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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Why Trump’s plot to ‘investigate the investigators’ is going up in a puff of smoke</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jefferson Morley / Independent Media Institute December 6, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For months, the names of Michael Horowitz and John Durham have figured in the pounding rhythms of right-wing media in which a heroically afflicted president faces down his perfidious enemies. A steady drumbeat of reports from Fox News, echoed by President Trump and Republican loyalists in Congress, proclaimed these two obscure Justice Department officials would get to the bottom of an alleged conspiracy against the Trump presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They would, in Trump’s words, “investigate the investigators.” It was oh so promising.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I will tell you this,” Trump blustered on October 25. “I think you’re going to see a lot of really bad things,” he said. “I leave it all up to the attorney general and I leave it all up to the people that are working with the attorney general who I don’t know. … I think you’ll see things that nobody would’ve believed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz, as the DOJ inspector general, had the narrower assignment. He was tasked with investigating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants issued to intercept the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz had to answer the question: Was Page targeted for political reasons, perhaps based on the famous “Steele Dossier”?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Durham, a senior U.S. attorney in Connecticut, has a broader brief: to review the FBI’s decision to open an investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians in 2015. Durham was selected for the job by Barr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For those inclined to believe Fox News and the president, the “deep state cabal” that allegedly targeted Trump was running scared. In early October, Fox News reported that “Barr and Durham traveled to Italy recently to talk to law enforcement officials there about the probe and have also had conversations with officials in the U.K. and Australia about the investigation.” From this report, the Daily Caller imaginatively extrapolated that Durham’s probe had expanded to include “looking at the activities of foreign intelligence agencies.” (One British official told the Independent that Barr and his minions asked, “in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.”) On October 22, the Washington Examiner said Durham was “scrutinizing four key figures”; the Spectator, a right-wing British magazine, claimed former CIA director John Brennan was in “Durham’s crosshairs.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And so on.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Things That Nobody Would’ve Believed’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s words, ironically, are coming true. Horowitz, it is now reliably reported, found that the Trump/Fox News talking points about a “deep state” conspiracy against Trump are, in fact, “things that nobody would’ve believed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz’s report, says USA Today, is “expected to conclude the FBI was justified in launching its two-year inquiry into the Trump campaign and possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post reports that Durham has already disappointed Trump. In the course of Horowitz’s investigation, Durham declined to endorse one key Republican talking point: that one witness, Joseph Mifsud, was actually a CIA or FBI agent deployed to undermine and defeat Trump’s presidential bid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Durham, according to the Post, has “said he could not offer evidence to the Justice Department’s inspector general to support the suspicions of some conservatives that the case was a setup by American intelligence.” (The Post describes its source as “people familiar with the matter.”)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz’s Letter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those pundits expected Horowitz to side with the president could be detained by mere facts, no matter how public. Remember a couple of hundred news cycles ago—mid-October—when right-wing media was filibustering about the identity of the CIA whistleblower who first brought Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign to light?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, Horowitz was engaged in a more substantive matter. As inspector general, Horowitz played a leading role in an extraordinary letter, signed by about 70 inspector generals, about the Justice Department’s handling of the whistleblower’s allegation. Although the letter never mentioned the attorney general’s name, its message was a broad rebuke of Barr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The legal question was far too intricate to generate pleasurable repartee on Twitter. The whistleblower complained in August to the inspector general in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The DNI is legally bound to pass to Congress only whistleblower complaints of “urgent concern.” Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, passed the buck and asked the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for guidance. In a secret memo, dated September 3, the OLC decided the whistleblower’s complaint was not an “urgent” matter that had to be passed to Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The OLC, beholden to Barr, took the position that there was no need to tell Congress of the possibility that Trump was withholding congressionally appropriated funds from the beleaguered Ukraine armed forces in order to force the Ukraine president to investigate Joe Biden’s son. The legal logic was fallacious and tortured.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Horowitz’s name topped the list of roughly 70 inspectors general who declared:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“the OLC opinion [written at Barr’s behest] could seriously impair whistleblowing and deter individuals in the intelligence community and throughout the government from reporting government waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, the letter was a dud on social media, cable TV, and Fox News. Who cares what a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington think? Horowitz, the hoped-for savior of Trump, had rebuked his boss, along with almost six dozen other senior civil servants in public. His real-world actions were ignored by conservative news outlets hyping imaginative reports on his investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Question</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will John Durham follow Barr’s lead? Or Horowitz’s?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The modus operandi of this administration is that when they cannot dismiss somebody else’s fact-based conclusions, they create a parallel narrative,” Joel Brenner, a former inspector general at the National Security Agency in the George W. Bush administration, told USA Today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What kind of narrative will Durham write?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One clue can be heard in “The Report,” a new movie starring Adam Driver about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on torture. The name “Durham” is heard exactly once in the movie. And yes, it is a reference to the same John Durham.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Durham is a career Justice Department prosecutor in Connecticut. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder assigned him to investigate the CIA’s torture program. It was a delicate assignment. On the one side, he had to poke into the dirty business of a $15 billion-a-year agency that believed it had legal and presidential sanction for “enhanced interrogation techniques.” On the other side, he was working for a popular new president who said the program was abhorrent and a host of lawyers who said it might well be criminal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Durham, in short, walked into a legal and political minefield. Two years later, he emerged unscathed with a supple, if not evasive, reading of the law. His investigation exonerated the CIA on 99 out of 101 incidents of torture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever you make of Durham’s report legally and morally, it was politically adroit. The report pleased Obama and Holder, who dodged the need to take on the barons of the national security agencies. His report pleased the CIA, which dodged the bullet of indictments of senior officials who had approved the torture regime, including John Brennan. As a narrative, Durham’s torture report shows that he implicitly shares the worldview of Brennan and other senior national security managers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He’s also a career prosecutor sure to consider all the facts brought to his attention.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump was enraged and threatened by national security leaks, even before he took office. Did Brennan et al commit any technical violations of the Espionage Act in talking to reporters about the president-elect’s Russian contacts? Quite possibly. Would John Durham go out on a legal limb to prosecute former top U.S. officials on behalf of Barr and Trump, who will be gone from Washington in five years at the maximum? That seems highly unlikely.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Trump sails into the high seas of a Senate impeachment trial, Durham’s report on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is not likely to be a lifeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>House committee sues AG Barr in wake of judge’s ruling that declared ‘presidents are not kings’</b></div><div>
</div><div>Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement November 26, 2019</div><div>
</div><div><b>The House Oversight Committee wasted no time in filing a lawsuit against Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, suing both Trump appointees for failure to respond to subpoenas demanding documents.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Declaring “President Trump and his aides are not above the law,” Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney on Tuesday announced, “I am filing this enforcement action today because the Trump Administration’s brazen obstruction of Congress must not stand.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Politico reports Maloney is seeking documents related to the 2020 Census, and the Trump administration’s attempts to add a citizenship question to the constitutionally-mandate survey.</div><div>
</div><div>That question was the brainchild of a Republican strategist, now deceased, who wrote it would depress participation in the Census by minorities, effectively granting Republicans greater representation in the House and other areas – including where $675 billion in federal funds are spent.</div><div>
</div><div>One federal judge declared if the citizenship question made it onto the census, “hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people will go uncounted.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Trump administration has ignored many subpoenas from House Democrats. On Monday a federal judge ruled former White House Counsel Don McGahn could not ignore a subpoena and must testify before Congress.</div><div>
</div><div><b>“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her 118-page ruling Monday.</b></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fundamentalism-and-authoritarianism-how-the-party-of-law-and-order-become-the-party-of-crooks-and-crime"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/fundamentalism-and-authoritarianism-how-the-party-of-law-and-order-become-the-party-of-crooks-and-crime</font></a></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Fundamentalism and authoritarianism: How the party of ‘law and order’ became the party of crooks and crime</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Paul Rosenberg / Salon November 24, 2019</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever happened to the Republicans as the “party of law and order”? True, Richard Nixon, who first branded the party that way, was lying when he famously said, “I am not a crook.” Both Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal rank among the most notorious examples of executive branch lawlessness in our nation’s history. But through it all, the narrative commitment to the brand never wavered. It was a source of moral and political strength, always to be contrasted with “soft on crime” Democrats, however contrary the front-page facts might be.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But not anymore. As noted here by&nbsp;<b>Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of rhetoric whose book, “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump” (table of contents here)</b>, will be published next year, it’s the Democrats who are the party of law and order in the impeachment drama, while the GOP is the party of conspiracy:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are betting that public opinion will move toward impeachment and removal once more information is made public. To try to shape public opinion they are relying on a law-and-order frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is legitimate and legally justified.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Democrats are positioning themselves as the only ones willing to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Republicans, led by President Trump, are counting on their power to frame reality to prevent the public from moving toward impeachment.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GOP is relying on a conspiracy frame that tells Americans that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate and part of a plot to destroy America.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course the rhetoric of conspiracy isn’t entirely synonymous with that of crooks and criminals — but when you start to insist that career law-enforcement officials are all in on it, and you’ve abandoned the “law and order” frame to the Democrats, the crooks and criminals stench is difficult to dispel. And it’s not happening in isolation, either — above and beyond the plethora of scandals Trump generates, and the lockstep support Republicans are giving him.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That lockstep support is perhaps the most striking difference between now and Watergate-a difference most readily understood via the role of asymmetric polarization and negative partisanship, which cautions us not to expect the kind of gradual but inexorable opinion shift seen 45 years ago in response to the buildup of evidence.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In turn, dramatically increased polarization is a predicted result of historical trends described by structural demographic theory (SDT)</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, which I wrote about previously in October 2016, reviewing “Ages of Discord,” an analysis of American history by evolutionary anthropologist Peter Turchin.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;SDT identifies three underlying factors contributing to increased levels of political instability: mass immiseration (stagnant or falling wages, worsening health, declining well-being), elite overproduction (increased competition for wealth and power), and fiscal distress (a product of both public debt and trust in public institutions). Mass immiseration helps fuel elite overproduction, since stagnant or falling wages leaves more money for elites, and the increased competition that results reduces broad cooperation and intensifies elite fragmentation (which also contributes to fiscal distress). In America, political polarization is a prime indicator of that fragmentation.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The fact that polarization has been asymmetric deserves special attention, as it’s not yet implicated in SDT. But it can be credibly explained</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;In “The&nbsp;<b>Authoritarian</b>Dynamic,” Karen Stenner presented compelling evidence that expressed intolerance resulted primarily from two factors: an innate predisposition to intolerance, demanding obedience and conformity, (“authoritarianism”) interacting with increased societal threat, particularly dissension in public opinion and loss of confidence in political leaders. Thus, there is both a logical reason for the expression of authoritarianism to increase as political instability rises, and motivation for either authoritarian or opportunistic elites to strategically manipulate conditions to intensify this process.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One can read “The Long Southern Strategy” (Salon interview with co-author Angie Maxwell here) as a coherent history of how GOP-affiliated elites have pursued just such a strategy over the past 50-plus years.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Authoritarian attitudes peak not only when social conditions change, but also if folks are made to feel like social conditions are changing (even if they aren’t),</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” Maxwell said. “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The threats are recycled, renewed with a sense of urgency, stoking a fire that is always smoldering. It isn’t a natural rise in authoritarian attitudes, it is an orchestrated rise in authoritarian attitudes.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>SDT suggests that it may be both, but without the orchestration it would be much more manageable, and much less prone to produce lawless behavior.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One can also view conservative legal activism as a key component in that process</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;as well as a profound influence on elite politics as a whole. At the time of Watergate, authoritarians were more evenly divided between the parties, but they’ve become much more concentrated in the GOP since then. As their experience of threat has risen, they’ve become more inclined to lawlessness — although it’s not tolerated on the part of others, of course!</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In short, the lawlessness at the top of the GOP isn’t new — just vastly more blatant than it was during Watergate.&nbsp; But the infrastructure supporting, defending and excusing it is dramatically more powerful and robust, and the authoritarian mass base is much more consolidated within their voter base.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Aside from impeachment itself, three other developments this month underscores the GOP’s broader embrace of lawlessness, in contrast to its decades-long self-branding. First, there is Trump’s pardoning of three war criminals</b>, burnishing his brand of support for official lawlessness and thuggish brutality. He may mistakenly believe this endears him to&nbsp; the military — which wants nothing to do with them — but it’s also meant to hype authoritarian support among his most rabid supporters.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Second, his </b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Roy Cohn-style attorney general, William Barr, delivered a widely criticized authoritarian screed to the Federalist Society,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;portraying the impeachment inquiry as dangerous to the rule of law, rather than warranted by Trump’s self-professed crimes.</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Third, legal scholar</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Steven Calabresi, chair of the Federalist Society’s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> board of directors, wrote a pair of opinion articles accusing Democrats of violating Trump’s rights, one of which, according to Steven Mazie, the Economist’s Supreme Court correspondent, “reads like the first draft of an op-ed by a MAGA middle-schooler who was inspired by Jacob Wohl’s erstwhile Twitter account.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The combination of Trump’s blatant endorsement of lawlessness and the double-whammy high-profile embarrassments of Calabresi and Barr reflects something much broader and profoundly troubling. The latter two offer striking indicators of just how seriously this is impacting establishment conservatism, in a way that can’t be fobbed off on Trump alone, while Trump’s pardons of war criminals — following earlier pardons, including that of ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio — not only enable brute lawlessness in uniform, but points towards outright valorization in the future, especially if performed in direct support of Trump himself.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To better understand the role of the conservative legal movement, I turned to two law professors I</b>’ve interviewed before: Eric J. Segall, author of “Originalism as Faith,” to help illuminate the role that faith has played in this process, and David Pozen, co-author (with Joseph Fishkin) of the paper, “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” which starts making sense of how the political asymmetry discussed above impacts norm-violating practices, with profound systemic results. In that paper, Fishkin and Pozen write:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The “restorationist” constitutional narratives and interpretive theories promoted by Republican politicians and lawyers, [this] Essay suggests, serve to legitimate the party’s use of constitutional hardball.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While this has surely been the elite focus of the actors involved, movement conservatives have also made remaking the Supreme Court and the entire judicial branch central to their politics in ways progressives have not, and this means engaging in authoritarian mobilization via threat manipulation, as described in “The Long Southern Strategy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Originalism&nbsp;</b>plays a key role in this, but the meaning of that term shifted sharply in the process. At first, Segall told me, the originalist position argued that judges shouldn’t be engaged in moral reasoning:</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not for judges to select the best moral position for a country, it’s for people who are elected to do it. Unless judges can point to something in the text of the Constitution or something clear in the history, then judges should say look, the Constitution doesn’t speak to this, vote on it.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Originalism, at first, “was inextricably tied to deference. That’s the only way that works.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But that all changed when conservatives gained control of the court in the late ’80s and early ’90s,</b>&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Segall says: “After 12 years of Reagan-Bush judges, the people who embraced originalism dropped the deference part.” That meant a return of moral reasoning, “because history cannot answer modern problems,” and while conservatives won’t admit that, “it’s true and they act that way.” The Constitution is silent about the rights of transgender people or the definition of marriage, to cite obvious examples....</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">quite long]</span></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1119 an</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/bill-barr-is-the-most-dangerous-trump-official-and-it-could-put-him-on-a-collision-course-with-chief-justice-roberts/" rel="bookmark" title="Bill Barr is the most dangerous Trump official — and it could put him on a collision course with Chief Justice Roberts" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 6px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.4; display: block;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color" important="important"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Barr is the most dangerous Trump official — and it could put him on a collision course with Chief Justice Roberts</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">thru looking glass?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/16/attorney-general-barr-accuses-democrats-using-oversight-powers-try-cripple-executive-branch/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/16/attorney-general-barr-accuses-democrats-using-oversight-powers-try-cripple-executive-branch/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Attorney General Barr accuses Democrats of ‘war’ on Trump in speech decried as partisan</div><div>
</div><div><b>Attorney General William P. Barr described a “war” against a “duly elected government” at a conference of the Federalist Society.</b> (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)</div><div>By&nbsp;</div><div>Hannah Knowles&nbsp;</div><div>November 16, 2019&nbsp;</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Attorney General William P. Barr accused Democrats on Friday of using their oversight powers to sabotage the executive branch, criticizing the “resistance” to President Trump and what he called a broader erosion in the commander in chief’s rightful authority.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Trump appointee described a “war” against a “duly elected government” at a conference of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that has played a key role in the administration’s efforts to seat record numbers of right-leaning federal judges.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of resistance against this administration,<b> it is the left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,</b>” Barr told his audience of lawyers at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>To critics, the speech was overly partisan and even “authoritarian.” It prompted some calls for Barr’s impeachment from lawyers and legal scholars, many of whom believe his views of presidential power are too expansive. Barr says the Constitution’s creators envisioned a strong executive.</b></div><div>
</div><div>His speech came amid a newly public, high-stakes phase of Democrat-led investigations into the White House, as impeachment hearings examine whether Trump abused his office to secure a foreign country’s probe of his political rival. Barr recently declined Trump’s request that he hold a news conference defending Trump in the inquiry by saying the president broke no laws in a call to Ukraine’s president, individuals familiar with the situation told The Washington Post.</div><div>
</div><div>But the attorney general was vociferous Friday in his defense of Trump’s actions in office, saying legislators are the ones who have overstepped their bounds. Judges, too, have interfered with the president’s authority in recent years, he said.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“I don’t deny that Congress has some implied authority,” he said. “But the sheer volume of what we see today, the pursuit of scores of parallel investigations through an avalanche of subpoenas, is plainly designed to incapacitate the executive branch and indeed is touted as such.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics attorney in the George W. Bush administration, called the attorney general’s statements “authoritarian,” comparing the Federalist Society talk to another Barr speech that criticized “radical secularists.”</div><div>
</div><div>Barr’s talk was “an attack on our Constitution and on the rule of law,” the University of Minnesota law professor tweeted.</div><div>
</div><div>The speech drew praise, however, from Trump supporters who have long said the administration has been unfairly attacked. Inside the Mayflower Hotel, Barr got enthusiastic applause.</div><div>
</div><div>The attorney general has been warning for decades of “legislative encroachments” on the president’s power, as he put it in a 1989 memo that his Democratic successor quickly replaced with one that recognized a bigger role for Congress.</div><div>
</div><div>Speaking Friday, Barr traced a “steady grinding down” of executive authority to the mid-1960s, saying the trend had quickened after the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.</div><div>
</div><div>Barr emphasized the president’s purview over policy and diplomacy and argued for the executive branch’s ability to keep its conversations secret from what he called a meddling Congress. For the attorney general, the so-called resistance to the president implies a “dangerous” notion of insurgency against a military occupation.</div><div>
</div><div>He pointed to Trump’s election as a mandate for his actions.</div><div>
</div><div>“While the president has certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook and punctilio, he was up front about what he wanted to do, and the people decided they wanted him to serve as president,” Barr said.</div><div>
</div><div>The attorney general defended specific Trump administration policies such as a travel ban aimed at citizens of mostly majority-Muslim countries, pointing to court victories. The Supreme Court upheld that policy last year in a close ruling that found Trump can bar travelers for national security reasons.</div><div>
</div><div>Barr contended the Obama administration wielded executive power more aggressively than its successor — for example, through its creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects certain undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” from deportation.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Barr’s speech reiterated views that were controversial during his confirmation earlier this year, too.</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His “vision of presidential power is contrary to the constitutional system of checks and balances that lies at the heart of our Constitution,” Neil Kinkopf, a law professor at Georgia State University, testified at hearings on Barr’s nomination.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Democrats were especially wary of how Barr would handle special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the president, pointing to a 2018 memo Barr wrote arguing that Mueller was interpreting obstruction of justice too liberally. In hearings, Barr would not promise to release the special counsel’s report.</div><div>
</div><div>Barr was confirmed in a 54-45 vote falling mostly along party lines.</div><div>
</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-unbearable-wrongness-of-william-barr-professor-of-secular-studies-explains-why-secularism-doesnt-destroy-moral-order/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/the-unbearable-wrongness-of-william-barr-professor-of-secular-studies-explains-why-secularism-doesnt-destroy-moral-order/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The unbearable wrongness of William Barr: Professor of secular studies explains why secularism doesn’t destroy moral order</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Barr image by U.S. Department of Justice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Phil Zuckerman / Salon November 10, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last month, in what Jeffrey Toobin called “the worst speech given by an Attorney General of the United States in modern history,” Attorney General William Barr offered a lecture at Notre Dame Law School in which he denounced secularism as a “social pathology” that destroys the “moral order.</span>” After blaming secularists for a host of contemporary problems — including depression, drug overdosing, and violence — Barr explained that without belief in a “transcendent Supreme Being” and adherence to “God’s eternal law,” the “possibility of any healthy community life crumbles.” Unless we follow “God’s instruction manual,” he sermonized, there will be “real-world consequences for man and society” — consequences that are not pretty, but quite grim. For without religion, there can be no “moral culture” and society will inevitably fall prey to humanity’s “capacity for great evil.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such hackneyed assertions are not new. Pious people of power have been scapegoating the non-religious for centuries, characterizing non-believers as threats to the nation, and declaring that without religion, there can be no moral social order. And like those before him who have made such claims — from Newt Gingrich to the prophet Muhammed — William Barr is wrong.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When lots of people in a given society stop being religious of their own accord, such organic secularization does not result in the evaporation of morality in society, nor national decay. For instance, the most secular countries in the world today fare much better on nearly every measure of peace, prosperity, and societal well-being — including infant mortality, life expectancy, educational attainment, economic prosperity, freedom, levels of corruption, and so forth — than the most religious countries. </span>In fact, those <b>countries with the highest murder rates — such as Jamaica, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, and Brazil — are extremely religious, while those countries with the lowest murder rates — such as Iceland, Canada, Slovenia, Norway, and the Netherlands — are among the most secular nations in the world</b>. Heck, Singapore and the Czech Republic are among the least religious nations on earth, while Brazil and the Philippines are among the most God-worshipping, yet the latter’s murder rates are over ten times higher than the former’s, and the crime rate of never-been-Christian, strongly secular Japan is 80 times lower than El Salvador’s, a Catholic nation neck-deep in worship of Barr’s “Supreme Transcendent Being.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Similar correlations hold within our own country: on almost every measure of societal well-being — from poverty rates to STD rates to DUIs — the most secular states tend to fare the best, while the most religious tend to fare the worst.</span> <b>For example, among the states with the highest gun violence and murder rates, many are among the most religious — e.g., Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Arkansas — while among those with the lowest gun violence and murder rates, many are among the least religious states, such as New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, such correlations don’t prove that secularism causes these more positive outcomes experienced by less religious societies. But they do knock the knees out of Barr’s thesis that secularism is a destructive force. For if secularism resulted in moral deterioration, then highly secular societies would be decaying bastions of crime and misery, while the strongly religious would be shining beacons of liberty and harmony. But we find just the opposite reality: the nations with the best overall quality of life are among the most secular countries in the world. And while numerous factors account for the differing degrees of societal well-being — factors that have nothing to do with religion or secularism — that’s exactly the point. Societies thrive or fail because of their social policies, laws, economic opportunities, civil institutions, and government regulations — not because of their faith in God, or lack thereof.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Historical analysis is also relevant. The so-called “rise of the nones” has occurred over the last five decades, with both God-belief declining and the percentage Americans claiming no religious affiliation skyrocketing, from less than 5% up to 26% today. And yet, over the course of those same decades, America’s poverty rate has precipitously declined, and the national violent crime rate has gone down by 51%! Clearly, secularism isn’t the hindrance to moral social progress Barr would have us believe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the individual level, while religiously-active people do volunteer and donate more money to charity than their secular peers — at least in the US, if not elsewhere — secular people are notably moral in other ways; they are, on average, less racist, less ethnocentric, less homophobic, less militaristic, less authoritarian, and less likely to hit their children than their religious peers; they are also more likely to support women’s equality, reproductive rights, sane gun control, death with dignity, animal welfare and efforts to fight climate change. Finally, atheists are significantly under-represented in prison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But how can secular people be moral if they don’t believe in God? Easy. Contrary to Barr’s perspective, morality did not start with the Bible. Human communities began constructing ethical codes of conduct long before the world’s major religions arrived on the scene</b>. And that’s because morality first developed during our long evolutionary past, when cooperation, honesty, and altruism increased group survival. Concomitantly, our brains long ago developed neurological pathways and peptides that enhanced our ability to be empathetic and compassionate — the two fundamental cornerstones of a moral orientation. We’ve also learned how to treat others through socialization and enculturation. And our innate ability to think, reflect, and reason has consistently led most of us to the basic, universal ethical principle that we ought to treat people the way we ourselves would like to be treated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although religion preaches many moral precepts, it by no means holds a monopoly on them. Ethical life abounds well beyond the confines of church, Bible, and belief in gods. Those who actively scapegoat the secular as pathologically immoral are purposefully spreading fear, and division — and in so doing, violate the very moral orientation they claim to champion.</font></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/heres-why-roger-stones-upcoming-trial-could-deal-a-major-blow-to-trump-at-a-perilous-time/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/heres-why-roger-stones-upcoming-trial-could-deal-a-major-blow-to-trump-at-a-perilous-time/</font></a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here’s why Roger Stone’s upcoming trial could deal a major blow to Trump at a perilous time</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson October 31, 2019</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Ukraine scandal and the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump have been drawing so much media attention that previous Trump-related scandals haven’t been in the news as much — for example, the looming criminal trial of the president’s long-time associate and self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone. But the U.S. Department of Justice hasn’t forgotten about Stone, who will appear in court beginning on Tuesday, November 5. And Stone, journalists David Corn and Dan Friedman report in Mother Jones, could still be problematic for Trump.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stone is facing federal charges that include obstruction of justice and witness tampering. And when he goes to trial on November 5, Corn and Friedman note, he will also be “facing charges that he lied to Congress about his interactions with WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign as the organization was publicly disseminating Democratic material stolen by Russian hackers.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Explaining what Stone’s trial could mean for Trump, they add: “Though the trial will determine whether Stone tried to bamboozle a congressional investigation, it could answer two bigger questions about the president: did Trump use or try to use Stone as a conduit to WikiLeaks, and did Trump lie to Special Counsel Robert Mueller? The former might not be illegal; the latter could be a crime.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Earlier this year, Attorney General </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">William Barr </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">publicly released, in redacted form, former Special Counsel Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation — and most of the references to Stone in the report were redacted,</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Corn and Friedman point out, “because his trial was pending.” However, the journalists add that the Mueller Report “contains clues suggesting that the full story of Stone’s involvement in the Trump-Russia scandal goes beyond what’s publicly known — and that it implicates Trump.”</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, Democratic e-mails were stolen by Russia hackers and given to WikiLeaks, which published them online — and Stone, in 2016, was in touch with both the Trump campaign and the Russian hacker known by the assumed identity Guccifer 2.0.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Corn and Friedman explain, “If Trump or his senior campaign aides thought Stone was communicating with WikiLeaks — whether or not he actually was — and they were receiving information from him related to WikiLeaks, that would mean they believed then that the Trump campaign had a back-channel contact to WikiLeaks as it participated in the Russian operation. Trump has long shouted there was ‘no collusion,’ but perhaps Trump thought at the time that he and his campaign were colluding. After all, a significant Trump adviser consorting with WikiLeaks at this point could be construed as some sort of collusion.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And as journalist Marcy Wheeler argued on Sept. 6., pre-trial documents indicate that Trump was in closer contact with Stone in 2016 than he told Mueller during the Russia investigation. Trump told Mueller he spoke to Stone “from time to time during the campaign,” but the documents indicate that Trump “spoke to Stone a lot.”</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump denied recalling any discussions with Stone on a number of fronts, saying:&nbsp;<b>“I do not recall&nbsp;</b>discussing WikiLeaks with him, nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign, although I was aware that WikiLeaks was the subject of media reporting and campaign-related discussion at the time.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, as Wheeler notes, the evidence for the Stone’s trial included seven different phone numbers for Trump — four for him personally and three for his assistants and bodyguard — suggesting they talked quite frequently. And though he didn’t charge the president for any lies, Mueller did indicate in his testimony to Congress that Trump’s answers to the special counsel were not all truthful. Stone’s trial could shed more light on this claim.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment strategy has clearly focused on the Ukraine scandal, largely leaving aside the Mueller Report. But as Corn and Friedman point out in their Mother Jones article, there is a connection between the two.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In a way,” the Mother Jones journalists explain, “the Russia affair led to the Ukraine scandal, with Trump pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate — and prove — a nutty conspiracy theory that claimed Moscow did not hack the 2016 election.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone’s trial, they add, will bring back memories of the Russia investigation at a time when the House will be weighing whether or not Trump’s Ukraine-related activities should result in articles of impeachment against him.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This trial of a conniving Trump confidante who specializes in the political dark arts will be a reminder of the original scandal of the Trump Administration that has tainted and undermined his presidency,” Corn and Friedman report, “and it could add another big lie — and a possible crime — to Trump’s long record of wrongdoing.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trump-and-bill-barr-are-still-working-to-cover-up-vladimir-putins-campaign-against-democracy/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trump-and-bill-barr-are-still-working-to-cover-up-vladimir-putins-campaign-against-democracy/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Trump and Bill Barr are still working to cover up Vladimir Putin’s campaign against democracy</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon October 25, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During his otherwise subdued testimony before Congress this summer, former special counsel Robert Mueller did turn to more dramatic language when discussing one issue: Russia’s efforts to undermine American democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious,” Mueller said in his opening statement. “This deserves the attention of every American.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well, two Americans who have decided to give it their attention are Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr. But instead of trying to stop such efforts, their plan is quite clearly to use the power of the United States government to cover up the Russian conspiracy — and intimidate any law enforcement officials who might feel the urge to fight similar criminal conspiracies going into the 2020 elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the New York Times reported late Thursday, the Justice Department, which Barr took over after Trump ran out previous Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to fully evacuate himself of all remaining traces of integrity, has opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russian investigation run by Mueller.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember this: Mueller uncovered a vast Russian conspiracy that pulled off something the Watergate burglars never could. Russians or their allies successfully stole information from Democratic Party officials that was used to bolster conspiracy theories that eventually cost the Democratic nominee the election. Mueller also discovered that Trump knew about this conspiracy, encouraged it publicly, and attempted to get involved but apparently failed —probably because the Russians concluded he was unreliable, and involving him was more trouble than it was worth. Mueller also discovered that Trump conducted a lengthy campaign to cover up the Russian conspiracy, resulting in a list of 10 incidents that, if Trump were not protected by his office, could result in federal charges of obstruction of justice.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just because the Mueller investigation is over doesn’t mean Trump’s efforts to cover up for Vladimir Putin’s campaign against democracy have ended. On the contrary, the obstruction of justice campaign has expanded. Now, under the guidance of Barr, it’s being run by the Department of Justice itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s quite clear what’s going on here. Barr almost certainly doesn’t really believe that DOJ officials, under Mueller’s guidance, broke any laws in investigating the Russian criminal conspiracy or Trump’s efforts to protect it. Instead, by opening this phony investigation, he intends both to shore up Trump’s conspiracy theories claiming that the Russia scandal is all a Democratic hoax, and to use the threat of criminal charges to intimidate any government officials who might have a hankering to protect the 2020 election from any future such conspiracies, involving the Russians or anyone else.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>There’s good reason to fear this phony investigation could lead to human rights abuses. Both Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe were fired from the FBI as part of Trump’s efforts to shore up his conspiracy theories denouncing the Russia investigation. Both men are no doubt aware that Trump may seek seeking to arrest them under false pretenses, as part of his scapegoating campaign.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Another interesting point here is that Barr is doing is exactly what Trump, using the threat of withheld military aid, tried to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do: Open up a phony investigation in order to smear Democrats and deny that the Russian government was behind the criminal attack on the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The difference is that Zelensky resisted, even under great pressure from the twin threats of soldiers dying and the possibility of further Russian invasion. Barr, on the other hand, is choosing to be a scumbag of his own accord, using lies and threats of imprisonment to intimidate those who would stand up for democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">(It’s worth noting here that Barr takes time out of his busy schedule of undermining democracy to give lectures implying that societal morality is being undermined by adults having consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes.</span> I’d call him out regarding his hypocrisy around Trump, but it’s safe to say the president’s thing isn’t consensual sex. Sexual assault probably falls right into what Barr calls the “customs and traditions which reflect the wisdom and experience of the ages.”)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As Heather Digby Parton noted at Salon, Barr’s in this because he’s a true ideological opponent of democracy, and sees his role as continuing to promote a “long-term project to transform the U.S. into an undemocratic, quasi-authoritarian plutocracy” that goes back at least to the 1980s.</b> In this, Barr’s views are complementary to Putin’s goal of undermining democracy around the world, in order to demoralize the hopes of Russians at home who are getting sick of living under his authoritarian rule.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, on the other hand, is in this for the same reason he does anything: Pure self-interest. Why he has such unwavering enthusiasm for the authoritarian Russian government, and such eagerness to help realize Putin’s goals in the U.S., remains something of a black box. One day, perhaps, his tax returns will finally be released and shed some light on the situation. But there can be little doubt that finances have something to do with it, as Mueller’s investigation revealed. In addition, Trump clearly has the idea that discrediting the Mueller investigation, even if that means trying to prosecute former government officials under false pretenses, will help him in the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ultimately, this is one more reason that Democrats should stop trying to contain the impeachment inquiry to the Ukraine scandal. After all, what Trump tried to do in Ukraine — use that government’s resources to open phony investigations of his opponents and discredit evidence of his own corruption — is the same thing he is trying to do here. The only difference is, here at home he’s succeeding. The attorney general should not be allowed to use the DOJ as a legal hit squad for the president, devoted to gutting democracy. It’s time to open an impeachment inquiry into Bill Barr, as well.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bill Barr’s alternate universe ‘investigation’ has a goal: Right-wing authoritarian rule</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Heather <b>Digby </b>Parton October 25, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>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, </b>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 <b>Ed Meese ( recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom) </b>which <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">holds that massive, unaccountable power is vested in the president of the United States.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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, </span>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.”)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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&nbsp; job, Barr and his <b>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.</b> Indeed, they had been setting the stage for such a man for decades.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s also obviously the case that Barr, and perhaps his Reaganite cronies as well, are suffering from the malady known as <b>Fox News Brain Rot,</b> the symptoms of which are an extreme susceptibility to absurd right-wing conspiracy theories and an inability to believe anything that contradicts them</span>. (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.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On Thursday night the Times set the political world aflame with a report that Durham has officially opened a criminal investigation into the matter. </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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. <b>We’ve been expecting that Senate Judiciary Committee chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.</b>, 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.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.&nbsp; According to the Daily Beast, it’s not working. In fact, T<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">rumpWorld wants Graham to call House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff to testify before Graham’s Senate committee, w</span>hich 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?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.&nbsp; 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></p><p><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/god-help-us-nobel-laureate-paul-krugman-explains-how-trump-and-barr-are-using-religious-bigotry-to-distract-from-presidents-unsuitability-for-high-office/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/god-help-us-nobel-laureate-paul-krugman-explains-how-trump-and-barr-are-using-religious-bigotry-to-distract-from-presidents-unsuitability-for-high-office/</font></a></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘God help us’: Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman explains how Trump and Barr are using ‘religious bigotry’ to distract from president’s ‘unsuitability for high office’</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson October 16, 2019</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump’s presidency has brought one scandal after another, and this week, he is coping with a growing impeachment inquiry as well as widespread criticism over his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northeastern Syria and abandon the United States’ Kurdish allies. But according to liberal economist and veteran New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Trump has a way of coping with multiple scandals — resorting to “religious bigotry” — and he is doing it with the help of Attorney General William Barr.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week, Krugman notes, <b>Barr gave a “fiery speech” at the Notre Dame University Law School in which he railed against “militant secularists” who are out to destroy the “traditional moral order” and are to blame for everything from violence to drug addiction in the United States.</b> And according to Krugman, such speeches are meant to distract Americans from Trump’s corruption.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Pardon my cynicism, but I seriously doubt that Barr, whose boss must be the least godly man ever to occupy the White House, has suddenly realized to his horror that America is becoming more secular,” Krugman asserts. “No, this outburst of God-talk is surely a response to the way the walls are closing in on Trump — the high likelihood that he will be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, Krugman writes, is “taking shelter behind bigotry — racial, of course, but now, religious as well.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Krugman emphasizes:</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s response to his predicament has been to ramp up the ugliness in an effort to rally his base. The racism has gotten even more explicit, the paranoia about the deep state more extreme. But who makes up Trump’s base? The usual answer is working-class whites, but a deeper dive into the data suggests that it’s more specific: it’s really evangelical working-class whites who are staying with Trump despite growing evidence of his malfeasance and unsuitability for high office.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Not only was Barr’s speech at Notre Dame a cynical effort to shelter Trump from all the terrible headlines that have come from the Ukraine scandal, Krugman writes — it was also horribly misleading in its critique of secular societies. The Times journalist explains, “Barr’s claim that secularism is responsible for violence happens to be empirically verifiable nonsense.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No matter how much Trump and Barr play the Culture War card, Krugman stresses, the Ukraine scandal won’t be any less repulsive.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The efforts of Trump’s henchmen to use the specter of secularism to distract people from their boss’ sins probably won’t work,” Krugman asserts. “But I could be wrong. And if I am wrong — if religious bigotry turns out to be a winning strategy — all I can say is, God help us.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/william-barrs-corruption-tour-continues-with-secret-rupert-murdoch-meeting/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/william-barrs-corruption-tour-continues-with-secret-rupert-murdoch-meeting/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>...T</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>rump’s top cop, Attorney General&nbsp;William Barr, had a private meeting in New York&nbsp;with none other than the ogre of media, Rupert Murdoch. </b>According to</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a title="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us/politics/barr-murdoch-trump.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</em></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Murdoch and Barr met Wednesday&nbsp;at Murdoch’s residence. Whether or not there were any others in attendance is not clear, and what the two men discussed&nbsp;over eye of newt and goblets of blood&nbsp;is also unknown. What is known is that Murdoch is powerful and he represents a lot of right-wing propaganda outlets, and Barr is suspected of having involved himself in high crimes and treason.</span></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News has been a&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/14/1849796/-Rupert-Murdoch-and-Fox-News-continue-to-slowly-poison-our-country-to-death" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">poisonous beacon</a>&nbsp;of Trump’s misinformation campaign against the world and reality for the past few years but in recent months, the cable network’s&nbsp;unwavering support of the president has shown some cracks. This has been coupled with random attacks from the sputtering orange white supremacist himself, unhappy at the network for what he has seemingly perceived as a betrayal...</font></p><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">this is the inverse of mueller as savior?</font></div><div><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Following the confirmation of William Barr to the position of attorney general in February, Sean Hannity&nbsp;<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=a8abbd5a09fe5b9fb7c8d915fdf3045950b07344eae2a2561ae56154919c51107374bf0a88cea8c9a8747eb7e2117ec04d00a36ec46c13b5" title="pushed one message" style="">pushed one message</a>: Investigate the president’s political enemies, or suffer the consequences. It appears Hannity got his wish.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This week, Trump’s campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany&nbsp;</span><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=a8abbd5a09fe5b9f9418be188578cccb9a1d9d5d1786de359b24d322003e99297f2c04f0a814f4c66ea628ad34b857db199a8af2c5e4b764" title="gave up the game" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">gave up the game</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. In an interview on his radio show, Hannity stated that Trump is opposed by “pretty much everybody except for like me” and subsequently asked McEnany to assess the impact that</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> “the media mob”</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> would have on the 2020 election. McEnany responded, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Yeah, the work that you do every night, Sean, is going to go a long way. It already has. We now have the Justice Department looking into the misdeeds of the Obama administration.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Hannity and Fox have long shilled for the president, attacking his enemies and shielding him from criticism at every turn. However, attributing a federal investigation to Hannity takes the network’s influence to a new level.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz pointed out this week, “It was inevitable for Hannity’s pro-Trump commentary to become the foundation of the president’s reelection campaign. That the campaign acknowledges that messaging might come via a federal investigation is an ominous sign.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p class="yiv4079980001headline3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">B<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/qpshfjdydbntnfrrtvsddtdrrvtrygpchbdnsmjgdfv_nypyqkjknqddkdrwpjj.html?a=&b=280&c=21989&d=2" style="">arr’s ‘suspicious’ decision to ignore a federal judge’s order over the release of Flynn transcripts put the AG in major jeopardy: legal scholars</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In interviews with a constitutional law scholar and a former…</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p class="yiv0560478744headline3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/zwsdlgfvftzkzlqqkbpffkfqqbkqvswcdtfzprgsbpb_izghyczcwymmcgngdmh.html?a=&b=248&c=21989&d=2" style="">rump’s Roy Cohns: William Barr has the power, but Rudy Giuliani slings the mud</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While he was in Japan, Donald Trump demanded that the…</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Trump just issued a sweeping order to give Bill Barr expanded authority to review the Russia probe’s origins</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>&nbsp;Trump just issued a sweeping order to give Bill Barr expanded authority to review the Russia probe’s origins Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead</div><div>written by Cody Fenwick<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>May 24, 2019</div><div>President Donald Trump issued a sweeping order to the intelligence community on Thursday, directing it to comply with Attorney General Bill Barr’s efforts to probe the origins of the Russia…</div><div>President Donald Trump issued a sweeping order to the intelligence community on Thursday, directing it to comply with Attorney General Bill Barr’s efforts to probe the origins of the Russia investigation that has hung over his presidency. It also expanded Barr’s declassification authority.</div><div>
</div><div>Press Secretary Sarah Sanders released the following statement:</div><div>
</div><div>Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election. The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information. Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions.</div><div>
</div><div>News reports recently revealed that Barr had directed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the investigation, despite the fact that another U.S. attorney and the Justice Department inspector general have already been reviewing the case. Because of the president’s obvious hostility toward the investigation and Barr’s fealty to Trump, it appears to be a blatant effort to feed suspicions about the “deep state” and potentially to find reasons for targeting the president’s perceived enemies.</div><div>
</div><div>“Whoa,” said Matthew Miller, a former DOJ spokesman, in reacting to the announcement. “So Barr has the sole authority to declassify info related to the Trump investigation over the objections of the original classifying authority – CIA, NSA, etc. A huge accumulation of power and discretion to the AG that I believe is unprecedented.”</div><div>
</div><div>“National security takes a back seat to Trump demands that Barr gin up an investigation into public servants at DOJ & FBI. Also today, Trump called prosecutors killers & accused people by name of treason after a reminder the punishment is execution,” said Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor. “There’s no way this ends well.”</div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/devin-nunes-planned-secret-meeting-with-bill-barr-to-launch-investigation-against-mueller-probe/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/devin-nunes-planned-secret-meeting-with-bill-barr-to-launch-investigation-against-mueller-probe/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a report from&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Politico</em>, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/13/devin-nunes-william-barr-meeting-1272835" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">is making plans to meet behind the scenes</a>&nbsp;with newly appointed Attorney General Bill Barr to set the stage for launching investigations into Justice Department officials who took part into the inquiry into President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.</font></p><div class="p1_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report states Democrats are furious with the GOP lawmaker who ran interference for the president when Republicans controlled the House.</font></p><div class="p2_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, “Nunes’ accusations of misconduct are aimed at a slew of former FBI and Justice Department officials, who he alleges committed crimes in their pursuit of allegations that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russians to influence the election.”</font></p><div class="p3_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nunes had previously hinted on Fox News that he was submitting criminal referrals to the Justice Department against those he feels have unfairly — or criminally — gone after the president.</font></p><div class="p4_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Nunes’ move is an escalation by Trump’s allies in Congress to pivot from Mueller’s still-unreleased findings to the conduct of the FBI and Justice Department investigators who initiated the Russia probe,” Politico reports. “Before seeing its contents, Nunes labeled Mueller’s report a ‘partisan document’ and said ‘we can just burn it up,’&nbsp; even as most of Trump’s supporters were celebrating the news — as described publicly by Barr — that Mueller ‘did not establish’ a conspiracy between the campaign and the Russian government.”</font></p><div class="p5_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, “The Justice Department declined multiple inquiries about whether Barr intends to meet with Nunes.’</font></p><div class="p6_7" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/13/devin-nunes-william-barr-meeting-1272835" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">read more here.</a></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see jrnl fail</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><header style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="article--header" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.3em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">F<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-the-political-infotainment-media-complex-the-mueller-investigation-was-a-gold-mine-114417" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">or the ‘<span class="nobr" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; white-space: nowrap;">political-infotainment</span>-media complex,’ the Mueller investigation was a gold&nbsp;mine</a></font></h2><p class="byline" style="margin: 0px; padding: 2px 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; line-height: 18px;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/matthew-jordan-188589" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none;">Matthew Jordan</a>,&nbsp;<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">Pennsylvania State University</span></font></span></p></div></header><div class="content" data-raw="" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the rest of us, it's another sign of the country's eroding media and political landscape.</font></span></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">big week, squelch mueller (recall 19 pp audition memo, unitary exec BS can not obstruct just by def then walk back, then try kill ACA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/republicans-want-to-do-vast-harm-on-health-care-because-its-only-a-right-for-the-rich/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/republicans-want-to-do-vast-harm-on-health-care-because-its-only-a-right-for-the-rich/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Republican, announced that his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, just hadn’t gone far enough&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/sessions-takes-aim-heart-obamacare-coverage-pre-existing-conditions-n881396" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">when he asked a federal judge to kill the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions</span></a>—that is, stuff like asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure.</b></font></span></p><div class="p1_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Barr told an appeals court that he does not want it to merely murder that one provision but, instead,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/us/politics/trump-aca.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">will insist that it massacre the ACA’s entire 1,990 pages</span></a>—death to every clause protecting patients from insurance company abuses, every portion devoted to containing costs, every phrase extending health care to the nation’s young adults and working poor.</font></span></p><div class="p2_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">It is essential, Barr contends, that the court rip insurance from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">21 million people</span></a>&nbsp;covered by the ACA health insurance marketplaces and Medicaid expansion; that the court deny insurance to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2 million young adults</span></a>&nbsp;covered by their parents’ plans; that the court foreclose substance abuse treatment to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">800,000 Americans</span></a>&nbsp;suffering opioid addiction.</font></span></p><div class="p3_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">It is critical, Barr insists, to deprive the ACA’s guarantee of medical insurance access to<b>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions</span></a>&nbsp;</b>and to increase medication and premium costs for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">60 million senior citizens on Medicare</span></a>. Also, of course, Barr says, the court must restore the medical insurance caps that bankrupted and killed Americans who suffered diseases that are expensive to treat, like cancer, or whose babies were born prematurely requiring costly long-term care.</font></span></p><div class="p4_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Barr is not an outlier. He is the face of a Republican Party that has done everything in its power to rob Americans of ACA benefits every minute of the nine years that the law has existed</b>.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/resources/primers/medicaidmap" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">GOP governors have vetoed the ACA extension of Medicaid</span></a>, denying insurance to millions of low-income working people. When the U.S. House was controlled by the GOP, it voted more than&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/21/the-house-has-voted-54-times-in-four-years-on-obamacare-heres-the-full-list/?utm_term=.f1bd79feafcb" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">50 times to repeal</span></a>&nbsp;all or parts of the ACA.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180710.935457/full/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Twenty GOP state attorneys general</span></a>&nbsp;asked a federal judge to overturn the law after Congress zeroed out its tax penalties for people who refuse to get insurance.</font></span></p><div class="p5_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of this is blatantly mean-spirited because the GOP never produced a plan to replace the ACA health insurance guarantees. In medical terms, it is the opposite of the physician mission to heal. It is Republican machination to harm.</font></span></p><div class="p6_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People who drive a Mercedes,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-accuses-wealthy-parents-including-celebrities-in-college-entrance-bribery-scheme/2019/03/12/d91c9942-44d1-11e9-8aab-95b8d80a1e4f_story.html?utm_term=.c4fc7d8a58d4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">spend half a million bucks</span></a>&nbsp;to get their children into high-status universities and lull away weekends at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coastalliving.com/travel/top-10/most-expensive-beach-towns" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">$3 million Nantucket beach homes</span></a>&nbsp;will always have health care. The price is irrelevant to them. Even if denied insurance, they can afford chemotherapy, or the monthly bill for insulin or the cost of a leg broken in a sail-boating accident.</font></span></p><div class="p7_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For everyone else, for coal miners and code writers, for registered nurses and Starbucks baristas, for Amazon warehouse workers and independent truck drivers, health insurance is vital. Workers, whether low-income or middle class, don’t have hundreds of thousands sitting around for a heart transplant or repeated cancer treatments or neonatal care.</font></span></p><div class="p8_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Before the ACA, health insurance corporations took advantage of this situation. They raised premiums at&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article228416754.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">twice the rate of inflation</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> They refused to insure sick people—the people who desperately need insurance, people with inherited conditions and chronic illnesses. Even some&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/health/obamacare-trump-health.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">employer-based insurance plans excluded coverage</span></a>&nbsp;for certain medical conditions. Insurers dropped coverage when people got sick. They capped coverage—<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/jan/16/bankrupted-by-giving-birth-having-premature-twins-cost-me-everything" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">so that if $1 million or $2 million—or some other random amount—was spent to save the preemie’s life in the first 18 months</span></a>, the still-fragile baby was uninsured after that.</span></font></span></p><div class="p9_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://tinyurl.com/6onzl2q" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Uninsured people died</a></span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;of treatable conditions because they couldn’t afford care. Inadequate insurance&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-4154729" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">bankrupted families</span></a>. Americans worried incessantly about whether they would be able to afford to maintain their insurance or whether an illness would cost them their coverage.</span></font></p><div class="p10_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ACA cured many of these problems in addition to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/slower-premium-growth-under-obama/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">lowering the rate at which the cost of health insurance rose.</span></a>&nbsp;As it accomplished those things, it became more popular. Its approval rating&nbsp;<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/obama_and_democrats_health_care_plan-1130.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">rose from around 40 percent</span></a>&nbsp;initially to&nbsp;<a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/03/21/obamacare-affordable-care-act-anniversary" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">51 percent now</span></a>. That’s not great, but it sure as hell is better than the way people felt about insurance before the ACA.</font></span></p><div class="p11_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The position of Republicans, however, is that some people just don’t deserve health insurance. It’s similar to saying some children just don’t deserve an education. Or some families just don’t deserve to have a fire department respond to a blaze at their home.</font></span></p><div class="p12_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans’ first effort to thwart the ACA was a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. The U.S. Supreme Court&nbsp;<a href="https://tinyurl.com/6ma8wpn" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ruled that most of the law complied</span></a>&nbsp;but that the federal government could not force states to expand Medicaid. Under the ACA, the federal government&nbsp;<a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2019/fiscal-case-medicaid-expansion" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">initially paid 100 percent, and later 90 percent</span></a>, of what it cost states to extend&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/utah-lawmakers-scale-back-voter-approved-medicaid-expansion/2019/02/11/fecaf742-2bcc-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?utm_term=.357a0d93e1cc" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Medicaid coverage to people who earned up to 138 percent of the federal poverty threshold</span></a>, which is about $17,000 for an individual or $35,000 for a family of four.</font></span></p><div class="p13_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a result, Republican governors and lawmakers denied Medicaid to millions of eligible low-income working people and their families. Some Republican governors went so far as to defy the will of the people of their states. In Maine, for example, voters approved expanding Medicaid in 2017 in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/health/maine-medicaid-expansion-lepage.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">binding referendum by 59-to-41 percent</span></a>&nbsp;after the Republican governor five times vetoed Medicaid expansion proposals.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/health/maine-medicaid-expansion-lepage.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Even after the referendum and a court decision ordering expansion</span></a>, the Republican governor refused to do it. Not until a Democrat took the governor’s seat this year did it happen. Similarly, Virginia and Kansas got Medicaid extensions only after they elected Democratic governors.</font></span></p><div class="p14_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In Idaho and Utah, just like Maine, Republicans are defying the will of the people in their states who passed referendums to extend Medicaid.</b> In Idaho, the Republican-controlled House&nbsp;<a href="https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/post/idaho-house-gives-green-light-medicaid-restrictions-bill#stream/0" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">decided to require those to whom Medicaid would be extended</span></a>&nbsp;to buy insurance on the ACA exchanges instead. The Republican-controlled&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/utah-lawmakers-scale-back-voter-approved-medicaid-expansion/2019/02/11/fecaf742-2bcc-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html?utm_term=.357a0d93e1cc" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">legislature in Utah voted to expand Medicaid only to people earning up to 100 percent</span></a>&nbsp;of the poverty threshold, instead of 138 percent, and, at the same time, demanded that the federal government reimburse Utah at the 90 percent rate as if the state had properly expanded Medicaid.</font></span></p><div class="p15_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, in Idaho,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article228504344.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the GOP-controlled House voted to require Medicaid recipients to prove they are working</span></a>&nbsp;to qualify.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-job-scarce-town-struggles-with-arkansass-first-in-nation-medicaid-work-rules/2019/03/26/f551c352-5012-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a579a05682dd" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Arkansas was the first state where Republicans imposed this demand, and quickly 18,000 residents lost their insurance</span></a>, either because they didn’t report work or failed to follow complicated rules, which include providing an email address in a state where less than half of residents of some counties have internet access.</font></span></p><div class="p16_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fourteen other states have imposed work requirements or want to, but a federal judge this week told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/health/medicaid-work-requirement.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Arkansas and Kentucky to stop it.</span></a></font></span></p><div class="p17_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They&nbsp;<a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-medicaid-work-requirements-judge-arkansas-indiana-kentucky.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">probably will appeal</span></a>—at the same time Republican Attorney General Barr is trying to blow up the entire health care law. The message is clear: to Republicans, health care is a right only for the rich; the rest can suffer and die. The GOP Hippocratic oath is: Do vast harm.</font></span></p><div class="p18_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This article was produced by the&nbsp;</span><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Independent Media Institute</span></span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">.</span></font></span></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-ap-expunges-iran-contra-pardons-from-barrs-record-and-proves-how-little-interest-there-is-in-the-trajectory-of-presidential-power/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/the-ap-expunges-iran-contra-pardons-from-barrs-record-and-proves-how-little-interest-there-is-in-the-trajectory-of-presidential-power/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">president facing a major scandal, just as the highest-profile trial is about to begin, pardons the indicted or convicted officials around him to effectively stop the investigation that’s closing in on his own illegal conduct.</span></font></div><div class="p0_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump soon? We’ll see. But this actually describes what President George H.W. Bush did in 1992.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Iran/Contra scandal revealed, among other things, that the Reagan/Bush White House had secretly sold missiles to Iran in exchange for hostages held in Lebanon, using the proceeds to fund right-wing forces fighting the leftist Nicaraguan government in violation of US law.</font></p><div class="p2_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Christmas Eve 1992, just as the indicted former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was about to face trial, Bush pardoned him and five others, including former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and and former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane. The&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">New York Times</strong>&nbsp;(<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/25/us/pardons-bush-pardons-6-iran-affair-aborting-weinberger-trial-prosecutor-assails.html?auth=login-email" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">12/25/92</a>) reported this as “Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Averting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails ‘Cover-Up.’”</font></p><div class="p3_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The attorney general for Bush who&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684553791/william-barr-supported-pardons-in-an-earlier-d-c-witch-hunt-iran-contra" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">approved the pardons</a>, William Barr, is now being nominated for the same position by Trump. Is this background relevant? Though current news columns are rife with speculation that Trump might likewise protect himself by pardoning his indicted or convicted associates, the dominant US news wire service doesn’t seem to think so.</font></p><div class="p4_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">n “Barr as Attorney General: Old Job, Very Different Washington” (<a href="https://apnews.com/8f26d3c22b264d5dad454fd94c6eb6a1?" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">1/14/19</a>),&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Associated Press</strong>&nbsp;reporter Eric Tucker made no mention whatsoever of the Iran/Contra pardons. Rather than seriously examine the trajectory of presidential power and accountability, Tucker framed the story, as the headline indicates, as a stark contrast between the&nbsp; gentlemanly Bush and the “twice-divorced” Trump:</font></p><div class="p5_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Serving Trump, who faces intensifying investigations from the department Barr would lead, is unlikely to compare with his tenure under President George H.W. Bush.</font></p><div class="p6_19" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The false implication is that Bush did not himself face intensifying investigations from Lawrence Walsh, who operated out of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel.&nbsp; The misleading comparison is compounded by Tucker describing Trump as “breaking with the practice of shielding law enforcement from political influence” and ousting Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “not protecting him in the Russia investigation”—as if Barr didn’t have direct experience in the first Bush administration with imposing political influence on law enforcement to protect a president from investigation.</font></p><div class="p7_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, Tucker cites Barr’s supporters calling him “driven by his commitment to the department” and “very much a law-and-order guy.” (The praise for the new head of the department Tucker regularly covers marks his article as a “<a href="https://fair.org/?s=beat+sweetener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">beat-sweetener</a>,” a long and unfortunate tradition of journalists’ making their jobs easier by sucking up to sources.)</font></p><div class="p8_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This deceptive piece was apparently picked up by literally thousands of media outlets. A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22unlikely+to+compare+with+his+tenure+under+President+George+H.W.+Bush.%22&rlz=1C1WPZA_enUS739US747&ei=DOk9XPWkBsni_Abv_6CYCw&start=90&sa=N&filter=0&ved=0ahUKEwj12pPq-u_fAhVJMd8KHe8_CLMQ8tMDCHU&biw=1920&bih=974" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">search</a>&nbsp;of “unlikely to compare with his tenure under President George H.W. Bush” produces over 2,400 results.</font></p><div class="p9_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Consortium News</strong>&nbsp;founder Robert Parry, who broke much of the Iran-Contra story for&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</strong>, would later write in a&nbsp;<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/21/firewall-inside-the-iran-contra-cover-up/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">review</a>&nbsp;of Walsh’s&nbsp;<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nBcV2hmsqW4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">book</a>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Firewall: Inside the Iran/Contra Cover-Up</span>:</font></p><div class="p10_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px; position: relative; line-height: 1.7; overflow: hidden; background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border: none !important;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican independent counsel [Lawrence Walsh] infuriated the GOP when he submitted a second indictment of Weinberger on the Friday before the 1992 elections. The indictment contained documents revealing that President Bush had been lying for years with his claim that he was “out of the loop” on the Iran/Contra decisions. The ensuing furor dominated the last several days of the campaign and sealed Bush’s defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton.</font></p><div class="p11_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></p><div class="p12_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.7;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Walsh had discovered, too, that Bush had withheld his own notes about the Iran/Contra Affair, a discovery that elevated the President to a possible criminal subject of the investigation. But Bush had one more weapon in his arsenal. On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush destroyed the Iran/Contra probe once and for all by pardoning Weinberger and five other convicted or indicted defendants.</font></p><div class="p13_19" style="font-style: italic; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></div></div></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parry, who died a year ago, left&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</strong>&nbsp;after many of his stories on Iran/Contra were squashed (<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Consortium News</strong>,&nbsp;<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/28/robert-parrys-legacy-and-the-future-of-consortiumnews/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">1/28/18</a>).</font></p><div class="p14_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After I&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/samhusseini/status/1084903761850580993" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">criticized</a>&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</strong>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Twitter</strong>&nbsp;for the omission, a later&nbsp;<a href="https://www.apnews.com/f3713a2b8df940c3818d6409abca4044" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">piece</a>&nbsp;by Tucker, co-written with Michael Balsamo, noted perfunctorily in the 16th graph: “As attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush’s pardons of Reagan administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal.” (A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22As+attorney+general+in+1992,+he+endorsed+Bush%E2%80%99s+pardons+of+Reagan+administration+officials+in+the+Iran-Contra+scandal%22&rlz=1C1WPZA_enUS739US747&filter=0&biw=1920&bih=974" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">search</a>&nbsp;on “as attorney general in 1992, he endorsed Bush’s pardons of Reagan administration officials in the Iran/Contra scandal” produced a mere 202 results.)</font></p><div class="p15_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While much of the media obsesses over every bit of “Russiagate,” some breathlessly anticipating the next revelation will surely bring down the Trump presidency, it’s remarkable how little interest there is in the trajectory of presidential power.</font></p><div class="p16_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather, much of the establishment media has gone to great lengths to rehabilitate officials from both Bush administrations, including the elder Bush himself when he died last month. (One exception to the generally&nbsp;<a href="https://fair.org/home/clear-eyed-antidotes-to-ingenuous-accolades-for-george-h-w-bush/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">hagiographic</a>&nbsp;coverage of his death was Arun Gupta’s “Let’s Talk About George H.W. Bush’s Role in the Iran/Contra Scandal”— in&nbsp;<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Intercept</strong>,&nbsp;<a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/12/07/george-h-w-bush-iran-contra/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">12/7/18</a>.) Indeed, Trump naming Barr just after George H.W. Bush’s funeral could be seen as a jiu-jitsu move: How could anyone object to his nominating the AG of the just-sainted Poppy Bush? It’s as though Trump were saying, “If you all like him so much, I’ll have what he had.” See the Institute for Public Accuracy&nbsp;<a href="https://accuracy.org/release/barr-as-ag-bush-and-trump-dovetail/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">news release</a>, “Barr as AG? Bush and Trump Dovetail.”</font></p><div class="p17_19" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">AP</strong>‘s actions also fit into the institution-protecting mode of what Parry derided as the “conventional wisdom”—which in its current formulation depicts Trump’s authoritarian tendencies as&nbsp;<a href="https://fair.org/home/nyt-trumpwashes-70-years-of-us-crimes/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">aberrations from the norms</a>&nbsp;of US politics, rather than a continuation of the worst tendencies of his predecessors.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/william-barrs-deep-state-resume-cover-ups-covert-ops-and-pardons/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/william-barrs-deep-state-resume-cover-ups-covert-ops-and-pardons/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">started off in Washington at the Central Intelligence Agency and went to law school at night while I was working at CIA,” recalled William Barr in a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/william-p-barr-oral-history-assistant-attorney-general" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2001 oral history</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">for the University of Virginia.</span></font></div><div class="p0_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s nominee to be attorney general has what Trump might call “deep state” credentials. Barr came to Langley in 1973. He was a 23-year-old graduate of Columbia with a master’s in political science and Chinese studies. His&nbsp;<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000019813387;view=1up;seq=160;size=150" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">resume</span></a>&nbsp;shows he toiled at the CIA by day and attended George Washington University law school at night. The Watergate scandal was ravaging the agency’s reputation and destroying the presidency of Richard Nixon.</font></span></p><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A close examination of Barr’s legal career indicates a high tolerance for presidentially sanctioned law-breaking.</b></font></span></p><div class="p2_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr spent four formative years in the Intelligence Directorate and the Office of Legislative Counsel. He even made the acquaintance of CIA director George H.W. Bush. In 1977 Barr moved on to a prestigious clerkship for a federal judge and then a series of jobs in private practice and the Justice Department. In 1991, Bush, now president, appointed Barr to be attorney general.</font></span></p><div class="p3_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">At age 41, Barr was one of the youngest men ever to hold that office. He left after one year and went on to a long career in corporate law and public service. Barr now returns to his old job at the behest of besieged President Trump.</font></span></p><div class="p4_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr’s confirmation hearings open this week amid questions about the legality of the president’s conduct toward Russian state agents and FBI investigators.</font></span></p><div class="p5_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Barr protect the investigation of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller? Or will he act on a&nbsp;<a href="https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/william-p-barrs-memo-on-the-special-counsels-obstruction-theory/3385/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">tightly argued memo</span></a>&nbsp;in which he claimed Mueller has already exceeded his authority?</font></span></p><div class="p6_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his first turn as attorney general in 1991, Barr handled three legal issues of deep concern to the CIA. He helped resolve all three issues favorably for the agency’s leaders and the president. Barr’s decisions were unfavorable to law enforcement, Congress, and the voters.</font></span></p><div class="p7_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bank of Fear</font></b></span></p><div class="p8_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">The first deep state fiasco handled by Attorney General Barr was the mother of all scandals, known by the sibilant initials,<b> BCCI.</b></font></span></p><div class="p9_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Bank of Credit and Commerce International was a global institution, which deputy CIA director Robert Gates described, slightly more accurately, as “the Bank of Crooks and Criminals.” David Ignatius dubbed it “The Bank of Fear.”</font></span></p><div class="p10_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">BCCI was a shadowy but very real institution with connections to governments and intelligence services all over the world. BCCI’s owners specialized in evading regulators so that they could speculate and bribe with the depositors’ money. As the fraud mounted and spread, law enforcement officials and bank regulators the world over discovered what the CIA had been trying to hide.</font></span></p><div class="p11_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate investigators, led by John Kerry, found the agency had numerous BCCI accounts. Kamal Adham, the former chief of&nbsp;<a href="https://tinyurl.com/yaz96x79" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Saudi intelligence</span></a>&nbsp;and a CIA collaborator, played a leading role in the bank’s dealings.</font></span></p><div class="p12_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The&nbsp;<a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000019995199;view=1up;seq=336" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">final report of the Kerry Committee</span></a>&nbsp;captures the mind-boggling scale of BCCI’s corruption. It was the kind of true story that makes people believe there is a “deep state.”</font></span></p><div class="p13_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1991, federal prosecutors in Tampa launched an investigation of money laundering at BCCI. The District Attorney of Manhattan investigated a broad array of bank activities and found itself getting zero cooperation from colleagues in the Justice Department and CIA. Barr sat on the influential deputies committee of the National Security Council, which controlled the paperwork.</font></span></p><div class="p14_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We couldn’t get records. We couldn’t get witnesses. We could barely get a meeting,” said John Moscow, the lead BCCI prosecutor in Manhattan, in a recent interview.</font></span></p><div class="p15_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr was up for confirmation as attorney general. Moscow said he heard that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee made Barr promise to let the BCCI investigation go ahead.</font></span></p><div class="p16_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We didn’t have a problem once Barr was in there,” Moscow said. “We got cooperation. We prosecuted seventeen people here in New York. Of course, the biggest guys got away.”</font></span></p><div class="p17_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several of the BCCI ringleaders were indicted, but they got away. Barr did not press Pakistan for their extradition, nor did his successors in the Clinton administration.</font></span></p><div class="p18_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iraq-Gate</font></b></span></p><div class="p19_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr played a more direct role in sidelining an investigation into an Italian bank that the CIA used to funnel aid to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The scandal was known, briefly, as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/18/weekinreview/the-world-a-budding-scandal-in-brief-a-primer-on-the-bnl-affair.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Iraq-gate.</span></a></font></span></p><div class="p20_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The backdrop was the geopolitics of the horrific war between Iran and Iraq in 1980-88, which killed millions. In the interests of harming Iran, President Bush authorized a program of covert support for Iraq, including the provision of targeting intelligence and commercial loan guarantees. The latter were made via the Atlanta branch of the Banco Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL).</font></span></p><div class="p21_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The story was politically potent because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had just invaded Kuwait in August 1990. President Bush had to raise an international military coalition to drive him out.</font></span></p><div class="p22_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Iraq-gate story illustrated how, once again, a U.S. covert operation had backfired. The Iraqi dictator had been emboldened by the covert support of the CIA to launch a war on a weaker American ally.</b></font></span></p><div class="p23_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“</span><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Were the intelligence services of the U.S., Britain and Italy all aware of—and participants in—the West’s secret, unlawful arming of Saddam?”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/12/opinion/essay-1st-global-political-scandal.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><span class="s4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">asked</span></a>&nbsp;</span><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">New York Times columnist William Safire. “</span><span class="s3" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of course; but the stonewalling strategy of the departing Justice politicians is to have the C.I.A. take the gaspipe for all the wrongdoers.”</span></font></p><div class="p24_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of those “departing Justice politicians” was Barr. He made sure CIA did not “take the gaspipe,” i.e., commit suicide. Under pressure to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate, Barr slyly appointed a special examiner, a magistrate with much less time and money. A retired judge conducted a cursory investigation and absolved both the CIA and Justice Department of wrongdoing.</font></span></p><div class="p25_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Incoming president Bill Clinton was not interested in investigating the CIA, and the BNL case was forgotten.</font></span></p><div class="p26_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr later dismissed the Iraq-gate allegations as “nonsense.” But there was no doubt Hussein had received billions of dollars’ worth of loan guarantees via the U.S. branch of BNL. How that happened was never determined.</font></span></p><div class="p27_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr, more than anyone, made sure the Iraq-gate scheme was not fully investigated.</font></span></p><div class="p28_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Iran-Contra Pardons</font></b></span></p><div class="p29_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With President Trump reserving the possibility that he might pardon former aides indicted by Mueller, Barr’s handling of the Iran-Contra pardons of 1992 is revealing.</font></span></p><div class="p30_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">President Bush had been defeated for reelection;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Barr urged Bush to use his pardon power freely before leaving office<b>. Like Trump today, Bush was under investigation by a special prosecutor</b>, Judge Lawrence Walsh, for his role in the Iran-Contra conspiracy.</span></font></span></p><div class="p31_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">Also under investigation were former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and two top CIA officials, Clair George and Dewey Clarridge. They had all plotted to evade a congressional ban on aid to the counterrevolutionaries in Central America by illegally selling weapons to Iran.</font></span></p><div class="p32_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">The CIA was in real danger. The trials of George and Clarridge promised to be a public relations nightmare or worse. Sen. Pat Moynihan, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had introduced a bill to abolish the clandestine service. The Cold War was coming to an end, and the agency’s future was in doubt.</font></span></p><div class="p33_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">In his oral history, Barr says he urged Bush to pardon the CIA men on the grounds that they were victims of the “criminalization” of foreign policy. When it came to pardon power, Barr said he “favored the broadest” use.</font></span></p><div class="p34_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There were some people arguing just for Weinberger, and I said, ‘No, in for a penny, in for a pound.’”</font></span></p><div class="p35_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bush took his advice. Barr had no respect for the special prosecutor’s work and no regrets about consigning it to history. Walsh accused Bush of hiding criminal misconduct, but the former president and aides escaped justice.</font></span></p><div class="p36_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In all three cover-ups, Barr sacrificed the interests of transparency and accountability to the political needs of Langley and the White House.</font></span></p><div class="p37_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="p1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span class="s1" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Can President Trump count on the same if Barr is confirmed? Yes, he almost certainly can.</font></span></p><div class="p38_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the&nbsp;<a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/projects-programs/the-deep-state" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Deep State</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Secret-Spymaster-James-Angleton/dp/1250080614/?tag=alternorg08-20" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton</a>.</font></span></p><div class="p39_41" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article was produced by the&nbsp;<a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/projects-programs/the-deep-state" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Deep State</a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.</font></span></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Republicans have scheduled the hearings for William Barr, Trump’s nominee for attorney general (who will replace the hapless Matt Whitaker, the short-term replacement for Jeff Sessions), for next week. The White House claims Barr won’t have time to meet with Democrats on the Judiciary Committee before the hearings because of the shutdown. They managed to squeeze in meetings with Republicans, however, including new committee chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. He assured everyone that in spite of Barr’s unseemly audition for the job by trashing the Mueller investigation, he will be completely fair and unbiased. Graham did make one mistake in saying that Barr and Mueller are close personal friends. Trump may not care for that.</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/trumps-ag-nominee-helped-perpetrate-steve-bannons-uranium-one-hoax/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/trumps-ag-nominee-helped-perpetrate-steve-bannons-uranium-one-hoax/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">C<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ertain figures in Washington develop a gold-plated image over the years, praised so often in reputable media outlets as men (almost always men) of integrity that their reputations become unassailable. Nobody criticizes them, because they are defined above criticism. Often enough, these figures prove less perfect than advertised — think Clark Clifford or Kenneth Starr.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such a fellow is&nbsp;<b>William Barr, whose nomination by President Trump for United States attorney general</b>&nbsp;will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. His name is almost invariably adorned with adjectives like “prominent” and “respected.” These days, it is also usually noted that he is one of the youngest lawyers who ever served in the office to which he again aspires, named by the late former President George H.W. Bush, of blessed memory, et cetera.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Given this uplifting consensus, it may seem churlish to mention some basic facts about Barr. Contrary to the sugar coating routinely applied by pundits to the Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush era, the Justice Department that Barr once headed was rife with political intrigue. (An attorney general predecessor of his — one Edwin Meese, still at large — barely escaped prison.)</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most blatant episode occurred one month before the 1992 presidential election, when Barr suddenly seized control of a minor matter in Little Rock, Arkansas. He ordered FBI agents in the Little Rock office to open an investigation of tiny Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan — no later than Oct. 16! — a move that was clearly designed to set up Bill and Hillary Clinton for embarrassment. Barr issued this order despite the fact that Charles Banks, the U.S. Attorney in eastern Arkansas, had determined there was no plausible evidence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr’s partisan directive plainly violated Justice Department strictures against any legal action that might influence a federal election. His intrusion enraged Banks — a Republican appointee — who dictated a sharply worded letter that left no doubt about his suspicions.</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Banks declared that he would not participate in this “intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election” and warned that this “amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Justice Department policy.” He closed by promising to direct “any press inquiry from any source whatsoever” to Barr.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Almost a quarter century later, Barr is the same partisan hack indulging in the same political mischief. And he is still targeting the Clintons.</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before he was nominated by Trump, he auditioned for the job by suggesting publicly that special counsel Robert Mueller has no legal basis to investigate the president for obstruction of justice. This worrisome opinion will no doubt be explored by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who fear that Barr will interfere with the Russia investigation.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They should also ask Barr why he believes that the Uranium One conspiracy theory — which claims that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved a Russian takeover of U.S. uranium reserves in exchange for donations to The Clinton Foundation — merits investigation by the Justice Department. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters,” he said last year, “the department is abdicating its responsibility.”</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Uranium One is a political hoax, albeit a hoax that Steve Bannon once contrived to place on the front page of The New York Times.&nbsp;</b>It is false in every aspect, from the motives of the Clintons, to the process for approving the uranium asset sale by federal officials — which Hillary Clinton could not have controlled as secretary of state, and which continued after she left office. So for Barr to promote this fraud means either that he is very stupid or that he is willing to misuse the Justice Department’s investigative authority. And nobody thinks Barr is stupid.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So senators on the judiciary committee should ask why he uttered that remark. What evidence does he possess about Uranium One? What sources have informed his strange opinion? And will he pursue investigations to vindicate a political agenda?</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It wouldn’t be the first time.</font></div><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="gmail_quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.creators.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=//www.creators.com&source=gmail&ust=1547298447208000&usg=AFQjCNEskL7i_7UrYNtMfTKg4n0JQNUBlw" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">www.creators.com</a>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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