Arbitrary, Capricious and Egregious

Barring a Disaster: The confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee William Barr started yesterday, launched by Senator Lindsay Graham, the newly crowned Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who, in a nod to Trump, opened by talking about the need to hold the FBI accountable for its anti-Trump bias and by asking Barr to join him in expressing outrage about former FBI agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok’s “shocking” texts. Graham then asked Barr to throw shade at Bruce Ohr another target of Republican conspiracy theorists because his wife works for Fusion GPS, the firm responsible for the Steele Dossier.  Barr agreed that the texts were shocking and that the optics behind Ohr were equally awful. Having satisfied Trump that he had his best interests in mind and that Barr too was in his court, Graham then got down to the business at hand, asking Barr what he thought of Special Counsel Mueller and his investigation.  Barr, a long time associate and friend of Mueller said that he had nothing but respect for Mueller, adding that he didn’t believe that the Russia investigation was a witch hunt or that Mueller’s professionalism could be questioned.  Barr also expressed support for Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, saying that he wasn’t pushing him out, that Rosenstein was leaving of his own accord and would stick around until he was ready to depart.  For the most part, Barr, who has been down the confirmation road before, he  served as Attorney General under Bush 41, remained as noncommittal as possible.  Though he promised that absent cause he wouldn’t fire Mueller and that he would quit if Trump fired Mueller in a fit of pique, he refused to commit to sharing Mueller’s full report with Congress, saying that he’ll make that determination when he sees what Mueller delivers and then he might deliver only a summary to Congress.  He did however throw shade at Rudy Giuliani, dismissing Giuliani’s assertion that he should be allowed to edit any report that Mueller produces. Senators Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar both pressed him on whether he would recuse himself from the Russia investigation if career DOJ ethics people thought he should but Barr refused to budge, saying that as Attorney General ultimately the decision would be all his and that despite the long detailed memo that he earlier provided the Trump team, the one that said that Trump could obstruct if he wanted, he couldn’t think of any reason to recuse. A number of the Democratic Senators, including NJ’s Cory Booker pressed him on criminal justice reform.  Barr’s answers revealed that his attitudes are dated, they don’t appear to have changed since 1990, in that respect and about immigration he’s only a little bit better than former AG Sessions.  Likewise, though he said that he wouldn’t go after marijuana use in states where weed is legal, he would be much happier if Congress passed a uniform pot law, leaving the distinct impression that he’d prefer that any new law prohibit recreational pot use countrywide. The hearings will continue today and odds are that though Barr won’t get much if any Democratic support because at the end of the day he’s extremely conservative, suspect by virtue of being Trump’s choice and his views on the president as the unitary executive (as in Trump can do no wrong) scare the you know what out of them, he’ll be confirmed. 

Mueller Front:  The quiet but persistent Mueller continues to move forward.  Yesterday, he told the Judge overseeing Paul Manafort partner Rick Gates’ case that he isn’t ready to proceed to sentencing since Gates is still cooperating, an indication that the investigation may not be as close to completion as we all hope.  It was also reported that together with federal attorneys from the Southern district of NY, he’s investigating a breakfast attended by a number of foreign dignitaries a few days before Trump’s inauguration, particularly focusing on former House Intel chair Devon Nunes’ involvement.  Wouldn’t it be karma if Trump toady Nunes gets hauled in front of a grand jury?  Mueller also provided a heavily redacted filing to the court that detailed the things that Manafort lied about.  Though the redacting made the document difficult to read, it appears that Manafort lied about a number of things including the source of a rather large payment, that he had no contact with members of the Trump administration at a time that he was still providing them advice and staffing “suggestions” and about his contact with Russian spy/business associate Konstantin Kilimnik. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reports that though Michael Cohen won’t be allowed to discuss issues related to Mueller’s investigation when he testifies on February 7, he is expected to provide “chilling” testimony on what its like working for a “madman.”  Also on the Russian front, yesterday the NY Times reported that out of an abundance of concern a number of senior officials have leaked that Trump is once again thinking about withdrawing the US from NATO,  an action that would make only his spymaster Vladimir Putin happy.  As farfetched as withdrawing sounds and as disruptive as it would be to the world order, with few real adults remaining in his administration and no more General Mattis around to hold him back, Trump might actually try to pull that off.  Already a number of Senators from both sides of the aisle are pushing back. And yet Trump wonders why so many think that he is Putin’s puppet.  Adding to Putin’s glee, yesterday the UK’s Brexit mess got even worse after Prime Minister May’s Brexit plan got fully trounced in a parliamentary vote.  It’s not clear what happens next, a messy hard exit from the economic union or another country wide vote on whether to exit altogether. 

Trump Shutdown:  The shutdown mess continues with no end in sight.  Yesterday Trump invited a group of Republican and Democratic members of Congress to lunch at the White House, part of his effort to get a few of the newer, purple state Democrats to appear on camera to be moving over to his side.  Though Speaker Pelosi told the newbie Democrats that they were free to join Trump, none of them chose to attend.  Later she joked that if they had gone they would have seen “what we’ve been dealing with, and they’ll want to make a citizen's arrest.”  On the Senate front, Majority Leader McConnell once again refused to bring any government opening legislation to the floor for a vote because he “won’t participate in something that doesn’t lead to an outcome.” By that he means that he won’t do anything that would cause Trump to yell at him because that bothers him far more than 800,000 plus unpaid Americans.  Even though the government remains partially closed, the administration has called back a large number of IRS workers to process refunds. Like everyone else they’ll have to wait to get paid because though they will be sending checks out they won’t be getting any of their own. Additionally flight and food safety workers have also been called back to work, again no pay, just work.   Ironically, if the shutdown continues for two more weeks, its estimated that its cost will exceed the $5.7 billion that Trump is seeking for the down payment on his vanity wall.   Though McConnell was able to block legislation opening the government he didn’t manage to block a procedural vote that kept alive a Chuck Schumer sponsored resolution opposing Trump’s plans to lift sanctions against Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum businesses.  Eleven Republicans, including Senators Kennedy, Collins, Rubio, Boozman, Cotton, Daines, Gardner, Hawley, Sasse, McSally and Moran crossed the aisle voting with all of the Democrats on the resolution.  If Schumer can come up with two more Republican votes his resolution will pass. It’s time for Mitt Romney to put up or shut up and it would be nice if frequent Trump thorn Lisa Murkowski would join in as well.

2020:  New York’s Senator Gillibrand is running, last night she announced the formation of her exploratory committee on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, one of the go to places for Democratic candidates.  While she was hanging in New York, three of the other likely presidential candidates, Senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris were busy using their seats on the Judiciary Committee to show off their best prosecutorial/debate skills. Harris is expected to announce on Martin Luther King Day and though she hasn’t specified her plans,  Klobuchar says that her family has signed off and is enthusiastically pushing her to run.  To cap off the day, Ohio’s Senator Sherrod Brown told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes  that he and his wife journalist Connie Schultz, who is already being targeted by Republican opposition researchers, are planning to travel to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, the four early primary states for a listening tour focused on working people, his way of saying he’s running.    

Judicial Pushback:  Once again some of Trump’s policies are hitting judicial roadblocks. Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia issued a nationwide injunction on Monday that prevents the Trump administration from interfering with women’s access to free birth control guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act.  Her decision was issued just one day after another Judge, Haywood Gilliam Jr. of the Federal District Court in Oakland, California granted a request by 13 states and the District of Columbia to block the rules in their jurisdictions.  It’s not just contraception where Trump’s efforts are being stymied, another Judge, Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York, ordered the administration to stop its plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census survey. Calling Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add the question “arbitrary and capricious,” he laid into Ross for “egregious” violations of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).   Opponents of the question say it would reduce response rates in immigrant communities, affecting congressional redistricting and federal funding which is precisely why Trump wants it added.  In his 277 page opinion Judge Furman said that Ross had “failed to consider several important aspects of the problem; alternately ignored, cherry-picked, or badly misconstrued the evidence in the record before him; acted irrationally both in light of that evidence and his own stated decisional criteria; and failed to justify significant departures from past policies and practices — a veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut APA violations.”