Thread: President Donald Trump

Trump's bizarre press day was a full-blown impeachment tantrum



Not once, but twice, Niinistö had to wear a so-this-is-perfectly-normal expression in public as the US president ranted and raved during two question and answer sessions with reporters, playing an even more extreme version of himself (not that the original was middle of the road).

Impeachment, it seems, has got under Trump’s skin like nothing else. Over the past week his tone has become more frantic, frenzied and apocalyptic. On Wednesday, the world saw his id run riot. #TrumpMeltdown trended on Twitter

So *NOW* can we *FINALLY* have a serious national conversation about the psychological condition of the President of the United States?” asked George Conway, a lawyer married to the White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway.

Yes, it was dark and scary for anyone worried about the life signs of the 243-year-old republic. But it was also just downright strange, even avant-garde. It was Samuel Beckett. It was Marcel Duchamp. It was John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s bed-in. Trump invited Niinistö to take a front row seat in his theatre of the absurd.

First, the pair spoke to reporters in the Oval Office, against all the usual trappings of fireplace, flags and exquisitely upholstered chairs. Trump was naturally asked about the impeachment inquiry that followed the July phone conversation in which he pressed the president of Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

The president has been trying to paint Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair of the House intelligence committee, as the most zealous witch hunter. “They should look at him for treason because he is making up the words of the president of the United States,” Trump said, hammering away at his theme that Schiff misquoted him at a congressional hearing. “We don’t call him ‘Shifty Schiff’ for nothing. He’s a shifty, dishonest guy.”



Then, an unexpected turn. “You know, there’s an expression: he couldn’t carry his ‘blank’ strap. I won’t say it because they’ll say it was so terrible to say. But that guy couldn’t carry his ‘blank’ strap. You understand that.”

No, not really.

With jazz hands and other random gestures, Trump rambled on a bit and mysteriously changed the nickname of his nemesis to “Shifty Shifft”.

Then a reporter got his turn. “Finnish media here. Finland is the happiest country in the world.”

Trump agreed, “Finland is a happy country,” and playfully slapped Niinistö on his left knee. Niinistö looked uncomfortable but said, “Yeah, for sure.”
The reporter continued: “What can you learn? What can you learn from Finland, which has a social democratic…” Inexplicably, Trump replied: “Well, you got rid of Pelosi and you got rid of Shifty Schiff. Finland is a happy country. He’s a happy leader, too.”

Both leaders chuckled.

After pushing more unfounded conspiracy theories about Biden, Pelosi and Schiff, Trump was ready to wind things up. But another journalist had a question about a New York Times report that the president had suggested protecting his border wall with electrification, spikes and a moat containing snakes or alligators.


First, Trump got his newspapers crossed. “It’s written by Washington Post people, so you know it’s inaccurate. You know it’s probably a fraud.”

Then he admitted the limits of his vocabulary. “OK, ready? That I wanted a wall, but I wanted a moat. A moat – whatever that is. It’s not a word I used, but they used it. A moat.”

A couple of hours later, there was round two, a joint press conference with Niinistö under the cornices and crystal chandeliers of the east room. Anyone hoping that sanity would prevail was in for a disappointment.

More in sorrow than in anger, Trump put his persecution complex on full display and sought to tug at the heart strings. “We had the Mueller collusion delusion, OK? That went on for years. And that’s finally done. No collusion, no obstruction, no nothing. It was a joke, and everyone knows it. And it was from the day one.

The Mueller report did in fact find 10 instances of Trump attempting to obstruct justice. He went on: “Now I get three days of peace, and I’m walking into the United Nations, going to meet with the biggest leaders in the world, and I hear about the word ‘impeachment’. I said, ‘What did I do now?’ And it was about a beautiful conversation that I had.”

Trump clutched a printout of a New York Times article that said Schiff learned about the outlines of the whistleblower’s concerns days before the complaint was filed. But the president’s doesn’t do nuance. “Well, I think it’s a scandal that he knew before,” he said. “I’d go a step further: I think he’s probably helped write it. OK? That’s what the word is.”


Whose word? There is zero evidence that Schiff helped write the whistleblower complaint.

Another question came from the Reuters journalist Jeff Mason, regarding Trump’s use of the word “treason”. The president gave another meandering answer about “Shifty” Schiff and claimed: “Believe it or not, I watch my words very carefully. There are those that think I’m a very stable genius.”

Mason followed up, asking what Trump wanted Zelenskiy to do in relation to Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The president unleashed a tirade about corruption and his misgivings over giving US money. “I don’t like being the sucker country.”

Mason persisted with his original question. “Are you talking to me?” Trump demanded. Then he angrily told Mason to ask Niinistö a question instead. “I’ve given you a long answer. Ask this gentleman a question. Don’t be rude!”

Mason coolly explained: “No, sir. I don’t want to be rude. I just wanted you to have a chance to answer the question that I asked you.”

Trump retorted: “I’ve answered everything. It’s a whole hoax. And you know who’s playing into the hoax? People like you,” he pointed at Mason, “and the fake news media that we have in this country. And I say, in many cases, the ‘corrupt media’ – because you’re corrupt. Much of the media in this country is not just fake, it’s corrupt.”

The Reuters reporter did put a question to the Finnish president about the World Trade Organisation and illegal tariffs. Trump brusquely interrupted: “That was a big win for the United States, right? You never had wins with other presidents, did you?”

The long suffering, eternally patient Niinistö tried to get a word in edgeways, and finally did: “But I think the question is for me. First of all, when I referred to your democracy, I just wanted to tell that I’m impressed what American people have gained during these decades – a hundred-so years – building up very impressive democracy.

“So,” he added, “keep it going on.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...tdown-niinisto

President Trump finds himself facing impeachment, at least in part, because he’s surrounded himself with yes men who enable and even encourage his impulses, rather than check them. Two of the most prominent officials in his administration may now pay a reputational price for their loyalty to Trump as they find themselves becoming central characters in the scandal engulfing his presidency. Trump fired his first attorney general and secretary of state after he judged them to be insufficiently loyal, replacing each with someone who proved to be a more pliant foot soldier.

Rex Tillerson, who was chief executive of ExxonMobil when Trump tapped him to be secretary of state, has said his relationship with the president soured when he refused to follow illegal directives. “So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want you to do, and here’s how I want you to do it,’” Tillerson said in Houston last December, not providing specific examples. “And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do. But you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’” (Trump responded that Tillerson was “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.”)

The president turned against Jeff Sessions as soon as he followed the advice of ethics lawyers and recused himself from overseeing the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Oh my God, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f-----,” Trump said when Sessions told him that Rod Rosenstein had appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel, according to contemporaneous notes from Sessions’ then-chief of staff.

-- The Wall Street Journal reported last night and the Associated Press confirmed that Mike Pompeo, Tillerson’s replacement, was listening in live on July 25 when Trump prodded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son. The president asked for this “favor” after Zelensky expressed a desire to buy antitank weapons to fend off the Russian occupation in Crimea, and the conversation came after Trump put a hold on about $400 million in assistance that Congress already approved for Kiev. During that call, according to the rough transcript released by the White House, Trump said that Bill Barr, who replaced Sessions, could help the Ukrainians, along with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. As a result of these and other fresh revelations, congressional investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the roles that Barr and Pompeo played as part of their fast-moving impeachment investigation.

-- Though he was mentioned on the Ukraine call, Barr declined to recuse himself from the discussions that led to the swift conclusion by other Trump appointees that the criminal referral from the intelligence community’s inspector general did not merit an FBI investigation. Barr’s spokeswoman stated last week that the attorney general was unaware of Trump’s effort to push Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and that he never spoke with the president nor the Ukrainians about the issue. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused Barr of “going rogue” and being involved with the “coverup of the coverup.” Other Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, have called on the attorney general to recuse himself going forward. (In case you missed it, I wrote a Big Idea last Thursday on all the president’s loyalist lawyers in an agency that’s supposed to be independent.)

The big news about Barr is that he has been holding private and undisclosed meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. “Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in reexamining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct,” my colleagues Devlin Barrett, Shane Harris and Matt Zapotosky scooped last night. “Trump still complains frequently that those involved in the investigation of his campaign should be charged with crimes…”

Against the backdrop of the Ukraine donnybrook, Barr continues to play a hands-on role in the very probe that Trump long demanded, ensuring that the 2016 election continues to be relitigated three years later. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer startled career professionals inside the government this spring when he testified that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, Barr drew intense criticism for his misleading summary of Mueller’s report, which deflated public expectations and blunted the political impact of its eventual release. The attorney general announced that he and Rosenstein concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish Trump committed obstruction of justice, even though the Mueller report painstakingly laid out evidence of 10 different cases of potential obstruction by the president. Mueller chose not to reach a definitive conclusion about whether the president sought to obstruct, partly because Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot be indicted. “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said later.
-- The New York Times also reported last night, and my colleagues have confirmed, that Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Barr’s inquiry. White House officials subsequently restricted access to the transcript of this call to a network usually reserved for covert operations, just as they did with the suspect Ukraine call. “Like that call, Mr. Trump’s discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests,” Mark Mazzetti and Katie Benner report in the Times. “The discussion with Mr. Morrison shows the extent to which Mr. Trump views the attorney general as a crucial partner: The president is using federal law enforcement powers to aid his political prospects, settle scores with his perceived ‘deep state’ enemies and show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt, partisan origins.”

THE CREDIBILITY GAP:

-- On ABC’s “This Week” the Sunday before last, host Martha Raddatz asked Pompeo directly about his knowledge of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky. The secretary deflected and replied that she was asking him about the whistleblower report. “None of which I’ve seen,” he said.

Pompeo then attacked former president Barack Obama for not offering sufficient support to Ukraine’s military when he was president. Raddatz followed up by reading from Ukraine’s initial readout of the call and asked whether it’s “perfectly fine” to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent. “I think I saw a statement from the Ukrainian foreign minister that said there was no pressure applied in the course of the conversation,” Pompeo said, adding that Biden is the one who should be investigated. Asked if Trump should release notes from the call, which he would do a few days later, Pompeo said “there’s no evidence” that it would be “appropriate” to do so. All the while, he knew exactly what the president had said.

-- Meanwhile, Barr’s Justice Department continues to behave as if its client is Trump himself, not the American people. TheTrump-appointed U.S. attorney in Manhattan disclosed late Monday in a letter to a judge that his office will join a lawsuit filed by Trump that seeks to block a subpoena for eight years of his tax returns. In a brief letter to the judge, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said the U.S. government would file a submission on Trump’s behalf by Wednesday, the Journal reports. Berman previously worked for the same law firm as Giuliani. He replaced Preet Bharara, who was fired in 2017 the day after refusing to take a phone call from Trump that he felt was improper and outside the chain of command.

-- Lawyers for House Democrats suggested in a fresh court filing last night for another case that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in Mueller’s report show that Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks, according to Politico. This is part of the House Judiciary Committee’s bid for Mueller’s grand jury materials, which have remained secret by law. “Not only could those materials demonstrate the president’s motives for obstructing the special counsel’s investigation, they also could reveal that Trump was aware of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks,” the House lawyers wrote, responding to the Justice Department’s opposition to the disclosure of the grand jury information.
“To back up their claim, the House’s legal team — led by House General Counsel Douglas Letter — cited a passage in Mueller’s report about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s testimony that he ‘recalled’ Trump asking to be kept ‘updated’ about WikiLeaks’ disclosures of Democratic National Committee emails,” Andrew Desiderio reports. “There is a grand-jury redaction in that passage, the lawyers note. … Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney, said the suggestion that Trump lied to Mueller’s investigators is ‘absurd.’”

MORE ON WHAT BARR’S BEEN UP TO:

-- The way Trump talks about Barr compared to how he talked about Sessions is night and day. Five months ago, Trump praised his attorney general for moving to investigate the people who investigated his campaign. “I hope he looks at the U.K., and I hope he looks at Australia, and I hope he looks at Ukraine," Trump told reporters on the South Lawn on May 24. “It’s the greatest hoax in the history of our country, and somebody has to get to the bottom of it.”

From the looks of it, Barr has strived to comply with this presidential plea. “The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official shows the priority Barr places on the investigation being conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who has been assigned the sensitive task of reviewing U.S. intelligence work surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath,” Barrett, Harris and Zapotosky reported.

“Barr has already made overtures to British intelligence officials, and last week the attorney general traveled to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials and Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham,” they add. “It was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet intelligence officials … Barr met with British officials in London over the summer to discuss the Durham probe, said a U.S. official familiar with the matter … In those conversations, according to this official, Barr expressed a belief that the U.S. investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election stemmed from some corrupt origin, the official said. It was not clear what Barr thought was amiss, but he expressed a suspicion that information had been improperly gathered overseas about people connected with the Trump campaign and that the British may have unwittingly assisted those efforts …

“One area that has been of sustained interest to Barr and Durham … is a murky figure named Joseph Mifsud. Mifsud, a European academic, was publicly linked to Russian interference efforts in late 2017, when Mueller revealed a guilty plea by former Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos, who admitted he had lied to the FBI about the details of his interactions with Mifsud. … While court papers filed in Mueller’s investigation suggested Mifsud operated in Russia’s interests, conservatives and conspiracy theorists [including Giuliani] have suggested he was instead aligned with Western intelligence agencies.”

-- The Times reports that Barr has not just taken an active role in overseeing Durham’s work but that he has been “pushing his team to move as quickly as possible”: “Mr. Durham has interviewed F.B.I. agents involved in the investigation into Mr. Trump’s campaign,” per Mazzetti and Benner. “Mr. Durham’s investigators have also interviewed other current and former intelligence officials outside the C.I.A. … But Mr. Durham has not questioned current C.I.A. employees, even though his team has had discussions with the agency about interviewing some of them…”

Regarding the Australia call specifically: “Mr. Trump initiated the discussion with Mr. Morrison in recent weeks explicitly for the purpose of requesting Australia’s help in the review,” the Times notes.“In making the request — one of many at Mr. Barr’s behest — Mr. Trump was in effect asking the Australian government to investigate itself. F.B.I. investigators began examining Trump ties to Russia’s 2016 election interference after Australian officials reported that Russian intermediaries had made overtures to Trump advisers about releasing information that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. … Mr. Morrison also met Mr. Trump in Washington this month for official meetings and a state dinner at the White House. Mr. Barr attended the dinner, and Justice Department officials met with Australian representatives during the visit.”

-- Flacks at the White House and DOJ say there was nothing wrong with the outreach to Australia. “I’m old enough to remember when Democrats actually wanted to find out what happened in the 2016 election,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “The Democrats clearly don’t want the truth to come out anymore as it might hurt them politically, but this call relates to a DOJ inquiry publicly announced months ago to uncover exactly what happened. The DOJ simply requested the President provide introductions to facilitate that ongoing inquiry, and he did so, that’s all.”

Kerri Kupec, Barr’s spokeswoman, added in her own statement: “Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.”

-- In a fresh piece about Barr for the New Yorker, David Rohde invokes the specter of Richard Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, who went to prison for 19 months on conspiracy, obstruction and perjury convictions stemming from his tenure as chairman of the committee to reelect the president in 1972:

“For many in the American legal community, though, Mitchell’s actions before Watergate were more troubling,” Rohde notes. “While serving as Attorney General, Mitchell hatched secret—and, at times, bizarre—plots to aid Nixon politically. He investigated government officials and journalists suspected of leaking damaging information about the President. He prosecuted opponents of the Vietnam War. And he controlled a secret slush fund used to smear Democratic Presidential candidates deemed a threat to Nixon. In one simultaneously abhorrent and amateurish act, Mitchell approved a payment of ten thousand dollars to a faction of the American Nazi Party, in order to carry out a failed effort to remove Governor George Wallace from a Presidential ballot in California. Nixon aides believed that supporters of Wallace—an avowed segregationist running as a third-party candidate—would shift their votes to Nixon.

“Judges later found Mitchell’s actions, such as wiretapping Americans without court orders, to be not only illegal but unconstitutional. He had used his powers as Attorney General to harass and smear Americans engaged in constitutionally protected political activity—from leading Democratic politicians to street protesters. After Nixon resigned and Mitchell was sent to prison, an elaborate series of norms and rules was established to prevent the President from acting like an authoritarian ruler—and the Attorney General from acting like the President’s personal lawyer.

“Since Mitchell, Attorneys General have also worked to restore public faith in the independence of the Justice Department. Edward Levi, a conservative legal scholar whom Gerald Ford appointed as the first post-Watergate Attorney General, was hailed by both political parties for restoring neutrality and integrity to the office. In an attempt to cement Levi’s legacy, multiple Republican and Democratic Attorneys General have recused themselves from investigations involving the Presidents who appointed them. During the Clinton Administration, Janet Reno recused herself from the Whitewater investigation, which led to Clinton’s impeachment. During the George W. Bush Administration, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales both recused themselves from an investigation of the leak of the C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame’s identity. Barr has an opportunity to … show that he represents the best interests of the American people, not those of Donald Trump. So far, he has declined to do so.”

THE WHISTLEBLOWER:

-- Trump ramped up attacks against the unknown whistleblower, saying he's trying to "find out" who it is, as some Republicans pleaded with the White House for a more measured and strategic response to the impeachment investigation. Toluse Olorunnipa and Ashley Parker report: “The White House has not yet set up anything resembling a ‘war room’ to coordinate its response, and officials spent Monday in meetings trying to determine a path forward. The president’s outside legal team played down the threat of impeachment and dismissed the need for the kind of coordinated war-room-based effort that President Bill Clinton relied on 20 years ago. … As he faces mounting accusations of wrongdoing, Trump is leading his own defense effort, largely from his Twitter account."

-- Legal analysts fear the whistleblower may receive little protection. Matt Zapotosky and John Wagner report: “Federal laws offer only limited protection for those in the intelligence community who report wrongdoing — even when they follow all the rules for doing so. Trump and his allies, analysts said, might face few, if any consequences, for outing the whistleblower or otherwise upending the person’s career. ‘If he wants to destroy this person’s life,’ said whistleblower attorney Bradley P. Moss, ‘there’s not a lot to stop him right now.’ While the acting director of national intelligence told lawmakers last week the whistleblower had acted in good faith and should be protected, Trump has seemed to suggest the opposite. … ‘The whistleblower knew almost nothing, its 2ND HAND description of the call is a fraud!’ Trump wrote on Twitter. The intelligence community inspector general deemed the whistleblower’s complaint credible, despite the person conceding much of the information was secondhand. …
"The inspector general’s office also seemed to dispute an allegation, which Trump had seized on, that the rules for whistleblower complaints were recently changed to allow secondhand information to be passed on. That assertion seemed to be based on reporting in the Federalist, which found a previous whistleblower complaint form with the heading, ‘FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.’ The law never had such a requirement.”

-- The Post’s Fact Checker examines Trump’s incorrect claim that the whistleblower rules have changed: “In his letter outlining the complaint, the whistleblower cited 50 U.S.C. Section 3033(k) (5)(A), which sets out the process that allows someone in the intelligence community to trigger an ‘urgent concern.’ The ‘urgent concern’ form apparently had not been online until recently. But the Federalist, an online publication, obtained an earlier form, from May 2018, which had a section titled: ‘FIRST-HAND INFORMATION REQUIRED.’ ... This warning language is not in the new online form. … But forms don’t change rules; the rules are set by laws and policies. In this case, the guiding document is Intelligence Community Directive 120, which was issued in 2014 and last updated in 2016. … Notwithstanding the section on firsthand information highlighted by the Federalist, the May 2018 form includes a box that can be checked about the sources of information: a) ‘I have personal and/or direct knowledge of events or records involved,’ b) ‘Other employees have told me about events or records involved’ or c) ‘Other source(s) (please explain).’"

-- There’s another whistleblower at the Internal Revenue Service, and House Democrats are exploring whether to release the allegations. From Bloomberg News: “The complaint raises allegations about ‘inappropriate efforts to influence’ the audit process, House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in August. Neal told reporters on Friday that a decision on releasing the complaint depends on advice he receives from lawyers for the House of Representatives. The release of such a complaint could bolster Neal’s lawsuit seeking to obtain six years of Trump’s tax returns, which he filed in July after the Treasury Department rejected the committee’s request. Neal has said he needs the returns to ensure the IRS is following its policy of annually examining the president’s returns. … Neal has cited his committee’s oversight of the presidential audit process to support his lawsuit. Republicans have criticized this rationale, saying Democrats only want the documents as a way to target a political enemy.”

GIULIANI'S TURN IN THE BARREL:

-- Three House committees subpoenaed Giuliani, demanding all records pertaining to his contacts regarding Ukraine, the Biden family and other related matters. Karoun Demirjian and Josh Dawsey report: “In a letter to Giuliani accompanying the subpoena, the chairmen of the three committees — Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) of the Intelligence Committee, Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) of Foreign Affairs, and Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) of Oversight — cited ‘a growing public record’ of information in accusing Giuliani of appearing ‘to have pressed the Ukrainian government to pursue two politically-motivated investigations.’ ‘The first is a prosecution of Ukrainians who provided evidence against Mr. Trump’s convicted campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. The second relates to [Biden],’ the letter continued, demanding Giuliani turn over materials to their investigation by Oct. 15. The chairmen also said they are investigating ‘credible allegations’ that Giuliani ‘acted as an agent of the president in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the office of the president.’”

In a text to The Post, Giuliani confirmed that he had received a subpoena but would not say if he'll comply: “It raises significant issues concerning legitimacy and constitutional and legal issues, including inter alia, attorney client and other privileges," he wrote. "It will be given appropriate consideration." He did not comment further.

-- On Sean Hannity's Fox show last night, Giuliani said he’s “weighing the alternatives.” The former New York mayor "then indicated he could be swayed if Congress wanted to review video and audio recordings he had gathered over the course of his Ukrainian adventures. Some Democrats, meanwhile, have expressed hesitation about inviting a wild card such as Giuliani for a public hearing," the Daily Beast reports.

-- Republicans may be defending the president, but they aren’t rushing to defend Giuliani. Aaron Blake parses their messaging: “Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) stepped forward as one of Trump’s earliest defenders. But there was one place he would not go. When Chuck Todd asked him whether he agreed with what Trump and [Giuliani] were doing, Kennedy sought to clarify exactly for whom he was vouching. ‘No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. I can’t speak for Mr. Giuliani. He’s wild as a March hare,’ Kennedy said. ‘I do not speak for Mr. Giuliani. I speak for John Kennedy.’ The folksiness of the most quotable man in Washington might have masked it, but here was a Republican distancing himself from the president’s attorney and his various pursuits. … Kennedy is hardly the only one backing away from Giuliani." House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-.S.C.) suggested they were sticking up for Trump in TV interviews but not necessarily Giuliani.

THE IMPEACHMENT PROCESS:

-- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would have no choice but to take impeachment up if the House advances it. Seung Min Kim reports: “McConnell said he was bound by existing Senate rules governing the impeachment and conviction process, amid speculation that he could simply ignore the specter of putting Trump on trial. … McConnell has given few public clues as to how he would proceed, and several Republican and Democratic officials on Monday cautioned that it was far too premature to predict how one of the most polarized Senates in decades would approach Trump’s trial. ... Now, McConnell is abiding by a 1986 memorandum written by then-Senate Parliamentarian Robert B. Dove, who concluded that Senate rules call for a 'rapid disposition of any impeachment trial' and also require at least two-thirds’ support to avoid taking up the question of trying someone who had been impeached. ...

"Senior party officials have also raised the prospect that Senate Republicans could simply move to dismiss any articles of impeachment — a maneuver that failed during Clinton’s impeachment trial in January 1999 but would have a far likelier chance of succeeding with GOP control of the Senate. Back then, former senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) offered the dismissal motion that would have effectively ended Clinton’s Senate trial. But Republicans who controlled the chamber, as well as then-Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), voted to sustain the proceedings, denying Democrats the simple majority needed to dismiss the trial on a 56-to-44 vote. Should Republicans try this tactic now, at least four GOP senators would have to align with all 47 senators in the Democratic caucus to keep the impeachment trial alive. ...

"If he were to take this route, McConnell would most likely let the proceedings play out for some period of time to give the trial an air of legitimacy. Clinton’s impeachment trial opened Jan. 8, 1999; the vote to dismiss the charges came Jan. 27. The majority leader alluded to the timing issue in the CNBC interview, noting that while his hand is forced on the actual trial proceedings, ‘how long you’re on it is a whole different matter.’ … On the other hand, Republicans also noted that should House Democrats turn the impeachment proceedings into a sharply partisan endeavor, it would be easier to shorten the process once it reached the Senate.”

-- Republican senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley are pressing the Justice Department to probe Hillary Clinton and Ukraine. From Politico: “In a letter to Barr released on Monday, Johnson (R-Wis.) and Grassley (R-Iowa) pressed the Justice Department to probe any connection between Clinton and Ukrainian operatives. They said they have ‘concerns about foreign assistance in the 2016 election that have not been thoroughly addressed.’”

-- Senate Democrats are demanding to know whether Trump judicial nominee Steven Menashi, who works in the White House counsel's office and is one of Trump's top legal advisers, has played a role in the handling of the whistleblower complaint. From the AP: “[Ten Senate Democrats] asked Menashi in a letter Friday to disclose what he knows about [the Ukraine call]. ... The senators also want to know what role, if any, Menashi played in responding to a whistleblower complaint that sparked the impeachment inquiry."

-- The Kremlin said its approval is required before Trump can publish the transcript of any of his calls with Vladimir Putin. From the AP: “Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that ‘the publication is possible only on mutual accord.’ ‘If we receive some signals from the U.S., we will consider it,’ he said in a conference call with reporters. Peskov noted that the ‘diplomatic practice doesn’t envisage such publications,’ adding that the issue is U.S. internal business.”

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump finds himself facing impeachment, at least in part, because he’s surrounded himself with yes men who enable and even encourage his impulses, rather than check them. Two of the most prominent officials in his administration may now pay a reputational price for their loyalty to Trump as they find themselves becoming central characters in the scandal engulfing his presidency.
Trump fired his first attorney general and secretary of state after he judged them to be insufficiently loyal, replacing each with someone who proved to be a more pliant foot soldier.

Rex Tillerson, who was chief executive of ExxonMobil when Trump tapped him to be secretary of state, has said his relationship with the president soured when he refused to follow illegal directives. “So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want you to do, and here’s how I want you to do it,’” Tillerson said in Houston last December, not providing specific examples. “And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do. But you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’” (Trump responded that Tillerson was “dumb as a rock” and “lazy as hell.”)

The president turned against Jeff Sessions as soon as he followed the advice of ethics lawyers and recused himself from overseeing the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Oh my God, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f-----,” Trump said when Sessions told him that Rod Rosenstein had appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel, according to contemporaneous notes from Sessions’ then-chief of staff.

-- The Wall Street Journal reported last night and the Associated Press confirmed that Mike Pompeo, Tillerson’s replacement, was listening in live on July 25 when Trump prodded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son. The president asked for this “favor” after Zelensky expressed a desire to buy antitank weapons to fend off the Russian occupation in Crimea, and the conversation came after Trump put a hold on about $400 million in assistance that Congress already approved for Kiev. During that call, according to the rough transcript released by the White House, Trump said that Bill Barr, who replaced Sessions, could help the Ukrainians, along with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. As a result of these and other fresh revelations, congressional investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the roles that Barr and Pompeo played as part of their fast-moving impeachment investigation.

-- Though he was mentioned on the Ukraine call, Barr declined to recuse himself from the discussions that led to the swift conclusion by other Trump appointees that the criminal referral from the intelligence community’s inspector general did not merit an FBI investigation. Barr’s spokeswoman stated last week that the attorney general was unaware of Trump’s effort to push Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and that he never spoke with the president nor the Ukrainians about the issue. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accused Barr of “going rogue” and being involved with the “coverup of the coverup.” Other Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, have called on the attorney general to recuse himself going forward. (In case you missed it, I wrote a Big Idea last Thursday on all the president’s loyalist lawyers in an agency that’s supposed to be independent.)

-- The big news about Barr is that he has been holding private and undisclosed meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. “Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in reexamining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct,” my colleagues Devlin Barrett, Shane Harris and Matt Zapotosky scooped last night. “Trump still complains frequently that those involved in the investigation of his campaign should be charged with crimes…”

-- Against the backdrop of the Ukraine donnybrook, Barr continues to play a hands-on role in the very probe that Trump long demanded, ensuring that the 2016 election continues to be relitigated three years later. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer startled career professionals inside the government this spring when he testified that “spying did occur” against the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, Barr drew intense criticism for his misleading summary of Mueller’s report, which deflated public expectations and blunted the political impact of its eventual release. The attorney general announced that he and Rosenstein concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish Trump committed obstruction of justice, even though the Mueller report painstakingly laid out evidence of 10 different cases of potential obstruction by the president. Mueller chose not to reach a definitive conclusion about whether the president sought to obstruct, partly because Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot be indicted. “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so,” Mueller said later.

-- The New York Times also reported last night, and my colleagues have confirmed, that Trump pushed the Australian prime minister during a recent telephone call to help Barr’s inquiry. White House officials subsequently restricted access to the transcript of this call to a network usually reserved for covert operations, just as they did with the suspect Ukraine call. “Like that call, Mr. Trump’s discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the president using high-level diplomacy to advance his personal political interests,” Mark Mazzetti and Katie Benner report in the Times. “The discussion with Mr. Morrison shows the extent to which Mr. Trump views the attorney general as a crucial partner: The president is using federal law enforcement powers to aid his political prospects, settle scores with his perceived ‘deep state’ enemies and show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt, partisan origins.”



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...0fa4b0ec247b9/