Trump has ordered a full withdrawal of US troops from Syria, and a withdrawal of half of our troops from Afghanistan. There was confusion on Wednesday because it was announced via tweet and all the usual stakeholders were blindsided by the decision. There was harsh and immediate disapproval from Congress, including Trump’s usual allies.
Mattis resigned in protest on Thursday. In his letter he wrote: “our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships….NATO’s 29 democracies demonstrated that strength in their commitment to fighting alongside us following the 9-11 attack on America. The Defeat-ISIS coalition of 74 nations is further proof. …we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions… on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors… Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. “
Reports indicate he went to the White House prepared to resign but tried to persuade Trump not to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan. When he returned to the Pentagon he distributed his letter.
Blowback from GOP members in Congress was immediate. Most telling was from McConnell: “It’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties. We must also maintain a cleareyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter. So I was sorry to learn that Secretary Mattis, who shares those clear principles, will soon depart the administration. But I am particularly distressed that he is resigning due to sharp differences with the president on these and other key aspects of America’s global leadership.”
The Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has released a rule the imposes work requirements on food stamp recipients. The farm bill that Trump signed this week dropped the very same requirement after bipartisan negotiations.
The Education and Justice Departments are planning on rescinding Obama-era rules that “advised schools on how to dole out discipline in a nondiscriminatory manner and examine education data to look for racial disparities that could flag a federal civil rights violation.” A draft of a letter from Devos’s office says “The guidance burdened local school districts, potentially exceeded the departments’ legal authority and may have made students less safe.”
An injunction earlier this week against Trump’s stricter asylum policies–that limited the reasons people could request asylum–was upheld by the Supreme Court. Roberts joined the four liberal justices.
Finally, due to an impasse over spending $5 billion on Trump’s border wall, Congress and the White House could not agree to a spending bill and the government partially shut down Friday at midnight. The Senate adjourned until December 27.
In Russia News:
On Monday, Flynn’s former business partner was charged with illegally lobbying on behalf of Turkey: “The indictment demonstrates the extent to which Flynn was secretly working to advance the interests of his Turkish clients while publicly serving as a key surrogate to Donald Trump and auditioning for a role in his administration.”
The next day there was a scene at the Flynn sentencing. The Judge castigated Flynn and his lawyers for suggesting he was duped by the FBI and made them walk that back and repeatedly made Flynn admit that he was guilty of lying. The judge said what Flynn did regarding lobbying for Turkey was “selling out our country” and that he was disgusted by it. Then he postponed sentencing until March so that Flynn could cooperate more and presumably made the judge feel better about giving him no prison time, which was the Special Counsel’s recommendation.
Senate-commissioned reports on Russian use of social media to interfere with the 2016 elections came out this week. It shows more widespread visibility of fake accounts than previously known, and that African Americans were targeted heavily.
According to the head researcher who reviewed all the social media data: “Russia was able to masquerade successfully as a collection of American media entities, managing fake personas and developing communities of hundreds of thousands, building influence over a period of years and using it to manipulate and exploit existing political and societal divisions…. It propagated lies about voting rules and processes, attempted to steer voters toward third-party candidates and created stories that advocated not voting.”
Wired compiled a summary of all 17 investigations of Trump and/or Russia. It spans seven different sets of prosecutors and investigators from Mueller to the SDNY to the NY State Attorney General, to the US Attorney of DC, to the Eastern District of Virginia.
There was big news in one of those investigations, by the New York Attorney General into Trump’s charity: “The Donald J. Trump Foundation, once billed as the charitable arm of the president’s financial empire, agreed to dissolve on Tuesday and give away all its remaining assets under court supervision as part of an ongoing investigation and lawsuit by the New York attorney general.”
Barr wrote a memo over the summer explaining why Mueller’s obstruction case is not grounded in DOJ policy or law. He sent the memo unsolicited to both DOJ and Trump’s legal team. Lawfare explains that Barr is making assumptions in this memo without actually knowing the fact pattern Mueller has. The question is if Barr will change his views when he gets access to what Mueller knows.
We also finally got word from DOJ about Whitaker’s status with the Special Counsel investigation: “A senior department official said on Thursday that Mr. Whitaker had not been receiving briefings on the special counsel investigation, but had decided on Wednesday that he would not recuse himself and would instead assume final say over major investigative or prosecutorial actions Mr. Mueller wants to take.” Whitaker did not submit himself to a formal ethics review process but instead “engaged in an informal conversation with the department’s career ethics lawyers that focused on statements like those he had made as a political commentator.” The ethics lawyers suggested he should recuse himself, but their advice is not binding and he has decided against it.
According to Just Security: “Whitaker consulted with an unspecified number of ‘senior’ DOJ ethics officials. Those officials advised him (apparently without dissent) that Whitaker should recuse himself from the Russia investigation because, in their view, ‘a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts likely would question [Whitaker’s] impartiality.”
CNN reports that Trump has vented to Whitaker about his unhappiness about his legal woes, specifically about Cohen and the Souther District of New York: “Trump was frustrated, the sources said, that prosecutors Matt Whitaker oversees filed charges that made Trump look bad. None of the sources suggested that the President directed Whitaker to stop the investigation, but rather lashed out at what he felt was an unfair situation…. Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn’t being done to control prosecutors in New York who brought the charges in the first place, suggesting they were going rogue.”
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.4%