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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Two law professors, Joyce White Vance and Barbara McQuade, together with former White House counsel and Watergate figure John Dean, did more on Monday afternoon to educate Americans about President Trump’s repeated acts of obstruction of justice than Democrats have done since the Mueller report was released in mid-April.
Dean, appearing elegant and restrained, especially in the face of unhinged Republican committee members ranting (to which he responded with some witty jibes), made the case effectively that Trump’s dangling of pardons in front of aides and former aides, which special counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented, is analogous to President Richard M. Nixon’s conduct. As someone who held former White House counsel Donald McGahn’s job decades earlier, Dean was well situated to appeal to McGahn to testify, and to interpret McGahn’s conduct in a favorable light (e.g., McGahn wouldn’t fire Mueller because it would look like the infamous Saturday Night Massacre).
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The hearing demonstrated three things. First, Republicans must obscure the report and lie about its contents since it has no real defense to Trump’s conduct. The amount of evidence is extensive. McQuade argued that this was worse than Watergate; Vance reaffirmed that this was not a close call and that there was substantial evidence of criminality.
Second, all witnesses and a number of congressmen made the strong case that McGahn’s testimony is essential. Third, this is the beginning of a process that will, if committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) is successful, include fact witnesses who can bring to life what the panel explained on Monday. Whether it changes public opinion sufficiently to encourage Democrats to move to impeachment is unknown, but if part of the task here is to make an historical record, Democrats have certainly succeeded. And if Trump is paying attention, he’ll want to get a pardon before leaving office; there are about 1,000 prosecutors who’d love to take up the case for which Mueller has documents.
President Trump has claimed for two days that he https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/11/sarah-sanders-offers-some-word-salad-about-trumps-tariff-claims/?utm_term=.29f329e93991 (secured a secret immigration deal with Mexico) — beyond the one announced Friday. But the White House has declined to disclose any details, and Mexico has denied it. Confronted with understandable skepticism that such a deal exists, Trump produced a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket Tuesday.
And a particularly good photographer, The Post’s Jabin Botsford, snapped an image that reveals some of the document’s contents. That image allows us to glean some clues.
Here’s the image, which Botsford helpfully flipped for readability:
The House took its strongest step yet in the standoff with President Trump over congressional oversight, voting Tuesday to seek court enforcement of subpoenas for Attorney General William P. Barr and former White House counsel Donald McGahn.
On a party-line vote of 229-to-191, the House passed a resolution that would empower the House Judiciary Committee to go to court against Barr and McGahn over non-compliance with requests for documents and testimony.
The vote keeps Democrats squarely on a meticulous investigative track favored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top leaders — and away from the formal impeachment inquiry that some 60 rank-and-file Democrats and several 2020 presidential candidates have been seeking.
Still, the House vote reflects the frustration among Democrats with Trump’s unwillingness to cooperate with congressional investigators who argue they have a constitutional right to examine the executive branch.
“This is a dark time. This Congress is being tested — in this case, not by a foreign adversary, but by our own president,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), adding that Trump’s blanket policy of not complying with congressional subpoenas makes “Richard Nixon look like an Eagle Scout.”
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A U.S. jury could not reach a verdict Tuesday against a border activist charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants in a trial that humanitarian aid groups said would have wide implications on their work.
Defense attorneys argued that Scott Daniel Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor, was simply being kind by providing two migrants with water, food and lodging when he was arrested in early 2018. He faced up to 20 years in prison.
But prosecutors maintained the men were not in distress and Warren conspired to transport and harbor them at a property used for providing aid to migrants in an Arizona town near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Jurors said Monday that they couldn’t reach a consensus but a federal judge told them to keep deliberating. The judge set a July 2 status hearing after the jury said it was deadlocked.
