And from our-tweeter-in-chief 
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3:09 p.m.
The Justice Department has told Congress to expect a summary of Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation within the hour.
That’s according to two people familiar with the Justice Department’s plans. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the plans.
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My hot take, an investigation into why the Republican President fired the Republican FBI Director, lead by the Republican former head of the FBI leaves obstruction of justice charges up to the Republican AG and Republican DAG, who decided they won’t charge the Republican President.
Trump said this was all a partisan witch hunt, he just never mentioned which party.
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CNN and other outlets are trying to hold out some glimmer of hope that the President will be held accountable by leading with headlines that emphasize Mueller did not exonerate the President on obstruction of justice. The sad truth is that Barr, appointed by Trump, made it clear in the letter that he believes Trump did not commit an obstruction of justice crime – case closed.
To me, this is beyond depressing. I have hope that President will be held accountable for the other crimes I’m certain he has committed such as tax evasion, money laundering, insurance fraud, charity fraud, etc., but right now I’m so depressed I’m just going to take a few days off from the news cycle and recuperate.
I worked hard to help flip the House and I’ll work even harder to ensure that Trump and his ilk are banished from the White House forever. Onward to 2020! 
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Without knowing what is in The Mueller Report as far as evidence goes, it is still very hard to comprehend how Barr did exonerate the President.
The report as Mueller framed it was for Congress to take action (impeach ultimately, despite the fact it is not a winnable action), since from Mueller’s vantage point, there was not an ability to indict a sitting president.
True to form, Barr stuck with the President and absolved him of any more Mueller scrutiny.
Dems will have to fight like crazy but keep an aggressive eye on unseating T in 2020.
> What to Make of Bill Barr’s Letter - Lawfare
Excerpt
The second section of the letter is both more complicated and less salutary for the president—and, again, readers must await the underlying document for a full accounting. In sharp contrast to the president’s tweet, Barr quotes Mueller as writing: “[W]hile this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” As Barr puts it, Mueller actually “did not draw a conclusion” at all as to whether Trump committed obstruction of justice in his interactions with the investigation. He refrained in view of the “‘difficult issues’ of law and fact” involved in that determination.
Mueller, writes Barr, did not make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the subject. Instead, for each act with a potentially obstructive nexus, “the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as ‘difficult issues’ of law and fact concerning whether the President’s actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction.”
This is, as a preliminary matter, a striking decision on Mueller’s part. It almost certainly flows from the difficult questions that arise when one tries to imagine how one would apply the obstruction of justice statutes to presidential acts that are, on their face, authorized by Article II of the Constitution—questions we have addressed at great length on this site.
…
While Mueller left the question of criminality unaddressed, Barr himself did not. Barr opines that Mueller’s “decision to describe the facts of his obstruction inquiry without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime”—though it is not clear why Barr felt this to be the case. Barr includes his own determination, along with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s, that Mueller’s evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”
In justifying this view, Barr notes Mueller’s determination that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian electoral interference” and argues that the lack of evidence of an underlying crime, though not dispositive, “bears upon the President’s intent with respect to obstruction.” The report does not identify any actions that, in Barr’s and Rosenstein’s view, “constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent,” each of which must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in order to establish the crime of obstruction of justice under Justice Department guidelines.
Notably, Barr says that his and Rosenstein’s assessment was made independently of constitutional questions about the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president. Though Barr does not make reference to any concerns over the interaction between presidential authority and possible obstruction offenses, it is worth keeping in mind his memorandum on the subject from June 2018, in which he argued that conduct authorized by Article II definitionally cannot constitute obstruction.
Finally, Barr indicates that more material from Mueller’s report is forthcoming, writing that his office is at work identifying information protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)—which protects material obtained before a grand jury from public disclosure—and “information that could impact other ongoing matters.” After that, Barr writes, he “will be in a position to move forward expeditiously in determining what can be released.”
So the good news is that there is more information on the way—though it is unclear how much more or when it will appear. Democratic members of Congress, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are already calling for the report to be released in its entirety. Pelosi and Schumer released a joint statement indicating skepticism of what they call “Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry,” and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler indicated that his committee will call on Barr to testify. Chairman of the Senate intelligence committee Richard Burr, for his part, thanked the attorney general for his letter and called for the release of “as much of the report as possible
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Agree with you…and very good point. The final decision being left up to Barr, and perhaps Rosenstein is just as you said…in-house loyalists. #Don’tRockTheBoat
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Who wrote the Comey memo? DAG. Who recommended Bill Barr for AG and called him his mentor? DAG.
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IMHO - DAG Rod Rosenstein I believe had to make a compromise of some sort when it was discovered he suggested to McCabe that he wear a wire with Trump. DAG could have been fired immediately but there was some sort of ‘negotiation’ and DAG stayed on in order to usher the Mueller Report through.
I wonder where DAG’s loyalties lay…
And as @anon95374541 suggest, he always lined up the next steps in the DOJ. He helped facilitate and ultimately manipulate the next moves.
Was DAG saving face, his reputation…or selling his soul?
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Keep in mind that William Barr has a long history of involvement in coverups, including the Iran-Contra Affair. He was quite explicitly hired by Trump to have his back, based on the bizarre 19-page paper he wrote while a private practitioner.
Then to condense a 22-month investigation into a 4 page report in under 48 hours and spin it so it makes Trump look like he’s off the hook… that’s wild. But note that even with all of that, he was unable to offer actual exoneration.
The fact is, until we see the report itself, we only have Barr’s word, and he’s shown to be an unreliable individual unless you’re his boss.
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Some great developments on the legal front having to do with drilling off the Artic and Atlantic oceans when a federal judge in Alaska called it ‘illegal.’
A federal judge in Alaska declared late Friday that President Trump’s order revoking a sweeping ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal, putting 128 million acres of federal waters off limits to energy exploration.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason is the third legal setback this week to Trump’s energy and environmental policies. The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2012, also blocked on Friday a land swap the Interior Department arranged that would pave the way for constructing a road through wilderness in a major National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service illegally approved two gas drilling plans in western Colorado. The judge said officials did not adequately analyze wildlife and climate impacts in their plans — which were challenged by a coalition of environmental groups — to drill 171 wells in North Fork Valley, which provides key habitat for elk and mule deer.
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Surprised??? Heck no…
For Trump’s ‘Party of Healthcare,’ there is no health-care plan - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-trumps-party-of-health-care-there-is-no-health-care-plan/2019/03/30/b4005bd0-5264-11e9-8d28-f5149e5a2fda_story.html?utm_term=.7bab4d62ecf6#click=https://t.co/kws2sSMA9M
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But there is a plan for Health
It even has a name!
It’s called “TrumpDoesn’tCare”
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Mick Mulvaney, Acting White House Chief of Staff, went on TV to say Mueller meant for Barr to rule on obstruction of justice and Congress should find something else to do.
And then he sort of sums it up by blaming a “deep state” at the FBI.
Mulvaney declined to say whether the White House would release the written responses the president provided to Mueller during the course of the special counsel’s investigation and blamed Mueller’s appointment on “a small group of people within the law enforcement community, specifically the FBI and the DOJ, who really did want to overturn” the results of the 2016 election.
"They cannot accept the fact that he’s president and from the very beginning, in fact before the election, they actually set the table to try and prevent him from becoming president," he said.
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And the Trump Administration is still threatening to close the southern border…
What I don’t understand is why they think this will help the situation? Anyone who crosses the into the US will still have a whole year to claim asylum. It will not affect the 2/3 of unauthorized immigrants who just let their visas expire. It will only affect those legally crossing the border. I can’t see this being a popular policy outside Trump’s base. What do you y’all think?
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A New York man is in custody after having been arrested and charged with threatening to assault and murder Rep. Ilhan Omar, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York.
Patrick W. Carlineo, Jr., 55, of Addison, New York, threatened to kill Omar because of her Muslim faith, according to a criminal complaint and accompanying affidavit.
Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, is one of the first two Muslim women serving in Congress after being elected in the 2018 midterms.
[…]
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) of New York suggested that the rhetoric of Trump has “emboldened bigots” to act.
“The political environment, led by an Islamophobe in the White House, has normalized hate speech and emboldened bigots in their actions,” CAIR-NY executive director Afaf Nasher said in a statement Saturday. “The rising threat of Islamophobia and white supremacy must be taken seriously. We are thankful that law enforcement tracked this individual down before he could act on his hatred for Muslims.”
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Deplorable. How is this not a bigger deal?
President Donald Trump made a sarcastic reference to Representative Ilhan Omar during a speech in Las Vegas, a day after prosecutors said a New York man was arrested for threatening to murder the freshman Minnesota Democrat.
Trump snuck in the line about Omar minutes into a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition as he ran through a list of Republican lawmakers and others supportive of Israel.
“Special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota,” Trump said. “Oh, I forgot. She doesn’t like Israel. I forgot. I’m so sorry."
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Who knows if this has any sway with Fortune 500 companies…but I would guess that if there’s enough public outcry about these T hires…then, it would. #CorporationsMakingTonsOfDough
Immigration and civil rights groups are urging companies not to hire senior Trump administration officials who were involved in planning, carrying out or defending the separation of migrant children from their parents.
“They should not be allowed to seek refuge in your boardrooms or corner offices,” according to the open letter signed by 41 groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Allowing them to step off of the revolving door and into your welcoming arms should be a non starter.”
The letter, which is being released on Friday, will be sent to chief executive officers of all Fortune 500 companies, according to organizers. The approach marks a shift in strategy by opponents of President Donald Trump’s policies that resulted in migrant children being separated from their undocumented parents on the U.S.-Mexico border. Until now, the groups have focused on campaigning against the administration’s actions or staging protests directed at public officials.
The letter singles out 30 current and former officials including John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Also on the list are lesser known officials such as former Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, Deputy Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Robert Perez, and Ronald Vitiello, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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More of the same…
The announcement came shortly after Mr. Trump said Kirstjen Nielsen was leaving the position, ending a tumultuous tenure in charge of the agency, which oversees border security, among other duties. She had taken the job in late 2017.
Mr. McAleenan, 47, will oversee an agency that has at times been a target of the president’s dissatisfaction over an increase of migrants illegally entering the United States at the southwestern border.
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