No Character, No Compass

Election Alert!  At the end of the impeachment trial, House Intelligence Chief Adam Schiff warned us that Trump has not changed and will not change because “a man without character or ethical compass will never find his way,” adding he has done it before and he will do it again.  Well, sadly Schiff’s remarks were spot on. On February 13 senior US intelligence officers told Congressional lawmakers that Russia is up to its old tricks, interfering in the Democratic primary process and working to get Trump reelected and that Trump, furious, not that the Russians are interfering again but that this information was shared  with Congressional Democrats, most notably arch villain Adam Schiff, went into a rage, screaming at then Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.  He then followed up by announcing that Maguire was “leaving” his position to be replaced by Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, whose only qualification for the position, one that by law can only be permanently filled by someone with extensive intelligence experience, is that he is a Trump loyalist.  The claim was that Maguire had to leave not because of his loyalty lapse but because the amount of time that he could serve in an acting capacity had expired.  It turns out that Grenell, will be multitasking, he will continue to serve as Ambassador to Germany and will only serve as the Acting DNI until someone else is nominated and confirmed by Congress. Notably, the same law that requires that the permanent DNI have intelligence experience says that it’s okay for someone serving in the acting capacity to be intelligence ignorant and that an acting DNI can stay in place for as long as it takes for a permanent DNI chief to be nominated and confirmed, which means that the “expired” Maguire could have stayed in place if Trump had nominated a permanent replacement which kind of proves that he was fired not because his time had expired but because Trump wants a compliant lackey in the DNI spot to insure that no more intelligence about Russian election interference or anything else for that matter is shared with Congress especially Democrats and most especially Adam Schiff.  

Even more troubling, last night we learned Trump has assigned Kash Patel, a former aide to the nefarious Intel Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, to serve as a senior advisor to Grenell.  Patel played a key role in helping Republicans discredit the Russia probe which by Trump standards makes him uniquely qualified for his new position.  Who cares if Grenell knows nothing, he’s got Patel to run the operation and make sure that none of that troubling intelligence stuff reaches probing eyes.  Why should we care about a little election interference anyway?  To add another wrinkle to this mess, late last night Trump also said that he’s considering Georgia Congressman Doug Collins for the permanent DNI spot.  If that name sounds familiar it’s because as ranking member of the House Judiciary Collins was one of the loudest screamers during the House impeachment process.  Collins who had been Trump’s preferred choice for the Senate seat vacated by the ailing Johnny Isakson lost that spot to Kelly Loeffler, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s preferred choice.  Collins has announced plans to run against Loeffler in the primary.  By appointing him to the DNI spot, Trump checks several boxes: he gets to keep Grenell in place until the nomination is confirmed;  possibly gets his fanboy Collins into the key DNI slot; preempts the risk that a messy Republican primary in Georgia leads to a Democratic Senate pick up in 2020; and notably Trump wins even if Collins fails to be confirmed by the Senate, a process that the wily Senate Leader McConnell no doubt will delay until it’s too late for Collins to primary Loeffler.     

Stone Saga:  Trump also appears poised to pardon his long term crony in crime Roger Stone who was finally sentenced yesterday by Judge Amy Berman Jackson.  While Judge Jackson was reading her sentencing announcement, one that was preceded by a lengthy and scathing speech where she said that “truth still matters” and where she expressed her “dismay” and “disgust” at the attempts to defend Stone’s actions as just business as usual and that was a complete and total rebuke of Trump and his assertion that Stone was a victim of overzealous prosecution by Special Counsel Mueller’s team of “Democratic loyalists,” Trump continued to tweet out that Stone has a good chance of exoneration.  In addition to making it clear that Stone was not prosecuted for standing up for Trump but for covering up for him, Jackson called out Attorney General Barr saying his intervention to reduce career prosecutors' sentencing recommendations was “unprecedented”  At the same time she made it clear that the politics surrounding the case had not influenced her decision, a point brought home when she sentenced Stone to 3 years and four months rather than the longer period called for in the relevant sentencing guidelines.  To be clear her decision to sentence Stone to the lesser amount of time had little if anything to do with the revised sentencing memo provided by Barr’s Justice Department flunkies, nor did it have anything to do with Trump’s tweets.  More likely her decision reflected current trends for sentences to fall below the guidelines.  Moreover by going with a less harsh sentencing she made it harder for Stone to win an appeal.  As to Stone, he’s still a free man, at least until Jackson rules on his attorney’s request for a new trial or until Trump provides him with that get out of jail free card that we all know he will eventually deliver. And of course Judge Jackson is now being attacked on twitter and by Trump’s flunkies including Tucker Carlson who says that she should be impeached.

Et Cetera:  With all the focus on Trump’s shenanigans and those messy, dare I say disastrous Democratic primaries, it’s been easy to forget about the way that people are being treated at the border but the situation there continues to fester.  Yesterday, David Bury, a federal judge in Arizona, ruled that conditions in holding cells operated by the US Customs and Border Protection agency are so vile that they violate the constitution. Calling them "substantially worse than detainees face upon commitment to either a civil immigration detention facility or even a criminal detention facility, like a jail or prison," he ruled that no migrant or asylum seeker can be held in those facilities for more than 48 hours. The Judge’s remarks follow acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s comments to an audience at a private gathering in England that the Trump administration “needs more immigrants” for the US economy to continue growing.  No doubt he means more Scandinavians.  On the Syrian front, the Wall Street Journal reports that one million people in northwestern Syria are trapped between the advancing Syrian military, backed by Russian airstrikes and pro-Iranian militias, and Turkey and with the border closed are about to be annihilated.  Remember when Erdogan promised Trump that he would make sure that everyone would be just fine if the US withdrew its forces from the region?  And lastly, not as dire but equally predictable, the Trump administration has weighed in on behalf of Oracle in its long running copyright dispute with Google.  That’s especially notable since the Trump administration brief was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday just as Oracle founder Larry Ellison held a bigly dollar campaign fundraiser for Trump at his southern California estate. Did I mention that the Democrats are so screwed up right now that we could end up with four, or more, years of this?