As I suspect is true of most that read these pages, I have read Attorney General William Barr’s advice to Congress regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Elections.” Assuming that the Attorney General is reporting accurately (which I think can be assumed, if for no other reason than large parts or all of the Report will, in some way or other, ultimately be made public), Mr. Mueller’s Report provides:

1. A reaffirmation that the Russian Government sought to influence the 2016 election through (1) “disinformation and social media operations … designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election” and (2) “computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election … including [through] Wikileaks.”

2. That the Special Counsel’s investigation “did not establish” that the Trump Campaign “conspired or coordinated” – expressly or tacitly – “with the Russian government in its interference activities.” (Given this finding, it is understandable that no indictments have been issued against Messrs. Donald Trump, Jr., or Jared Kushner.)

3. That the Special Counsel elected not to make a traditional prosecutorial decision regarding any obstruction of justice by President Trump, instead listing incriminating and exonerating evidence related to the suitability of such charges. Mr. Barr did note the Special Counsel’s statement, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Mr. Barr stated that given Mr. Mueller’s failure to reach a conclusion regarding obstruction of justice charges against Mr. Trump, it was for Mr. Barr himself, as Attorney General, to decide whether there was sufficient evidence to establish that the President had obstructed justice, and further indicated that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (no fan of Mr. Trump) concluded that the grounds to proceed were insufficient.

(Given the seemingly oddly circumspect approach that the Special Counsel took to addressing the obstruction of justice issues – and in admittedly the type of pure speculation that I generally try to avoid in these notes — one might wonder whether the final weeks’ delay in the issuance of the Special Counsel report following Mr. Barr’s confirmation as Attorney General arose from a decision to significantly recast the Report’s obstruction of justice sections; Mr. Mueller is obviously acutely aware that Mr. Barr, in his lengthy memo that constituted a de facto application for the A.G. position, had challenged the premise that a President, absent evidence of illegal collusion, could be found guilty of obstruction of justice, due to an allegedly “improper motive,” for performing what Mr. Barr called “facially-lawful” acts. It would be interesting to see copies of Report drafts existing before Mr. Barr was nominated.)

Since I am no fan of President Trump, in the last weeks I have wondered whether I would feel a bit despondent if Mr. Mueller’s team failed to uncover sufficiently incriminating evidence to indict Mr. Trump (even if such indictment wasn’t sought, due to Department of Justice guidelines) and his family members; but I don’t. If we have learned anything during the Trump presidency, it’s that having honesty in government, having procedures that don’t predetermine a result, is what matters. The strength, rigor, and fairness of our processes is what separates us from Russia, China, and much of the rest of the world – allies and adversaries alike. Despite the unwarranted and despicable personal attacks on the Special Counsel by Mr. Trump and his cohort, Mr. Mueller demonstrated why he is widely acclaimed for his integrity, competence, courage, and thoroughness. No one can credibly claim that the Mueller Team was biased for or against the President. It was never a “Witch Hunt.” The system worked.

I would suggest that there are at least two benefits arising from this result that should encourage even the President’s harshest critics. First, the entire process – to employ what has admittedly become an overused phrase – moved the goalposts regarding the public’s understanding of Russian meddling in our elections. Two years ago, the President scoffed at the notion of Russian meddling, concerned that it would undermine the legitimacy of his presidency. As the threat of an election-related criminal prosecution seemingly loomed against himself and his family, he became less focused on defending the sanctity of his victory and more focused on disclaiming any relationship with Russian actors. At this point, the fact that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf is seemingly accepted (albeit grudgingly in some quarters) across the political spectrum. Perhaps now, on the eve of the next election, Republicans if not Mr. Trump himself will collaborate more enthusiastically with Democrats to shore up our electoral processes. The President clearly isn’t going anywhere during the next two years; the key is to do what we can to limit the extent to which our people are manipulated by malign foreign actors in the next election.

Second, although a number of Democrats and liberal pundits are now undoubtedly licking their wounds, I suspect that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is to some extent relieved by the outcome. Absent “smoking gun” evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump had consciously colluded with Russia or sought to obstruct justice, there has never been a chance that the President’s opponents would muster 20 Senate Republican votes (even assuming all Senate Democrats stayed in line) to remove him from office; any attempt at impeachment would have yet further roiled the country and very likely resulted in an embarrassing defeat and attendant backlash much closer to the 2020 election – a result that would have significantly enhanced Mr. Trump’s reelection prospects.

That said, I would like to see the entire Mueller Report; I would wager that most other Americans would as well; but although there will undoubtedly be sections that Democrats will pounce upon to demonstrate untoward behavior by the President and his associates, I hope that liberals don’t expend undue energy on pointless quibbling. Aside from using the fruits of the Special Counsel investigation to gather Republican support to enact measures and controls to better guard against foreign meddling in the next election, it’s time to move on.

“When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear; so do one’s faults when one speaks … one’s speech disclose[s] the bent of one’s mind.” Sirach 27:4-6

I didn’t watch Michael Cohen’s full testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee, but did see Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows and other Committee Republicans harangue and stage grandstanding attacks upon Mr. Cohen’s credibility. Although these are far from unique reactions, it did strike me real time (1) that the Republicans were abandoning their constitutional duty to ascertain the facts and (2) that they knew – they knew – that Mr. Cohen was substantially telling the truth. The only motive that I could conjure up for their behavior at the time was that they were trying to provide any remaining naïve Trump supporters with a rationalization for keeping the wool pulled down over their eyes. Mine was a fatuous thought. The lack of any meaningful political fallout for President Trump in the days since the hearing shows that Mr. Trump’s most diehard supporters already recognized and accepted the flawed nature of his character, something the Congressional Republicans almost certainly understood. It took me a little while to realize that they were motivated by baser emotions: fear and loathing.

I would suggest that Republicans’ abject defense of the President has little to do with substantive policy considerations, since if Mr. Trump left the presidency, he would be replaced by Vice President Mike Pence, who has been an obsequious supporter of the president’s agenda and would probably exert a stronger hand in confronting Russian aggression. (I’m confident that even the President’s most avid supporters recognize that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy.) Their unwillingness to seek truth seems manifestly driven by fear of retribution from Mr. Trump’s core supporters … combined with an aberrant desire not to let the Democrats win, even if they’re right – as they are – in demonstrating Mr. Trump a scoundrel unworthy of the presidency.

In the summer of 2018, a friend sent me an email string which had been forwarded to him entitled, “This is why you can’t vote democratic.” It was – there is no kinder description for it – an unhinged rant primarily focused on former Sec. Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, primarily addressing Uranium One and Benghazi. Although no one would consider Ms. Clinton a saint and it is undisputed even by Mr. Comey that he made serious missteps prior to the 2016 Presidential election, this email completely ignored the fact that Republicans used their congressional investigatory powers ad nauseam on Uranium One and Benghazi without uncovering evidence of wrongdoing, and that Mr. Trump himself initially privately acknowledged that Mr. Comey’s public missteps regarding the FBI’s investigation of Ms. Clinton’s lost emails were probably the deciding factor in the election. This note demonstrated no indication of any desire to understand or accept facts; it was purely a manifestation of hatred of Democrats. Although the Committee Republicans were perhaps a bit smoother during the Cohen hearing, the emotions they feel are clearly the same. We are a long way from Republican TN Sen. Howard Baker’s effort to discover the truth in the Watergate scandal: “What did [Republican President Richard Nixon] know, and when did he know it?”

Democrats love grabbing the moral high ground – with Mr. Trump in the White House, admittedly easy ground to command – but recent accounts make them appear no better. Since January, a House of Representatives procedural maneuver known as the “Motion to Recommit” has, due to the aid of the votes of some moderate Democrats, allowed the Republicans to make small dents in certain progressive initiatives, thereby stirring the anger of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and young progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has reportedly “suggested” to these moderate Democrats that should their behavior continue, she will alert her chain of progressive activists of their failure to stand with the Democratic majority on these votes. I would submit that by this posturing, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is seeking to sow political fear among the moderates – and by doing so, is no better for it than Mr. Trump. As for unrestrained vilification of the opposition, over the weekend, former Vice President Joe Biden was lambasted by the left after suggesting that Mr. Pence is a “decent guy”; Progressives have loudly rejected any notion that Mr. Pence can be “decent” due to his staunch Evangelical stance against LBGT rights. Think what you will of the fawning way he has conducted the Vice Presidency or his position on gender rights or other issues, Mr. Pence apparently is a decent man on a personal level, motivated by what he sees as moral principles; South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay person to seek the presidency, has called Mr. Pence “a super-nice guy,” although Mr. Buttigieg obviously vehemently disagrees with Mr. Pence on virtually all issues. There is as great a need on the left to disparage all aspects of all political opponents – to see only malevolence in the other side — as there is on the right.

Not only should Republicans be aware that there will be life after Mr. Trump; Democrats should be as well. Those of us that see neither party as the font of all virtue or the source of all depravity are concerned that neither side recognizes that formulating constructive policy requires trust of and well-intended engagement with the other.

An event seemingly meriting a second post in one day.

Although most who read these pages are probably already aware of this, today 58 former national security officials published a “Joint Declaration” disputing President Trump’s claim of a national emergency that justifies the diversion of federal funds to add further wall at our southern border. From a quick review of this Joint Declaration, it would appear that about a quarter of the signatories provided at least part of their national service to Republican Administrations, including three that served in the Trump Administration (although to be fair, two of the three were holdovers from the Obama Administration).

The Joint Declaration’s introduction provides in part:

“On February 15, 2019, the President declared a “national emergency” for the purpose of diverting appropriated funds from previously designated uses to build a wall along the southern border. We are aware of no emergency that remotely justifies such a step. The President’s actions are at odds with the overwhelming evidence in the public record, including the administration’s own data and estimates. We have lived and worked through national emergencies, and we support the President’s power to mobilize the Executive Branch to respond quickly in genuine national emergencies. But under no plausible assessment of the evidence is there a national emergency today that entitles the President to tap into funds appropriated for other purposes to build a wall at the southern border.”

A link to the Joint Declaration appears below.

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/02/25/2019-2-21.final.national.emergency.decl.pdf

I understand that a House Resolution terminating the National Emergency declared by the President will be passed by the House on Tuesday and sent to the Senate. Although there is no indication that if the Senate passes the measure it will survive a certain presidential veto, the most revealing part of this process will be ascertaining which and how many Republican Senators are willing to confront Mr. Trump, given indications that many have significant misgivings about what they reportedly consider an unwarranted presidential usurpation of Congressional power.  This Joint Declaration will seemingly add to those misgivings.  I will be watching Utah Sen. Mitt Romney.

If one intends to review this post, but has not yet read Part I (which is immediately below), I would start there ;).

I understand that William Barr’s nomination for Attorney General will be reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. While I appreciate the unease that Democrats feel regarding the prospect of Mr. Barr’s directing the Special Counsel inquiry, I would suggest that their concerns are insufficient to reject his nomination. I would vote to confirm Mr. Barr as Attorney General.

As noted in Part I of this post, no one questions Mr. Barr’s objective qualifications to serve as U.S. Attorney General. The majority of Democrats’ concerns center on the memo he provided to the Justice Department (and President Trump’s legal team) in June of this year. While it strains credulity to discount the notion that Mr. Barr intended this memo as an application for the A.G. position, surprisingly little of the commentary I have heard has remarked upon what I consider a pertinent fact: that Mr. Barr’s apparent defense of the President was limited to what he considered, on public policy grounds, as an inappropriate expansion of the applicability of the federal obstruction of justice statute to acts of Executive discretion. Interestingly, he was making the case against such expansion at a time when conventional wisdom held (and apparently the President and his advisors believed) that Mr. Trump’s legal transgression, if any, had more or less arisen from an inadvertent obstruction of justice borne of his New York real estate instincts.

Beginning with Donald Trump, Jr.’s 2017 admission that the 2016 Trump Tower meeting involved a discussion of how Russian representatives could provide the Trump Campaign information damaging to Secretary Hillary Clinton’s campaign, a string of ever-more-damning revelations seems to be casting aside the previously prevailing impression that in their dealings with the Russians, members of the Trump campaign were shady dupes rather than active conspirators. Now, we have seen serious indications that (1) agents of the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee’s email server; (2) the Russian agents delivered the hacked emails to Wikileaks; and (3) Wikileaks was in communication with Mr. Trump’s longtime confidant, Roger Stone. Subject to correction by the learned eyes that read these pages, I understand that if Mr. Mueller is able to establish that Wikileaks affirmatively coordinated with the Trump Campaign, through Mr. Stone or otherwise, to “drop” electronically stolen DNC emails damaging to Ms. Clinton at times opportune to the Trump Campaign … that’s a criminal conspiracy.

It should seemingly be noted that Mr. Barr said little in his memo regarding the ramifications that would ensue if the Special Counsel presented solid evidence showing that the Trump Campaign had criminally conspired with the Russian Government against Sec. Clinton – and that what he did say, in light of current circumstances, may provide scant comfort to the President: “If [the President and his campaign engaged in illegal collusion], then the issue of ‘obstruction’ is a sideshow … Mueller should get on with the task at hand and reach a conclusion on collusion.”

Partisans on both sides are currently all too-ready to impute ulterior motives to those with whom they disagree. If solid evidence that senior members of the Trump Campaign illegally colluded with Russia is presented to Mr. Barr by a universally-respected investigator, I suggest that one need assume either that he will bring the information to the Congress, or that he is a partisan – indeed, traitorous – blackguard. I am willing to believe, unless and until I have evidence to the contrary, that Mr. Barr will do what is necessary to protect the United States while conducting his duty. While he clearly auditioned for the position he will now hold, it should not be forgotten: that his opinions regarding the President’s constitutional prerogatives and the limitations of the federal obstruction of justice statute are legally defensible; that he is not a longtime confidant of President Trump, having risen in the G.H.W. Bush administration; that he has testified that he has respect for the Special Counsel, and does not believe that Mr. Mueller would engage in a “Witch Hunt”; and that he has indicated that he will release as much of the Mueller Report to the public as he can in accordance with DOJ guidelines. I judge his qualified responses regarding release of the Mueller report and any conflict of issues he might have to comport with what one would expect from an able, savvy public servant intent on keeping his options open. Even if he doesn’t release Mr. Mueller’s full report to the public (which could be for completely justifiable grounds such as protection of CIA and FBI sources and methods), it doesn’t mean that he won’t make the entire report available in closed session to appropriate members of Congress if there is evidence of behavior threatening to the Republic. I suspect that he will ultimately opt to release the full report, for two reasons: his failure to do so will raise doubts about his role in the process, and … it will inevitably get out anyway.

There is reportedly some Democratic concern that Mr. Barr might redact parts of the Mueller Report dealing with President Trump’s behavior because there can be no recourse against Mr. Trump arising out of the Special Counsel’s investigation; a sitting President cannot be indicted under DOJ guidelines. Even if such would be the case, I would offer that Democrats’ concerns are misplaced. I don’t believe that there is a DOJ policy against indicting a President’s relatives. If the Mueller team has uncovered solid evidence of collusion between senior Trump Campaign officials and Russian operatives, it will almost certainly implicate Donald Trump, Jr. and Jared Kushner; if indictments of those worthies are handed down, the media focus on their criminal proceedings will not only be tantamount to indicting the President, it will emasculate what remains of his presidency. We could ironically end up with a situation in which Republicans want the President removed from office, so they can begin a political recovery under then-President Pence, while Democrats are content to have Mr. Trump swing in the political winds.

I assume that most are now aware that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has sharply criticized House Democrats’ Bill HR-1, which includes, among other electoral reform changes, a provision designating federal election days as paid holidays for federal workers. (There are many parts of the bill that seem, at least as reported, sensible to me, but I haven’t read the bill and a reaction to its overall effect is beyond the scope of this note and at least as of today, my ken.) No end of pundits have hooted at Sen. McConnell’s comments, noting that they constitute a tacit admission of what voting statistics have consistently shown for quite a while: at least in politically purple areas of the country, the more people that vote, the better the Democrats fare.

While I deplore Mr. McConnell’s obvious sentiment – as dewy-eyed as I know it sounds, every American should hope that every American that is legally eligible to vote does so – I concur with the premise that we do not need additional federal cost without productivity at a time of spiraling deficits. I would suggest that Democrats call Mr. McConnell’s bid, and raise: offer a separate bill that makes federal election days national holidays (a counter that would cover all of our nation’s workers, not just federal employees) while providing that Presidents’ Day (which is apparently technically still called, “Washington’s Birthday”) shall only be observed as a national holiday in years in which federal elections are not held. (I originally considered the notion that Election Day replace Columbus Day, which is closer on the calendar to federal election days, but I understand that not all states heed Columbus Day.) It does not seem Noise to suggest that the Father of our Nation might consider a change to federal law that made it easier for more Americans to vote a greater testament to his legacy than remembering his birthday; I know I would.

Such a modification to the Democrats’ current measure would facilitate voting by our citizens while not increasing federal costs. [Somehow, I still don’t think Sen. McConnell will go for it ;)].