statement. “We were doing well until Reid gave a speech and said it was immigration first. News to us!” a senior Administration official said. “It was kind of like, ‘Whoa, what do we do now? Where did that come from?’ ” Reid’s office seemed to be embarking on a rogue operation. In a three-day period, Reid’s office and unnamed Senate Democrats leaked to Roll Call, The Hill, the Associated Press, Politico, and the Wall Street Journal that the phantom immigration bill would be considered before the climate bill. Graham once again said that he felt betrayed. “This comes out of left field,” he told reporters. “I’m working as earnestly as I can to craft climate and energy independence, clean air and jobs, and now we’re being told that we’re going to immigration. This destroys the ability to do something on energy and climate.”

Graham didn’t tell the press that immigration was mostly just an excuse for his anger. That day, he had urged Reid to release a statement supporting the modified linked fee that Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman had used in negotiating with the refiners. Reid’s office greeted the request with suspicion. Reid and Graham didn’t trust each other. Reid’s aides thought the Republican leadership was trying to trick Reid into supporting something that sounded like a gas tax. The fact that Kerry and Lieberman were also supporters of the proposal did little to allay Reid’s fears. His aides drafted a pro-forma statement for Graham that promised simply that Reid would review the legislation. Graham dismissed the statement as meaningless. During one phone call, Graham shouted some vulgarities at Reid and the line went dead. The Majority Leader had hung up the phone.

At 10 P.M. the next day, Rimkunas sent Rosengarten an e-mail. They had worked together for seven months on the bill. Rosengarten had postponed her honeymoon—twice—to finish the project. They had travelled to Copenhagen together for the international climate conference and often teamed up to oppose Kerry’s office during internal debates. “Sorry buddy” is all the e-mail said. It was devastating. “Matt’s e-mail was a life low point,” she said. “It was actually soul-crushing.”

The next morning, a Saturday, Graham abandoned the talks. Lieberman was observing Shabbat and thus couldn’t work, use electrical devices, or talk on the phone. When his aides explained what was happening, he invoked a Talmudic exception allowing an Orthodox Jew to violate the Shabbat commandments “for the good of the community.” Kerry was in Massachusetts and immediately flew to Washington. The two men spent the morning trying to persuade Graham to stay. At about noon, Graham had a final conversation with Reid, who had nothing more to offer. Graham was out. He wrote a statement, and Olson, his legislative director, e-mailed a copy to Lieberman’s office. The public statement cited immigration as the issue, but attached was a note from Olson explaining that Graham was never going to receive the cover he needed from Reid on how they dealt with the oil refiners.

Rosengarten got the message on her BlackBerry while she was on the phone with Pickens’s policy people, who had no idea about the unfolding drama and wanted to make sure that their natural-gas goodies had survived the final draft of the bill. K.G.L., perhaps the last best chance to deal with global warming in the Obama era, was officially dead. As she read Graham’s definitive goodbye letter, tears streamed down her face.