Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

I don't think we fully realize the profundity of Barr's assertions yesterday. The ideas that a president can determine whether or not he ought to be investigated or that a president is incapable of committing obstruction are not just outrageous assaults on Constitutional values.

Taken in the context of this administration's systematic rejection of the oversight role of Congress and of the law--whether it is the emoluments clause of Constitution or the obligation of the IRS to hand over tax returns to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee--

what we are seeing is nothing less than a coup, to use a word the president has grown fond of. Trump and Barr are seeking to eliminate the checks and balances that are a hallmark of our system and to effectively render the Congress subservient to the presidency.

Combine this with the efforts of the Senate to load the courts with judicial candidates loyal to the president and the implication of McConnell, Graham & Co. that they will not fulfill their own Constitutional obligations, and you see a devastating picture.

The GOP, in order to achieve narrow political objectives which translate into the further empowerment of a tiny minority who represent America's richest and most powerful individuals, corporations and financial institutions, are seeking changes that will forever change us.

That they are doing this in complicity with foreign enemies, themselves captive to oligarchies whose interests are commingled with those of our ever, rapaciously ascendant ruling class, makes this all the more pernicious.Not only is the power of the few being raised above that...

...of the many who once were the supreme source of authority in our democracy, but our national interests are being compromised to serve those of foreign rulers who wish us ill, or who are actively seeking to destroy us as a nation.

Should Trump, Barr, McConnell and Graham succeed, then those foreign enemies, notable Vladimir Putin, will succeed as well. Our democracy will lay in ruins. Our Constitution will be gutted. The idea that no man is above the law in America will be murdered before our eyes.

That is the effort we saw afoot yesterday...and that we see today as Barr refuses the House's request that he testify...and that we are seeing daily in serial rejections of the authority of the Congress or of the laws, regulations and standards that have governed past presidents.

It may have appeared that Barr was just an incompetent, a bad liar lying badly. But look at his words--from his assertions of presidential authority to his refusal to condemn the most obvious forms of collaboration with a foreign enemy--

and you will recognize the depth, severity and urgency of the crisis we face. Don't discount this as politics as usual. Don't shrug this off as more partisanship in Washington. Read or watch what was said...what is said and done daily.

And then recognize that impeachment of Trump and of Barr, potent challenges to their efforts to grab power and systematic efforts to remove them from office by the ballot box must be our collective highest priority. The alternative is the final step in the empowerment...

...of an American aristocracy and the cold blooded murder of the ideas and ideals that our founders and every subsequent generation of Americans fought for.

Thread by @djrothkopf: "I don't think we fully realize the profundity of Barr's assertions yesterday. The ideas that a president can determine whether or not he oug […]"

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Her story is fascinating, and sometimes frustrating. She wishes she had never said the things she’s said or did the things she’s done, but when I first met her, she still insisted that they were often jokes gone wrong, and that, on some level, she’d said these things because she’d been egged on by others. She seemed unable to face her full complicity in her own behavior. Unlike Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and to date one of the most significant defectors from the white nationalist movement — he’s even https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557516/rising-out-of-hatred-by-eli-saslow/9780385542869/ by the Washington Post’s Eli Saslow — McHugh wasn’t raised in the movement. While Black represented the old guard of white nationalism — his godfather is David Duke — McHugh was a part of the vanguard. Her set took the emerging own-the-libs ethos that animated the online right and combined it with the new iteration of white nationalism, which called itself the alt-right.

Where was McHugh radicalized? Her story is about support systems and pipelines. It's about how an angry young conservative with reactionary views got herself involved with a small coterie of ideologues in Washington and prepped for a conservative media career in the crucial years before the rise of Donald Trump, as extremism became more popular on the right and as people could optimize themselves for success through attention on social media. It’s about how the organizations she worked for either turned a blind eye to or were genuinely ignorant of the fact that one of their young stars was leading a double life among hardcore racist activists. And it’s about how the cultlike atmosphere of the so-called alt-right helped people make more and more harmful decisions.

Her story is also about something that has ended. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Incredibly, even after the delivery of the Mueller report, the American people still have only the haziest idea of Trump's business connections to Russia and Russians. Do those connections cast any light on why the Russian government was so eager to have him elected president in 2016? Perhaps that information is held somewhere within the Department of Justice or the FBI, but citizens and taxpayers can only guess.

If Trump has his way, the secrecy will continue for a lot longer. In the past few days, he’s filed suit to prevent his bankers from complying with a congressional subpoena. His secretary of the Treasury has defied a never-before-questioned law and refused to surrender the president’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee. His attorney general mischaracterized the Mueller report, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller complained in writing, and now has operational control over the ongoing criminal prosecutions bequeathed to the Justice Department by Mueller.

Trump’s trouble is that the dike is sprouting more leaks than he has fingers with which to plug the expanding trickles. ...

Perhaps the Trump administration hopes it can run out the clock on the bank subpoenas and the other matters too. But so many clocks are ticking over so many inquiries into so many areas of potential scandal. Can they all be postponed and postponed past 2020? For a president with many guilty secrets, everything turns on the ability to insert delay after delay before ultimate legal defeat. It’s not a great plan. It’s liable to go wrong, maybe catastrophically wrong. At this point, though, it’s all he’s got.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant died while in U.S. government custody on Tuesday, the latest in a series of child deaths as Central Americans continue flooding across the southern border.

No health concerns were observed by Customs and Border Protection personnel when they picked him up, and the child did not report any health problems when he was transferred to a shelter on April 20 operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a statement from the department.

By the next day, the boy "became noticeably ill including fever, chills and a headache," according to the statement. That started a chaotic week when the boy was taken to three different hospitals, including two emergency room visits and a stay in the intensive care unit of a children's hospital in Texas.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Her story is fascinating, and sometimes frustrating. She wishes she had never said the things she’s said or did the things she’s done, but when I first met her, she still insisted that they were often jokes gone wrong, and that, on some level, she’d said these things because she’d been egged on by others. She seemed unable to face her full complicity in her own behavior. Unlike Derek Black, the son of Stormfront founder Don Black and to date one of the most significant defectors from the white nationalist movement — he’s even https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557516/rising-out-of-hatred-by-eli-saslow/9780385542869/ by the Washington Post’s Eli Saslow — McHugh wasn’t raised in the movement. While Black represented the old guard of white nationalism — his godfather is David Duke — McHugh was a part of the vanguard. Her set took the emerging own-the-libs ethos that animated the online right and combined it with the new iteration of white nationalism, which called itself the alt-right.

Where was McHugh radicalized? Her story is about support systems and pipelines. It's about how an angry young conservative with reactionary views got herself involved with a small coterie of ideologues in Washington and prepped for a conservative media career in the crucial years before the rise of Donald Trump, as extremism became more popular on the right and as people could optimize themselves for success through attention on social media. It’s about how the organizations she worked for either turned a blind eye to or were genuinely ignorant of the fact that one of their young stars was leading a double life among hardcore racist activists. And it’s about how the cultlike atmosphere of the so-called alt-right helped people make more and more harmful decisions.

Her story is also about something that has ended. ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

One thing Robert Mueller’s March 27 letter to Attorney General William Barr reveals — in addition to the fact that Mueller is as pissed as he has ever been in his career — is that the two men think very differently about the redactions in the now released report. DOJ has always said it redacted information for four reasons:

• Grand jury material
• Ongoing investigations
• Investigative techniques (sources and methods)
• Peripheral privacy

It was always clear the last category was — as described — abusively applied. ...

Mueller in his letter makes it clear he doesn’t consider that PP category peripheral people. Rather, he treats it as a declination decision.

I previously sent you a letter dated March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel’s report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e); that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. [my emphasis]​

The appropriateness of the redaction may be the same in both cases: clearly Mueller believes those not charged, even if it was a close call, should not be identified (with the notable exception of Jeff Sessions).

But Mueller is not pretending these are peripheral figures. The Attorney General is hiding the seriousness of potential criminal acts by at least five Trump flunkies — including Trump’s failson — by pretending these people are peripheral figures rather than central figures that, for whatever reason, the Special Counsel decided not to charge.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

"It's doubtful this will go according to plan. There are too many other investigations for Trump to outrun. But we should be clear about what’s being attempted: The stage is set for an investigation of the investigators, and the supplanting of a real crime with a fictional one."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]