Obstructive Tendencies

Trumpisms:  During a rally in Florida for Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis and for departing Governor and Senator wannabee Rick Scott, Trump went with his usual themes, he attacked immigration, insisted that he would get funding for the wall, and threatened drastic things like a government shutdown if he doesn’t.  He also attacked the press spurring the crowd to jeer at CNN’s Jim Acosta one of his favorite targets.  He also called for the imposition of ID requirements to put an end to all that fraudulent voting, the fraudulent voting that study after study has shown never happens, while siting that ID cards are required for everything else including grocery shopping, yes grocery shopping. Clearly the out of touch Trump hasn’t hit any Publix supermarkets lately, if he had he’d know that you don’t need an ID card to buy toilet paper and Diet Coke.  As to immigrants, though he blamed them for every ill befalling the country, he failed to mention his family separation policy or any of the 700 children who remain apart from their families.  The Senate Judiciary Committee did hold a hearing on his family separation policy and though they resolved nothing and many of their questions remained unanswered, they did ask a few zingers that elicited some revealing responses. Responding to a question as to whether anyone had pushed back at the policy before it was implemented, Health and Human Services’ Commander Jonathan White said the he had personally raised a “number of concerns” about the impact of the policy and had warned that the separation of children from parents “entails significant risk of harm to children as well as psychological injury.”  Sadly, his warning was ignored.  When asked about reports of sexual and other abuse at government detention facilities, ICE official Matthew Albence gave more ammunition to those calling for the elimination of ICE by dismissively saying that they had “oversight procedures” and that there was no need to worry because the facilities are just like “summer camps,” true only if you are counting those camps with predatory counselors.  Illinois Senator Richard Dubin, a Democrat, just called for Homeland Security Head Kirstjen Nielsen to resign for her role in implementing the “zero tolerance” policy.

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Before flying off to Florida, Trump weighed in on the controversy surrounding 3D guns tweeting “I am looking into 3-D Plastic Guns being sold to the public. Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem to make much sense!“   Trump was referencing a recent settlement between the Justice Department and Defense Distributed, an organization that designs and disseminates plans for making plastic guns with 3D printers.  In accordance with the settlement the government had decided to allow the organization to start posting schematics for the guns online.  For some reason, Trump seems to think that discussing the issue with his supporters at the NRA would be the best way to solve the problem of people circumventing gun laws, manufacturing plastic guns and then getting them past metal detectors because the NRA is so useful when it comes to developing and implementing effective gun restrictions. Not!  Attorneys general from eight states didn’t bother to consult with the NRA, instead they filed a lawsuit against the administration in an attempt to prevent the publication of any of the 3D printable gun schematics.  Last night a Federal judge from the Western District of Washington blocked the posting of the gun blueprints pending appeal and at least for now Defense Distributed has stopped allowing downloads of their schematics.  Separately Florida’s Democratic Senator Bill Nelson tried to pass a bill by unanimous consent that would make it illegal to publish a digital file that programs a 3D printer to manufacture a firearm but his effort was stymied by Republican Senator Mike Lee who objected to passing the legislation over concerns that it would infringe on the First Amendment and probably also because it would anger the NRA.  It’s worth noting that Nelson is up for reelection and appears to be falling short in his battle against Trump’s pick, Florida’s outgoing Governor Rick Scott, one of those guys with great NRA ratings.

Manafort Mania:  The Virginia case against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager or as Trump likes to call him, the man he hardly knows who worked on his campaign for only a minute or so, got off to a fast start yesterday.  A jury of six men and six women was quickly seated and has already started to hear some testimony.  In their introductory remarks Special Counsel Mueller’s prosecutors laid out an outline of their case, stating that that Manafort failed to report most of the $60 million that he made consulting for a Russian backed political party in Ukraine, one led by former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, that he knew he was paid through unreported foreign bank accounts, and that in 2014, after his patron Yanukovych fled to Russia and he had spent all of his ill-gotten, unreported gains on things like expensive Ostrich jackets, Zegna suits and over the top landscaping that he began committing bank fraud to make up for his lost income.  Defense lawyers argue that Manafort was too busy consulting in Ukraine to have had the time to commit any fraud, that instead it was his associate Rick Gates, who they claim embezzled millions from Manafort and who will be testifying against him who committed all of the illegal activities. Separately it was also reported that Mueller has referred the investigation into three other lobbyists, including former DNC chair John Podesta’s brother Tony Podesta, over to the Southern District of New York, the same prosecutors currently looking into Trump’s former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen. It turns out that getting caught engaging in questionable activities is a bad thing even if you aren’t the intended target of an investigation.        

The Russians Are Back:  Actually, the Russians never left and now it appears that the same group who stirred up discontent during the 2016 election are at it again. Facebook reports that they have detected a covert campaign to influence the November midterms by targeting hot-button social issues.  In all Facebook has detected and removed eight Facebook pages, 17 Facebook profiles and seven Instagram accounts followed by 290,000 individuals. Some of those individuals have already attended events sponsored by the questionable players. The pages and accounts included a faux African-American group, a Latino group and a women's group, they were not pushing specific candidates but sought to stir anger on divisive issues such as race and immigration and appear to have been aimed at left-leaning voters. Though Facebook didn’t specifically identify the perpetrators, they are leaving that up to the FBI, in all likelihood the evil doers come from the Internet Research Agency, the group owned by Russian oligarch and Putin crony Yevgeny Prigozhin, the same guys who Mueller indicted for spreading anti-Hillary propaganda and spurring discontent during the 2016 elections.   Prigozhin is an all-around bad guy who is also involved with the Wagner Group a Russian paramilitary organization known to do Putin’s dirty work in places like Syria, eastern Ukraine  and Africa.  Yesterday, it was reported that three journalists who were investigating the Wagner Group’s activities in Central Africa were killed under suspicious circumstances. Putin strikes again and again. In an effort to tamp down criticism that Trump isn’t taking election interference seriously, yesterday his sidekick, VP Pence, acknowledged that the Russians interfered in the last election and are at it again as did Homeland Security Head Kirstjen Nielsen.  Pence went on to say that Trump has directed the administration to create a "whole-of-government" approach to strengthen election security, by that he means that Trump has spent thirty minutes discussing the issue but has issued no new directives at least that’s what a number of administration officials have reported, off the record of course.       

Obstruction:  In an article appearing in the New York Review of Books, investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize nominee Murray Waas reports that former Trump lawyer John Dowd and current lawyer Jay Sekulow knowingly misrepresented what and when Trump learned about former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s FBI problems.  Waas says that despite their claims to the contrary Trump had already been told that Flynn was under investigation by the FBI when he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn.  Apparently, Special Counsel Mueller knows this too because others, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, told him so when they were interviewed as part of his investigation.  Also, the diligent Priebus kept copious notes on everything.  Over the past few days there has been an inordinate amount of discussion of whether or not collusion is a crime but its important to remember that obstruction is still on the table, bigly.