Spilling Lies

Nutshell Review:  As expected Attorney General Barr followed up his deceptive performance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee by failing to show for his scheduled appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee.  In response, House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler took to the podium to say that Barr “has failed to check the president’s worst instincts. He has not only misrepresented the findings of the special counsel, he has failed to protect the special counsel’s investigation from unfair political attacks. He has himself unfairly attacked the special counsel’s investigation.”  Nadler added that he will give Barr one more, of those one more chances to provide the full unredacted Mueller report before holding him in contempt, but unfortunately, nasty threats aside, short of initiating impeachment proceedings against Trump, an action that Democratic leadership doesn’t appear ready to take, there doesn’t appear to be much that Nadler can do to make Barr cooperate in a timely fashion which is, of course, the whole point of the Trump/Barr delay, delay and delay strategy.   For his part, Trump told his media outlet Fox News that he’s not  inclined to “let” former White House Counsel Don McGahn testify before the House or the Senate because he’s done enough damage already, well he didn’t use the work “damage” but that’s what he meant.  It’s not clear that Trump can block McGahn, who is now a private citizen, from testifying about the subjects that he already discussed with Special Counsel Mueller but Trump appears to be doing his best to delay the inevitable.  We also learned yesterday that White House lawyer Emmet Flood wasn’t all that happy with Mueller’s Report.  Shortly after the redacted version was released to the public Flood sent Barr a “blistering” letter attacking Mueller for playing politics by submitting findings that he called “part ‘truth commission’ report and part law school exam paper.” Mostly Flood was truly pissed that Mueller failed to do the “one thing” he was supposed to do under “governing law,” come to a finding on the whole obstruction thing, and by finding Flood means, he failed to fully exonerate Trump because while concluding that there wasn’t enough collusion with Russians to constitute “conspiracy” was nice Trump needed him to also rule that there had been absolutely no obstruction.  Flood is also totally irate at any and all suggestions that the Mueller report is a Watergate-like roadmap to Congress on how to proceed with impeachment proceedings. He goes on to argue that Trump should be able to stop officials from talking to Congress about the report’s findings and attempts to justify the White House refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas seeking further information about instances described in the report. Though the intent of the Flood letter is to shut off any future testimony, it’s likely  that it is having the reverse effect on Mueller. To that end last night both ABC and NBC news reported that Nadler’s Judiciary Committee has gone straight to the horse’s mouth, instead of trying to work with Barr’s Justice Department they are now talking directly to Special Counsel Mueller’s team with the objective of getting Mueller, who appears to be receptive to their request, to testify at an open hearing on or around May 15. On the advice of Barr,  Senator Amy Klobuchar has also taken it upon herself to go straight to Mueller. Though it’s not clear that Barr meant for her to take him literally, during his Wednesday Senate testimony, he responded to her question about whether, as Trump has been claiming, Mueller had actually gotten hold of Trump’s elusive tax returns during the course of what Trump calls the $35 million witch hunt, by saying that he didn’t know but if she really wants to find out she should ask Mueller directly.  Last night Klobuchar decided to follow through, she sent a letter to Mueller asking him to share Trump’s financial stuff to the extent that he really has any of it.      

Twenty-one in Twenty:  Michael Bennet, the senior Senator from Colorado, formally announced yesterday that he, too, is joining the herd running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.  Last month Bennet indicated that while he was likely to run, he first had to take an unplanned detour to the hospital for prostate cancer surgery.  Presumably all has turned out okay on that front because now he is in the race.  Bennet, a moderate who calls himself a “pragmatic idealist” is best known outside of Colorado for the impassioned Senate floor speech he gave during the January government shutdown, during that speech he ripped Texas Senator Ted Cruz for the “crocodile tears” he shed for Texas first responders when he failed to care at all when people had been suffering and dying during an earlier crisis that impacted Colorado.  During his Senate testimony, Attorney General Barr went silent before mumbling a somewhat unintelligible response when he was asked if Trump or anyone else at the White House had pressed him to open up any investigations against any of Trump’s perceived or real enemies. At the time, most assumed his failure to say anything coherent had to do with Hillary and/or one or more of those inappropriate FBI sexter/texters who weren’t all that fond of Trump or any other politicians, now it looks like it also had to do with Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s involvement with a Ukrainian energy company.  Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer/hatchet man, called for an investigation into whether or not the senior Biden’s efforts to push out a Ukraine prosecutor back when he was VP had been influenced by his son’s business interests. Given Trump’s concerns about Biden’s strength in “his” swing states,  Giuliani’s push and a related NY Times article can’t be all that much of a coincidence of timing.      

Policy:  While Barr was testifying or, as Speaker Pelosi puts it, lying in front of the Senate about the Mueller report a few of his Justice Department lawyers were occupied with other things, like arguing in court that the entire Affordable Care Act should be thrown out because despite Trump’s assertions that the Republicans have a “better” plan, one that will be cost effective and cover pre-existing conditions, they don’t and apparently don’t care all that much if millions more people lose their coverage, odd only because if they win the case those people will lose their coverage in the run up to the 2020 election.  Significantly the list of Justice department attorneys who signed the related brief was just that, brief, because most of the department’s career attorneys think that the administration position is meritless and refused to sign on to any of the paperwork.  And to placate the oil and gas industry yesterday the Trump administration announced that it is eliminating parts of a rule meant to protect the environment and worker safety that was passed in the wake of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  That is unlikely to end well.