Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

The poll also suggests that independents may be the deciding factor in whether the public supports Trump’s impeachment, if it comes to that. Per the Post poll, if Mueller’s report finds that Trump obstructed justice by trying to undermine the Russia investigation, Americans believe — 65 percent to 29 percent — that Congress should impeach Trump and try to remove him from office.1 And if the report concludes that Trump authorized his campaign staff to collude with Russia, Americans support impeachment and attempted removal by a similar margin: 61 percent to 33 percent.

Those numbers may seem surprisingly high. But impeachment is a political process and, quite frankly, a partisan one. According to this poll and many others, most Democrats already support beginning impeachment proceedings against Trump — so right off that bat, that’s a sizable chunk of the country in favor. And this poll added a conditional to its question: “If Mueller’s report concludes….” Since independents mostly see Mueller as a fair judge, it makes sense that most of them would support impeachment if Mueller finds grounds for it. And indeed they do, at least in this poll: 61 percent support impeachment if Trump approved coordination with the Russian government, and 68 percent support impeachment if he obstructed justice.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Among the casualties of President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build his border wall is the reputation of the majority leader Mitch McConnell as a Senate institutionalist. The evidence of the last few days has confirmed, if there were still any doubt, that he is no such thing.

First, he helped prolong the longest government shutdown in American history by insisting that the Senate would act only with explicit approval from the president. Now Mr. McConnell has fully acquiesced in President Trump’s power grab by supporting an emergency declaration, which he opposed just weeks before, aimed at addressing a crisis that Senate Republicans know does not exist.

This display of obedience from the leader of a supposedly coequal branch of government is shocking only if you ever believed Mr. McConnell was an institutionalist. But his defining characteristic has always been his willingness to do anything and sacrifice any principle to amass power for himself. What separates him from the garden-variety politicians — what makes him a radical — are the lengths he is willing to go. Seeing this with clarity should help us grasp the danger to which he is subjecting the Senate — and, more important, our democracy.

The signs of Mr. McConnell’s malign influence were always there. Before he became a Senate leader, he dedicated himself to opening the floodgates for corporate money to flow into our political system. Mr. McConnell chased the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law all the way to the Supreme Court; the 2003 challenge to the law bears his name. Mr. McConnell lost that one, but his cause prevailed six years later when the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on corporate contributions in Citizens United.

In 2010, as minority leader, Mr. McConnell stated that his main goal was not to help our country recover from the Great Recession but to make President Obama a “one-term president.” A self-declared “https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitch-mcconnell-the-man-who-broke-america/2017/04/07/8e12f1d8-1bbd-11e7-9887-1a5314b56a08_story.html?utm_term=.4d2069a03276 (proud guardian of gridlock),” he presided over an enormous escalation in the use of the filibuster. His innovation was to transform it from a procedural tool used to block bills into a weapon of nullification, deploying it against even routine Senate business to gridlock the legislative process.

The two forces that characterized Mr. McConnell’s career, obstruction and increasing the power of corporate money in our democracy, have worked hand in hand to diminish the Senate and paralyze American politics. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

With a light hand, barely pressing his pencil on paper, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began sketching his case for Trump campaign collusion with the Russians in a Friday court filing related to Roger Stone’s prosecution for lying to Congress.

Until Friday, Mueller’s team had been coy about directly connecting any Trump campaign associate to a 12-member Russian GRU military intelligence team it indicted in July 2018 for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It had secured guilty pleas from such scandal participants as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Trump campaign executive Rick Gates, campaign backbencher George Papadopoulos, and others, and convicted campaign director Paul Manafort on an array of financial fraud charges connected to his politicking and lobbying for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.

But the two seemingly parallel investigations never really intersected. Self-described dirty trickster Stone, who worked on the early Trump campaign and remained close to Trump and his aides after departing, wanted the court to say the investigations were separate. He requested a new judge, saying the charges against him had nothing to do with the Russian hackers case, also being prosecuted before Judge Amy Berman Jackson. But the judge tossed Stone’s request, accepting Mueller’s line of argument that Stone directly interacted with the Russians and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, the middleman for the hacked emails.

Now that the two investigations are one, what remains to be gleaned is how wide and deep the Trump campaign’s connections to the Russians and WikiLeaks were.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Andrew McCabe served as the acting director of the FBI in the three-month aftermath of President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Excerpts from his book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” set for release on February 19, provide disturbing new insights into how and why we find ourselves in a full-blown special counsel investigation of our president, his inner circle and their contacts with Russian representatives. Spoiler alert: The book’s title — which compresses the words “threat,” “terror” and “Trump” into one breath — is a clue.

McCabe served America as an FBI special agent for over 20 years, working his way along an arduous career path from organized crime in New York to counterterrorism and high-value detainee interrogations to his eventual appointments as deputy director and then acting director. Among other high-profile cases he worked on, McCabe helped secure the arrest of Ahmed Abu Khattala for suspected involvement in the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Many FBI agents have written books filled with war stories or tales espousing the rewards of public service. Yet, few FBI leaders have felt that they had to write a book. McCabe is writing a book for the same reasons that James Comey seems to have written a book; because he feels he must tell his side of the story and counter the withering barrage of taunting he and his family has endured from our bully of a president. "Yet now the rule of law is under attack, including from the President himself,” he writes.

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Of course, McCabe’s fears about his job were warranted. He was fired from the FBI a mere 26 hours before he could have retired with an FBI pension. This firing was the result of a https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/national/read-the-report-justice-department-inspector-generals-investigation-of-andrew-mccabe/2902/ (DOJ Inspector General inquiry that recommended McCabe) be fired for an unauthorized media disclosure and for lacking candor on four occasions. I led an adjudication unit in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility and was responsible for disciplinary decisions in cases of serious misconduct. I later served as the FBI’s chief inspector, investigating and reviewing sensitive personnel and program performance issues. In the hundreds of internal investigations that I’ve handled, I never saw an FBI employee fired within 26 hours of retirement. In my experience, employees in similar situations were typically allowed to stay on, sometimes under suspension, until retirement eligibility kicked in.

The fact that McCabe may have lacked candor during an inquiry troubles me greatly, but the circumstances around his firing trouble me even more and give rise to concern that the White House or attorney general put their thumbs on the scale of justice when it came to decisions of what to do with McCabe. Importantly, even if the lack of candor allegations were valid, we need to take notice of McCabe’s verifiable observations and accounts. He’s sounding an alarm and we need to listen.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Andrew McCabe’s lengthy interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes this weekend should not in any profound respect change one’s understanding of L’Affaire Russe or the investigation of it. It does however, substantially enrich that understanding, adding important texture and detail in a number of different areas and sharpening some questions prior news stories had already posed. On two major issues, in particular, McCabe’s interview refines the picture in important respects.