Tag Archives: Adam Schiff

Impeachment Blahs?

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One thing I always try to keep in mind anytime there’s an issue or event requiring more than an hour of the public’s attention is: how high is the entertainment quotient here?

Take impeachment, where for all the headlines, all the indignation on cable news and all the chanting at rallies like the one I attended last night in downtown Duluth, (+2 degrees, but “Hey, hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go”), there doesn’t seem to be the same pitch of fervor that I remember back when ’70s-era Republicans were telling us every president did what Richard Nixon did, so get over it.

A lump of beautiful coal for you, Donnie boy. Duluth. Dec. 17.

Good public entertainment requires juicy dollops of suspense, excitement, hilarity or prurient appeal. Mix and match as you see fit.

But other than Trump’s Stephen Miller copy-edited letter to Nancy Pelosi, the antics of Rudy, Lev and Igor and the fools-at-court blithering of Doug Collins, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz and other House Republicans, hilarity is in pretty short supply with this impeachment drama.

Likewise any prurient appeal. Especially if like me you’re still trying to bleach your neurons of the image of Donny having his way with a porn queen.

There’s been too much inevitability about this episode to really grab and hold an American audience. Going way back, everyone familiar with Trump’s career as a fraudulent real estate buffoon (of the casino-bankrupting variety) knew he was such a reckless fool it was inevitable that sooner or later he’d screw the pooch so badly he’d get himself impeached. We’re just amazed it took this long.

But now we’re dealing with the House’s long inevitable vote to actually do the deed, and that’s rolled in with the very high expectation that Mitch McConnell will cook the Senate trial into a quickie nothingburger putting a “fully exonerated” Donald on the road to reelection against a creaky, bumbling Joe Biden.

As loathsome a national embarrassment as Trump is nothing galls me more than the fact that there has never been even an hour of reckoning for Mitch McConnell. You know the system is in shambles when he flat-out says things like he said to Sean Hannity last week, about how he, the jury foreman, is tightly coordinating his trial duties with the defendant, right before, during and after he takes that oath to be impartial … and there’s no legal downside.

There are various ideas being floated to force a series of votes on things like the witnesses (Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney, John Boltobn) Mitch doesn’t want anywhere near the trial cameras.

There’s even an interesting idea whereby Pelosi and Adam Schiff don’t even formally send the articles of impeachment to McConnell to begin a trial. They do this on the grounds that (pick one) McConnell has disqualified himself by his public remarks to Hannity and/or the obvious fact that Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, is still running around try to get Scorsese-worthy Ukrainian wise guys to invent a tale or two about those Biden bastards. In case you’ve forgotten, that presidential attorney Rudy who is being paid by his “translators” Lev and Igor, the former of whose wife recently came in possession of a $1 million check from a Russian gangster.

Point being, the plots to pollute the next U.S. election and obstruct Congress are clearly still going on. So … instead of a sham trial led by a guy who has said he’s in the bag for the defendant, Pelosi and Schiff hang on to these articles and announce they’re contining the dozen or so inquiries slogging through the Trump-crippled U.S. court system.

Wait long enough and the SDNY may spit out its case against Rudy, Lev and Igor … and Principal #1. Or maybe … really maybe … in June the Trump-toady Supreme Court will go all Nixon on him and compel him to release his tax returns.

Whatever. As effective as the Democrats have been in telling the story of Trump’s Ukraine scandal, the Senate trial, hobbled and gelded by Moscow Mitch, is going to need several twists of plot to go boffo at the box office.

Artificial Intelligence and Our “Cold Civil War”

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While watching all six-plus hour of yesterday’s impeachment inquiry hearings I was continually struck by Carl Bernstein’s recent assertion that the U.S. is now in what has been describing as a “cold civil war.” (A mere eight months ago he was only saying we were close to “ignition” of said war.)

There are probably a dozen or more ways to describe this conflict: Liberals vs conservatives. Elites vs. real Americans. Urban vs. rural. Professionals vs. amateurs. Serious vs. silly. B-students and higher vs. C- and lower. But at some point this new civil war can be distilled to something closer to: Fact vs. fiction.

Some Things That Actually Happened vs. Some Things That Didn’t.

How else to you describe the contrast between the open and shut case of presidential extortion presented by Adam Schiff and the Democrats with the scattershot, “Oh hell, let’s spitball this” hodgepodge of guffaw-inducing nonsense thrown up by Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan? (What? “Nude pictures” of Donald Trump? What?)

Okay, yes, we understand that even Nunes and Jordan understand that Trump did it. And that it isn’t “heresay” when you’ve got first-hand witnesses. And that their only viable line of defense is to cloud up the story with a torrent of strange names lacking any bona fide connection to the extortion at hand, all in hopes of selling the idea that every government everywhere is such a sewer Trump was merely honoring a long, sordid tradition.

But the question, to Bernstein’s point, is who are they selling this sewage to? What sort of people would ever even begin to believe, to use just one example, that Trump was vitally concerned with corruption in Ukraine because, (after he said he was considering recognizing Crimea as Russian territory), a few Ukrainian officials said mean things about him on social media in 2016?

The short answer of course is that they’re selling this and every other absurd, baseless concoction to a remarkably lazy-minded (and large) constituency. The side of the civil war eager to accept that the Ukrainians have the actual physical server containing Hillary’s e-mails. That a Politico story about a few Ukrainians’ outraged over Paul Manafort’s role in gross corruption tipping Democrats off to that fact “proves” the country was aligned to undermine Trump’s campaign … and on and on, including of course the Trump-hating whistleblower and those nude pictures of Donny.

Try as I might to be generous, the constituency for this flagrant claptrap just is not very bright. Or, put another way, it’s a crowd, an upswelling or revolution you might even say, of people adamant that they know a lot but who have plainly — plainly — done way too little to actually know what is true and what is not.

As I’ve suggested many times before, this fundamental laziness explains a lot about why these very same people feel “left behind” in a fast-moving 2019 world.

In that context — and without going all science-fictioning here — the outlines of the divide in this new “cold civil war” become even clearer and more ominous.

Over the past couple years I’ve become fascinated with the quantum advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the warnings about it from people with thoughtful, first-hand experience, not only with what AI may (likely) do to human society but … how soon it will happen.

An algorithm-driven world, where our personal preferences and antipathies deliver more (and steadily more virulent and intoxicating examples) of those preferences is already well upon us. Think your Facebook feed, the rabbit hole of YouTube where every new video is weirder and more provocative than the last.

As noxious and culturally contorting as that is today, with precious few people fully understanding how this stuff works, its sophistication and application is increasing … rapidly.

One effect, say people like writer-philosopher Yuval Harari, is a further hardening of the tribal bubbles we see so much of today. And that is bad enough.

But, he and others also forsee the stark divide between people fully appreciative of facts — of science and sociology, etc. — and those ignorant of reality adding to the creation of a class of what he describes harshly as a “useless” citizens. People, who because of their ignorance of relevant knowledge are of little to no value to the people, companies and institutions propelling a pretty Darwinian society based on algorithms, machine-learning and other forms of AI.

In his book, “Homo Deus” (i.e. “Man God”), Harari notes that where cultures until now needed vast numbers of people of no great talent to populate armies and operate factories, neither is true today. Machines are already doing all that better, more reliably and less expensively. Ask any American auto worker, if you doubt it.

The “civil war” point then becomes clearer.

The appeal today of the Trump-era GOP’s sewer of nonsense and hysteria may be rooted in class and racial animus — the “left behind” feeling ever more marginalized and “disrespected”.

But let’s project — as Harari and others do — ten to fifteen years into the future, when the perpetuated ignorance of this large bloc of citizens leaves them even less relevant and employable.

Who are they going to blame then?

Probably not Sean Hannity or Devin Nunes.

It Has Always Been, and Still is About Russia, Stupid.

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In the interest of generating Must See TV I’m delighted to see that House Democrats, i.e. Adam “Shifty” Schiff and “Crazy” Nancy Pelosi, will allow staff/lawyers to question witnesses when the impeachment inquiry hearings go public next month. This at least mitigates the numbing tedium of 20-30 Congress-types preening and fulminating for their five minutes in the international spotlight.

Tight, cross-referenced questioning by practicing attorneys will help Schiff and Pelosi lay out a fuller, more comprehensible story of what the hell has been going on, simplifying things for the easily-distracted and confused general public.

Put another — simpler — way, the carefully strategized and coordinated (re-) questioning of people like Ambassador Bill Taylor, former Ukraine Amnbassador Marie Yovanovich, veteran Russian expert Fiona Hill and yesterday’s witness, Lt. Col. AlexanderVindman — and others — holds great potential to pull the many, varied elements of the Trump corruption saga into a tighter focus, a focus that has always begun and remains on … Russia.

Schiff in particular has long been hip to the all-important “compromised” factor involving Trump and Russia. Namely, as Schiff repeated constantly in the months prior to the Mueller Report, Trump’s money-laundering for Russian gangsters has been a fundamental staple of his personal finances. He owes Putin a lot.

Not a stupid fellow — unlike fellow Californians Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes — Schiff has long expressed confidence in the remarkably well-documented if not as yet fully confirmed story of Trump’s deep indebtedness to Putin-approved gangster “investment” in projects all over the world, from Panama to Azerbaijan to Soho (Manhattan). (My apologies for the much-abbreviated list.)

Full confirmation of that corruption — the remaining 2-3% of the story that isn’t demonstrable today — awaits acquisition of Trump’s tax records or interrogation of Trump’s Deutsche Bank handlers — the folks who doled out Russian gangster money to Trump via Deutsche Bank’s “private banking” operation.

The current Pelosi-led strategy to avoid confusing the issue with all that — weird Russian names, off-shore accounts, spy vs. spy vs. spy covert ops and such — is completely understandable.

Having been handed a vividly clear and re-re-re-re-re-corroborated tale of a flagrant, mob-style quid pro quo shakedown of Ukraine, the Democrats have no good tactical reason to cloud public comprehension of the matter with chatter about Oleg Deripaska, Dimitri Firtash and Semion Mogilevic. The latter being the Don Corleone of Russian organized crime and one of the two men, Putin being the other, to whom Firtash would report. Ukrainian oil gangster Firtash being the guy (he posted a $174 million bond as he fights extradition to Chicago for a bribery charge) who has been bankrolling the two Ukrainian goombahs — Lev and Igor. Those two being the farcical duo Trump’s “personal attorney” Rudy Giuliani has been cavorting around with as he tries to convince someone (either Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity will do) that the Ukrainians and not the peace-loving Russians are the true guilty party in that U.S. election interference stuff. Interference that, if not wholly responsible, was without question directed at putting Donald Trump in the White House.

And so … well you see how quickly the Mario Puzo-deep chain-of-characters narrative roars off into the weeds.

As I’ve said before, unless you follow this story with true, nerd-like obsession, its easily to bewildered. But the point here is that it appears Schiff and Pelosi understand this, and are setting up a public process — a TV spectacle — that cleans up the messy storyline and focuses in, for the easi(er) comprehension of reasonable people, on Trump’s latest but hardly worst act of corruption.

Whether this makes a whit of difference to Senate Republicans or Trump’s base, I have no idea. But as bad as the Taylor-Lewis-Yovanovich-Vindman testimonies have been behind closed doors, nothing gets better when they tell the same stories on national TV. Which is to say and I believe in tipping points. The moment when the craven, mostly-clueless Republican herd makes a 90-degree turn away from the cliff and suddenly sees great, indisputable merit in replacing Trump with a “true conservative”.

Larger point being this: I have faith that Schiff and Pelosi, armed with a deep from the get-go understanding of the entirety of the Russian compromise of Trump, have the means, motive and opportunity to roll Mike Pence (and certainly Mike Pompeo) into this fresh, tight narrative.

Even better for my and your viewing pleasure, the World Series will end tonight and we won’t have to click back and forth between Alex Bregman and Alex Vindman.

Does Bill Barr Really Think He Can Get Away With This?

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One week later, The Big Question is: does Bill Barr really think he can pull this off?

As many of us know, less than 48 hours after Ken Starr wrapped up his (far longer and more expensive) investigation of Bill Clinton’s sexual hijinks he dropped a 400-page report Congress and the public. Oooo, stained dresses! Cigars! Dirty talk! Love it!

By contrast, Barr, arguing that Robert Mueller’s work, because it operated under a different legal arrangement, needs, you know, a lot of time-consuming finessing and redacting and re-phrasing and, well … mostly it needs delaying, in order for Trump’s claim of “total exoneration” to settle in.

Unlike say, Rudy Giuliani or Matt Whitaker or some other of Trump’s other legal “talent”, Barr doesn’t seem to be a sad fool with no regard for history’s verdict or his reputation. That said, he is playing a perilous game in those regards. He has to be smart enough to know that his narrow and vaguely paternalistic interpretations of law (i.e. “I’m the legal savant here, you lesser people just go on about your petty business”) could quite easily backfire on him, and badly when — not if — Mueller’s full volume of information is released … or leaked.

He’s heard the name, Robert Bork, I’m quite sure.

If Barr is so stupid as to play along with a White House strategy to declare victory, parade around the country and the Twitter-verse calling everyone who has followed the Russia case in extreme detail “losers” and “pencil necks” he’s in for a very rude awakening. While Trump and his usual crowd of “libtard”-hating dead-enders, the folks who only know what Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity tell them, are still doing their touchdown celebration ..,. they haven’t noticed that they’ve spiked the ball 40 yards short of the goal line.

Moreover, on a human-reputational level, this clumsy game Barr is playing with the non-release of everything Mueller found out — which is dead certain to be chockfull of damning details about how badly Trump may be “compromised” by his corrupt activities — is accelerating the infuriation of not just the Adam Schiffs and Elijah Cummings and Jerrold Nadlers of the world, but the mainstream press as well. None of those people — all of whom have invested thousands of hours analyzing Trump/Russia/obstruction — are any too happy about being smeared (by fools) with the assertion that they’ve been both wrong and “biased.”

Put another way, anyone who cares to know knows damn well that Trump has engaged in a Vegas buffet of corrupt business and campaign activities. How so? Because it’s been out there for everyone to see for years.

The country beyond the MAGA crowd wants this story told. In full, with all the juicy “blue dress” details. And they expected Mueller to tell it.

So now, in this interlude between Barr getting the report and figuring out how to release it with as little damage as possible to the man who appointed him, American adults are disappointed-to-disheartened that this storytelling is being twisted up into yet another round of rancid partisan legalisms.

In that context, if Barr “succeeds” in redacting or murking-up the most damaging evidence Mueller produced, I ask you, has there been a better, more righteous excuse for a Daniel Ellsberg – Pentagon Papers-style leak than this?

The Russians hacked into a presidential election on behalf of the improbable, disreputable character now in the Oval Office. A character now simultaneously alienating allies and abetting long-standing Russian goals at every possible turn … without ever … ever … acknowledging what the Russians did.

Seriously smart people are not going to put up with this.

Buh-lieve me.

Post-Mueller: Raw Politics and a Million Questions

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All morning I’ve been thinking about the famous video of Bill Clinton explaining for the camera what the real meaning of “is is”. It was not Bubba’s finest moment, but it was the President of the United States, under oath for four hours and forty minutes answering questions before a grand jury. He was answering them badly and, uh, excessively legalistically, mind you. But he was answering them.

Donald Trump has not done that — about a matter considerably more relevant to the protection of the American public than canoodling with a White House intern — and it appears Robert Mueller never pushed to force him to answer any questions live, in person and under oath. Nor, as far as we know at this moment, did Mueller ever bring Donald Trump Jr. in to ex-plain what exactly he was doing (or did afterward) as organizer of the infamous June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting with multiple Russians offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (aka “Little Adam Shitt”)* has been wondering aloud for weeks about this investigatory oddity.  Not that it means that Mueller is part of an establishment cabal (the deep state underlying “the deep state”, you might say) conniving to keep Trump in office. But rather it could be an indication of a strictly legalized, small-“c” conservative, only by-the-book process designed exclusively to deliver foundational information to Congress and let Congress to then take it wherever they may.

Too many obsessive Mueller-watchers have held a belief that somehow an hour after Mueller finished his work, a half-dozen FBI agents would grab Big Donny by the nape of the neck and frogmarch him out of the Oval Office.

That was never going to happen, which is one reason even Trumpy-insiders like the much abused and humiliated Chris Christie have been saying for a while that Trump’s biggest problem has never been Mueller as much as the Southern District of New York, (and all the other legal offices in his home state). That crowd, furiously filing terabytes of information about Donny’s flagrantly corrupt business activities in Manhattan for the past 50 years, has the power to bring charges that present Trump with the likelihood of complete financial ruin … once he leaves the White House.

But for the moment — as in the last 72 hours — the most salient point is that while, yes, Mueller found no (prosecutable?) evidence of collusion and did not “exonerate” Trump for obstruction, all any of us really knows about the two-year investigation, the 500+ witnesses and the 2800 subpoenas, is what Attorney General Bill Barr characterized in his four-page “op-ed” as critics are calling it.

Given that 800,000+ pages of raw data on the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation, (you know, the one that almost certainly meant a Sixth Extinction apocalypse for the American way of life), there’s no excuse whatsoever for all of Mueller’s raw data — not just his full report, but everything in his taxpayer-funded files — to also be turned over to Schiff, Jerrold Nadler and others.

The basic idea of a Special Counsel is to keep the investigation away from politics, but then when completed, turn it over to politicians for wherever the grand battle royale will take it. That is obviously what has to happen here, and pronto. The public interest in what has been going on — about a cyber attack on our election system, not intern canoodling or a private e-mail server  — has unprecedented public interest.

Without over-playing the partisan hack card, Bill Barr is a true believer of Dick Cheney’s “unitary executive theory”, which basically places the president above and beyond any standard of law applying to everyone else. Barr is also the guy who “auditioned” for his current job with an unsolicited multi-page memo last year reinforcing those beliefs to Trump’s legal team.

Whatever else Barr may be trying to achieve by his minimalist characterization of Mueller’s investigation, what he has achieved over the weekend, by allowing Trumpland to crow loudly about “total exoneration”, is new handicapping of Democrats in the grand political fight that was always to come. With Trump now unleashed to bellow “no collusion” to every MAGA rally he can schedule, the Democratic counter-attack on what are still literally dozens of potent legal fronts, will be viewed by the Trump base as just the wretched whining of poor losers.

All that could shift pretty fast with a crowd-sourced scrutiny of Mueller’s entire report and all his raw data.

Maybe then we’d get answers to hundreds of questions.

Like:

1: Did Mueller ever get Trump’s tax returns?  If not, why not?

2: Mueller’s team included the much-celebrated Andrew Weismann,  a renown pitbull on money-laundering scams, something the Trump family has engaged in flagrantly for years. What did he find? And given the collection of Russians characters using Trump properties for criminal purposes and the leverage that played against Trump, how did that not lead to conspiratorial links?

3: What about the case of Cambridge Analytica? It’s an episode where we find not only Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Trump campaign aid Brad Parscale, but Michael Flynn and most significantly Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the wackadoodle climate change-denying billionaire father-daughter team behind the creation of both Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica. We know Cambridge had a way to micro-target voters down to precise precincts. Who weaponized that information? How exactly was it used?

And 4: If nothing else. For god’s sake tell us why virtually everyone in Trump’s orbit was constantly, perpetually lying about their contacts with Russians?

*As described by our president.