The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

Trump’s national emergency looks like a 2020 loser

A new NPR-PBS-Marist College poll was launched when Trump declared his national emergency four days ago. And the verdict isn’t a good one: The poll shows 61 percent of registered voters disapprove of Trump’s national emergency declaration, vs. 36 percent who approve of it.

The opposition spans nearly every demographic group. Of the more than 40 groups broken out by the poll, only Republicans (both men and women), Trump supporters, white evangelicals and rural voters don’t see opposition cresting 50 percent. (Rural voters, though, are split 47-47 — despite favoring Trump 61-34 in the 2016 election.)

Those numbers aren’t hugely surprising, given they track pretty closely with the popularity of the wall (generally around 35 to 40 percent approval) and with what polls showed on the idea of a national emergency (CNN showed 66 percent opposed before Trump declared it). The national emergency declaration is modestly more popular than in an automated HuffPost-YouGov survey this weekend (37 percent in support vs. 55 percent opposed), but that poll showed support for the wall more broadly at 45 percent. That’s higher than just about every poll in recent months — suggesting a possible outlier.

Perhaps more important in the Marist poll, though, is this question: “Does President Trump declaring a national emergency to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border make you more likely or less likely to vote for him for reelection in 2020?” On that question, a majority — 54 percent — says this is a motivator to vote against Trump, while just 33 percent say it’s more likely to make them vote for Trump.

The utility of this question is up for debate. Oftentimes it breaks down like the broader question, and that’s certainly the case here. But it can also give us insight into whether the opposition is inflated by people who simply don’t care all that much — and whether Trump might even reap a bigger benefit by motivating his base.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case here — at least judging from this one poll. Here are some comparisons between how key 2016 groups voted then and how they say this decision affects their vote in 2020:

Non-college-educated white men: supported Trump 71-23 percent, but this makes them less likely to support him, 47-41 percent.

Independents: backed Trump 46-42 percent but say this makes them less likely to support him, 55-29 percent.

Midwest: Trump’s most important region (most notably wins in blue-leaning Michigan and Wisconsin) says this alienates them, 54-34 percent.

His racist base ain't gonna get him reelected.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Officials Tried To Rush Nuclear Technology To Saudis, House Panel Finds

#Resist

[Katiebee]

The rule of law is not something the Trump administration believes in or follows.

[Athos_131]

Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation: Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him

WASHINGTON — As federal prosecutors in Manhattan gathered evidence late last year about President Trump’s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called Matthew G. Whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. He asked whether Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the widening investigation, according to several American officials with direct knowledge of the call.

Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.

Trying to install a perceived loyalist atop a widening inquiry is a familiar tactic for Mr. Trump, who has been struggling to beat back the investigations that have consumed his presidency. His efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finishes his work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump’s public war on the inquiry has gone on long enough that it is no longer shocking. Mr. Trump rages almost daily to his 58 million Twitter followers that Mr. Mueller is on a “witch hunt” and has adopted the language of Mafia bosses by calling those who cooperate with the special counsel “rats.” His lawyer talks openly about a strategy to smear and discredit the special counsel investigation. The president’s allies in Congress and the conservative media warn of an insidious plot inside the Justice Department and the F.B. I to subvert a democratically elected president.

An examination by The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.

White House lawyers wrote a confidential memo expressing concern about the president’s staff peddling misleading information in public about the firing of Michael T. Flynn, the Trump administration’s first national security adviser. Mr. Trump had private conversations with Republican lawmakers about a campaign to attack the Mueller investigation. And, there was the episode when asked his attorney general about putting Mr. Berman in charge of the Manhattan investigation.

Mr. Whitaker, who earlier this month told a congressional committee that Mr. Trump had never pressured him over the various investigations, is now under scrutiny by House Democrats for possible perjury.

The White House and the Department of Justice declined to comment for this article. Mr. Whitaker referred inquiries to the Justice Department.

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The story of Mr. Trump’s attempts to defang the investigations has been voluminously covered in the news media, to such a degree that many Americans have lost track of how unusual his behavior is. But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession. Mr. Trump has done it with the same tactics he once used in his business empire: demanding fierce loyalty from employees, applying pressure tactics to keep people in line, and protecting the brand — himself — at all costs.

It is a public relations strategy as much as a legal strategy — a campaign to create a narrative of a president hounded by his “deep state” foes. The new Democratic majority in the House, and the prospect of a wave of investigations on Capitol Hill this year, will test whether the strategy shores up Mr. Trump’s political support or puts his presidency in greater peril. The president has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations.

Julie O’Sullivan, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University, said she believed there was ample public evidence that Mr. Trump had the “corrupt intent” to try to derail the Mueller investigation, the legal standard for an obstruction of justice case.

But this is far from a routine criminal investigation, she said, and Mr. Mueller will have to make judgments about the impact on the country of making a criminal case against the president. Democrats in the House have said they will wait for Mr. Mueller to finish his work before making a decision about whether the president’s behavior warrants impeachment.

In addition to the Mueller investigation, there are at least two other federal inquiries that touch the president and his advisers — the Manhattan investigation focused on the hush money payments made by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and an inquiry examining the flow of foreign money to the Trump inaugural committee.

The president’s defenders counter that most of Mr. Trump’s actions under scrutiny fall under his authority as the head of the executive branch. They argue that the Constitution gives the president sweeping powers to hire and fire, to start and stop law enforcement proceedings, and to grant presidential pardons to friends and allies. A sitting American president cannot be indicted, according to current Justice Department policy.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers add this novel response: the president has been public about his disdain for the Mueller investigation and other federal inquiries, so he is hardly engaged in a conspiracy. He fired one F.B.I. director and considered firing his replacement. He humiliated his first attorney general for being unable to “control” the Russia investigation and installed a replacement, Mr. Whitaker, who has told people he believed his job was to protect the president. But that, they say, is Donald Trump being Donald Trump.

In other words, the president’s brazen public behavior might be his best defense.

The investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign aided the effort presented the new White House with its first crisis after just 25 days. The president immediately tried to contain the damage.

It was Feb. 14, 2017, and Mr. Trump and his advisers were in the Oval Office debating how to explain the resignation of Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, the previous night. Mr. Flynn, who had been a top campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, was under investigation by the F.B.I. for his contacts with Russians and secret foreign lobbying efforts for Turkey.

The Justice Department had already raised questions that Mr. Flynn might be subject to blackmail by the Russians for misleading White House officials about the Russian contacts, and inside the White House there was a palpable fear that the Russia investigation could consume the early months of a new administration.

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers mentioned in passing what then-Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin had told reporters — that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan’s words. “That sounds better,” the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the media.

“Say that,” Mr. Trump ordered.

But was that true, Mr. Spicer pressed.

“Say that I asked for his resignation,” Mr. Trump repeated.

The president appeared to have little concern about what he told the public about Mr. Flynn’s departure, and quickly warmed to the new narrative. The episode was among the first of multiple ham-handed efforts by the president to carry out a dual strategy: publicly casting the Russia story as an overblown hoax and privately trying to contain the investigation’s reach.

“This Russia thing is all over now because I fired Flynn,” Mr. Trump said over lunch that day, according to a new book by Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and a longtime Trump ally.

Mr. Christie was taken aback. “This Russia thing is far from over,” Mr. Christie wrote that he told Mr. Trump, who responded: “What do you mean? Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.”

Mr. Kushner, who was also at the lunch, chimed in, according to Mr. Christie’s book: “That’s right, firing Flynn ends the whole Russia thing.”

As Mr. Trump was lunching with Mr. Christie, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office met with Mr. Spicer about what he should say from the White House podium about what was a sensitive national security investigation. But when Mr. Spicer’s briefing began, the lawyers started hearing numerous misstatements — some bigger than others — and ended up compiling them all in a memo.

The lawyers’ main concern was that Mr. Spicer overstated how exhaustively the White House had investigated Mr. Flynn and that he said, wrongly, that administration lawyers had concluded there were no legal issues surrounding Mr. Flynn’s conduct.

Mr. Spicer later told people he stuck to talking points that he was given by the counsel’s office, and that White House lawyers expressed concern only about the how he had described the thoroughness of the internal inquiry into Mr. Flynn. The memo written by the lawyers said that Mr. Spicer was presented with a longer list of his misstatements. The White House never publicly corrected the record.

Later that day, Mr. Trump confronted the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, in the Oval Office. The president told him that Mr. Spicer had done a great job explaining how the White House had handled the firing. Then he asked Mr. Comey to end the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Flynn, and that Mr. Flynn was a good guy.

Mr. Comey responded, according to a memo he wrote at the time, that Mr. Flynn was indeed a good guy. But he said nothing about ending the F.B.I. investigation.

By March, Mr. Trump was in a rage that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from the Russia inquiry because investigators were looking into the campaign, of which Mr. Sessions had been a part. Mr. Trump was also growing increasingly frustrated with Mr. Comey, who refused to say publicly that the president was not under investigation.

Mr. Trump finally fired Mr. Comey in May. But the president and the White House gave conflicting accounts of their reasoning for the dismissal, which only served to exacerbate the president’s legal exposure.

A week after the firing, The New York Times disclosed that the president had asked Mr. Comey to end the Flynn investigation. The next day, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, appointed Mr. Mueller, a Republican, as special counsel.

Instead of ending the Russia investigation by firing Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump had drastically raised the stakes.

Mr. Mueller’s appointment fueled Mr. Trump’s anger and what became increasingly reckless behavior — triggering a string of actions over the summer of 2017 that could end up as building blocks in a case by Congress that the president engaged in a broad effort to thwart the investigation.

On Twitter and in news media interviews, Mr. Trump tried to pressure investigators and undermine the credibility of potential witnesses in the Mueller investigation.

He directed much of his venom at Mr. Sessions, who had recused himself in March from overseeing the Russia investigation because of contacts he had during the election with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

The president humiliated Mr. Sessions at every turn, and stunned Washington when he said during an interview with The Times that he never would have named Mr. Sessions attorney general if he had known Mr. Sessions would step aside from the investigation.

Privately, he tried to remove Mr. Sessions — he said he wanted an attorney general who would protect him — but didn’t fire him, in part because White House aides dodged the president’s orders to demand his resignation. Mr. Trump even called his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, over the Fourth of July weekend to ask him to pressure Mr. Sessions to resign. Mr. Lewandowski was noncommittal and never acted on the request.

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyer also reached out that summer to the attorneys for two of his former aides — Paul J. Manafort and Mr. Flynn — to discuss possible pardons. The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation.

The president even tried to fire Mr. Mueller himself, a move that could have brought an end to the investigation. Just weeks after Mr. Mueller’s appointment, the president insisted that he ought to be fired because of perceived conflicts of interest. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who would have been responsible for carrying out the order, refused and threatened to quit.

The president eventually backed off.

Sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge during a layover in Atlanta’s airport in July 2017, Representative Matt Gaetz, a first-term Republican from the Florida Panhandle, decided it was time to attack. Mr. Gaetz, then 35, believed that the president’s allies in Congress needed a coordinated strategy to fight back against an investigation they viewed as deeply unfair and politically biased.

He called Representative Jim Jordan, a conservative Republican from Ohio, and told him the party needed “to go play offense,” Mr. Gaetz recalled in an interview.

The two men believed that Republican leaders, who publicly praised the appointment of Mr. Mueller, had been beaten into a defensive crouch by the unending chaos and were leaving Democrats unchecked to “pistol whip” the president with constant accusations about his campaign and Russia.

So they began to investigate the investigators. Mr. Trump and his lawyers enthusiastically encouraged the strategy, which, according to some polls, convinced many Americans that the country’s law enforcement apparatus was determined to bring down the president.

Within days of their conversation, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan drafted a letter to Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, the first call for the appointment of a second special counsel to essentially reinvestigate Hillary Clinton for her handling of her emails while secretary of state — the case had ended in the summer of 2016 — as well as the origins of the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Flynn and other Trump associates.

The letter itself, with the signatures of only 20 House Republicans, gained little traction at first. But an important shift was underway: At a time when Mr. Trump’s lawyers were urging him to cooperate with Mr. Mueller and tone down his Twitter feed, the president’s fiercest allies in Congress and the conservative media were busy trying to flip the script on the federal law enforcement agencies and officials who began the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan began huddling with like-minded Republicans, sometimes including Representative Mark Meadows, a press-savvy North Carolinian close to Mr. Trump, and Representative Devin Nunes of California, the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Nunes, the product of a dairy farming family in California’s Central Valley, had already emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s strongest allies in Congress. He worked closely with Mr. Flynn during the Trump transition after the 2016 election, and he had a history of battling the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, which he sometimes accused of coloring their analysis for partisan reasons. In the spring of 2017, he sought to bolster Mr. Trump’s false claim that President Barack Obama had ordered an illegal wiretap on Trump Tower.

Using Congress’s oversight powers, the Republican lawmakers succeeding in doing what Mr. Trump could not realistically do on his own: forcing into the open some of the government’s most sensitive investigative files — including secret wiretaps and the existence of an F.B.I. informant — which were part of the Russia inquiry. House Republicans opened investigations into the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case and a debunked Obama-era uranium deal indirectly linked to Mrs. Clinton. The lawmakers got a big assist from the Justice Department, which gave them private text messages recovered from two senior F.B.I. officials who had been on the Russia case. The officials — Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump in their texts, which were featured in a loop on Fox News and became a centerpiece of an evolving and powerful conservative narrative about a cabal inside the F.B.I. and Justice Department to take down Mr. Trump.

The president cheered the lawmakers on Twitter, in interviews and in private, urging Mr. Gaetz on Air Force One in December 2017 and in subsequent phone calls to keep up the House Republicans’ oversight work. He was hoping for fair treatment from Mr. Mueller, Mr. Trump told Mr. Gaetz in one of the calls just after the congressman appeared on Fox News, but that did not preclude him from encouraging his allies’ scrutiny of the investigation.

Later, when Mr. Nunes produced a memo alleging that the F.B.I. had abused its authority in spying on a former Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, Mr. Trump called Mr. Nunes a “Great American hero.” (The F.B.I. said it had “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.)

The president became an active participant in the campaign. He repeatedly leaned on administration officials on behalf of the lawmakers — urging Mr. Rosenstein and other law enforcement leaders to flout procedure and share sensitive materials about the ongoing case with Congress. As president, Mr. Trump has ultimate authority over information that passes through the government, but his interventions were unusual.

By the spring of 2018, Mr. Nunes zeroed in on new targets. In one case, he threatened to hold Mr. Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or even try to impeach him if the documents he wanted were not turned over, including the file used to open the Russia case. In another, he pressed the Justice Department for sensitive information about a trusted F.B.I. informant used in the Russia investigation, a Cambridge professor named Stefan Halper — even as intelligence officials said that the release of the information could damage relationships with important allies.

The president chimed in, accusing the F.B.I., without evidence, of planting a spy in his campaign. “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!” Mr. Trump wrote, turning the term into a popular hashtag.

Most Senate Republicans tried to ignore the House tactics, and not all House Republicans who participated in the investigations agreed with the scorched-earth approach. Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor who had led Republicans in the Benghazi investigation, felt that figures like Mr. Gaetz and, in some cases, Mr. Nunes, were hurting their own cause with a sloppy, overhyped campaign that damaged Congress’s credibility.

Former Representative Thomas J. Rooney, a Republican who sat on the Intelligence Committee and retired last year, was similarly critical. “The efforts to tag Mueller as a witch hunt are a mistake,” he said in an interview. “The guy is an American hero. He is somebody who has always spouted the rule of law in what our country is about.”

But Mr. Gaetz makes no apologies.

“Do I think it’s right that our work in the Congress has aided in the president’s defense?” he asked, before answering his own question.

“Yeah, I think it is right.”

Ultimately, his strategy was successful in softening the ground for a shift in the president’s legal strategy — away from relatively quiet cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s investigators and toward a targeted and relentless frontal attack on their credibility and impartiality.

Last April, Mr. Trump hired Rudolph W. Giuliani, his longtime friend and a famously combative former mayor of New York, as his personal lawyer and ubiquitous television attack dog. A new war had begun.

In jettisoning his previous legal team — which had counseled that Mr. Trump should cooperate with the investigation — the president decided to combine a legal strategy with a public-relations campaign in an aggressive effort to undermine the credibility of both Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department.

Mr. Mueller was unlikely to indict Mr. Trump, the president’s advisers believed, so the real danger to his presidency was impeachment — a political act that Congress would probably only carry out only with broad public support. If Mr. Mueller’s investigation could be discredited, then impeachment might be less likely.

Months of caustic presidential tweets and fiery television interviews by Mr. Giuliani unfolded. The former mayor accused Mr. Mueller, without evidence, of bias and ignoring facts to carry out an anti-Trump agenda. He called one of Mr. Mueller’s top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, a “complete scoundrel.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Giuliani was getting help from a curious source: Kevin Downing, the lawyer for Paul Manafort, who had been the president’s 2016 campaign chairman. Mr. Manafort had agreed to cooperate with the special counsel after being convicted of financial crimes in an attempt to lessen a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Downing shared details about prosecutors’ lines of questioning, Mr. Giuliani admitted late last year.

It was a highly unusual arrangement — the lawyer for a cooperating witness providing valuable information to the president’s lawyer at a time when his client remained in the sights of the special counsel’s prosecutors. The arrangement angered Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who questioned what Mr. Manafort was trying to gain from the arrangement.

The attacks on the Muller investigation appeared to have an effect. Last summer, polling showed a 14-point uptick in the percentage of Americans polled who disapproved of how Mr. Mueller was handling the inquiry. “Mueller is now slightly more distrusted than trusted, and Trump is a little ahead of the game,” Mr. Giuliani said during an interview in August.

“So I think we’ve done really well,” Mr. Giuliani added. “And my client’s happy.”

But Mr. Giuliani and his client had a serious problem, which they were slow to comprehend.

In April the F.B.I. raided the Manhattan office and residences of Mr. Cohen — the president’s lawyer and fixer — walking off with business records, emails and other documents dating back years. At first, Mr. Trump wasn’t concerned.

The president told advisers that Mr. Rosenstein assured him at the time that the Cohen investigation had nothing to do with him. In the president’s recounting, Mr. Rosenstein told him that the inquiry in New York was about Mr. Cohen’s business dealings, it did not involve the president and was not about Russia. Since then, Mr. Trump has asked his advisers if Mr. Rosenstein was deliberately misleading him to keep him calm.

Mr. Giuliani initially portrayed Mr. Cohen as “honest,” and Mr. Trump praised him publicly. But Mr. Cohen soon told prosecutors in New York how Mr. Trump had ordered him during the 2016 campaign to buy the silence of women who claimed they had sex with the president. In a separate bid for leniency, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors about Mr. Trump’s participation in negotiations during the height of the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Mr. Trump was now battling twin investigations that seemed to be moving ever close to him. And Mr. Cohen, once the president’s fiercest defender, was becoming his chief tormentor.

In a court appearance in August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty and told a judge that Mr. Trump had ordered him to arrange the payments to the women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Mr. Cohen’s descriptions of the president’s actions made Mr. Trump, in effect, an unindicted co-conspirator and raised the prospect of the president being charged after he leaves office. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who in January became the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, said the implied offense was probably impeachable.

The president struck back, launching a volley of tweets that savaged Mr. Cohen and his family — insinuating that Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law had engaged in unexamined criminal activity. He called Mr. Cohen a “rat.” The messages infuriated Democratic lawmakers, who claimed the president was trying to threaten and intimidate a witness ahead of testimony Mr. Cohen planned before Congress.

“He’s only been threatened by the truth,” the president responded.

As the prosecutors closed in, Mr. Trump felt a more urgent need to gain control of the investigation.

He made the call to Mr. Whitaker to see if he could put Mr. Berman in charge of the New York investigation. The inquiry is run by Robert Khuzami, a career prosecutor who took over after Mr. Berman, whom Mr. Trump appointed, recused himself because of a routine conflict of interest.

What exactly Mr. Whitaker did after the call is unclear, but there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation. He did, however, tell some associates at the Justice Department that the prosecutors in New York required “adult supervision.”

Second, Mr. Trump moved on to a new attorney general, William P. Barr, whom Mr. Trump nominated for the job in part because of a memo Mr. Barr wrote last summer making a case that a sitting American president cannot be charged with obstruction of justice for acts well within his power — like firing an F.B.I. director.

A president cannot be found to have broken the law, Mr. Barr argued, if he was exercising his executive powers to fire subordinates or use his “complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding.”

The memo might have ingratiated Mr. Barr to his future boss, but Mr. Barr is also respected among the rank and file in the Justice Department. Many officials there hope he will try to change the Trump administration’s combative tone toward the department as well as the F.B.I.

Whether it is too late is another question. Mr. Trump's language, and allegations of “deep state” excesses, are now embedded in the political conversation, used as a cudgel by the president’s supporters.

This past December, days before Mr. Flynn was to be sentenced for lying to the F.B.I., his lawyers wrote a memo to the judge suggesting that federal agents had tricked the former national security adviser into lying. The judge roundly rejected that argument, and on sentencing day he excoriated Mr. Flynn for his crimes.

The argument about F.B.I. trickery did, however, appear to please the one man who holds great power over Mr. Flynn’s future — the constitutional power to pardon.

“Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn,” Mr. Trump tweeted cheerily on the morning of the sentencing.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Not exactly a slow news day.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Judge in Roger Stone case orders hearing after he appeared to threaten her on Instagram

Intimidating a judge.

 Illegal is Illegal. Period. What is unclear about that?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump Has Publicly Attacked the Russia Investigation More Than 1,100 Times

I thought this was the party of law and order?

#Resist

[joan1984]

Is there any limit to the length of a single post at KB? Is any limit suggested, such as how "chapters" are used for story posts, when a cut and paste post may continue on and on and on, such as this one when printed out fully as was the case by the OP?

Curious minds want to skip beyond to the next thing sometimes... Thank you.

Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation: Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him

[psiberzerker]

Is there any limit to the length of a single post at KB?

Yes, there is.  If it's too long, then don't read it.  It automatically skips to the next thing when someone else posts.  (Which Athos did.  30 seconds later, for your convenience.)  If they don't, there's no next thing to skip to.  Is that all you have to complain about?  Because that's pretty lame.

[joan1984]

I asked a simple question. Do you know the answer? How many words, or lines, or whatever indicates 'excessive' length to a post, or 'maximum' length?

Would think a author may know, or have asked such questions, or not.
Not a complaint, a question...

Is there any limit to the length of a single post at KB?

Yes, there is.  If it's too long, then don't read it.  It automatically skips to the next thing when someone else posts.  If they don't, there's no next thing to skip to.  Is that all you have to complain about?  Because that's pretty lame.

[Athos_131]

Is there any limit to the length of a single post at KB? Is any limit suggested, such as how "chapters" are used for story posts, when a cut and paste post may continue on and on and on, such as this one when printed out fully as was the case by the OP?

Curious minds want to skip beyond to the next thing sometimes... Thank you.

Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation: Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him

WASHINGTON — As federal prosecutors in Manhattan gathered evidence late last year about President Trump’s role in silencing women with hush payments during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump called Matthew G. Whitaker, his newly installed attorney general, with a question. He asked whether Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the widening investigation, according to several American officials with direct knowledge of the call.

Mr. Whitaker, who had privately told associates that part of his role at the Justice Department was to “jump on a grenade” for the president, knew he could not put Mr. Berman in charge, since Mr. Berman had already recused himself from the investigation. The president soon soured on Mr. Whitaker, as he often does with his aides, and complained about his inability to pull levers at the Justice Department that could make the president’s many legal problems go away.

Trying to install a perceived loyalist atop a widening inquiry is a familiar tactic for Mr. Trump, who has been struggling to beat back the investigations that have consumed his presidency. His efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finishes his work investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump’s public war on the inquiry has gone on long enough that it is no longer shocking. Mr. Trump rages almost daily to his 58 million Twitter followers that Mr. Mueller is on a “witch hunt” and has adopted the language of Mafia bosses by calling those who cooperate with the special counsel “rats.” His lawyer talks openly about a strategy to smear and discredit the special counsel investigation. The president’s allies in Congress and the conservative media warn of an insidious plot inside the Justice Department and the F.B. I to subvert a democratically elected president.

An examination by The New York Times reveals the extent of an even more sustained, more secretive assault by Mr. Trump on the machinery of federal law enforcement. Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.

White House lawyers wrote a confidential memo expressing concern about the president’s staff peddling misleading information in public about the firing of Michael T. Flynn, the Trump administration’s first national security adviser. Mr. Trump had private conversations with Republican lawmakers about a campaign to attack the Mueller investigation. And, there was the episode when asked his attorney general about putting Mr. Berman in charge of the Manhattan investigation.

Mr. Whitaker, who earlier this month told a congressional committee that Mr. Trump had never pressured him over the various investigations, is now under scrutiny by House Democrats for possible perjury.

The White House and the Department of Justice declined to comment for this article. Mr. Whitaker referred inquiries to the Justice Department.

Sign Up for On Politics With Lisa Lerer
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.

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The story of Mr. Trump’s attempts to defang the investigations has been voluminously covered in the news media, to such a degree that many Americans have lost track of how unusual his behavior is. But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession. Mr. Trump has done it with the same tactics he once used in his business empire: demanding fierce loyalty from employees, applying pressure tactics to keep people in line, and protecting the brand — himself — at all costs.

It is a public relations strategy as much as a legal strategy — a campaign to create a narrative of a president hounded by his “deep state” foes. The new Democratic majority in the House, and the prospect of a wave of investigations on Capitol Hill this year, will test whether the strategy shores up Mr. Trump’s political support or puts his presidency in greater peril. The president has spent much of his time venting publicly about there being “no collusion” with Russia before the 2016 election, which has diverted attention from a growing body of evidence that he has tried to impede the various investigations.

Julie O’Sullivan, a criminal law professor at Georgetown University, said she believed there was ample public evidence that Mr. Trump had the “corrupt intent” to try to derail the Mueller investigation, the legal standard for an obstruction of justice case.

But this is far from a routine criminal investigation, she said, and Mr. Mueller will have to make judgments about the impact on the country of making a criminal case against the president. Democrats in the House have said they will wait for Mr. Mueller to finish his work before making a decision about whether the president’s behavior warrants impeachment.

In addition to the Mueller investigation, there are at least two other federal inquiries that touch the president and his advisers — the Manhattan investigation focused on the hush money payments made by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, and an inquiry examining the flow of foreign money to the Trump inaugural committee.

The president’s defenders counter that most of Mr. Trump’s actions under scrutiny fall under his authority as the head of the executive branch. They argue that the Constitution gives the president sweeping powers to hire and fire, to start and stop law enforcement proceedings, and to grant presidential pardons to friends and allies. A sitting American president cannot be indicted, according to current Justice Department policy.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers add this novel response: the president has been public about his disdain for the Mueller investigation and other federal inquiries, so he is hardly engaged in a conspiracy. He fired one F.B.I. director and considered firing his replacement. He humiliated his first attorney general for being unable to “control” the Russia investigation and installed a replacement, Mr. Whitaker, who has told people he believed his job was to protect the president. But that, they say, is Donald Trump being Donald Trump.

In other words, the president’s brazen public behavior might be his best defense.

The investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign aided the effort presented the new White House with its first crisis after just 25 days. The president immediately tried to contain the damage.

It was Feb. 14, 2017, and Mr. Trump and his advisers were in the Oval Office debating how to explain the resignation of Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, the previous night. Mr. Flynn, who had been a top campaign adviser to Mr. Trump, was under investigation by the F.B.I. for his contacts with Russians and secret foreign lobbying efforts for Turkey.

The Justice Department had already raised questions that Mr. Flynn might be subject to blackmail by the Russians for misleading White House officials about the Russian contacts, and inside the White House there was a palpable fear that the Russia investigation could consume the early months of a new administration.

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers mentioned in passing what then-Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin had told reporters — that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan’s words. “That sounds better,” the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the media.

“Say that,” Mr. Trump ordered.

But was that true, Mr. Spicer pressed.

“Say that I asked for his resignation,” Mr. Trump repeated.

The president appeared to have little concern about what he told the public about Mr. Flynn’s departure, and quickly warmed to the new narrative. The episode was among the first of multiple ham-handed efforts by the president to carry out a dual strategy: publicly casting the Russia story as an overblown hoax and privately trying to contain the investigation’s reach.

“This Russia thing is all over now because I fired Flynn,” Mr. Trump said over lunch that day, according to a new book by Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and a longtime Trump ally.

Mr. Christie was taken aback. “This Russia thing is far from over,” Mr. Christie wrote that he told Mr. Trump, who responded: “What do you mean? Flynn met with the Russians. That was the problem. I fired Flynn. It’s over.”

Mr. Kushner, who was also at the lunch, chimed in, according to Mr. Christie’s book: “That’s right, firing Flynn ends the whole Russia thing.”

As Mr. Trump was lunching with Mr. Christie, lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office met with Mr. Spicer about what he should say from the White House podium about what was a sensitive national security investigation. But when Mr. Spicer’s briefing began, the lawyers started hearing numerous misstatements — some bigger than others — and ended up compiling them all in a memo.

The lawyers’ main concern was that Mr. Spicer overstated how exhaustively the White House had investigated Mr. Flynn and that he said, wrongly, that administration lawyers had concluded there were no legal issues surrounding Mr. Flynn’s conduct.

Mr. Spicer later told people he stuck to talking points that he was given by the counsel’s office, and that White House lawyers expressed concern only about the how he had described the thoroughness of the internal inquiry into Mr. Flynn. The memo written by the lawyers said that Mr. Spicer was presented with a longer list of his misstatements. The White House never publicly corrected the record.

Later that day, Mr. Trump confronted the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, in the Oval Office. The president told him that Mr. Spicer had done a great job explaining how the White House had handled the firing. Then he asked Mr. Comey to end the F.B.I.’s investigation into Mr. Flynn, and that Mr. Flynn was a good guy.

Mr. Comey responded, according to a memo he wrote at the time, that Mr. Flynn was indeed a good guy. But he said nothing about ending the F.B.I. investigation.

By March, Mr. Trump was in a rage that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from the Russia inquiry because investigators were looking into the campaign, of which Mr. Sessions had been a part. Mr. Trump was also growing increasingly frustrated with Mr. Comey, who refused to say publicly that the president was not under investigation.

Mr. Trump finally fired Mr. Comey in May. But the president and the White House gave conflicting accounts of their reasoning for the dismissal, which only served to exacerbate the president’s legal exposure.

A week after the firing, The New York Times disclosed that the president had asked Mr. Comey to end the Flynn investigation. The next day, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, appointed Mr. Mueller, a Republican, as special counsel.

Instead of ending the Russia investigation by firing Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump had drastically raised the stakes.

Mr. Mueller’s appointment fueled Mr. Trump’s anger and what became increasingly reckless behavior — triggering a string of actions over the summer of 2017 that could end up as building blocks in a case by Congress that the president engaged in a broad effort to thwart the investigation.

On Twitter and in news media interviews, Mr. Trump tried to pressure investigators and undermine the credibility of potential witnesses in the Mueller investigation.

He directed much of his venom at Mr. Sessions, who had recused himself in March from overseeing the Russia investigation because of contacts he had during the election with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

The president humiliated Mr. Sessions at every turn, and stunned Washington when he said during an interview with The Times that he never would have named Mr. Sessions attorney general if he had known Mr. Sessions would step aside from the investigation.

Privately, he tried to remove Mr. Sessions — he said he wanted an attorney general who would protect him — but didn’t fire him, in part because White House aides dodged the president’s orders to demand his resignation. Mr. Trump even called his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, over the Fourth of July weekend to ask him to pressure Mr. Sessions to resign. Mr. Lewandowski was noncommittal and never acted on the request.

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyer also reached out that summer to the attorneys for two of his former aides — Paul J. Manafort and Mr. Flynn — to discuss possible pardons. The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation.

The president even tried to fire Mr. Mueller himself, a move that could have brought an end to the investigation. Just weeks after Mr. Mueller’s appointment, the president insisted that he ought to be fired because of perceived conflicts of interest. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who would have been responsible for carrying out the order, refused and threatened to quit.

The president eventually backed off.

Sitting in the Delta Sky Lounge during a layover in Atlanta’s airport in July 2017, Representative Matt Gaetz, a first-term Republican from the Florida Panhandle, decided it was time to attack. Mr. Gaetz, then 35, believed that the president’s allies in Congress needed a coordinated strategy to fight back against an investigation they viewed as deeply unfair and politically biased.

He called Representative Jim Jordan, a conservative Republican from Ohio, and told him the party needed “to go play offense,” Mr. Gaetz recalled in an interview.

The two men believed that Republican leaders, who publicly praised the appointment of Mr. Mueller, had been beaten into a defensive crouch by the unending chaos and were leaving Democrats unchecked to “pistol whip” the president with constant accusations about his campaign and Russia.

So they began to investigate the investigators. Mr. Trump and his lawyers enthusiastically encouraged the strategy, which, according to some polls, convinced many Americans that the country’s law enforcement apparatus was determined to bring down the president.

Within days of their conversation, Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan drafted a letter to Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, the first call for the appointment of a second special counsel to essentially reinvestigate Hillary Clinton for her handling of her emails while secretary of state — the case had ended in the summer of 2016 — as well as the origins of the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Flynn and other Trump associates.

The letter itself, with the signatures of only 20 House Republicans, gained little traction at first. But an important shift was underway: At a time when Mr. Trump’s lawyers were urging him to cooperate with Mr. Mueller and tone down his Twitter feed, the president’s fiercest allies in Congress and the conservative media were busy trying to flip the script on the federal law enforcement agencies and officials who began the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s campaign.

Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Jordan began huddling with like-minded Republicans, sometimes including Representative Mark Meadows, a press-savvy North Carolinian close to Mr. Trump, and Representative Devin Nunes of California, the head of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Nunes, the product of a dairy farming family in California’s Central Valley, had already emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s strongest allies in Congress. He worked closely with Mr. Flynn during the Trump transition after the 2016 election, and he had a history of battling the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, which he sometimes accused of coloring their analysis for partisan reasons. In the spring of 2017, he sought to bolster Mr. Trump’s false claim that President Barack Obama had ordered an illegal wiretap on Trump Tower.

Using Congress’s oversight powers, the Republican lawmakers succeeding in doing what Mr. Trump could not realistically do on his own: forcing into the open some of the government’s most sensitive investigative files — including secret wiretaps and the existence of an F.B.I. informant — which were part of the Russia inquiry. House Republicans opened investigations into the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email case and a debunked Obama-era uranium deal indirectly linked to Mrs. Clinton. The lawmakers got a big assist from the Justice Department, which gave them private text messages recovered from two senior F.B.I. officials who had been on the Russia case. The officials — Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — repeatedly criticized Mr. Trump in their texts, which were featured in a loop on Fox News and became a centerpiece of an evolving and powerful conservative narrative about a cabal inside the F.B.I. and Justice Department to take down Mr. Trump.

The president cheered the lawmakers on Twitter, in interviews and in private, urging Mr. Gaetz on Air Force One in December 2017 and in subsequent phone calls to keep up the House Republicans’ oversight work. He was hoping for fair treatment from Mr. Mueller, Mr. Trump told Mr. Gaetz in one of the calls just after the congressman appeared on Fox News, but that did not preclude him from encouraging his allies’ scrutiny of the investigation.

Later, when Mr. Nunes produced a memo alleging that the F.B.I. had abused its authority in spying on a former Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, Mr. Trump called Mr. Nunes a “Great American hero.” (The F.B.I. said it had “grave concerns” about the memo’s accuracy.)

The president became an active participant in the campaign. He repeatedly leaned on administration officials on behalf of the lawmakers — urging Mr. Rosenstein and other law enforcement leaders to flout procedure and share sensitive materials about the ongoing case with Congress. As president, Mr. Trump has ultimate authority over information that passes through the government, but his interventions were unusual.

By the spring of 2018, Mr. Nunes zeroed in on new targets. In one case, he threatened to hold Mr. Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or even try to impeach him if the documents he wanted were not turned over, including the file used to open the Russia case. In another, he pressed the Justice Department for sensitive information about a trusted F.B.I. informant used in the Russia investigation, a Cambridge professor named Stefan Halper — even as intelligence officials said that the release of the information could damage relationships with important allies.

The president chimed in, accusing the F.B.I., without evidence, of planting a spy in his campaign. “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!” Mr. Trump wrote, turning the term into a popular hashtag.

Most Senate Republicans tried to ignore the House tactics, and not all House Republicans who participated in the investigations agreed with the scorched-earth approach. Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor who had led Republicans in the Benghazi investigation, felt that figures like Mr. Gaetz and, in some cases, Mr. Nunes, were hurting their own cause with a sloppy, overhyped campaign that damaged Congress’s credibility.

Former Representative Thomas J. Rooney, a Republican who sat on the Intelligence Committee and retired last year, was similarly critical. “The efforts to tag Mueller as a witch hunt are a mistake,” he said in an interview. “The guy is an American hero. He is somebody who has always spouted the rule of law in what our country is about.”

But Mr. Gaetz makes no apologies.

“Do I think it’s right that our work in the Congress has aided in the president’s defense?” he asked, before answering his own question.

“Yeah, I think it is right.”

Ultimately, his strategy was successful in softening the ground for a shift in the president’s legal strategy — away from relatively quiet cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s investigators and toward a targeted and relentless frontal attack on their credibility and impartiality.

Last April, Mr. Trump hired Rudolph W. Giuliani, his longtime friend and a famously combative former mayor of New York, as his personal lawyer and ubiquitous television attack dog. A new war had begun.

In jettisoning his previous legal team — which had counseled that Mr. Trump should cooperate with the investigation — the president decided to combine a legal strategy with a public-relations campaign in an aggressive effort to undermine the credibility of both Mr. Mueller and the Justice Department.

Mr. Mueller was unlikely to indict Mr. Trump, the president’s advisers believed, so the real danger to his presidency was impeachment — a political act that Congress would probably only carry out only with broad public support. If Mr. Mueller’s investigation could be discredited, then impeachment might be less likely.

Months of caustic presidential tweets and fiery television interviews by Mr. Giuliani unfolded. The former mayor accused Mr. Mueller, without evidence, of bias and ignoring facts to carry out an anti-Trump agenda. He called one of Mr. Mueller’s top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, a “complete scoundrel.”

Behind the scenes, Mr. Giuliani was getting help from a curious source: Kevin Downing, the lawyer for Paul Manafort, who had been the president’s 2016 campaign chairman. Mr. Manafort had agreed to cooperate with the special counsel after being convicted of financial crimes in an attempt to lessen a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Downing shared details about prosecutors’ lines of questioning, Mr. Giuliani admitted late last year.

It was a highly unusual arrangement — the lawyer for a cooperating witness providing valuable information to the president’s lawyer at a time when his client remained in the sights of the special counsel’s prosecutors. The arrangement angered Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who questioned what Mr. Manafort was trying to gain from the arrangement.

The attacks on the Muller investigation appeared to have an effect. Last summer, polling showed a 14-point uptick in the percentage of Americans polled who disapproved of how Mr. Mueller was handling the inquiry. “Mueller is now slightly more distrusted than trusted, and Trump is a little ahead of the game,” Mr. Giuliani said during an interview in August.

“So I think we’ve done really well,” Mr. Giuliani added. “And my client’s happy.”

But Mr. Giuliani and his client had a serious problem, which they were slow to comprehend.

In April the F.B.I. raided the Manhattan office and residences of Mr. Cohen — the president’s lawyer and fixer — walking off with business records, emails and other documents dating back years. At first, Mr. Trump wasn’t concerned.

The president told advisers that Mr. Rosenstein assured him at the time that the Cohen investigation had nothing to do with him. In the president’s recounting, Mr. Rosenstein told him that the inquiry in New York was about Mr. Cohen’s business dealings, it did not involve the president and was not about Russia. Since then, Mr. Trump has asked his advisers if Mr. Rosenstein was deliberately misleading him to keep him calm.

Mr. Giuliani initially portrayed Mr. Cohen as “honest,” and Mr. Trump praised him publicly. But Mr. Cohen soon told prosecutors in New York how Mr. Trump had ordered him during the 2016 campaign to buy the silence of women who claimed they had sex with the president. In a separate bid for leniency, Mr. Cohen told Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors about Mr. Trump’s participation in negotiations during the height of the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Mr. Trump was now battling twin investigations that seemed to be moving ever close to him. And Mr. Cohen, once the president’s fiercest defender, was becoming his chief tormentor.

In a court appearance in August, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty and told a judge that Mr. Trump had ordered him to arrange the payments to the women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Mr. Cohen’s descriptions of the president’s actions made Mr. Trump, in effect, an unindicted co-conspirator and raised the prospect of the president being charged after he leaves office. Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who in January became the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the matter, said the implied offense was probably impeachable.

The president struck back, launching a volley of tweets that savaged Mr. Cohen and his family — insinuating that Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law had engaged in unexamined criminal activity. He called Mr. Cohen a “rat.” The messages infuriated Democratic lawmakers, who claimed the president was trying to threaten and intimidate a witness ahead of testimony Mr. Cohen planned before Congress.

“He’s only been threatened by the truth,” the president responded.

As the prosecutors closed in, Mr. Trump felt a more urgent need to gain control of the investigation.

He made the call to Mr. Whitaker to see if he could put Mr. Berman in charge of the New York investigation. The inquiry is run by Robert Khuzami, a career prosecutor who took over after Mr. Berman, whom Mr. Trump appointed, recused himself because of a routine conflict of interest.

What exactly Mr. Whitaker did after the call is unclear, but there is no evidence that he took any direct steps to intervene in the Manhattan investigation. He did, however, tell some associates at the Justice Department that the prosecutors in New York required “adult supervision.”

Second, Mr. Trump moved on to a new attorney general, William P. Barr, whom Mr. Trump nominated for the job in part because of a memo Mr. Barr wrote last summer making a case that a sitting American president cannot be charged with obstruction of justice for acts well within his power — like firing an F.B.I. director.

A president cannot be found to have broken the law, Mr. Barr argued, if he was exercising his executive powers to fire subordinates or use his “complete authority to start or stop a law enforcement proceeding.”

The memo might have ingratiated Mr. Barr to his future boss, but Mr. Barr is also respected among the rank and file in the Justice Department. Many officials there hope he will try to change the Trump administration’s combative tone toward the department as well as the F.B.I.

Whether it is too late is another question. Mr. Trump's language, and allegations of “deep state” excesses, are now embedded in the political conversation, used as a cudgel by the president’s supporters.

This past December, days before Mr. Flynn was to be sentenced for lying to the F.B.I., his lawyers wrote a memo to the judge suggesting that federal agents had tricked the former national security adviser into lying. The judge roundly rejected that argument, and on sentencing day he excoriated Mr. Flynn for his crimes.

The argument about F.B.I. trickery did, however, appear to please the one man who holds great power over Mr. Flynn’s future — the constitutional power to pardon.

“Good luck today in court to General Michael Flynn,” Mr. Trump tweeted cheerily on the morning of the sentencing.

 Illegal is Illegal. Period. What is unclear about that?

I put the article in this post as well so you can read it again.

Sucks when the truth gets revealed about your hero, eh?

#Resist

[Athos_131]

How the Next President Could Declare a National Emergency Over Climate Change

On Friday, President Trump tossed precedent out the window and declared a national emergency to pay for an unneeded border wall he previously promised Mexico would pay for.

His declaration isn’t just setting up a massive court battle. It also opens the door to imagining how a Democratic president could wield emergency powers to tackle climate change, something Republicans are already worrying about and Democrats are already embracing as a path forward given the years of Republican filibustering, inaction, and denial.

As it turns out, the president has a few potential avenues to quickly address both fossil fuel production and renewable energy, but the powers aren’t nearly as sweeping as Republicans fear and advocates hope. A climate crisis national emergency declaration isn’t going to lead to the complete decarbonization of the U.S., but it could start to unwind a system that keeps churning carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a dangerous rate.

Imagine that around 11 p.m. on November 3, 2020, CNN calls Florida for Kamala Harris, making it clear Trump will be a one-term president. Democrats also hold the House, but the battle for the Senate comes down to Texas. Beto O’Rourke’s run at John Cornyn’s seat ends like his race against Ted Cruz, with the hope of turning Texas purple dying out in the state’s deep red rural counties. As a result, Republicans hang onto the Senate and with that, any hope of meaningful climate action making it through the legislative branch goes out the window for at least two more years.

Harris said opioids and gun violence are both national emergencies early in the campaign, leaving the door open to her issuing a declaration. But recognizing the urgent message in the UN’s special 2018 report on climate change, imagine President-elect Harris instead announces on her first day in office that she’ll sign a declaration for a national emergency to address the climate crisis.

In declaring an emergency, Harris will have to outline what emergency powers she’d use. The Brennan Center for Justice has identified nearly 140 statutes that any president can draw on when declaring a national emergency that give them power to regulate, move money around, and even use industry to do the government’s bidding.

All these powers are tied to the idea of a national security emergency, with recent declarations springing up in wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. But as we’ve seen with the Trump wall declaration, presidents have a pretty wide latitude for interpreting what constitutes a threat to national security. A future president may argue there’s ample reason to declare a climate change national emergency, given the myriad ways in which it undermines U.S. security at home and abroad.

“There are very few restrictions on president’s ability to declare a national emergency,” Andrew Boyle, a counsel at the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, told Earther. “Certainly around climate change and all the possible ramifications, billions of dollars in devastation climate change can cause, migration issues, food scarcity, all these are things that come with climate change that could inform the basis for president declaring of national emergency.”

Once Harris declares a national emergency over climate change, what can she do? Boyle suggested there’s not a lot in the aforementioned 140 statutes that could reduce carbon pollution in ways like, say, tightening fuel economy standards. But the broad powers do present some other disruptive ways of addressing climate change.

An analysis by Dan Farber, a University of California, Berkeley law professor at Legal Planet, found a few statutes President Harris could draw on to address the climate crisis via presidential fiat in what, as a reminder, is a completely hypothetical scenario.

“Some of the powers are broader than others,” he told Earther. “They don’t add up to complete leeway in using federal funds or imposing special regulations, but they do provide significant authority.”

That leeway could allow future President Harris to both address the cause of climate change (fossil fuel extraction) and ramp up the solutions. On the cause side, among the national emergency statutes available are a suite tied to fossil fuel extraction and public lands. Under 43 U.S. Code § 1341, the president can declare that certain areas of the outer Continental Shelf are “restricted from exploration and operation” if those regions are needed for national defense. That means offshore oil and gas leasing—something Trump has tried to ramp up with limited results—could instead be wound down. Under 43 U.S. Code § 155, the president can also restrict access to and utilization of public lands. This, again, could be used to shut down fossil fuel exploration and production on the roughly 640 million acres of public land the U.S. operates, including drilling in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Transportation is the largest source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and while an emergency declaration wouldn’t include more stringent fuel economy standards, it could include other measures to limit transportation emissions. 49 U.S. Code § 114 gives the executive branch the ability to “coordinate domestic transportation, including aviation, rail, and other surface transportation, and maritime transportation.” That could give the president the ability to curtail commercial flights or in Farber’s read, “allow various restrictions on automobile and truck use” all with the intent of reducing carbon emissions. Meanwhile, 46 U.S. Code § 56301 would allow the secretary of transportation to “requisition or purchase” any marine vessel, effectively allowing the government to limit shipping emissions.

Of course, a U.S. with limited mobility and access to energy is hardly a place anyone wants to live, and President Harris could face immediate revolt and calls for impeachment in our hypothetical scenario. But she’d also be able to draw on other powers at her disposal to hopefully ease the transition, ramping up renewable energy and maybe even zero-pollution forms of transit.

50 U.S. Code § 4533 allows the president to “create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense.” Translated to climate change, the statute could be used by the government to expand the purchase of and investment in renewable energy technology, zero emissions vehicles, or mass transit, or ramp up mining of rare Earth metals crucial to batteries and solar panels, all while bypassing Congress. 50 U.S. Code § 4531 could further reinforce the goals outlined above by providing “guarantees of loans” to any company or person deemed “necessary to create, maintain, expedite, expand, protect, or restore production and deliveries or services essential to the national defense.”

If some of this sounds dramatic and a bit totalitarian, well, it is. It also won’t address all sources of U.S. carbon emissions or do anything about the rest of the world, though a signal that the U.S. is ready to take dramatic action could have ripple effects. Using these powers is an ill fit to truly addressing climate change, though it’s entirely possible this will be part of the national discourse in 2020 if Democrats win the presidency but not the entire legislative branch.

“In a hyper partisan atmosphere, there is pressure to seize other tools but that may undermine other aspects of our democratic system,” Alice Hill, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and former senior director on Obama’s National Security Council, told Earther while noting she wasn’t advocating a national climate emergency as the right path forward.

If a president does go this route, it will almost certainly be challenged in court, much like the Trump administration’s declaration to fund a border wall. Both Hill and Boyle noted that the courts have tended to be deferential to the executive branch on areas of national security, and the border wall challenges will set precedent for any cases around a climate crisis declaration.

“Whatever deference they end up giving to Trump, that deference should apply to someone else who is trying to declare a climate change emergency,” Boyle said.

Beyond legal challenges, there’s also the teeny, tiny issue that declaring a national emergency subverts the will of the American people by bypassing Congress. Of course, Congress—and largely Congressional Republicans—has abdicated its responsibility to address climate change even as more Americans are increasingly concerned about it. You could argue that there’s a need for structural reform like eliminating the filibuster to try and move climate legislation forward, but that hinges on winning the Senate.

All of which is what makes the 2020 election so important beyond the White House, and why climate change could be one of the defining issues. 

“We have a very urgent irreversible challenge currently already impacting the United States,” Hill said. “So there is a need to act on this.”

#Resist

[Lois]

Yes, there is a charachter limit on posts.  I don't remember what it is, but it is likely stated in the story section.  That is the only place where it has ever been an issue.

[joan1984]

Thank you, Lois, good to know.

Yes, there is a charachter limit on posts.  I don't remember what it is, but it is likely stated in the story section.  That is the only place where it has ever been an issue.

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

‘Enjoy your life’: Trump puts new attorney general in an awkward position from the start

On William P. Barr’s first full day as attorney general, President Trump singled him out during remarks in the Rose Garden after signing a national emergency declaration aimed at building his long-promised border wall.

“I want to wish our attorney general great luck and speed, and enjoy your life. Bill, good luck,” Trump told him at Friday’s ceremony, drawing light laughter from others in attendance, who surely remembered the many ways the president tormented Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions.

In the days that followed, Trump sent more than a dozen messages to his 58 million Twitter followers reviving his critiques of the Justice Department, which Barr now helms, or the officials who came before him. The president called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” that is “totally conflicted, illegal and rigged!” He assailed former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe as “disgraced.” And he said McCabe’s claim that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein broached the idea of using the 25th Amendment to oust Trump amounted to treason — while quoting a Fox News Channel pundit describing it as a “coup” attempt.

McCabe “and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught,” Trump tweeted Monday. “ . . . This was the illegal and treasonous ‘insurance policy’ in full action!”

Although Trump’s animosity was not aimed at Barr — in fact, he has praised him — it nonetheless puts the attorney general in a particularly awkward position as he begins his job.

Barr, people who know him say, is laboring to maintain his reputation as a relatively independent and principled leader while simultaneously reacting to pressure from his boss, who demands loyalty from his appointees and nominees and frequently disparages the Justice Department as it investigates his campaign and conduct.

“William Barr has been attorney general before, but no attorney general in our history — literally — has been under a president who has such contempt for the rule of law, the judicial process and law enforcement generally,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s: ‘Buckle in, because it’s going to be a wild ride, Mr. Barr. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ ”

So far, Barr has kept a low profile, spending most of his time getting up to speed on how the department he led more than 25 years ago, in the George H.W. Bush administration, operates today.

He has not publicly addressed Trump’s running commentary of the past few days. But soon after he was confirmed by the Senate last week, he wrote in a memo to Justice Department employees that times have changed not just in the threats that federal law enforcement has to respond to, but in the microscope the department is now under.

“Advances in technology have given rise to new threats but also new tools to meet those threats, as well as new opportunities,” Barr wrote. “And the Department has faced ever-increasing scrutiny from all quarters as news cycles have shrunk from days, to hours, to nanoseconds.”

The memo’s only reference to Trump was Barr expressing gratitude “to the President for his confidence in me and for the opportunity to lead the Department and to serve the Nation once again.”

On Tuesday, Barr invited Justice Department employees to stop by his office for an open house of sorts, and aides said he paid for refreshments out of his own pocket. Some department employees said Barr’s confirmation had buoyed spirits, which had sunk after Trump asked Sessions to resign and replaced him with Matthew G. Whitaker, whose qualifications to be acting attorney general were doubted by some in the building.

Whitaker remains at the Justice Department as a senior counselor in the associate attorney general’s office, though it is expected that he will depart soon, people familiar with the matter said.

“It’s a new day over here,” said one Justice Department official who was not authorized to talk on the record and so spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Barr is viewed internally as a “lawyer’s lawyer,” the official said, and is seen as less politically minded than Sessions or Whitaker. He is well respected in the department as well as in conservative legal circles, having worked extensively as a corporate lawyer and in the Justice Department previously as attorney general, deputy attorney general and head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

“He runs a very efficient and principled organization, and I fully expect people will respond very positively to that,” said George Terwilliger, a former deputy attorney general and close friend of Barr’s.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney in the Obama administration and a Trump critic, said Barr will be tested early on.

“Barr, if he wants to be the people’s lawyer and not the president’s lawyer, is going to have to walk the high ground, not just in his private dealings inside of the Justice Department but publicly,” Vance said. “He’s going to have to set a clear example that when it comes to individual criminal investigations he’s independent from the White House, and that’s not what this president wants from an attorney general.”

Complicating Barr’s position is the fact that his son-in-law, Tyler McGaughey, a Justice Department lawyer, recently began working in the White House Counsel’s Office. McGaughey, who had been prosecuting major crimes in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, was among several lawyers there who have been detailed to the White House. McGaughey sought the assignment before Barr’s nomination to be attorney general, according to people familiar with the situation.

Barr also took over as attorney general just as McCabe was on a media blitz to promote his new book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.”

McCabe has been airing unflattering, behind-the-scenes details of his discussions with and about Trump. In recent interviews, he has described how he opened an investigation into Trump personally after the president fired James B. Comey as FBI director in May 2017 — and how officials contemplated even more dramatic steps. McCabe singled out in particular Rosenstein, the current No. 2 Justice Department official. McCabe says Rosenstein raised the question of which Cabinet member might support using the 25th Amendment to oust Trump, as well as the idea of wearing a wire into the White House to secretly record what the president was saying.

The allegations first emerged late last year and nearly cost Rosenstein his job at the time, and McCabe’s television tour this past week seemed to inflame those old wounds. On Twitter, Trump lashed out at both McCabe and Rosenstein. He quoted conservative commentator Dan Bongino saying Monday on “Fox & Friends,” “This was an illegal coup attempt on the President of the United States.” And he cited the current criminal investigation into McCabe over allegations that he lied to investigators exploring a media disclosure.

“Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe,” Trump tweeted. “He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged.”

While Trump’s comment about Rosenstein might be perceived as pressing Barr to remove him as deputy attorney general, that die already had been cast. Rosenstein has been saying for weeks that he planned to step down soon after Barr was confirmed, and Barr — as a condition of taking the job — insisted on selecting his own top deputy.

A Justice Department official said Monday that Rosenstein planned to step down in mid-March for reasons unconnected to McCabe’s allegations. The administration on Tuesday announced that Trump is nominating Jeffrey Rosen — the deputy secretary of transportation, who worked previously at Kirkland & Ellis, the firm where Barr also previously worked — to replace him.

Barr said in a statement that Rosen is a “distinguished lawyer who has served at the highest levels of government and the private sector,” and he thanked Rosenstein for serving the Justice Department “over many years with dedication and distinction.”

Trump’s recent comments foreshadow what is likely to be a tense reality for Barr: The president could attack him or the department he leads in ways that defy historical norms.

“The bed was on fire when he got into it, so to speak,” Blumenthal said.

When Sessions was the country’s top law enforcement official, Trump undermined and diminished him relentlessly — even declaring at one point that he had no attorney general. Trump was incensed by Sessions’s recusal from oversight of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation because of his conflict of interest as a top Trump campaign surrogate, a problem that Barr does not face.

Barr and the Justice Department have not responded to Trump’s recent tweets, and in some ways, their hands are tied. In addition to facing possible criminal exposure, McCabe has said he plans to sue the department over his termination, which he believes was retaliation for having opened an investigation into Trump. Barr’s commenting could affect both the criminal probe into McCabe and the litigation over his expected suit.

Some Justice Department officials were uneasy at the time about how quickly McCabe opened an investigation into Trump, people familiar with the matter have said. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) vowed to investigate the matter, using subpoenas if necessary.

If there was impropriety — by Rosenstein, McCabe or anyone else — it would be up to Barr to determine whether they should face discipline or whether department policies need to change.

“Obviously, those are matters that raise really serious concerns and questions about what was going on inside the FBI at the time,” Terwilliger said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

What we learned about Trumpworld outreach to Russia since Mueller’s investigation began

#Resist

[Lois]

I don't get why there are peeps still supporting Trump, especially responsible people like Mitch McConnell.  Russian influence permeates the Trump campaign so much that the FBI undertook an investigation of Trump himself.  The red flag was waving like a rally flag the moment Trump dismissed Comey for not dismissing the Flynn investigation.  THen Trump took Putin's word over that of our security agencies.   WTF?

[psiberzerker]

Especially responsible people like Mitch McConnell.

Just going to skip right past what he's responsible for?  Okay.

[Athos_131]

Michael S. Schmidt Describes the Times’ Reporting on Trump’s Obstructions

On Tuesday, the Times published a major story describing the various ways that Donald Trump has tried to undermine or end the investigations surrounding his Presidency. Late last year, the Times reported, Trump called the acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker (who was just replaced by William Barr), to ask whether Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, could be put in charge of his office’s investigation into Michael Cohen. This would have required Berman—who worked on Trump’s transition, was appointed by Trump, and recused himself from the Cohen investigation—to un-recuse himself from the inquiry. (Trump, of course, wanted his previous Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to do the same with the Russia investigation.)

The Times piece was written by Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman, Nicholas Fandos, and Michael S. Schmidt. I spoke by phone with Schmidt soon after the story went online. During our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Whitaker’s tenure as the Attorney General, whether Trump’s mind-set about these investigations has and hasn’t changed over time, and why un-recusing yourself is easier said than done.

Was the idea for this story some discovery that you wanted to base it around, or was it meant to be a long-view take on how Trump has dealt with this investigation?

I think there were a few things. One of them is that the President has engaged in a lengthy effort to control the narrative and the investigations around him. And, if you are the average person, and you are not following every single whiff and blow of what is going on, it can be a difficult story to follow. And sometimes we are really at our best and really helping the reader as much as possible when we are able to take them and to hold their hand a bit and tell them the larger story that may get lost in the day-to-day shuffle.

The central event in your story is Trump calling Whitaker and asking if Geoffrey Berman can un-recuse himself. The President often speaks off the cuff. Was this an order? Was this a question?

Our understanding is that it was an idea that the President had broached, saying, Is this something that we could do? Sometimes the President’s confidantes and advisors, when they push back on us, say, That’s just how he talks; that’s just how he speaks. And, while I can understand why some people would understand where they are coming from, for us, he is the President of the United States, he is in charge of the executive branch. There are these investigations involving him. And because of that, I don’t think that he should be given the benefit of the doubt that that’s just how he speaks.

I suppose his defenders would say that he didn’t fire Matt Whitaker.

If that’s how you want to view it, that’s fine. But, if the President had his way—he asked Jim Comey in February of 2017 to end the investigation into Michael Flynn, and Jim Comey decided not to do that. So, the President’s words, if followed by others, would be a means to his end.

If Comey had followed the President’s words, the Flynn investigation would have been over. And here we are, two years later, and Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to a felony of lying to the F.B.I. If the President had his way, that case would never have been made. And that’s based on something he told his F.B.I. director at the time.

How do people at the Department of Justice view Matthew Whitaker’s term? The worst fears were not borne out, but how do you understand his time there?

I think there was great fear within the Justice Department about what Whitaker would do when he came in. There were a lot of people who didn’t see him as legitimate, who thought he wasn’t qualified for the job, who thought he was there to do the President’s bidding to end these investigations. I think that, when we get a fuller picture of this, we will continue to see that Whitaker ran into forces that were far greater and stronger than he thought he would face and ultimately was not that successful in helping the President.

What are those forces?

I think it is harder to—well, we don’t know the full picture yet. But I do think it is harder to influence investigations once they are so far along the way that the Mueller one is and the way that the Southern District of New York one on Cohen is. And, because of that, I think even if you are the Attorney General, in charge of the department, you are constrained in some ways about what you can and cannot do.

Is that because of laws and regulations or people in the Justice Department standing in the way?

I think people at the Justice Department. I think it’s because of a structure of how the Justice Department operates, how cases are run by U.S. Attorneys’ offices across the country, and the fact that so many people are paying attention to this issue, whether it’s Capitol Hill or the media.

This piece goes back a long way. Do you see any changes in how Trump behaved and his mind-set altered with regard to these investigations, or is Trump always Trump, never changing?

One of the more remarkable things about the arc of the story of how Trump has dealt with the investigations around him is that it does not appear that he has learned a lot from his earlier mistakes. It was in the first two months of his Presidency that he found out that Jeff Sessions had recused himself from the Russia investigation. The President threw a fit and then spent the next several months trying to get Sessions to un-recuse himself. That failed and ultimately became an avenue that the special counsel’s office has looked at when they considered the question of obstruction. If you live through that as the President and are unable to get Sessions back in charge of the investigation, and then find yourself being examined for that exact question, you would think you might shy away from it going forward. But that appears not to be the case.

Do you understand the process of un-recusal and why it’s so difficult?

I think it’s something that is possible but is a decision made by ethics officials in Washington, who determine whether that’s kosher or not. The issue on recusing, which is interesting, is that the reason you often recuse yourself is perception of bias. But at the heart of un-recusal is the question of perception. So, if you are un-recusing yourself to take back over control of an investigation, then you are inherently, in that, creating a perception issue. It seems to lack, in taking that as an idea, an understanding of what that is all about.

What do people at the Department of Justice think about the new Attorney General?

It remains to be seen on Barr. He testified that he is going to be true to the Justice Department and the rule of law and do what’s right. He said he is at the end of his career and is prepared to walk away from the job if he believes he has to do something that isn’t right. He is just a few days in, and we haven’t seen him doing anything publicly yet.

And what do people internally think he will bring?

I think there is a sense internally that he will bring stability to the department, that he is an old hand and can keep the ship steady. You had an acting Attorney General in Whitaker who was not liked by senior department officials. There was distrust between [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein’s office and Whitaker, and there were a lot of moving parts and unease at the top. And there is a feeling that Barr could bring a ballast.

And his memo? [In June, 2018, Barr sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department, raising questions about whether Mueller can investigate Trump for obstruction of justice.] Does that freak people out, or do they think he just has certain views on executive power?

My guess is that, if Barr knew he would be Attorney General, he wouldn’t have written the memo.

But didn’t he write the memo in the hope of becoming Attorney General?

I don’t know that.

Hmm, that’s interesting. Anything more on this?

No. When this is over, we will know what this memo really meant: whether it was what he said it was or whether there was something larger afoot. We won’t really know until we see what he does.

What have you made of [the former deputy director of the F.B.I. Andrew] McCabe’s book, and do you understand why there seems to be such dislike between the McCabe and Rosenstein camps at the D.O.J.?

The McCabe book is interesting, because a lot of the stuff in it had been reported, but it is an interesting media phenomenon that, when it comes out of the mouth of the person who is directly involved in it, it’s big news, even though we knew a lot of it. I think McCabe and Rosenstein went through an incredible period of time together, where they were under enormous stress and trying to figure out what was going in the aftermath of the Comey firing. I think that stress had tremendous impact on the relationship, but I am not sure it was ever going to be recoverable after Rosenstein had written a memo that was used as the rationalization for the firing of Comey.

That remains the weirdest part of this whole thing. He wrote the memo, it was used, and he felt betrayed. It feels like a bizarre sequence of events for obviously a very smart guy.

History in all this takes a long time to suss out, and that period of time we don’t have full insight into about why everything happened the way that it did.

I have noticed news stories stating as fact that Mueller is in the final stages of his investigation. Does your reporting show that, or is this just something out there that may or may not be true?

Like the movement of time, which marches forward, I think we are moving closer to the end of the investigation.

That’s really deep.

I don’t want to be in the business of trying to predict Bob Mueller.

O.K., but does your reporting show this is at the end, or are you just hearing the same gossip we all are?

Some folks have written it harder than others. I think it’s a difficult position to be in, to try and predict the way an investigation like this is going to go. The journalists, you know, that’s a tough spot.

#Resist