Tag Archives: collusion

national news

It was never a ‘witch hunt,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald J. Trump appears set to ride the “witch hunt” horse all the way to his final day in the Oval Office, which I hope is sooner rather than later . . . if you get my drift.

Special counsel Robert Mueller concluded his 22-month investigation into alleged “collusion” with Russians who attacked our election in 2016. He said there was no prosecutable evidence of a conspiracy to collude. Fine . . . sorta.

Then he left the door open to a possible obstruction of justice complaint brought by someone other than the special counsel’s office. Mueller apparently decided he couldn’t under Justice Department rules file a complaint against a sitting president.

Along the way, Mueller’s team produced many indictments, a few guilty pleas, a number of convictions and some prison sentences for Trump campaign team members.

That is not a “witch hunt.” Yet the president appears intent on hammering away incessantly with the mantra that has been shown to be anything but what he calls it. Attorney General William Barr, for crying out loud, has said that Mueller did not engage in a “witch hunt” as he searched for the truth.

I had hoped against hope that Trump would accept the findings that Mueller reached and then gone on with the task of “making America great again.”

He proclaims himself to be cleared of collusion and obstruction. Yet he continues his loathsome attacks on the character of Mueller, former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and a whole host of second-tier officials who — by the way — have been critical of the president.

Witch hunt?

Not a chance. Nothing of the sort.

The more Donald Trump bitches and moans about a legitimate and necessary investigation — and the more the president stonewalls Congress — the more culpable he sounds.

legal news

Barr on the hunt for clue to ‘witch hunt’?

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Here we go again. U.S. Attorney General William Barr — reportedly/allegedly/supposedly acting on his volition — has hired a federal prosecutor to determine whether an illegal “spy” operation triggered the Robert Mueller probe into alleged collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russians who attacked our electoral system.

Do you believe with all your heart and soul that the AG acted on his own? Or that he will keep his mitts off the probe being conducted by the U.S. attorney from Connecticut? Or that this investigation will put the “witch hunt” diatribe from the president to rest?

Barr has given John Durham the task of determining whether illegal “spying” occurred during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Other senior officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray, have said they have seen no evidence of any such monkey business. That’s not good enough for Barr, who happens to be Wray’s boss. He wants Durham to scour the evidence and make an independent determination.

This assignment bothers me for two reasons.

One is that Donald Trump is involved. Given that I don’t trust him as far as I can toss his 239-pound body, I consider the president to be wholly non-credible on anything, on any issue. I don’t believe a word that flies out of his mouth. He yammers about the Mueller probe being a “witch hunt,” although the AG himself has said he doesn’t believe that to be the case.

The other reason is that Barr also has been acting and sounding more like the president’s personal lawyer than the nation’s chief law enforcer. He filed that four-page “summary” of Mueller’s findings, only to be criticized by Mueller for failing to provide the full context of what Mueller and his team concluded.

So now he has turned John Durham loose to look for determine what others have concluded already, that the Obama administration didn’t “spy” on Trump’s campaign.

Let’s wait for what the prosecutor learns.  I fear another tempest may be brewing.

national news

Lying has become ‘tolerable’ among politicians?

Jimmy Carter once promised that he would never lie to Americans if they elected him president of the United States.

To the best of my knowledge and memory, the 39th president kept that promise. Perhaps he didn’t tell us everything in real time about sensitive negotiations with Egyptian President and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin as they crafted a comprehensive peace treaty. He might have held back on what he told Iranian leaders who held our citizens hostage for 444 days in 1979-80.

I don’t believe he lied.

We fast-forward now to the present day. The current president has demonstrated that he cannot tell the truth.

Donald Trump lies at every level. He lies when he doesn’t need to lie. He lies when it is easier to tell the truth. He lies about matters large and small.

I cannot single out the major lies he has told. They usually involve a political foe. He will say something that puts someone in a negative light. If it’s a lie, well, so be it.

The petty lies are equally remarkable. He lied about his late father being born in Germany; Fred Trump was born in New York City. He lied about losing friends on 9/11; he lost zero friends, he attended zero funerals of those who died on that terrible day.

Trump is lying at an astonishing pace. The Washington Post is keeping a running tabulation the falsehoods; it has passed the 10,000 mark so far and the pace is quickening.

I mention all of this because Donald Trump keeps insisting that he has been “totally exonerated” regarding the Russia matter. No, he hasn’t.

Thus, Trump lies even when the public record demonstrates precisely the opposite to be true. Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into alleged collusion is clear: The special counsel could not clear Trump of obstruction of justice; nor could he prosecute him. Still, Trump lies when he says he has been “totally exonerated.”

How in the world can we accept a single thing this individual says as truth? My view: We cannot. 

national news

No, Mr. Leader, the case is not ‘over’!

Listen to me, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. I’m going to say something you’ve heard already, but you choose to ignore.

The case against Donald Trump is not “over,” as you said on the Senate floor today. There’s more to learn about that obstruction of justice matter.

I get that the collusion case is done. Finished. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings on that matter aren’t exactly going down well with all Americans; I’m one of them who wishes he had reached a different conclusion as to whether the president’s campaign conspired to collude with the Russians who attacked our electoral system. He didn’t. However, since I have extolled Mueller’s integrity and professionalism, I am left to accept his findings.

Mr. Majority Leader, the obstruction case is still gaping wide open. We need to get to the bottom of what the president did and how Mueller concluded that he wasn’t “exonerated” of allegations that he has obstructed the investigation into the Russia matter.

You, sir, have added to the disgrace of your own high office. I’ve already said on this blog many times already that the president has disgraced his office. Now it’s your turn, Sen. McConnell.

Step aside and let your colleagues in the Senate and down hall in the U.S. House of Representatives complete their probe into obstruction, per Mueller’s suggestion in his lengthy report.

The case isn’t over.

national news

Just keep saying it, Mr. POTUS; it’s still a lie

Donald Trump must believe in the theory that if you say something often enough — regardless of its fallacy — that people will eventually believe it to be true.

I refer to “no collusion, no obstruction,” the mantra of the moment for the president of the United States.

I am running out of ways to say this, but I’ll try it yet again.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month-long investigation into alleged “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russians who hacked into our electoral system came up empty. Mueller didn’t find sufficient evidence of conspiracy to collude with the Russians. That particular case is closed.

I do get that. Honestly. I really do.

The obstruction matter is wide open. Mueller has said so. He said in his 448-page report, which Attorney General William Barr has let the world see, declares that Mueller’s team could not conclude that Trump and his campaign team did not obstruct justice; if they could have done so, they would have, Mueller said.

So, the obstruction issue remains an open — and quite inviting target — for Congress to pursue.

I’ve got some social media contacts who keep yapping at me because I won’t acknowledge that Mueller found no evidence of “obstruction.” One of those contacts actually is a friend of mine . . . who happens to be a Trumpkin. Hey, I still love my good buddy.

I regret, though, that he has bought into the Trump mantra of “no obstruction.”

To my dear friend and to others who happen to read these musings from me, I just need to reiterate for the umpteenth time: The case for obstruction of justice is far from being settled. Those 500 or so former federal prosecutors — who worked for Democratic and Republican administrations — all signed that letter that declared that had Trump not been president, he would have been indicted for obstruction of justice.

Let’s allow this matter to run its course.

national news

370 former prosecutors all say it: Trump committed crimes

Three hundred-seventy former federal prosecutors can’t all be wrong . . . can they?

They all have declared, according to Politico, that Donald Trump would have been indicted for obstruction of justice if he were just an ordinary citizen — and not the president of the United States.

Hmm. You know what that means? It means that when special counsel appears before congressional judiciary committees — in both the House and Senate — he should be asked this set of questions:

Did the president commit a crime of obstruction of justice? If yes, why — specifically — did you decide not to file a criminal complaint? If the answer is no, then show us the evidence that led you to that conclusion?

Mueller is a cautious, careful and highly skilled professional prosecutor. He won’t fly off the handle.

However, the former prosecutors who have signed on to the notion that Trump would have been indicted had he not held the highest office in the land must not be discredited, dismissed, or disparaged.

Which is what Trump surely will do as he seeks to ridicule them.

national news

Trump tempts political fate by ordering witnesses to stay silent

I just have to ask: Is Donald Trump committing an act of potential political suicide by refusing to allow witnesses from his administration to testify before congressional committees?

Another president, Richard Nixon, sought to play the same card in 1974. It cost him bigly. President Nixon told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino he would get nothing more from the administration regarding the Watergate matter.

Rodino wouldn’t accept that. He was able to force the president to turn over pertinent material related to the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in June 1972. The rest, as they say, is history. The Judiciary panel approved articles of impeachment and then the president resigned.

Forty-five years later, Donald Trump is seeking to play the same hand. He is telling the current House Judiciary chairman, Jerrold Nadler, that he will withhold information from that panel as it seeks to uncover the truth into allegations of obstruction of justice into the Russia matter that’s been in all the papers of late.

Nadler doesn’t strike me as being any more likely to cave in to this president’s demands than Rodino was in 1974 when Richard Nixon tried to bully him.

I among those Americans who does not favor impeaching Trump. I want the House and the Senate to do their work. Special counsel Robert Mueller appears headed to Capitol Hill eventually to talk to both legislative chambers.

I want Mueller to state on the record whether he believes Trump committed a crime, whether he obstructed justice. If he won’t say it, well, we need to accept what we won’t get. Then again, if he says that president did commit a crime of obstruction, but that Mueller just couldn’t commit to issuing a criminal complaint, well . . . then we have a ballgame.

Richard Nixon’s stonewalling ended badly for his presidency in 1974. Donald Trump’s reprise of that strategy well could doom his own presidency.

national news

Barr has become a big disappointment … dang it!

William Barr came into office as U.S. attorney general bringing a glimmer of hope — even among some of the nation’s most vigorous foes of Donald Trump, the man who nominated him to be the AG.

I was one of those who had hope that Barr would be a grownup, that he would conduct himself with professional impartiality, taking seriously the oath to which he swore to be our attorney general, not be an a**-coverer for the president of the United States.

The AG has let me down.

Hard, man!

His testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee was an exercise in obfuscation and evasion. Then he did something even worse: He refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee and answer questions from that panel’s team of legal eagles.

I don’t know what I was thinking, now that I look back on what happened prior to Barr’s nomination.

Trump fired Jeff Sessions as AG because Sessions refused to act as a Trump sycophant; that’s why he recused himself from the Russia investigation. He couldn’t under Justice Department rules take part in an investigation into an activity in which he was a principal player. Sessions served on Trump’s campaign team, then on his transition team, which the DOJ was probing with regard to allegations of collusion and other potential misdeeds.

So he walked away, handed the matter over to his No. 2 at DOJ, Rod Rosenstein, who then appointed Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel. All of that enraged Trump, as we have since learned.

Now he has installed his “boy” at DOJ, William Barr.

Barr’s record as attorney general near the end of President George H.W. Bush’s term suggested to me that he would be the right man for the country, not necessarily for the president.

Silly me. It turns out he is the right man for Trump and he is wrong for the country.

I wanted to feel good about Barr. Sadly, he has let me down.

Dammit, anyway!

national news

Trump flies off the rails … over Biden endorsement

I have tried for the past couple of years to avoid saying things such as Donald Trump has gone “unhinged,” or that he has “lost his mind.”

However, when former Vice President Joe Biden secured a key union endorsement in his bid for the presidency in 2020, the president . . . well . . . went ballistic!

Vanity Fair reports that Trump set some sort of personal record with a 60-tweet tirade that erupted after the International Union of Firefighters endorsed Biden’s presidential bid.

He ripped into what he called the firefighters’ “dues-sucking” union leadership. Trump said he expected the leaders to endorse Biden, but added that the rank-and-file firefighters will vote for the president.

Really? He knows that?

The president’s Twitter tirades are nothing new, of course. What is amazing is that he spends so much of his supposedly valuable time firing these messages into cyberspace. Oh, I forgot: We’ve got that “executive time” that Trump sets aside for doing whatever he does when he’s not making America great again. 

I am having difficulty understanding how the president can function like this. I guess is he doesn’t function in his capacity as head of state/head of government/commander in chief/leader of the free world/chief executive of the world’s most indispensable nation.

He’s too preoccupied with fomenting lies about his foes and hurling insults at those who want to know the truth about whether this individual sought to obstruct justice while special counsel Robert Mueller looked for answers into whether there was “collusion” with Russians.

Vanity Fair suggests, too, that Trump is “panicked” at the prospect of facing the former VP in a fall 2020 campaign. Thus, he is launching a pre-emptive Twitter strike against Biden with the hope of torpedoing the ex-veep’s reported surge in public opinion polling.

I’ll continue to steer away from words such as “unhinged” when talking about Trump. My sense is that he knows what he is doing when he ignites these Twitter tirades.

I hope this strategy explodes in his face.

national news

No one stands up for Trump’s character?

I’ve been watching the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today with Attorney General William Barr and am left with an early takeaway.

It is this: Republican senators on the committee aren’t standing up for the president of the United States. They aren’t declaring that Donald Trump is of such upstanding moral character that he never would collude with a hostile foreign power to undermine our electoral process; that he is so mindful of the law that he would ensure that he avoid obstructing justice.

Senate Democrats, of course, are targeting the president and the AG. They are leveling serious allegations of obstruction of justice against the president and, by association, against the attorney general.

The “defense” from the GOP side of the aisle is aimed at the accusers’ credibility, their motives, their intentions.

No defense of the president has come forth.

Hey, I am just thinking out loud.