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Break Glass Now.

You can panic now.

That’s what Nate Cohn said after it was clear Clinton was in trouble in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan on election night 2016 and this applies to what this illegitimate ‘President’ this illegitimate ‘man’ did yesterday.

One day after Trump’s clear repudiation by the voters he fires his AG. Yes ‘the President can legally fire his AG’ just like he can fire his FBI Director but he can’t do either to quash an investigation into himself.

Now one thing the Trump defenders say is that you can’t get inside his head and know what his intent is. Normally that might be true-one of the toughest things in prosecuting someone is getting inside their head and persuasively being able to argue that they had ill intent. But because Trump ‘tends to say the quiet part out loud’-like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon and many of the Trumpsters-again, an authoritarian tells you what he’s going to do-it’s clear as day what his motivation for firing Sessions is just as it was for why he fired Comey-as he told Lester Holt he fired Comey over Russia; for good measure he told the Russians the morning after he fired him that ‘this takes great pressure off me.’

Similarly Trump has been loudly and very publicly fulminating against Sessions for 18 months for one reason: Sessions recused himself on Russia.

This is just classic what the lawyers call prima facie evidence. When there is such clear, unambiguous, compelling prima facie evidence it shifts the burden of proof. While normally the prosecutor has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant has ill intent when there’s such clear prima facie evidence the defendant has to compellingly prove that no such ill intent existed despite all appearances to the contrary.

Turns out that ‘God’ has a pretty good summation of the last 36 hours or so:

UPDATE: Trump’s son wasn’t indicted though why Mueller chose not to indict him remains an open and important question-Chapter A for more.

Kind of puts a big exclamation point as to why voters so clearly repudiated him. And as bad as it all is it could have been much worse. Just imagine this exact same fact pattern except he hadn’t just lost the House. Because he would have done the same thing in that case. Some were worrying yesterday if we can last the next two months before the Democrats take over in January, 2019. Ok, I can’t criticize anyone for having their hair on fire-this is truly outrageous and appalling and it’s correct to use phrases like ‘roiling Saturday Night Massacre’ but just imagine if the Democrats were not going to take over in under two months?

But the Dems are coming and thank ‘God’ for that.

UPDATE: Though a year later we’re still waiting for the Dems to hit their stride-there’s reason to hope they may be about to now. The majority of the House Dems now have publicly come out for impeachment and Nadler claims they in fact do now have an open inquiry. Meanwhile the recent revelations Deutsche made in court suggest there will be other avenues for the Dems to obtain Trump’s tax returns and financial records than through Richard Neal’s up until now subpar efforts.

End of UPDATE

No doubt this is ‘not a drill’ and it is a five car alarm fire which is why Indivisible is planning mass protests of Sessions’ firing today.

As Rachel Maddow documented the night before the election, Indivisible has done some very important activism, indeed, they get a fair amount of the credit Tuesday’s big Dem House win. In Trump’s meltdown of a press conference yesterday, he had used the fact that 40 House GOPers retired as yet another excuse-every thing is to blame but himself.

But part of why they retired was Indivisible came to their offices and protested and sang them ‘retirement’ songs contributing to an overall environment that strongly encouraged them to retire.

In a way it’s rather amazing: all these groups protesting the firing of Sessions-an unreconstructed segregationist from Alabama who has done so much to roll back civil rights and has been the tip of the spear for Trump’s draconian crackdown on Latino immigrants. But again, it’s about intent. Even those of us who would have normally been happy to see him fired are strongly protesting why Sessions in fact was fired.

There are lots of great reasons to fire Sessions-to numerous too count. But Trump fired him for the one decent thing he did as AG. 

The night of the election Ari Melber had spoken to ranking member soon to be House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Jerrold Nadler, about Trump firing Sessions. Nadler had stated that what is most of issue is who Sessions is replaced with.

As Trump fired Sessions for recusing himself it’s obvious that he would replace him with someone Trump believes won’t recuse themselves, that person emerges as Matthew Whittaker who got Trump’s attention by: declaring Mueller has gone too far on cable news. 

This, remains the best way to get a job with Trump-defend him on cable news.

“Matthew G. Whitaker, President Trump’s pick to temporarily helm the Justice Department, provides Trump with the leader he has long sought at the law enforcement agency: a political loyalist critical of the special counsel probe.”

“Before Whitaker joined the Trump administration as a political appointee, the Republican lawyer and legal commentator complained that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the election and of the Trump campaign was dangerously close to overreaching. He suggested ways it could be stopped or curtailed and urged his followers on Twitter to read a story that dubbed the investigators “Mueller’s lynch mob.”

“Now — at least on an interim basis — Whitaker will assume authority over that investigation, an arrangement that has triggered calls by Democrats for him to recuse himself.”

“As Sessions’s chief of staff, Whitaker met with the president in the Oval Office more than a dozen times, normally accompanying the attorney general, according to a senior administration official. When Trump complained about the Mueller investigation, Whitaker often smiled knowingly and nodded in assent, the official said.”

“Before joining the Justice Department, he made pointed comments suggesting Mueller’s probe is too far-ranging. In a July 2017 appearance on CNN, Whitaker mused about a scenario in which Trump might fire Sessions and replace him with a temporary attorney general. Whitaker suggested the replacement could then choke off funding for the Mueller probe, and “his investigation grinds to almost a halt.”

“Whitaker also tweeted in August 2017 that his followers should read a Philadelphia Inquirer column titled “Note to Trump’s lawyer: Do not cooperate with Mueller lynch mob.”

“In an opinion column that month on CNN, he said any investigation of Trump’s personal or business finances would be crossing a red line, and he urged Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to “limit the scope of this investigation.”

“Whitaker also has ties to a witness in the probe: onetime Trump campaign chairman Sam Clovis. The two men have been close since Whitaker chaired Clovis’s bid for Iowa state treasurer in 2014.”

“Clovis has been interviewed as a witness in the Mueller investigation because of his communications with George Papadopoulos, a junior Trump campaign adviser who repeatedly tried to broker a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

Again as bad as this is, though, and it’s very bad imagine if the Democrats weren’t coming in January?

Yesterday’s actions did require a response though and the Dems did respond:

As noted above, Nadler had actually anticipated this move in his interview with Melber on Tuesday night and warned that if Trump went down this road the House Democrats would have to investigate it and hold those involved accountable.

Here’s Adam Schiff:

Nancy Pelosi:’

Ted Lieu:

Sessions’ removal was presented as a resignation but his own words make it clear it was a forced resignation-which is a contradiction in terms. So he was fired. This is a matter of no small importance because if Sessions was fired Trump actually can’t replace him with Whittaker as acting AG, he should follow the lines of succession which would make Rosenstein the next AG. Of course, the whole purpose of firing Sessions is to find someone to usurp Ronsenstein’s position in overseeing the Russia probe.

So it’s clear that Trump is doing something he actually lacks the authority to do.

Obama’s former DOJ spokesman argues we can’t wait for the Dems in January now is the time to make our voices heard.

As for Trump’s motivations-he would have done this if the GOP held the House on Tuesday night out of arrogance-after all at that point he would certainly see himself as above all oversight. In this case it’s that he’s panicking as some major Mueller moves are felt to be coming soon.

But no matter what he was going to do this. Regarding Whittaker’s connections to Clovis, Papadopoulos-of all people-thinks this is a fine pick.

https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1060431265575329793

FN: Looks like another tweet the Coffee Boy later felt the need to delete.

Clovis is who hired the treasonous Coffee Boy.

So the Democratic House will be here in January and people are protesting and letting their voices be heard now. Then there’s Mueller. Surely he has a break the glass plan though he don’t know what. Miller appeals to senior people at DOJ who object to Trump’s abuse of power.

You don’t think he was relieved the Dems won the House? Until now the #Resistance to Trump has held up thanks to regular folks protesting and Indivisible, the Women’s March, the protests over Trump’s Muslim ban, etc as well as the courts-though McConnell and friends in the Senate continue to send Trump friendly judges at breakneck speed. The media has been another very powerful check on Trump.

FN: Though there are some major problems with how the MSM has covered Trump-they’ve been normalizing him-certainly much of MSNBC’s daytime pundit shows do to say nothing of Dean Paquet’s NYT. What has been powerful is all the great investigate reporting into Russian collusion but even so what the mainstream press has not been good at is putting all the reporting together. They can have 100 stories on Trump-Russia but not connect any of the threads that will relate the 100 disparate stories together.

Overall, the trouble with the ‘Savvy’ is they are narrative driven, facts that don’t corroborate their narrative don’t exist. Chapter A for much more.

For just one example of how pernicious this narrative driven coverage is-even though Bill Barr has been widely debunked and panned his fake exoneration letter remains the Beltway’s effective narrative-that there was no collusion no obstruction total exoneration as Ken Dilanian rhapsodized the night of the fake exoneration letter. Since then the coverage has become much more nuanced-it’s understood there certainly was obstruction and that even ‘no collusion’ is pretty misleading-in fact it’s just plain wrong but we’re discussing the tone of the coverage which hasn’t really admitted there was collusion though they get that ‘no collusion’ is something of a red herring.

Still the overall narrative has taken Barr’s fake exoneration letter for granted-no matter what. Even now with the steady increase of Democrats coming out for impeachment the MSM has simply ignored it. The narrative is clearly that whatever the n exact details Trump survived it now lets’ have a normal discussion about the 2020 horserace.

How different was the coverage of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky-in that case you had many editorial pages demanding Clinton resign. But in this case the much more serious misconduct of Trump is handwaved away-let’s talk about 2020.

End of FN.

But the missing link has been Congress. That ends in January when Mueller will finally have powerful Congressional allies. 

“House Democrats say they’re also ready to act as a backstop if Trump follows through on more than 18 months of pent-up angst and fires Mueller or tries to meddle with the special counsel’s work through a major shakeup at the Justice Department.”

“Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has already pledged to make sure Mueller’s “documentation is preserved” and the likely next House speaker also holds in her back pocket the threat of launching impeachment hearings against Trump if the president tries to oust Mueller or if the special counsel’s investigators ultimately uncover a smoking gun involving criminal behavior.”

UPDATE: Though we’ve seen how gingerly she’s gone about exercising that power-again maybe that’s changing now-with the level of public pressure from the Dem base maybe even if she wants to she won’t be able to run out the clock.

End of UPDATE

Democrats are even prepping a break-glass scenario in case there’s a Nixon-era Saturday Night Massacre during which Trump fires his current DOJ leadership and tries to shutter the Mueller probe in the process. If that happens, senior Democratic officials say Mueller would likely get an immediate summons to Capitol Hill for nationally televised testimony about his findings.

FN: Mueller was never fired exactly though there were questions about wether he was pushed to shutdown early. He finally did indeed testify nationally about his findings in late July, 2019 and stated that he wasn’t pushed to close down early. Nevertheless there sure were a lot of spinoff cases hurriedly sent to other jurisdictions when he finished in March of this year.

With all the legitimate concern over Whittaker, Bob Barr has been much more effective at giving Trump what he wanted-a DOJ fully beholden not to the public interest but the fake ‘President’s private political interest. Barr shutdown a case in SDNY about Trump’s  hush money payoff of Stormy Daniels-Michael Cohen, of course, was indicted and convicted but this left Trump as an un-indicted co-conspirator. Barr’s shutting it down prevented Trump going from an un-indicted co-conspirator to indicted.

Barr is every bit as partisan as Whittaker but has proven to be much more adept than Whitakker-as he understands how the DOJ machinery works.

End of FN

“I think you could expect Democrats to take pieces of what they shut down and expose it publicly,” said a high-ranking Democratic policy adviser familiar with Pelosi’s planning. “This is a report paid for with taxpayer dollars. So taxpayers would have a right to know what Mr. Mueller found.”

“The Democrats’ midterm victory also gives Mueller company in his search for answers about what happened more than two years ago between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian hackers accused of stealing Democratic emails and releasing them in a bid to help a rookie Republican politician win the White House.”

“Republicans had embarked on sporadic efforts to interview key witnesses tied to the 2016 election but Democrats had long complained that the hearings were window dressing for a broader effort to discredit Mueller and his probe.”

“Now, Democrats have the power to act on dozens of their own long-bridled demands for information and witness interviews — and can share their findings freely with Mueller.”

“They plan to ship dozens of transcripts — collected during interviews with the likes of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. — to Mueller for possible prosecution on perjury charges. They want Justice Department briefings on allegations Trump directed his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to break campaign finance laws during the 2016 White House race in order to silence an adult film actress who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.”

“They’re also in position to examine Trump’s pardon powers, which they’ve warned the president might try to use to insulate himself from legal exposure in the wake of guilty pleas from Cohen and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.”

“Rep. Adam Schiff, the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has said he’s planning to re-open his panel’s shuttered Russia investigation using as a road map a list of about 70 people, organizations and companies Democrats say the GOP failed to adequately examine.”

Early Wednesday morning, Schiff also said Democrats have an opportunity to finally do what their Republican colleagues refused to — protect Mueller.

“I think that the chances that Bob Mueller will be able to finish his work improved for the reason that our committee and others like the Government Reform Committee and the Judiciary Committee, which under Republican leadership served as basically surrogates for the president in their efforts to batter down the Justice Department, to give the president a pretext … to fire people in the Justice Department, all of that tearing down of the independence of these institutions is going to end,” Schiff said on MSNBC. “Now that doesn’t mean the president can’t still act in ways that are antithetical to the rule of law and the interest of justice, but it does mean that we’re better able to protect our institutions and see this investigation, I hope, complete.”

We do expect Mueller to make some major indictments soon-Roger Stone? This last weekend Stone was calling friends and family clearly worried it will soon be: his time in the barrel.

Could Christie be the permanent AG?

Of course, the real worry is what happens durning Whittaker’s interim period.

UPDATE: NBC News just reported Christie is visiting the Russia House and sources say Trump is considering him as the next AG.

FN: However serious the consideration of Christie may or may not have been Bill Barr would be the guy-a true coverup AG who. of course, didn’t recuse himself and has done plenty to protect Trump-again starting from the fake exoneration

Let’s look at some fine analysis on Sessions’ firing by Marcy Wheeler aka Emptywheel:

It’s all going as I predicted it might in this TNR piece last week.

“All that said, Mueller was surely expecting just such an eventuality. And the fact that they got Roger Stone attorney Tyler Nixon to testify Friday suggests they were prepping for it, getting the last bit of evidence against Stone in place.”

“The only question is whether they got the grand jury to approve whatever indictments they were working on. I’d be surprised if Mueller didn’t (unless Rod Rosenstein prevented him from doing so).”

“If that’s the case, then Whitaker is not going to help Trump get out of his legal troubles. That’s because Chief Judge Beryl Howell, not Whitaker, will make the decision about unsealing anything sealed in this grand jury investigation.”

“So if Mueller prepared for this very predictable eventuality, then Trump may have just fired a key player in his racist agenda for naught.”

She also asks if this has been the plan since August, 2017. I’ve wondered the same as that’s when news broke that Sessions had offered his resignation but that Trump had refused to accept it-then.

“…Trump may have been pursuing this plan since July 2017.

If so, then Mueller may have already anticipated that, because he asked four questions about that episode in March, as well as questions about what he did in response to Sessions’ earlier recusal.

  • What did you think and do regarding the recusal of Mr. Sessions?
  • What efforts did you make to try to get him to change his mind?
  • Did you discuss whether Mr. Sessions would protect you, and reference past attorneys general?
  • What did you think and what did you do in reaction to the news of the appointment of the special counsel?
  • Why did you hold Mr. Sessions’s resignation until May 31, 2017, and with whom did you discuss it?
  • What discussions did you have with Reince Priebus in July 2017 about obtaining the Sessions resignation? With whom did you discuss it?
  • What discussions did you have regarding terminating the special counsel, and what did you do when that consideration was reported in January 2018?
  • What was the purpose of your July 2017 criticism of Mr. Sessions?

Whatever it was, Trump obtained Sessions’ resignation before today’s press conference, so it’s possible Whitaker already tried to move against Mueller today, relying on the ground work he laid over a year ago.”

What I’m wondering is if this letter was the same one Sessions wrote back in May, 2017? The faux resignation letter released yesterday was undated.

Wheeler also argues that Whittaker has the ability to share information from Mueller’s investigation with Trump.

Just over a year ago, I worried that if and when Brian Benczkowski was confirmed as DOJ Criminal Division chief, it would probably provide Trump with a mole in the Mueller investigation. It took Benczkowski a long time, but after he was confirmed on July 11 of this year, he may have gotten visibility into parts of the Mueller investigation that relied on Criminal Division resources.

“Whether or not Benczkowski shared anything he may have learned with Trump, we can be fairly certain that Matt Whitaker, whom Trump has just made Acting Attorney General, could share the information. Authority to do so stems from an OLC memo Jay Bybee wrote back in 2002.”

“Given that the entire purpose of this move seems to be about tampering with the Mueller inquiry, we should assume Whitaker will do as imagined, and let the President know what Mueller has been up to.”

You can panic now. But it could be worse-imagine if the Democrats weren’t coming into two months.

UPDATE: Let’s hope they are finally ready to fully exercise this authority in September.

Some believe they are.

https://twitter.com/blakesmustache/status/1166353097364520960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1166353097364520960&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fevilsax.pressbooks.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D8854%26action%3Dedit

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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