Russia Investigation
Barr threatened to not show up for this Thursday congressional hearing if democrats insist on using staff lawyers to interview him. Nadler said they will not change their format, and if Barr reuses to testify he will be sent a subpoena. Barr then refused to go before the House committee on May 2.
The day before Barr testified before the Senate, someone leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times that Mueller sent a letter to Barr in the week between Barr’s announcement of the no charges against Trump and Barr’s follow up letter to Congress. Mueller was not happy about how Barr was handling the release of the report: “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”
Here is the letter itself, which was written March 27, and made public May 1, the day of Barr’s senate hearing. He said that Barr had received an introduction and executive summary of each volume of the full report, with redactions, and that “I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time.”
Here are key moments from the Barr senate hearing. Wheeler recounts some of Barrs more remarkable statements. Barr offered different interpretations of Trump’s obstructive actions than Mueller, and ignored some evidence when doing so.
Katyal writes “We knew when we drafted them that we could have a nefarious attorney general (though, in fairness, we didn’t predict this amount of duplicity).”
Wittes outlines all the ways Barr has mischaracterized the Mueller report: The effect of these layers of mischaracterization are to rewrite the Mueller report and to recast the presidential conduct described in it. The direction of the recasting just happens to dovetail with the president’s talking points, and just happens to transmute him from a scofflaw with power into a victim of the “deep state.”
Comey wrote an op-ed after the Barr hearing where he posited a theory for how career DOJ people like Barr and Rosenstein could be corrupted by Trump. He used his own experience with Trump–the way he lies in meetings and expects your silence to mean consent–and projects out what might happen if you stayed silent and remaind in the administration: Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.
Max Boot was also ruminating on how Trump corrupts people in the wake of the Barr hearing: The surrender by conservatives outside the administration has proceeded through a gradual process of compromise and corruption similar to that on the inside. The most important factor driving this process, I believe, is fear of the professional consequences of opposing the vengeful occupant of the Oval Office. … The more that critics attack you for your support of Trump, the more you dig in. The more Trump misconduct you defend, the more you feel compelled to defend. In for a penny, in for a pound. No going back now. You tell yourself that only by staying loyal to the president can you check his worst excesses and channel his instincts in a more constructive and conservative direction. You are convinced that you are too valuable to America in your current position to risk losing it — and that whoever replaces you will be far more of a Trump enabler than you are.
Jack Goldsmith makes the case that Barr is not acting as a hack but in support of Article II powers, hence he still believes Barr is an institutionalist.
On Friday Trump and Putin spoke by phone for over an hour: Mr. Trump first mentioned that he “had a long and very good conversation” with Mr. Putin in a tweet, in which he also said that the subjects discussed included “even the ‘Russian Hoax.’” When the subject of the Mueller report and Russia’s role in the election came up during the call, Mr. Trump later explained, Mr. Putin “actually sort of smiled when he said something to the effect that it started off as a mountain and ended up being a mouse. But he knew that because he knew there was no collusion whatsoever.”
Rosenstein finally announced his resignation. He’s leaving May 11.
Wittes finally finished his close read and analysis of the Mueller Report. Here is his section by section analysis, and then his 5 key takeaways: “When Trump leaves office, assuming statutes of limitations have not yet run out, someone will have to make the binary assessment, which Mueller did not make, of whether they amount to prosecutable cases. As a historical matter, the report leaves me with little doubt that the president engaged in criminal obstruction of justice on a number of occasions… This is heartland impeachment material—the sort of conduct the impeachment clauses were written to address.”
In Other News
President Trump, his three eldest children and his private company filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against Deutsche Bank and Capital One, in a bid to prevent the banks from responding to congressional subpoenas.
Reuters reports on a new potential emoluments case where foreign countries leases property in Trump Tower against the law but approved by Trump’s State Department: The records show that in the eight months following Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration, foreign governments sent 13 notes to the State Department seeking permission to rent or renew leases in Trump World Tower. That is more solicitations from foreign governments for new or renewed leases in that building than in the previous two years combined.
ProPublica unearthed some Mar-a-Lago receipts: The Secret Service guarded the door, according to the email. The bartender wasn’t allowed to return. And members of the group began pouring themselves drinks. No one paid. Six days later, on April 13, Mar-a-Lago created a bill for those drinks, tallying $838 worth of alcohol plus a 20% service charge. It covered 54 drinks (making for an average price of $18.62 each) of premium liquor: Chopin vodka, Patron and Don Julio Blanco tequilas and Woodford Reserve bourbon. … The bill was sent to the State Department, which objected to covering it. It was then forwarded to the White House, which paid the tab.
Wired updated its running list of legal cases against Trump, closing some, but adding eight new ones, bringing the total to 16: Effectively everything with a Russian nexus appears to be over, leaving a dozen cases focused on Trump world’s finances.
The Washington Post fact checker has been tallying all of Trump’s lies he has made as president. He crossed the 10,000 mark this week.
Pelosi gave a New York Times interview where she continued to argue it would be politically dangerous to impeach Trump. She is all but saying she will not allow impeachment proceedings, while also laying out a House agenda designed to maximize democratic wins among moderate voters in 2020.
NBC News got their hands on government emails from June 2018 that show officials did not have any way to track the children and parents they just separated: “[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful,” a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. “We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children.”
Asylum officers are fighting back against new policy’s that limit their ability to make judgements about whether or not a seeker should be allowed to stay in the US due to safety reasons. They are speaking out to the media through their union, which is highly unusual.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.3%