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Today's News (2020/2/18)
Feb. 18th, 2020 02:09 pmBit of a rush today, but here's what I have, mostly queued from last night.
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Abandoning anti-corruption posture, Trump goes on pardoning spree
With this pardon spree, the whole idea of Trump as some kind of corruption-fighter has become a punch-line to a sad joke.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/abandoning-anti-corruption-posture-trump-goes-pardoning-spree-n1138221
Feb. 18, 2020, 12:40 PM PST
By Steve Benen
For months, as the Ukraine scandal derailed his presidency, Donald Trump tried to defend his illegal extortion scheme with a rather ridiculous explanation. His actions, the president insisted, were motivated by his deep and abiding concerns about corruption. More than a few Republicans played along, pretending that Trump really is an aggressive anti-corruption crusader -- all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
With this White House statement, released a short while ago, the whole idea of Trump as some kind of corruption-fighter has become a punch-line to a sad joke.
-----
William Barr Is Going After Trump’s Enemies One by One
By Jonathan Chait
New York Magazine
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/william-barr-going-after-trumps-enemies-one-by-one-comey-fbi-department-justice.html
In May of 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had wrapped up his party’s nomination, but when the notion he might win the presidency seemed remote at best, Benjamin Wittes wrote one of the very early essays attempting to analyze how an obviously authoritarian president might abuse his powers. “The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice,” he argued, laying out how prosecutorial discretion could allow a president to harass his domestic enemies.
Yesterday’s news that the Department of Justice is exploring yet another probe of James Comey, the former FBI director turned Trump antagonist, would seem to confirm those fears have been borne out.
As the Times report notes, the investigation — the second the Department of Justice has brought against Comey — is highly unusual. The charge is that, in 2017, Comey leaked to the Times and Washington Post details of a dubious Russian document that the bureau had acquired in 2017. The document claimed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had assured the Clinton campaign that the FBI would not investigate the email scandal very deeply. The authenticity of this fact has never been established, and some members of the bureau suspect it was Russian disinformation, designed to discredit the FBI and stoke suspicion about Clinton’s corruption. But the memo’s existence made Comey paranoid about the appearance of favoritism toward Clinton, and helped push him toward his fateful decision to announce a reopening of the email probe days before the election — a decision that likely swung the election to Trump.
Leaking details of FBI investigations to the media is illegal. Prosecution, however, is rare, and it is even more rare — possibly unprecedented — to prosecute leaks that occurred several years ago. So Comey is not being hit with trumped-up charges. He is the apparent victim of selective prosecution.
...
Meanwhile, Barr has appointed John Durham to undertake another even broader investigation into the FBI and the intelligence community’s Russia investigation. The probe appears to be aimed at other Trump antagonists, such as former CIA Director John Brennan. Barr has thrown his weight behind the probe, visiting foreign countries and asking their cooperation.
The Department has also pursued a case against former director Andrew McCabe for misleading the Department about media leaks. McCabe is another Trump target, who stood behind Comey after Trump fired him, has since then been the target of public and private abuse by the president. The potential charges have been hanging over McCabe’s head for so long that last month a court ordered the Department either to bring a case or drop it.
In theory, there would be nothing wrong with the Department of Justice tightening up its standards of conduct. But all the evidence points to the conclusion those standards are being raised only for Trump’s political enemies. The Department released batches of private texts by Lisa Page, including texts that had no political relevance, exposing her to personal embarrassment. Trump of course is the head bully, mocking Page repeatedly, including engaging in a simulated orgasm between her and the FBI agent with whom her affair was exposed in the texts. Page is suing the Department, but the Department is not bringing its own charges against the officials who undertook this obvious abuse.
Nor is the Department investigating the ubiquitous 2016 leaks about the Clinton email probe.The sentiment against Clinton among conservative FBI agents was at such a fervor that agents would openly cheer on colleagues investigating her with comments like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” They pressured Comey to bring charges by leaking constant stories to the right wing media. “FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey urging the Justice Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information,” stated a report in the Daily Caller. Giuliani was literally broadcasting his leaks from conservative agents on television.
...
Trump is not arbitrarily having his opponents arrested. He is doing something more subtle, but still extremely dangerous: using the Department of Justice to selectively hold his opponents to the most exacting levels of legal scrutiny that are not broadly applied. It doesn’t even matter that not every investigation brings charges, and the charges themselves probably won’t hold up in court. The time, expense, and reputational cost of the investigations will be damaging enough.
-----
Federal judges' association calls emergency meeting after DOJ intervenes in case of Trump ally Roger Stone
Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY - February 17, 2020
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/17/roger-stone-sentence-judges-worried-political-interference/4788155002/
WASHINGTON – A national association of federal judges has called an emergency meeting Tuesday to address growing concerns about the intervention of Justice Department officials and President Donald Trump in politically sensitive cases, the group’s president said Monday.
Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, said the group “could not wait” until its spring conference to weigh in on a deepening crisis that has enveloped the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe told USA TODAY. “We’ll talk all of this through.”
Rufe, nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, said the group of more than 1,000 federal jurists called for the meeting last week after Trump criticized prosecutors' initial sentencing recommendation for his friend Roger Stone and the Department of Justice overruled them.
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El Paso Times
'Somebody is making money off those ladders': Smugglers use 'camouflage' ladders to cross border wall
Lauren Villagran Published 2:53 p.m. MT Feb. 14, 2020
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2020/02/14/smugglers-in-mexico-use-camouflage-ladder-to-cross-border-wall/4760798002/
Perhaps the quickest way around a billion-dollar wall is over it.
Smugglers in Juárez have engineered camouflage hook-and-ladders made of rebar that blend in so well with the border wall that it can be hard to detect, according to U.S. Border Patrol. The ladders are the same rust brown color as the mesh panels or steel beams of the fence.
El Paso's urban stretch of border is littered with the rusted rebar ladders at the base on both sides — ladders lying in wait on the Mexican side, ladders pulled down by border agents or abandoned by smugglers on the U.S. side. One of the rebar ladders was poking out of a dumpster in a lot near the Chihuahuita neighborhood on Thursday.
"Somebody is making money off those ladders," said Agent Joe Romero, pointing to a mangled version tossed in the dirt on the U.S. side. "The agents pulled it off the wall and cut it up so it can't be used again."
Border patrol agents Joe Romero and Fidel Baca look at discarded ladders migrants use to climb over the border fence Thursday, Feb. 13, in El Paso.Buy Photo
Border patrol agents Joe Romero and Fidel Baca look at discarded ladders migrants use to climb over the border fence Thursday, Feb. 13, in El Paso. (Photo: BRIANA SANCHEZ/EL PASO TIMES)
The ladders appear to be made with two poles of 3/8-inch rebar and four thinner poles, outfitted with steps and bent over at the end in a U, to hook on the top of the wall. It's the sort of cubed rebar support structure used in construction in Mexico, called castillo.
-----
Abandoning anti-corruption posture, Trump goes on pardoning spree
With this pardon spree, the whole idea of Trump as some kind of corruption-fighter has become a punch-line to a sad joke.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/abandoning-anti-corruption-posture-trump-goes-pardoning-spree-n1138221
Feb. 18, 2020, 12:40 PM PST
By Steve Benen
For months, as the Ukraine scandal derailed his presidency, Donald Trump tried to defend his illegal extortion scheme with a rather ridiculous explanation. His actions, the president insisted, were motivated by his deep and abiding concerns about corruption. More than a few Republicans played along, pretending that Trump really is an aggressive anti-corruption crusader -- all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
With this White House statement, released a short while ago, the whole idea of Trump as some kind of corruption-fighter has become a punch-line to a sad joke.
-----
William Barr Is Going After Trump’s Enemies One by One
By Jonathan Chait
New York Magazine
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/william-barr-going-after-trumps-enemies-one-by-one-comey-fbi-department-justice.html
In May of 2016, shortly after Donald Trump had wrapped up his party’s nomination, but when the notion he might win the presidency seemed remote at best, Benjamin Wittes wrote one of the very early essays attempting to analyze how an obviously authoritarian president might abuse his powers. “The soft spot, the least tyrant-proof part of the government, is the U.S. Department of Justice,” he argued, laying out how prosecutorial discretion could allow a president to harass his domestic enemies.
Yesterday’s news that the Department of Justice is exploring yet another probe of James Comey, the former FBI director turned Trump antagonist, would seem to confirm those fears have been borne out.
As the Times report notes, the investigation — the second the Department of Justice has brought against Comey — is highly unusual. The charge is that, in 2017, Comey leaked to the Times and Washington Post details of a dubious Russian document that the bureau had acquired in 2017. The document claimed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had assured the Clinton campaign that the FBI would not investigate the email scandal very deeply. The authenticity of this fact has never been established, and some members of the bureau suspect it was Russian disinformation, designed to discredit the FBI and stoke suspicion about Clinton’s corruption. But the memo’s existence made Comey paranoid about the appearance of favoritism toward Clinton, and helped push him toward his fateful decision to announce a reopening of the email probe days before the election — a decision that likely swung the election to Trump.
Leaking details of FBI investigations to the media is illegal. Prosecution, however, is rare, and it is even more rare — possibly unprecedented — to prosecute leaks that occurred several years ago. So Comey is not being hit with trumped-up charges. He is the apparent victim of selective prosecution.
...
Meanwhile, Barr has appointed John Durham to undertake another even broader investigation into the FBI and the intelligence community’s Russia investigation. The probe appears to be aimed at other Trump antagonists, such as former CIA Director John Brennan. Barr has thrown his weight behind the probe, visiting foreign countries and asking their cooperation.
The Department has also pursued a case against former director Andrew McCabe for misleading the Department about media leaks. McCabe is another Trump target, who stood behind Comey after Trump fired him, has since then been the target of public and private abuse by the president. The potential charges have been hanging over McCabe’s head for so long that last month a court ordered the Department either to bring a case or drop it.
In theory, there would be nothing wrong with the Department of Justice tightening up its standards of conduct. But all the evidence points to the conclusion those standards are being raised only for Trump’s political enemies. The Department released batches of private texts by Lisa Page, including texts that had no political relevance, exposing her to personal embarrassment. Trump of course is the head bully, mocking Page repeatedly, including engaging in a simulated orgasm between her and the FBI agent with whom her affair was exposed in the texts. Page is suing the Department, but the Department is not bringing its own charges against the officials who undertook this obvious abuse.
Nor is the Department investigating the ubiquitous 2016 leaks about the Clinton email probe.The sentiment against Clinton among conservative FBI agents was at such a fervor that agents would openly cheer on colleagues investigating her with comments like “You have to get her” and “You guys are finally going to get that bitch.” They pressured Comey to bring charges by leaking constant stories to the right wing media. “FBI agents say the bureau is alarmed over Director James Comey urging the Justice Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information,” stated a report in the Daily Caller. Giuliani was literally broadcasting his leaks from conservative agents on television.
...
Trump is not arbitrarily having his opponents arrested. He is doing something more subtle, but still extremely dangerous: using the Department of Justice to selectively hold his opponents to the most exacting levels of legal scrutiny that are not broadly applied. It doesn’t even matter that not every investigation brings charges, and the charges themselves probably won’t hold up in court. The time, expense, and reputational cost of the investigations will be damaging enough.
-----
Federal judges' association calls emergency meeting after DOJ intervenes in case of Trump ally Roger Stone
Kevin Johnson
USA TODAY - February 17, 2020
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/17/roger-stone-sentence-judges-worried-political-interference/4788155002/
WASHINGTON – A national association of federal judges has called an emergency meeting Tuesday to address growing concerns about the intervention of Justice Department officials and President Donald Trump in politically sensitive cases, the group’s president said Monday.
Philadelphia U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe, who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, said the group “could not wait” until its spring conference to weigh in on a deepening crisis that has enveloped the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr.
“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe told USA TODAY. “We’ll talk all of this through.”
Rufe, nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, said the group of more than 1,000 federal jurists called for the meeting last week after Trump criticized prosecutors' initial sentencing recommendation for his friend Roger Stone and the Department of Justice overruled them.
-----
El Paso Times
'Somebody is making money off those ladders': Smugglers use 'camouflage' ladders to cross border wall
Lauren Villagran Published 2:53 p.m. MT Feb. 14, 2020
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2020/02/14/smugglers-in-mexico-use-camouflage-ladder-to-cross-border-wall/4760798002/
Perhaps the quickest way around a billion-dollar wall is over it.
Smugglers in Juárez have engineered camouflage hook-and-ladders made of rebar that blend in so well with the border wall that it can be hard to detect, according to U.S. Border Patrol. The ladders are the same rust brown color as the mesh panels or steel beams of the fence.
El Paso's urban stretch of border is littered with the rusted rebar ladders at the base on both sides — ladders lying in wait on the Mexican side, ladders pulled down by border agents or abandoned by smugglers on the U.S. side. One of the rebar ladders was poking out of a dumpster in a lot near the Chihuahuita neighborhood on Thursday.
"Somebody is making money off those ladders," said Agent Joe Romero, pointing to a mangled version tossed in the dirt on the U.S. side. "The agents pulled it off the wall and cut it up so it can't be used again."
Border patrol agents Joe Romero and Fidel Baca look at discarded ladders migrants use to climb over the border fence Thursday, Feb. 13, in El Paso.Buy Photo
Border patrol agents Joe Romero and Fidel Baca look at discarded ladders migrants use to climb over the border fence Thursday, Feb. 13, in El Paso. (Photo: BRIANA SANCHEZ/EL PASO TIMES)
The ladders appear to be made with two poles of 3/8-inch rebar and four thinner poles, outfitted with steps and bent over at the end in a U, to hook on the top of the wall. It's the sort of cubed rebar support structure used in construction in Mexico, called castillo.
