Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

At 9 a.m. today on NBC, Megyn Kelly will conduct a live, sit-down interview with three women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct: Jessica Leeds, Samantha Holvey and Rachel Crooks.

A news release for "Megyn Kelly TODAY" say the women "will share their claims, which President Trump has denied, and stories together for the first time on television."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

On this day in 1845, the New England poet and noted abolitionist (and Harvard Law School graduate) James Russell Lowell published a long poem in the Boston Courierentitled “Verses Suggested by the Present Crisis” about the national debate over slavery and the impending war with Mexico after the annexation of the slave-owning Texas by the United States.

The poem included the following lines, which were later incorporated (in part) into a well-known hymn about social responsibility that is still included in many Protestant hymnals and was quoted by Martin Luther King in his “We Will Overcome” speech in 1966:

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.


Then to side with truth is noble,
When we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit,
And 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses
While the coward stands aside,

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

In the nearly seven months since Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate possible collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia, he has already obtained two indictments and two guilty pleas. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, the indictees, are back in court Monday, when their trial date could be set, and more charges could well be coming for other people in Trump’s orbit. But even as the investigation gathers steam — or perhaps because of it — there are increasing concerns about just how long Mueller will be able to keep his job.

The prosecutor serves under the authority of the deputy attorney general and could be asked to leave at any time. And external opposition could help grease the wheels for his departure. A growing drumbeat to this effect seems to be building on the right. Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote for the second time that Mueller is too “conflicted” to run the investigation and called on him to step down in favor of someone more “credible.” Fox News host Sean Hannity recently condemned Mueller’s investigators as “an extremely biased team of liberal crusaders,” and Newt Gingrich, who called Mueller a “superb choice” to run the investigation when he was appointed in May, is now attacking him as “corrupt.”

Then there’s the possibility that the president could simply lose patience with Mueller and order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire him. Mueller reportedly subpoenaed information this fall on accounts held by the Trump family at Deutsche Bank — after Trump implied earlier this year that investigating his finances could spur him to consider dismissing Mueller.

Democrats, for their part, have been arguing for months that Congress needs to act to pass additional protections for Mueller. But our review of the history of special prosecutor investigations suggests that Mueller’s investigation is more secure than it might seem — and that more protections don’t necessarily produce more effective prosecutions.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

We await only the last word: Someone will say out loud that Trump is better than democracy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2017/12/11/we-await-only-the-last-word-someone-will-say-out-loud-that-trump-is-better-than-democracy/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.cfe2cd037d18 (Opinion | We await only the last word: Someone will say out loud that Trump is better than democracy)

What a long way we have traveled. Who knew that the escalator upon which Donald Trump descended into the presidential campaign would take us so low?

The capitulation of Trump’s onetime opponents and the relentless moving of the goalposts of what is considered beyond the pale in American politics have brought us to this. To Republicans undermining independent investigations of Trump. To the firing of an FBI director for investigating Trump. To threats to fire his replacement. To functionally placing Trump beyond the reach of any law. To Roy Moore, an accused child molester — a man who believes that his interpretation of the Bible supersedes the Constitution on questions of law. A man who wants to repeal all the amendments after the 10th, including the one guaranteeing citizenship and equal rights and protection to former slaves. When they say that electing this individual would be better than electing any Democrat, they have come very close to the admission.

The only question now is when someone in the Republican Party will say out loud just about the only thing they haven’t admitted to: that we’d be better off without democracy if it comes to that. And following their current trajectory, that is exactly what it is coming to.

Trump and his supporters do not represent the majority of Americans, and they know it. This leaves Trump with two choices: to expand his base of political support by reaching out to the rest of Americans, or to double down on the vehemence and extremism of his existing base. We know which he has chosen, and which the Republican Party has now also chosen. And what the donors to Trump and the Republican Party have also chosen. And what is the only logical destination of that choice? Their leaving power gracefully, or the slow or sudden termination of democracy. Think it through. It’s not that complicated.

They maybe don’t all yet realize this implication of their strategy, but no doubt some of them do. This card has been held close to the vest, but not all that close. Trump’s threats to those who might hold him accountable have been overt and at times, as in the case of James Comey, concrete. The response of his party has been migrating from grumbling to cheerleading.

Where does this inevitably lead? We will either hear someone prominent in the party break the ice and say democracy is the real problem and needs to go. Or maybe it won’t be said out loud, and we can simply watch as they quietly go ahead and do it.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn's firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn's firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn.

EIGHTEEN ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn's firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn.

On January 24 of this year, President Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition. On January 26th, the White House was informed that Flynn had misled top Trump officials about those contacts. On February 13, Trump fired Flynn.

One big question now is: Did any of Trump’s top officials — or Trump himself — direct Flynn to lie to the FBI about these contacts? This question appears to be of interest to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, according to https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amp/18-crucial-days-what-did-president-know-when-did-he-n828261?cid=eml_onsite.

The https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amp/18-crucial-days-what-did-president-know-when-did-he-n828261?cid=eml_onsitethat Mueller is trying to “piece together a timeline” of the 18-day period between January 26th, when the White House was told by then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates that Flynn had misled Vice President Pence and other top officials by claiming he hadn’t discussed sanctions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and the February 13th firing of Flynn.

As NBC reports: “Trump’s legal team and senior White House aides are refusing to say when and how the president first learned that Flynn had lied to the FBI.” After the https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michael-flynn-charged-with-making-false-statement-to-the-fbi/2017/12/01/e03a6c48-d6a2-11e7-9461-ba77d604373d_story.html?utm_term=.d46acf16a21e (news broke that Flynn had made a plea deal)admitting to these lies, Trump tweeted that he’d fired Flynn because he lied to the FBI, suggesting he knew of this lying at the time, though his attorney has since insisted that this isn’t what he meant. This has raised questions as to why Trump would press his former FBI director to drop the investigation into Flynn (as James B. Comey has testified, and Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/12/03/in-pre-dawn-twitter-message-trump-issues-a-fresh-denial-about-intervening-in-flynn-investigation/?utm_term=.337515fc6ee6 (denies)) in the apparent knowledge that he’d lied to the FBI, which could constitute obstruction of justice.

But beyond that important question, there is also the question of what Trump knew about the lying itself and when.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The president’s move was an epic blunder that made peace far harder to achieve.

Trump’s Jerusalem gambit isn’t a world-ender—it’s just ill-timed, ill-conceived, ill-considered and unmoored from any real strategy that would advance U.S. national interests, peace or security.

Other than that, it’s great.

Having spent most of my professional life in and around Arab-Israeli negotiations, and a good part of that trying to finesse or avoid dealing with the Jerusalem issue, it’s taken a little while to recover from the jolt of a president unaware of the city’s complexities and willing to confront the issue head-on without any apparent long-term objective or seemingly a clue of what comes next. Now that the shock has worn off, and we’ve seen protests in Arab capitals that were milder than many expected, a few thoughts:

...

Right now, it seems that Trump’s Jerusalem move was a bone-headed move that has made a bad situation worse, and is very much in keeping with an administration that loves to come up with solutions to problems we don’t have. It is not, as I said at the outset, the end of the world, but it will only reinforce the reality that for the foreseeable future, the pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace will likely remain trapped between a two-state solution that’s too important to abandon on one hand, and just too hard to implement on the other.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

TrumpTraitors, TrumpTreason, TrumpFascists ...



Our democratic republic is in far more danger than it was even a few weeks ago.

Until this point, there was an underlying faith in much of the political world that if Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian collusion in the election turned up unmistakably damning material about Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress would feel obligated by their commitment to the country’s well-being to accept Mueller’s findings and challenge the president.

We would often hear recollections of how Republicans during Watergate — Sen. Barry Goldwater would inevitably come up — decided that the smoking guns were too smoky and that Richard Nixon had to go. They made clear to him that he no longer had the support of his party.

Surely, said the optimists, we have not drifted so far from decency that this sort of patriotism is beyond us.

Well, it sure seems to be. It’s not surprising that Trump and those on his payroll want to protect him at all costs. But we learned last week that Republicans are deepening their complicity in derailing Mueller’s investigation and burying the facts. The more Mueller imperils Trump, the more McCarthyite the GOP becomes.

The apotheosis of Republican congressional collusion with Trump’s efforts to hang on at all costs came at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. One Republican after another attacked Mueller and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as if the latter should be placed on a new compendium of subversive organizations.

The occasion was https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-director-to-face-lawmakers-quesitons-about-bureaus-handling-of-trump-clinton-probes/2017/12/07/15608948-db58-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html?utm_term=.ec97d059b08d (testimony before the committee by Christopher A. Wray), the Trump-appointed FBI director. It was heartening to see Wray stand up for his colleagues, which made you wonder if Wray may soon go the way of his predecessor, James B. Comey.

...

We also assumed that Mueller’s findings would be respected because of his deserved reputation for fairness and independence. Just last May, Newt Gingrich called him a “superb choice to be special counsel” and praised his “honesty and integrity.” Now, pro-Trump politicians feel free to contradict anything they said in the past and to dismiss what they once saw as legitimate authority if those who hold it threaten their power. This is a recipe for autocracy.

Trump himself told us plainly on Friday night in Pensacola, Fla., that he will do whatever it takes to hold power, and he should be taken seriously. “There are powerful forces in Washington trying to sabotage our movement,” he declared. “These are bad people, these are very, very bad and evil people. . . . But you know what, we’re stopping them. You’re seeing that right now.”

We are far closer to the edge than we want to think.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Remarkably, we are almost a year into Donald Trump's term as president of the United States and we haven't yet had a full-blown constitutional crisis. But it may be on its way.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is circling the Oval Office, and the closer he gets, the more agitated President Trump and his defenders become. In response, they've begun an all-out assault on Mueller, one that could well result in Trump firing him. It's more than obvious that Trump wants to do so; the only question is how long the relatively sane people around him who appreciate the consequences of such a move can hold him back.

They surely know that Trump firing Mueller would not only be a political disaster for him but would plunge the government into its most serious crisis in decades, with a president moving to shut down an investigation into his own wrongdoing. In order to do it, Trump would have to create his own version of Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, in which he moved to fire Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate scandal.

Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, the only one with the authority to fire Mueller is Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has made clear he understands that he is only allowed to fire Mueller for cause, not simply because the president doesn't like being investigated. So Trump would probably have to fire Rosenstein, then order the next person in line to fire Mueller, and if she didn't, he could keep firing people on down the line (there's a good explanation of all that here).

It would be an incredibly dramatic crisis, one that would almost certainly involve many of Trump's closest aides begging him to stop before he created ample justification for impeachment. Until now they've succeeded in restraining him. How long can they keep it up?

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]