Liars Lie

Lowering the Barr:  Attorney General Barr is scheduled to testify this morning in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he has some bigly explaining to do because it turns out he hasn’t been sticking to the truth, and that’s putting it mildly.  Last night both the Washington Post and the NY Times revealed that in response to Barr’s four page summary of the Mueller Report, the summary that absolved Trump of both conspiracy  and obstruction, Mueller sent a letter to Barr informing him that his summary “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance” of his work.  He went on to tell Barr that as a result  “there is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”  In the letter he also pressed Barr to quickly release the introduction and section summaries that were part of the report and even made redaction suggestions to speed up their release.  Mueller was so disturbed that he followed up with a phone call to Barr during which he told Barr that he “was concerned that media coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work.”  Not only was Barr’s summary misleading but in his April 10 press conference and during his subsequent testimony in front of Congress he falsely denied that Mueller or his team had expressed any reservations about how he described their report.  So far, to no one’s surprise, Republicans have had little to say about Barr’s duplicity and with Senator Lindsey Graham, who has already said that he doesn’t care if Trump’s team met with Russians and isn’t bothered by Trump’s obstructive acts, serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,  Republicans on the committee are likely to swat away any concerns about Barr’s actions during this morning’s hearing but Democrats are likely to go after him big time.  Senator Amy Klobuchar already was planning to press Barr on how his conclusion that Trump had not obstructed the Mueller investigation contrasted with his confirmation hearing testimony where he said that a person, including a president, persuading a person to perjure or change testimony would be obstruction.  She and the other members of the Senate panel, including other presidential wannabees Corey Booker and Kamala Harris, are likely to really give him a hard time now that they know about the Mueller letter.  And it’s not just them, last night Democratic Senator Chris Coons who is not on the Judiciary Committee but who had specifically asked Barr if Mueller had supported his conclusion about the report during his April Senate Appropriations Committee estimony, a question that Barr had deceptively answered by saying “I don’t know,”  has already called for Barr to resign.  Assuming they can work out their differences about format, Barr is due to testify before Chairman Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee tomorrow.  Suffice it to say, if he shows up it won’t be pretty and if he refuses to show up subpoenas and whatever else Nadler has in his quiver will start flying.  

Teasing Infrastructure:  Nancy and Chuck and their team met with Trump yesterday to discuss infrastructure.  This time around the meeting was not on camera so there are no great soundbites or Trump gaffes to report.  By all indications, everyone was on best behavior, neither the Democrats nor Trump brought up any of the many ongoing investigations into Trump’s “alleged” misdeeds.  After the meeting Chuck and Nancy reported that there was general agreement on moving forward with $2 trillion of infrastructure projects including broadband for underserved communities and that they would meet again in two weeks to talk about how to finance all those nifty projects.  Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders called the meeting “excellent.”  Though that sounds promising it’s probably just more smoke and mirrors.  Senate Majority Leader McConnell was notably absent from the meeting and he’s already on record saying that there’s no way he’ll move forward with trillions for infrastructure unless of course the Democrats want to divert money from all those social programs that they like so much.  Moreover, there’s little chance that he’ll sign on for an increase in the gas tax, the most likely source of funding for most, if not all, of the projects.  Additionally, Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff, who is a tea party budget hawk at heart, was also not present at the meeting and reports are that he had no idea that Trump was going to sign on to a $2 trillion plan.         

Other News:  New York State is moving closer to passing legislation that would allow the State’s Attorney General to share Trump’s state tax returns with Congressional committees.  In Washington DC US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that Democrats in Congress can move ahead with their emoluments lawsuit against Trump, the case alleging that his private business violates the Constitution’s ban on gifts or payments from foreign governments.  The Washington Post’s David Farenthold, who’s been making a Pulitzer prize winning career digging up irregularities at Trump’s businesses and charity, reports that some of the undocumented, “illegal” employees working at Trump National Golf Club Westchester have told NY investigators that they were not paid fairly for their work and that managers made them clock out and then continue to do unpaid "side work," while working 60-hour weeks for no overtime pay and that they were denied the vacations and promotions given to their legally employed colleagues.  The Trump organization denies these accusations but then again isn’t keeping labor costs down the reason that Trump’s businesses employed illegal workers in the first place?  Though it’s not a fait accompli yet, it’s looking more and more likely that the nomination of Trump’s Federal Reserve pick Stephen Moore is following the Herman Cain trajectory.  More and more of his foolish, politically incorrect statements keep surfacing, in addition to dissing women he is also on record saying that child labor laws should be nixed so that young people, preferably those out of diapers, can get work experience early.  Iowa’s Senator Joni Ernst appears to be in the “no” column and a number of other Republican Senators have reported that they have or will express their reservations directly to the White House.  On the investigatory front House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff formally referred Blackwater founder, Education Secretary Nancy DeVos brother, Erik Prince to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation over whether he lied to the panel about his 2016 meeting in the Seychelles islands with a Russian banker tied to Putin.  Apparently what Prince told Mueller’s investigators about the meeting directly conflicts with what he told Congress.   On the international front, things in Venezuela are going from bad to worse and depending on who you believe President Maduro did or didn’t try to jump ship yesterday before being pushed to stay by Russia and ISIS may have lost its caliphate but its long missing leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has surfaced, appearing on video to rally his followers and to take credit for the deadly Easter terrorist attack in Sri Lanka.