All in the Family

Intro to Mueller:  Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee held its first Mueller 101 hearing, formally titled Lessons From the Mueller Report: Presidential Obstruction and Other Crimes, part of Democratic leadership’s attempt to educate the public about the contents of the Mueller Report, especially section two, the part about all of Trump’s obstructive acts. Since neither the report’s author nor any of the individuals cited in the report were willing to show up, the hearing featured testimony from former Federal Attorneys and current TV legal pundits Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance, former White House Counsel John Dean who has made a career out of his own Watergate crime/experience and one Republican invitee, John Malcom of the conservative Heritage Foundation.  McQuade and Vance did an excellent job outlining Trump’s obstructions and summarizing Mueller’s findings.  John Dean did his best to equate Trump to Richard Nixon on steroids, displaying a sharp sense of humor in the fact of Republican attacks.  As expected John Malcolm, the Republican witness, a believer, like Attorney General Barr, in the unitary executive theory, played the role of Trump defender asserting that “some laws apply differently to him and some don’t apply at all.” Not surprisingly committee Republicans, most of whom proudly admit that they’ve never read any of the Mueller Report, did their sycophantic thing, defending all of Trump’s actions. Unfortunately the class wasn’t well attended as only viewers of CSPAN got to sit for the whole lesson after all the other news stations covering the hearing almost immediately pivoted to report on the concurrent crash of a helicopter into a NYC skyscraper, a story that made for far more compelling news, because who doesn’t like to watch a good crash.  The Democrats really, really need to get the real Mueller Report characters to show up because though there was education value in yesterday’s hearings, the public and much of the press will only stay focused when the main characters like Mueller, Don McGahn, and the fashionably conflicted Hope Hicks appear.  At least on one front the House Judiciary Committee made some progress yesterday.  Chairman Nadler announced that the Justice Department has finally agreed to provide Congress with key evidence collected by Mueller’s team including “interview notes, firsthand accounts of misconduct and other critical evidence” collected from the White House and the various former officials who Mueller interviewed.  In exchange, Nadler agreed, at least for now, not to move forward with contempt proceedings against Attorney General Barr.  This seems to be Barr’s strategy, he pulled the same routine with the House Intelligence Committee, holding off on providing them with the information they sought before finally releasing that information in order to avoid personal disgrace.  Separately, since Barr has made it clear that he won’t ask a judge to grant access to any of the grand jury information redacted from the version of the Mueller Report shared with Congress,  Nadler plans to have the House vote on a resolution that will grant him the authority to go directly to the courts to request the information.

Word Soup: Frustrated with news reports that his major Mexico “accomplishment” didn’t contain much if anything that was new, Trump took to the phones yesterday morning, calling into CNBC.  In an impromptu interview that was largely made up of incoherent word goulash and misstated “facts” Trump called  tariffs a “beautiful thing when you're the piggy bank, when you have all the money,” "because without tariffs, we would be absolutely, outside of something that I won't even mention, we would be absolutely in a competitive disadvantage, the likes of which you've never seen."  He threatened to apply more of those tariffs on Chinese goods and said though he was a long term member of the US Chamber of Commerce he might have to pull out because of their complaints that tariffs were hurting their members’ businesses.  Continuing on the tariff theme, he said that it took only two days of threats to get the Mexicans to cave, ignoring again that they had agreed to nothing new.  He also weighed in on Federal Reserve policy, criticizing his handpicked Fed Chairman by saying "We have a Fed that raises interest rates the day before a bond issue goes out, so we have to pay more money. You tell me about that thinking, OK" and then adding “We should be entitled to have a fair playing field, but even without a fair playing field -- because our Fed is very, very destructive to us."  He went on spouting a number of other rambling incoherent statements before capping the interview off with a claim that he unlike any president before him was a budget cutter.  This year’s proposed budget is $4.75 trillion, the largest ever in American history.   

Swamp News:  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is on record promising that the Senate will remain the graveyard for legislation coming out of the Democratic House has been busy on another front.  Though he opposes any large scale infrastructure bill, especially one that funds anything critical like the tunnels connecting New York and New Jersey, he has managed to obtain funding for some of his favorite Kentucky projects.  He did that with the assistance of his wife Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation who assigned a special intermediary to make sure that grants for Kentucky projects sailed through her department; other states do not have their own “special intermediaries.”  Chao, who must really wants to see her husband win reelection in 2020, is all in on helping family.  She has also been accused of inappropriately “communicating” with her family’s huge and lucrative shipping business, because what international shipping business with a focus on China wouldn’t want to take full advantage of their daughter’s key role?  It’s unlikely that she or McConnell will suffer any consequences for any of their inappropriate actions because by Trump standards helping out the family at the expense of the country is standard operating procedure.  One former Trumpkin who has been a float for a while has finally nailed down a job.  Former Chief of Staff Reince Preibus has joined the Navy, he was commissioned yesterday as an entry level ensign at a ceremony led by VP Pence.  His responsibilities are expected to include communications.

Courtly Checks:  Missouri’s sole remaining abortion clinic has gotten a two week reprieve.  Last night a St. Louis judge issued another order to keep the clinic operating while a fight over the facility's license plays out in court.   On the gun front the Supreme Court turned away a request to consider whether firearm accessories such as silencers are protected by the Second Amendment leaving intact a ruling by an appeals court that had held that a silencer is not a "bearable" arm protected by the Constitution.  No ruling yet on the much disputed census citizenship question.