Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Republican committee Chair Lindsey Graham to insist on the importance of bringing Robert Mueller before their committee. To demonstrate the importance, the Democratic senators have included a list of 60 questions that can only be answered by the special counsel’s appearance. The letter—which includes the signatures of 2020 presidential candidates … Read More
Breaking: Senate Intel Committee Subpoenas Donald Trump Jr.
Axios is reporting that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to answer questions about his previous testimony before Senate investigators in relation to the Russia investigation. This is huge and unique as it is REPUBLICANS who lead the committee. It is the first congressional subpoena — that we know about — of one of President Trump’s … Read More
Breaking: White House Declares Executive Privilege Over Unredacted Mueller Report
NY Times: WASHINGTON — President Trump asserted executive privilege on Wednesday in an effort to shield hidden portions of Robert S. Mueller III’s unredacted report and the evidence he collected from Congress. The assertion, Mr. Trump’s first use of the secrecy powers as president, came as the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Wednesday morning to recommend the House … Read More
Call For Impeachment Grows
There are a lot of serious writings lately urging the impeachment of Trump, and not just from the fringes of the internet. Here is one typical example, printed in the Washington Post, by Brian Klaas: If Donald Trump weren’t president, he’d probably be in jail. That’s the view of a bipartisan group of hundreds of former federal prosecutors, who have … Read More
400+ Former Federal Prosecutors Can’t Be Wrong
More than 400 former federal prosecutors have signed onto a statement asserting that if the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) did not prohibit a sitting president from being indicted, President Trump would be charged with obstruction of justice. Special counsel Robert Mueller laid out extensive evidence of possible obstruction by Trump in volume 2 of his report, though he ultimately … Read More
Four Things To Watch For Today
Barr’s last chance to avoid contempt Nadler gave the Justice Department a Monday morning deadline to respond to his recent offer regarding the release of the full Mueller report. Nadler has threatened Barr with contempt if they can’t reach an agreement. Be watching for the department’s response. Mnuchin to give answer on Trump’s taxes Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin gave himself a … Read More
The Fallout Continues
It’s been two days after his embarrassing testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barr’s jaw-dropping performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday dispelled any lingering confidence in the impartial administration of justice — the bedrock of our republic. He actually testified that if the president feels an investigation is unfounded, he “does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow … Read More
Barr’s Most Absurd Defenses Of Trump’s Obstructive Conduct
By now, it’s pretty clear that Attorney General Bill Barr thinks there was nothing unusual — let alone potentially criminal — about President Trump’s intervention in the federal Russia investigation. Not the repeated pushes to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, not the public fuming about being the innocent victim of a federal “witch hunt,” not the tweeted threats to the … Read More
Attorney General Barr Testifies Before Senate Judiciary
Despite what he testified to earlier, we learned last night that AG Barr was fully aware that Mueller did not care for Barr’s summary of the Mueller Report. In fact, Mueller sent Barr a letter explicitly complaining about Barr’s characterization of the investigation’s conclusions. The letter, dated March 27, was the second correspondence Mueller sent to Barr after the attorney … Read More
Ben Wittes: Five Conclusions
Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes – a man not given to hyperbole – has finished reading the Mueller Report and created a nice crib sheet of his conclusions: The president committed crimes. There is no way around it. Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to clear President Donald Trump, both in his original letter and in his press conference the morning of the … Read More
Breaking: Russian Gun Rights Activist Maria Butina Sentenced To 18 Months After Conspiring To Infiltrate The NRA
Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina was sentenced to an 18-month prison term Friday in Washington after failing to register as a foreign agent for conspiring to infiltrate conservative U.S. political circles for the Kremlin. Butina, 30, pleaded guilty in December to conspiring with a senior Russian official to access the National Rifle Association among other groups from 2015 until she was … Read More
Post-Mueller Report Polls Show Public Is Tepid On Impeachment
Conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., holds that impeachment would be a massive gift to President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort. President Bill Clinton famously stayed popular throughout his impeachment proceedings, and since any effort to remove Trump would likely fail in the Senate, many people believe impeachment would be doomed from the start. But we really shouldn’t be so sure. … Read More
14 Tidbits Of The Mueller Report That May Have Gotten Lost In All The Analysis
1. This was as much a counterintelligence investigation as a criminal one. One of the new details in the report is that the FBI “embedded” approximately 40 personnel in the Special Counsel’s Office. Their role was not to contribute to the criminal probe, but instead to pore over the collected materials and pass written summaries of key counterintelligence findings to FBI … Read More
To Impeach or Not?
Okay, we have the Muller Report, which — as everyone says — is a roadmap for Congress to start impeachment proceedings, or at least go forward with investigations leading to impeachment proceedings. Steny Hoyer, the number-two Democrat in the House, even after the long-awaited Mueller report, is not on board. “Based on what we have seen to date, going forward … Read More
The Mueller Report: The Day After
Clearly, the pro-Trump spin attempts have failed. And they know it. The day after the Justice Department released the Mueller report, President Donald Trump tweeted that, in his opinion, parts of the report are “total bullshit.” That’s quite a departure from Trump’s earlier comments, in which he claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was a “total exoneration” of him. … Read More