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Here’s a switch…and a good one. No early ending of the Census which has been deemed a very politicized move.
A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Friday from ending the 2020 census a month early, the latest twist in years of political and legal warfare over perhaps the most contested population count in a century.
In U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Lucy H. Koh issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from winding down the count by Sept. 30, a month before the scheduled completion date of Oct. 31. She also barred officials from delivering completed population data to the White House on Dec. 31 rather than the April 2021 delivery date that had previously been set out.
The judge had temporarily stayed the early completion of the census count on Sept. 5 pending a hearing held on Tuesday.
The ruling came after evidence filed this week showed that top Census Bureau officials believed ending the head count early would seriously endanger its accuracy.
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Here comes the republican Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows lying about whether there is voter fraud. A call to take the tweet down.
video
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#FileUnderRetribution and #OhtheIronyFreeSpeecher not given award, already designated.
The Trump administration rescinded an award recognizing the work of a journalist from Finland last year after discovering she had criticized President Trump in social media posts, then gave a false explanation for withdrawing the honor, according to a report by the State Department’s internal watchdog.
The report tracks how the discovery of the journalist’s remarks worried senior U.S. officials and prompted a decision to withdraw the honor to avoid a possible public relations debacle.
The report’s release is likely to worsen tensions between the department’s leadership and the inspector general’s office, which has undergone several shake-ups following the firing of Inspector General Steve Linick in the spring at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“The Inspector General’s report is another somber example of how fear and partisanship have permeated our nation’s foreign policy and diplomacy under the Trump administration,” said Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who along with seven other senators requested the investigation.
According to the report, the journalist, Jessikka Aro, was selected for the State Department’s International Women of Courage Awards for her reporting on Russian propaganda activities dating back to 2014. Aro endured death threats and cyber attacks for her work, which helped expose Russian troll factories.
After she was informed of her selection and offered flight options, State Department interns discovered her Facebook and Twitter posts, including one from September 2018 in which she noted that “Trump constantly labels journalists as ‘enemy’ and ‘fake news,’ ” said the report. In another tweet, she noted that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet in Helsinki where “Finnish people can protest them both. Sweet.”
After the State Department withdrew Aro’s invitation and the story became public in a report by Foreign Policy, the department’s press office told reporters that Aro had been “incorrectly notified” that “she’d been selected as a finalist. This was an error. This was a mistake.”
The department also told Congress that Aro “ultimately was not selected to receive the award, due to the highly competitive selection of candidates.”
But the IG ultimately found that the decision to give her the award was not a mistake and was included in a memo approved by Pompeo.
According to meeting notes obtained by the inspector general, senior U.S. officials argued that Aro’s invitation should be withdrawn, including the acting director of the Office of Global Women’s Issues. The director’s concerns included the possibility that the “media could highlight the tweets and Facebook posts during the ceremony,” which could cause “potential embarrassment to the Department, particularly given the involvement of the Secretary and the First Lady [Melania Trump].”
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Letter to Judge Sullivan indicating that additional notes were added to ex-FBI Strzok’s chronology for Michael Flynn. Why? Just a way to move Flynn out of jail from DOJ.
Can we put this in Questionable Behavior please? @anon95374541 @MissJava Thanks!
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The disgusting way the Trump campaign is using Brad Parscale’s mental health as a political weapon
The Trump Campaign Is Quietly Disappearing Brad Parscale From Their Website
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale was detained by police last week after his wife reported that he was planning to harm himself.
Police use of force on ex-Trump campaign manager familiar during crisis calls, experts say
‘Brad Parscale hits her’: Former Trump campaign manager accused of domestic violence
Hospitalized Brad Parscale ‘is under investigation for stealing up to $40million from Trump’s campaign and $10million from the RNC’, as he spirals out of control over White House ‘gravy train’ ending and mounting debt
- Brad Parscale is under investigation for ‘stealing’ between $25-$40 million from Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, well-placed sources told DailyMail.com
- The 44-year-old is also being investigated for ‘pocketing’ another $10 million from the Republican National Committee, the insiders added
- He was involuntarily committed to a hospital by Fort Lauderdale police on Sunday afternoon following a concerning episode at his $2.4M Florida home
- DailyMail.com revealed on Monday his wife Candice was fleeing the home in just her bikini, telling a passerby: 'I think my husband just killed himself’
- She told police Parscale had been 'stressed out for the past two weeks and has made suicidal comments throughout the week to shoot himself’
- A Trump insider explained to DailyMail.com Parscale went into a tailspin after he was demoted in July and replaced by his former number two, Bill Stepien
- Trump later ordered an audit of the spending of the RNC
- Campaign records show Parscale was making $15,000 a month as Trump’s electioneering guru
- DailyMail.com previously reported he owns $300k in cars and $5M in condos
Brad Parscale facing investigation for ‘stealing’ $40 million from Trump campaign: report
Brad Parscale faces investigation for ‘stealing’ $40 million from Trump campaign: report
All roads on this investigation story lead back to the Daily Mail so far, so I am watching to see if this proves true and more comes out.
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Per the request of Judge Reggie Walton, the redacted portions of the Mueller report DO need to be unredacted. He read through the report and it needs to come out. A FOIA request also had some additional pressure about this too! They will be out before Nov 2nd…
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to publish information redacted from the Mueller report that had been designated as privileged.
District Judge Reggie Walton said the Trump administration had failed to justify certain redactions from the report on the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The specific redactions he took issue with cover the decisionmaking process within former special counsel Robert Mueller’s team over whether to charge certain people with crimes during the probe.
“Based on the Court’s review of the unredacted version of the Mueller Report, the Court concludes that the Department has failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that the withheld material is protected by the deliberative process privilege,” Walton, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote in his 40-page opinion.
The decision comes as a result of a pair of lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) brought by a journalist with BuzzFeed News and the Electronic Privacy Information Center that sought to have the full, unredacted report released to the public.
Walton on Wednesday ruled that the DOJ could continue to withhold material it had redacted under FOIA exemptions allowing agencies to conceal information that would compromise law enforcement investigations or compromise the privacy of witnesses.
Matt Topic, who was lead attorney for plaintiffs, told The Hill: "After a very thorough review, the Court found that the Justice Department violated federal law with regard to a number of the redactions to the Mueller Report. We look forward to the release of this additional information by November 2."
A spokeswoman for the DOJ did not immediately respond when asked for comment.
In March, Walton ordered the DOJ to give him access to an unredacted copy of the report so that he could review their withholdings. He excoriated the department and Attorney General William Barr at the time for misrepresenting the report’s conclusions before it was actually released.
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A bit more…yes, the family should be worried if Brad Pascale talks. And sourced from the DailyMail article…but additional input from Campaign staff.
As the Times story lit up cable news and Twitter, news broke that Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale had been taken into custody outside his Ft. Lauderdale home and hospitalized after threatening to commit suicide and allegedly beating his wife days prior. Police body camera footage showing an officer brutally tackling a shirtless, 6’8” Parscale to the pavement instantly became a visual metaphor for the chaos engulfing the Trump campaign. One campaign adviser I spoke with was shocked by the amount of force the police used to subdue and cuff Parscale. “If Brad had been Black, there would be riots all over the country,” the source said. (In fact, police have killed unarmed Black men in far less hostile situations.)
Parscale’s public meltdown happened while he is reportedly under investigation for stealing from the Trump campaign and the RNC. According to the source close to the campaign, the Trump family is worried that Parscale could turn on them and cooperate with law enforcement about possible campaign finance violations. “The family is worried Brad will start talking,” the source said.
In response the Trump campaign’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh , said: “It’s utterly false. There is no investigation, no audit, and there never was.”
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Great - check on a secretive ‘law commission’ halted by DC Judge.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday halted the work of a policing panel created by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration that aimed to deliver a slate of “law and order” reform proposals before the Nov. 3 election, saying it violated federal open meeting laws.
The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice was part of a Justice Department effort to deliver on a promise by Trump last year to a meeting of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
The commission’s membership - made up entirely of federal, state and local law enforcement, with no civil rights advocates - and secretive proceedings led the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund to sue to stop its work.
U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington on Thursday ruled in the group’s favor.
A national commission on law enforcement launched earlier this year by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr has violated federal law by failing to have a diverse membership and failing to provide public access to its meetings, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The judge ordered the commission to stop work, though it has already sent its draft report and recommendations on improving American policing to Barr for release next month, and prohibited Barr from releasing a final report.
The ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington came in response to a lawsuit from the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, which sought an injunction against the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice for violating laws on how federal advisory committees must work. Bates did not issue an injunction, but ordered the commission to change its membership and comply with other aspects of the law.
“Especially in 2020,” Bates wrote, “when racial justice and civil rights issues involving law enforcement have erupted across the nation, one may legitimately question whether it is sound policy to have a group with little diversity of experience examine, behind closed doors, the sensitive issues facing law enforcement and the criminal justice system in America today.”
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On the Judge Amy Cony Barett front, she is selectively disclosing what she tells the judicial committee, leaving out Roe v. Wade ad to remove it, with her endorsement on it.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, failed to disclose her participation in a 2006 newspaper ad calling for Roe v. Wade to be overturned and ending its “barbaric legacy” when she submitted paperwork to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Two Democratic committee aides confirmed to NBC News that the two-page ad published in the South Bend Tribune of Indiana, which included her name in a long list of those in support, was not disclosed in the Senate forms required of judicial nominees and maintained that it should have been. They said it should have been included in the response to a question in the forms asking for citations of “books, articles, reports, letters to the editor, editorial pieces or other published material you have written or edited.”
“The ad should have been included in Judge Barrett’s Senate Judiciary Questionnaire and was not,” one of the two aides said, asking not to be named in order to speak freely about the questionnaire. The aide also said that Barrett did not include her participation in the ad in her Senate disclosure forms for her 2017 appeals court appointment.
This two-page ad from 2006 signed by Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was not included in her Senate disclosure forms.South Bend Tribune / via Newspapers.com
Barrett’s support for the ad, and her failure to report it, was first reported in The Guardian.
A White House spokesman said that because Barrett did not write or edit the advertisement, it does not fall within the scope of the questionnaire.
Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown Law, was special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and went through the same disclosure process when President Barack Obama nominated her to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Her nomination was part of a slate of Obama judicial nominees blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“She should have disclosed it,” Nourse said. “In my experience, I would have had to do it,” especially when it pertains to a contentious issue likely to come before the court. Nourse said the paperwork requirements for judicial nominees are very specific and strict and it took her months to fill them out. “You’re supposed to give anything you have on the internet and all of your endorsements."
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Lots of agreement on Barr’s lack of respect for the rules…and his complicit actions to endorse the conpiratorial meanderings of the President.
DOJ Alumni Open Letter on Protecting Free and Fair Elections | by DOJ Alumni | Oct, 2020 | Medium
We, the undersigned, are alumni of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) who have collectively served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Each of us took an oath to defend the Constitution and pursue the evenhanded administration of justice free from partisan consideration.
Many of us have spoken out in previous statements, motivated by an ongoing concern that President Trump and Attorney General Barr are weaponizing the DOJ in the service of Trump’s personal interests, thereby doing grave damage to the rule of law, to the foundational principle that the law should be applied equally to all Americans, and to the DOJ’s institutional credibility as an independent law enforcement agency.
We speak out again now because we fear that Attorney General Barr intends to use the DOJ’s vast law enforcement powers to undermine our most fundamental democratic value: free and fair elections. He has signalled this intention in myriad ways, from making false statements about the security of mail-in voting from foreign hackers to falsely suggesting that mail-in ballots are subject to widespread fraud and coercion. Most recently, the Department made a premature and improper announcement of a mail-in ballot tampering investigation that the White House immediately used as a talking point in its campaign to discredit mail-in voting and to further the claim it will be rigged against President Trump.
And based on Attorney General Barr’s public statements and other evidence, it appears that he will use the ongoing inquiry into the origins of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election — known as the “Durham investigation” after John Durham, the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut tapped by Barr to lead it — to help President Trump’s reelection chances. There are serious questions about whether there is a legitimate basis for the Durham investigation. It has been repeatedly politicized and tainted by President Trump, and both the DOJ’s Inspector General and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have concluded that the Russian interference investigation was wholly appropriate and methodologically sound. But even if there is a legitimate predicate for the Durham investigation, there is clearly no justification for taking public action on it in such close proximity to the November election. Such a blatant politicization and abuse of federal law enforcement power risks immense and lasting harm to our democracy and to the integrity and reputation of the DOJ.
The core principle of federal law enforcement — familiar to all DOJ lawyers — is that the law should be applied equally and impartially, free from partisan considerations. It is embodied in the Constitution and countless laws and rules governing the conduct of federal prosecutors, including DOJ policies — both written and unwritten — designed to avoid interference with an election. One such unwritten policy — sometimes called the “60-Day Rule” — creates a presumption that DOJ personnel should not take public steps or make public statements about a criminal investigation in the period immediately before an election if doing so could influence the vote.
Attorney General Barr is well aware of the 60-Day Rule and the longstanding policies and traditions it serves. Indeed, he endorsed it during his own Senate confirmation hearing, explaining that it exists because “the incumbent party has their hands on … the levers of the law enforcement apparatus of the country, and you do not want it used against the opposing political party.” Earlier this year, Attorney General Barr issued a memorandum to DOJ personnel in which he reiterated that “the Department has long recognized that it must exercise particular care regarding sensitive investigations and prosecutions that relate to political candidates, campaigns, and other politically sensitive individuals and organizations — especially in an election year.” In doing so, he acknowledged the importance of “ensur[ing] that the Department’s actions do not unnecessarily advantage or disadvantage any candidate or political party.” During his first tour as Attorney General, Barr criticized just such an action, when Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh indicted former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger days before the 1992 election, thereby damaging President George H.W. Bush’s re-election campaign.
But now, Attorney General Barr seems to be ignoring the principle altogether in his handling of the Durham investigation, which he has continued in spite of President Trump’s repeated efforts to use it as a political weapon. President Trump has publicly insisted on prosecutions of numerous persons associated with what he calls the “Russia Witch Hunt,” including former President Obama and former Vice President Biden, and has bluntly stated that Attorney General Barr’s ability to be considered “the greatest attorney general in our history,” versus just “an average guy,” hinges on whether he prosecutes them. President Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows suggested that he has reviewed documents related to the investigation that demonstrate that “it’s time for people to go to jail.” Far from distancing himself from these abuses of power, Attorney General Barr has repeatedly violated DOJ policy by commenting on the investigation, to include opining that its subjects committed crimes constituting “one of the greatest travesties in American history” and “sabotage” of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Such improper political influence from the White House and guilt-presuming comments not only violate DOJ policy, they undermine fundamental fairness and due process.
While the 60-Day Rule’s presumption against pre-election action can sometimes be overcome for legitimate law enforcement purposes — such as the need to enforce a subpoena when a prosecutor fears evidence will be destroyed or the need to make an arrest when a suspect may flee — we are aware of no such exigencies here. The recent resignation of Nora Dannehy, one of prosecutors on the Durham investigation — in apparent protest of pressure to produce unprecedented pre-indictment findings before the election — further suggests that the Durham investigation is being used as a means of partisan interference in the election on President Trump’s behalf.
In recent remarks, Attorney General Barr criticized DOJ career prosecutors for being insufficiently deferential to the Trump administration and the political leadership at DOJ. Attorney General Barr’s comments display a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of career prosecutors and why many of them have openly resisted his interventions on President Trump’s behalf. While it is of course true that the DOJ is managed by its political leaders, when those leaders violate their oath to faithfully execute the law, the career staff is obligated by their own oaths of office to uphold the principle of equal justice under law. All DOJ officials, including Mr. Durham himself, should respond to any improper efforts to influence the election by: reporting misconduct; refusing to carry out improper directives; and following the lead of Ms. Dannehy and others and resigning rather than violate their oaths of office. The Inspector General should protect the DOJ’s integrity by answering the call of the House of Representatives to open his own investigation into election interference. And given Attorney General Barr’s demonstrated willingness to use the Department to help President Trump politically, the media and the public should view any election-related activity by the DOJ — including any announcement or findings related to the Durham investigation — with appropriate skepticism.
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CNN reporting
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Talking head and former Naval officer Tom Nichols.
Ben Rhodes…former NSC under Obama
Just some twisted stuff…
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No one can help, no one’s in charge…
The White House rejected on Monday an offer from the nation’s public health experts to lead the effort to track down and notify Americans who were exposed to a growing coronavirus outbreak linked to President Donald Trump and several top aides.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is widely considered the federal government’s authority in contact tracing, the public health best practice of reaching out to people at risk of acquiring an infectious disease and to identify others who were subsequently exposed.
In interviews and internal CDC communications reviewed by USA TODAY, current and former agency officials accused the White House of seeking to avoid learning the scope of the outbreaks. Without an independent investigation, they said, countless others may be exposed and never know it.
“CDC, when left in the hands of its scientists, makes tough decisions and helps implement them and maybe that’s not what the White House wants,” said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a former CDC director and 26-year veteran of the agency. “They seem to be marching toward a different goal. It’s a petty one and a partisan one. And all of us pay the price.”
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Two political appointees at the federal agency that oversees the Voice of America recently investigated one of its most prominent journalists to make the case he was biased against President Trump.
NPR has learned the appointees compiled an extensive report deemed “confidential” on VOA White House bureau chief Steve Herman, claiming that in his reporting and tweets that Herman had been unfair to Trump and had broken the broadcaster’s standards and social media policies. They repeatedly cited a “conflict of interest,” based on their conclusions from Herman’s social media postings, including his own tweets and his “likes,” according to materials reviewed by NPR. The findings were quietly presented to acting Voice of America Director Elez Biberaj for action two weeks ago.
In so doing, the two men appear to have violated laws and regulations intended to protect the federally funded news outlet from political interference or influence. That has set off alarms within the VOA newsroom, already unnerved by investigations of coverage of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by VOA’s Urdu language service and the tenor of language used to describe his wife, Jill Biden, to introduce a segment on VOA’s French to Africa language service.
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DNI head Ratcliffe selects and releases some classified documents related to the CIA, FBI’s Trump-Russian investigation which coincidentally help Trump make his argument that he was unfairly investigated.
Brennan’s book is out today as well, criticizing the Administration.
Drumroll…it’s dirty tricks time with selective classified notes just prior to election.
Former CIA director John Brennan accuses intel chief of selectively declassifying documents to help Trump - CNNPolitics
On Tuesday, CNN confirmed that Ratcliffe declassified Brennan’s notes and the intelligence memo – a decision that comes one week after he released a letter outlining the claims about Clinton coming from Russian intelligence services.
Brennan’s notes and the CIA memo were handed over to the Senate and House intelligence committees, a democratic congressional source and Ratcliffe’s office confirmed to CNN after it was first reported Tuesday by Fox News.
In a statement to CNN, Ratcliffe said he declassified the documents at “the direction of President Trump.”
Trump on Tuesday evening tweeted about the Russia investigation, vowing to declassify all related materials and documents “pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal.”
That message came during a Twitter spree attacking former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI, where Trump said he will declassify the documents with “no redactions.” Trump was quote-tweeting Paul Sperry, a conservative journalist and fellow at the Hoover institution, who wrote that if the documents were declassified, it would show that “the FBI and CIA not only knew the Russia ‘collusion’ allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.”
Yet in a later tweet, Trump said he already had declassified all the relevant intelligence – but it was unclear what he was referring to beyond the documents released by Ratcliffe in recent days.
But Brennan told CNN Tuesday that the memo declassified by Ratcliffe, which he characterized as a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL), is just one of several documents that were sent to the FBI related to Russian activity during the 2016 race.
There are a lot of other CIOLs that talk about the contacts that were taking place between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians. So he might want to think about trying to balance some of these releases by providing information to the American public about what the intelligence community had unearthed during this period of time about Russia’s interactions with those involved in the Trump campaign," he said.
Last week, CNN reported that Ratcliffe declassified unverified Russian intelligence despite concerns being raised by the CIA and National Security Agency, according to people briefed on the matter.
Career officials in the intelligence agencies were concerned about declassifying the information because it was unverified and they believed it could reveal sources and methods. Ratcliffe overrode those concerns and sent the document to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, the people said.
That declassified document, which includes a Russian intelligence assessment from 2016 that Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to “stir up a scandal” against then-candidate Trump by tying him to Russia and the hack of the Democratic National Committee, has sparked charges from Democrats and former intelligence officials that Ratcliffe was politicizing intelligence and sharing Russian disinformation.
It was the latest in a string of declassified documents Ratcliffe and Attorney General William Barr have provided to Senate Republicans and others targeting the FBI’s Russia investigation ahead of the November election.
Ratcliffe noted in the summary he provided to Graham that the intelligence community "does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication."
Ratcliffe later issued a clarifying statement that the information “is not Russian disinformation.” But multiple intelligence and law enforcement officials say the possibility that it is disinformation hasn’t been ruled out by the intelligence agencies.
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Some crazy stories rolling out now… the sources I’d be careful of for some of these, clearly.
Spy chief releases docs on claim Hillary Clinton cooked up Russia scandal
Former CIA director accuses intel chief of selectively declassifying documents to help Trump
Hillary Clinton behind plan to tie Trump to Russia, CIA warned Comey, Strzok
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What T’s authoritarian motivated position really wants - wants to go after rivals - Hillary, release selective documents which skew the ‘russian’ argument towards T being unfairly pursued, take conversations away from Covid and destabilize the elections. Unpresendented.
President Trump’s order to his secretary of state to declassify thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails, along with his insistence that his attorney general issue indictments against Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., takes his presidency into new territory — until now, occupied by leaders with names like Putin, Xi and Erdogan.
Mr. Trump has long demanded — quite publicly, often on Twitter — that his most senior cabinet members use the power of their office to pursue political enemies. But his appeals this week, as he trailed badly in the polls and was desperate to turn the national conversation away from the coronavirus, were so blatant that one had to look to authoritarian nations to make comparisons.
He took a step even Richard M. Nixon avoided in his most desperate days: openly ordering direct, immediate government action against specific opponents, timed to serve his re-election campaign.
“There is essentially no precedent,” said Jack Goldsmith, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush and has written extensively on presidential powers. “We have a norm that developed after Watergate that presidents don’t talk about ongoing investigations, much less interfere with them.”
“It is crazy and it is unprecedented,” said Mr. Goldsmith, now a professor at Harvard Law School, “but it’s no different from what he has been saying since the beginning of his presidency. The only thing new is that he has moved from talking about it to seeming to order it.”
Mr. Trump’s vision of the presidency has always leaned to exercising the absolute powers of the chief executive, a writ-large version of the family business he presided over. “I have an Article II,” he told young adults last year at a Turning Point USA summit, referring to the section of the Constitution that deals with the president’s powers, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president, but I don’t even talk about that.”
Now he is talking about it, almost daily. He is making it clear that prosecutions, like vaccines for the coronavirus, are useless to him if they come after Nov. 3. He has declared, without evidence, that there is already plenty of proof that Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton, among others, were fueling the charges that his campaign had links to Russia — what he calls “the Russia hoax.” And he has pressured his secretary of state to agree to release more of Mrs. Clinton’s emails before the election, reprising a yearslong fixation despite having defeated her four years ago.
Presidential historians say there is no case in modern times where the president has so plainly used his powers to take political opponents off the field — or has been so eager to replicate the behavior of strongmen. “In America, our presidents have generally avoided strongman balcony scenes — that’s for other countries with authoritarian systems,” Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, wrote on Twitter after Mr. Trump returned from the hospital where he received Covid-19 treatment and removed his mask, while still considered contagious, as he saluted from the White House balcony.
Long ago, White House officials learned how to avoid questions about whether the president views his powers as fundamentally more constrained than those of the authoritarians he so often casts in admiring terms, including Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. They have something in common: Mr. Trump’s State Department has criticized all three for corrupting the justice systems in their countries to pursue political enemies.
(Russia, the State Department complained in its 2019 Human Rights report, engaged in a “crackdown on political opposition and other critics before and after presidential elections that Vladimir Putin won.” Turkey, it said the same year, has conducted the “arbitrary arrest and detention of tens of thousands of persons, including former opposition members of parliament.” In recent weeks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been particularly outspoken about the state’s use of a new national security law to arrest activists and political opponents of the Chinese Communist Party.)
Mr. Pompeo has always bristled when reporters have asked him to explain what the world should believe when it reads Mr. Trump’s most authoritarian-sounding tweets. He answers that what distinguishes the United States is that it is a “rule of law” nation, and then often turns the tables on his questioners, charging that even raising the issue reveals that the reporters are partisans, not journalists, intent on embarrassing Mr. Trump and the United States.
But his anger is often wielded as a shield, one that keeps him from publicly grappling with the underlying question: How can Washington take on other authoritarians around the world — especially China, Mr. Pompeo’s nemesis — for abusing state power when the president of the United States calls for political prosecutions and politically motivated declassifications?
“We’ve never seen anything like this in an American election campaign,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of state who is now an informal adviser to Mr. Biden. “It reduces our credibility — we look like the countries we condemn for nondemocratic practices before an election.”
“I have worked for nine secretaries of state,” Mr. Burns said. “I cannot imagine any of them intervening in an election as blatantly as what we are seeing now. Our tradition is that secretaries of state stay out of elections. If they wanted to release Hillary Clinton’s emails, they could have done it in 2017, 2018 or 2019. It is an abuse of power by Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.”
Another career diplomat who served as both ambassador to Russia and deputy secretary of state, William J. Burns, said that what Mr. Trump had ordered is “exactly the kind of behavior I saw so often in authoritarian regimes in many years as an American diplomat.”
“In dealing with Putin’s Russia or Erdogan’s Turkey, we would have protested and condemned such actions,” he said. “Now it’s our own government that’s engaging in them.”
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And the accomplices who will allow T’s arguments to fly…Fox, Barr etc.
While most of the nation was largely fixated over the past week on President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis, the President and his allies in right-wing media have been engrossed with something else entirely.
Trump, with the help of outlets like Fox News, has been pushing a dishonest narrative in touting intelligence documents that his administration declassified last month on the eve of the first presidential debate. They claimed the information was a supposed smoking gun proving that Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration sought to frame Trump with a Russian collusion scandal.
But when examined closely the documents indicate no such thing. In fact, by the Trump administration’s own admission, they are based on unverified Russian intelligence that could be totally bogus. Which is to say that the President and Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are hyping and disseminating information that originates from a foreign adversary to bludgeon top Democratic officials.
Trump and his allies have even gone so far as to demand or suggest that President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden should be charged with actual crimes -- again, resting much of their case on unverified Russian chatter and other cherry-picked material that the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency warned against releasing, as CNN previously reported.
It’s the latest episode in a long-running attempt by Trump and right-wing media to portray the Obama administration as nefarious actors who sought to launch a coup of an incoming Republican administration. This “deep state” conspiracy has been thoroughly discredited.
What makes this situation more alarming is that John Ratcliffe, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence who declassified the documents, appears to be selectively doing so to help Trump accuse his 2020 opponent of committing a crime – all with the help of a major US media organization.
It has some current and former intelligence officials aghast.
"We are acting like a banana republic, with various cabinet officials so beholden to a dictator, they violate all norms and rules simply to curry favor," said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia before retiring last summer.
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