Who's next?

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5 years after the Mueller report into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election on behalf of Trump

Mueller did a poor job of putting the facts about Russia's election interference before the public

Howard Manly, The Conversation

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

Only Trumpers are allowed to be Republicans

The Republican Party is going through a nasty divorce

By Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

When former Vice President Mike Pence said last Friday that he would not be endorsing his old boss Donald Trump for a second term as president, it made for a good chuckle: Pence wouldn't be backing the guy who tried to have him hanged on Jan. 6, 2021.

But zoom out a bit and Pence's rejection of his former boss comes amid a potentially meaningful groundswell of opposition from many of those who worked closest with Trump—including his former top aides and Cabinet members.

The Biden campaign sure thinks it’s notable. Shortly after Pence's statement, the campaign's rapid response director, Ammar Moussa, blasted out a list to reporters of former Trump staffers who don't think Trump and his autocratic agenda should be "anywhere near the Oval Office."

Pence topped the list, followed by former U.N. ambassador and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley—but let's put a pin in that for a moment.

Other former senior Trump officials who made Team Biden's "short list" were:

• His Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly 
• His National security Advisor, John Bolton
• His National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster
• His Defense Secretary, Mark Esper
• His Defense Secretary, Gen. James Mattis
• His Attorney General, Bill Barr
• His Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson

Does Trump WANT to go to jail?

Oh, the horror!

 

Dems and GOP agree - American democracy is in crisis - but for different reasons

But we’re polarized on what the crisis is — and one side’s dead wrong.

By Mitchell Zimmerman 

Seven out of ten Republicans — like seven of ten Democrats — believe that American democracy is in danger of collapse.

Both sides correctly fear the end of our democracy. But they see the danger very differently.

As Democrats see it, GOP candidates are mouthing Donald Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen and supporting the January 6 rioters at the Capitol as “patriots.” Democrats see Republican legislatures attacking the right to vote based on phony claims of election fraud — and they see GOP plans to steal elections if they lose.

By contrast, as Republicans see it, there was a big steal. Indeed, hundreds of Republican political leaders claim that Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide, but that it was stolen by massive election fraud.

Trump and his supporters have asserted a bewildering range of claims of wrongdoing, convincing fully 70 percent of Republican voters that President Biden was not legitimately elected. And now they’re fighting mad. “It may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government,” 36 percent of Republicans agreed in a recent poll.

How do you figure out which side is right?

Actually, it’s not all that difficult. You can decide by asking yourself a few questions.

Trump Tower, 2021

 

Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity

Making it harder to vote does threaten democracy

Douglas R. Hess, Grinnell College

An election worker during mail-in ballot counting at the Pennsylvania
Convention Center in Philadelphia on Nov. 6, 2020. 
Chris McGrath/Getty Images

As state legislators consider hundreds of bills on election policies this spring, false claims of voter fraud are being repeated as justification for proposals to claw back recent advances that have made voting easier for Americans.

In debates about election policy, making it easier to vote and election integrity are frequently presented as opposing goals. Increasing one, it is argued, means decreasing the other.

The 2020 elections saw many states expand voting by mail, the use of ballot drop-off boxes and other procedures. 

In the end, turnout was high, and both the U.S. Justice Department, under Trump Attorney General William Barr, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with a host of other election and security officials, stated that the elections were secure.

Changes in election policy can either make it easier or harder to vote by adding or removing hurdles to participation. 

For example, state bills most commonly introduced by Democrats aim to expand the number of people voting by increasing early voting periods, allowing more people the right to vote absentee or restoring the voting rights of people who completed a felony sentence. 

Implementing automatic voter registration – that is, registering citizens to vote from existing government data, as many wealthy democracies do – is a particularly common reform proposal.

In contrast to an emphasis on making voting easier, Republican proposals tend to prioritize restrictions on mail-in voting, early voting and the discretion local election officials used in 2020 to increase turnout while protecting voters from the pandemic. Republicans claim these changes are needed to protect election integrity, another central value for fair elections.

Trump Intelligence Chiefs Hid Evidence Of Russian Election Interference

 Internal Intelligence Community Report Names Grenell and Ratcliffe for ‘Politicalization’ of Analysts’ Findings

By Alison Greene

Even in his re-election campaign, Trump's ties to Russia
stood out

Lost in the news on the day of Trump’s Insurrection was a devastating new watchdog report to Congress on the politicizing and distorting of intelligence during Donald Trump’s time in office.

The analytic ombudsman, career intelligence community veteran Barry A. Zulauf, determined that under Trump national intelligence reports had become highly politicized. 

Important findings were suppressed to appease Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in American elections.

Zulauf’s unclassified report paints a frightening picture of just how much the Trump administration skewed intelligence to suppress knowledge of interference by Russia in our 2020 elections.

From March 2020, in the critical months leading up to the elections, Zulauf “identified a long story arc of—at the very least—perceived politicization of intelligence.”

Round up the usual suspects

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Prostituting justice

 

Can't happen here

By Jen Sorensen

 

Inside the Unbelievable Trump's election campaign

Tom Tomorrow for Daily Kos

 

Bill Barr Goes Full-In Right-Wing Looney

‘Sedition’ Arrests for BLM Protesters? Prosecute Seattle’s Mayor? Mask Mandates and Slavery? Is This Guy for Real?

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor

By Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

Are you kidding me? Sedition? From 1798?

Just in case someone is not persuaded that this Trump Administration is falling off its rocker, the advice from Atty. Gen. William P. Barr to federal prosecutors to use a two-century-old law to stop people – no, specifically “violent” leftist protests outside federal courthouses – from seeking to overthrow the government should make us stop and scratch our collective heads.

For openers, protesting disproportionate police brutality against Black citizens is not calling for the overthrow of the government.

Secondly, there is actual evidence that groups other than Black Lives Matter or the oft-cited, if unorganized “antifa” are not the only ones in street. 

You heard nothing from Barr about using sedition laws against actual, organized, gun-toting, right-wing, white supremacist nationals who seem actually to want to overthrow the government – as well as to mix it up with lefties in the streets.

Thirdly, sedition laws have not been used over two centuries for good reason: Their Constitutionality runs very close to the edge of First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly that have protected leftists, neo-Nazis, right-wingers, flag-burners and vocal bayers-at-the-moon.

Looking for a definitive reason to deny the Trump team four more years? How about using the law to declare a virtual shutdown of civil liberties and free speech. Barr’s remarks this week were so outrageous that comparing state orders mandating masks and shutdowns for public health to slavery were not even the top line head-slap.

The Thing that eat America's brain

 

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Trump's attacks on Biden's mental health came from Russia

DHS covered-up bulletin saying Russia was planting false stories about Biden and dementia

Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff

Over the last week, Donald Trump and William Barr have been working hard to un-vestigate foreign interference in the 2020 election. Also known as conduct a massive cover-up.

Only … is it still a cover-up when you’re openly dismissing the official in charge of assessing legalities around this issue, informing Congress that they’re getting no more briefings on election interference, and making it clear that no one but Barr is allowed to check in on what campaigns are up to?

Cover-up seems to imply some level of stealth. They’re not bothering with that. They’re also not bothering to hide the fact that this is an all-government effort, with Trump making no differentiation between the functions of the government and the boundaries of the Trump campaign.

In 2000, the Bush administration infamously ignored a bulletin titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the U.S.” Bush’s failure to respond to that bulletin led to the death of … almost half as many Americans who perished from Donald Trump’s COVID-19 disaster in the last week.

But now it’s Trump’s turn to dismiss a critical bulletin. Only the title of this one was “Russia Likely to Denigrate Health of US Candidates to Influence 2020 Election.” Though it’s not really fair to say that Trump ignored the bulletin. It’s more like … he absorbed it.

Trump finds new twist on "vote early, vote often"

Trump Tells NC Residents to Vote Twice, Openly Encouraging Voter Fraud

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

It is a felony under North Carolina law to vote more than once or "induce" others to do so, but that didn't stop President Donald Trump from openly encouraging residents of the state to attempt to cast two ballots in the November election in an interview with a local reporter Wednesday.

They are going to have to check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way because if it tabulates, then they won't be able to do that," Trump said, apparently urging residents to test their state's mail-in voting system. 

"So let them send it in, and let them go vote. And if their system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote [on Election Day]. If it isn't tabulated, they will be able to vote. So that's the way it is, and that's what they should do."

"I'm not happy about it," Trump said of expansions of mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic. "At the same time, we're in court with a lot of it. We're going to see if it can be stopped. But send your ballots, send them in strong, whether it's solicited or unsolicited. The absentees are fine. But go to vote and if they haven't counted it, you can vote. That's the way I view it."

"The president just committed a felony," Marc Elias, an attorney and voting rights advocate, tweeted in response to Trump's remarks, which come after the president spent weeks fearmongering over virtually nonexistent voter fraud in what critics dubbed a blatant effort to preemptively cast doubt on the results of the November election.

Under election law in North Carolina, where an estimated 600,000 voters have requested absentee ballots for November, it is illegal for "any person with intent to commit a fraud to register or vote at more than one precinct or more than one time, or to induce another to do so, in the same primary or election, or to vote illegally at any primary or election."

"So he's trying to make his conspiracy theories about voter fraud come true even if it means urging his supporters to commit a felony?" asked Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) following the president's comments.

Sean Eldridge, founder and president of advocacy group Stand Up America, tweeted late Wednesday that "voter fraud is nearly nonexistent."

"And the only one encouraging it is Donald Trump," Eldridge added, "in a desperate attempt to create chaos and sow doubt."

And Barr is clueless about legality of voting twice

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams

Leading Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, Harvard comments

Pressed late Wednesday to respond to Donald Trump's remarks encouraging North Carolina residents to try to cast two ballots in the November election, Attorney General William Barr—the top law enforcement official in the U.S.—repeatedly claimed to not know whether it's illegal to vote twice.

"I don't know what the law in the particular state says," Barr said in a CNN appearance when host Wolf Blitzer told the attorney general that it is, in fact, illegal to vote twice.

"Well, I don't know what the law in the particular state says," Barr repeated.

Democratic lawmakers and other critics quickly slammed Barr for what they characterized as feigned ignorance in defense of Trump's open encouragement of voter fraud. In an interview with a North Carolina reporter Wednesday, Trump said residents of the state should attempt to vote by mail and in person to test the ballot-counting system.

If the mail-in ballot "isn't tabulated," the president said, "they will be able to vote [in person]. So that's the way it is, and that's what they should do." Under North Carolina law, it is a felony to vote twice or "induce" others to do so.

In response to Barr's remarks Wednesday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) pointed to federal law, tweeting: "As the attorney general, you are expected not to be an idiot when it comes to basic legal principles. Federal law prohibits voting more than once in the same election. 52 U.S. Code § 10307."

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said "Barr once again made clear today that he is not serving as the attorney general for the American people."

"He is serving as the personal henchman for Donald Trump," Jayapal added.

During the same CNN appearance Wednesday, Barr floated the claim that new expansions of mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic leave "open the possibility" that either someone in the United States or a foreign nation could counterfeit ballots. Asked to provide evidence for that claim, Barr said he is basing it on "logic."

"The president's chief propagandist is still at it," tweeted Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics.

Some ways to reassure Americans

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The new normal

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More very stable genius crisis management tips

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