Barrtending

The Barr Report:  Republicans are in celebratory mode, Democrats not so much, they’ve taken to calling the four page summary of the Mueller report that Attorney General Barr provided to Congress, the Barr Report.  They have a point, it’s only a summary, one seen through the eyes of Barr and maybe departing Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein,  and we don’t even know how long the actual report is.  Even Barr admits that Mueller made no decision about whether or not Trump obstructed justice, that the decision to conclude there was insufficient evidence to move forward on obstruction was all  Barr’s, a conclusion that Democrats view as too conveniently consistent with his long term and very publicly stated view that presidents can’t really obstruct because, well, they’re presidents.  Yesterday we learned that Barr has known about  Mueller’s lack of a recommendation about that “little” obstruction of justice issue for a few weeks.  He could have, and probably should have passed Mueller’s conclusion or lack of one on to Congress, leaving the decision on whether to pursue Trump for obstruction up to them, that’s what happened during the Nixon-Watergate investigation, but he didn’t.  Anyway, while Trump and his team of Trumpkins continue trumpeting their message of full exoneration, polls indicate that somewhere around 80% of the country would like to see the whole report to get a better understanding of why all those “Russian curious” meetings took place.  Democrats are doing their best to see that happen, or at least to get as much of it into the public domain as soon as possible.  Republicans who before they’d seen Barr’s summary wanted the whole report out there too so that they could pick apart anything they didn’t like have now changed their views.  One time House Intelligence Chairman Devon Nunes, who’s had to cancel some planned campaign meetings due to calls by parody tweeter @DevonCow, the guy he is suing,  to send zillions of cowbells to the site of those meetings, now says that it should just be destroyed and Senate Majority Leader McConnell has blocked a Senate vote on a resolution to push for its release, a resolution that was already passed unanimously by the House.  Kind of makes you wonder why they are so concerned about all of seeing a report that “exonerated” Trump?  Yesterday, while telling Barr that his summary report was insufficient, six House committee chairs sent him a letter requesting that he submit the full Mueller report to Congress by April 2.  Not all that surprisingly given his nature, Trump, who is thoroughly over the moon about his so called “total exoneration” is now seeking retribution against those who spent the last two years pushing the Russia collusion mantra.  To that end yesterday his campaign team sent a memo to  several media companies instructing them to "employ basic journalistic standards when booking" six current or former government officials that the campaign said "made outlandish, false claims, without evidence" while on air.  The memo targets four Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut and House Judiciary Chairman Nadler of New York, as well as Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and former CIA Director John Brennan but made no mention of people like Kellyanne Conway, the inventor of the Bowling Green Massacre, or any of Trump’s other even more questionable surrogates because it’s still okay for Republicans to push false narratives.  So yesterday when NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Sarah Huckabee Sander if she would “acknowledge it is incorrect” for Trump to call the Mueller report a “total exoneration,” Sanders responded "Not at all. It is. It is a complete and total exoneration." Adding to the onslaught, Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy called for House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff to step down.  That’s not happening, as he is widely supported by his Democratic colleagues. Separately, with Trump now emboldened Barr has now also weighed in on the lawsuit against Obamacare, the lawsuit being pressed by several Republican Attorneys General. Former AG Sessions had opted not to defend Obamacare in response to that lawsuit;  Barr, who danced around committing to what he would do during his confirmation hearings, has now weighed in, and not in a good way.    On Monday, the Justice Department filed a brief saying that the administration supports a recent district court decision that invalidated all of Obamacare. So it is now the official position of Trump’s administration that all of Obamacare including the private insurance option that covers 15 million people, the Medicaid expansion that covers another 15 million, and the protections for people with preexisting conditions, should be nullified.  Just another slap back at former Senator McCain and his errant thumb?  As to McCain, Trump also holds him responsible for sharing the Steele Dossier with the FBI, the dossier that Trump continues to insist started the whole Russia investigation even though it didn’t.  Yesterday, Senator Lindsey Graham, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said that his committee will probe alleged abuses of the FISA Act at the start of the Russia investigation.  He then went on to call on Barr to appoint a new special counsel to investigate the “other side of the story.” At the same time he admitted that he’d had some involvement with the dossier revealing that after his one-time BFF, McCain showed him the copy that had been delivered to him by one of his aides, he told McCain to take it to the FBI which is what McCain did. Really, why didn’t we hear about that before now?

Collateral Damage:  It took only six days for New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to change her country’s gun laws after the Christchurch mosques massacre.  Not only have ours not changed, but the collateral damage from our tragic shootings continues to pile up.  A second student from Parkland’s Stoneman Douglas High School and the father of one of the children killed during the Newtown Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre have now committed suicide.  Despite those tragedies, several gun activists groups are seeking to overturn the recently imposed ban on  bump stocks, the devices that turn semi-automatic weapons into even more lethal automatic ones. That ban is due to go into effect today.   And then there is Michael Avenatti, yesterday he was arrested in New York for allegedly trying to extort $25 million from Nike by disclosing some “damaging” claims about the company.  Shortly before his arrest Avenatti had tweeted about plans to hold a news conference where he was expected to air his claims which allegedly have to do with “evidence that one or more Nike employees had authorized and funded payments to the families of top high school basketball players and/or their families and attempted to conceal those payments.” Avenatti is now out on bail but it’s fair to assume that the that press conference has been “postponed.” Simultaneously with his NY arrest, Avenatti was charged in California in a separate federal case for embezzling a client's money "in order to pay his own expense and debts," and of "defrauding a bank in Mississippi." He claims that it’s all part of a Trump plot to get back at him for his role in bringing Trump’s porn star and playmate campaign related hush money payments to light; probably not but the timing of his denouement is quite ironic. Michael Cohen, meet your new cellmate?