Give New York Times columnist Bret Stephens his due. Back
before black lives matter was a thing, and criticism of that thing would get a
person banished from every place left of Fox News, Stephens recognized Black
Lives Matter had "some really thuggish elements in it.".
In June of 2020, the Times disavowed an op-ed it had
published in which Republican senator Tom Cotton had suggested that federal
troops be used to break up violent George Floyd protests. In his column,
Stephens argued that Cotton's op-ed "doesn't lie in its goodness or
rightness" but in the Senator "being a leading spokesman for a major
current of public opinion."
In the spring following the protests, Stephens had noted
"anti-racism is a great simplifier- good and evil, black and white"
and "effective policing requires that cops gain the trust of the
communities they serve while recognizing that those communities are ill served
when cops are afraid to do their jobs."
So Stephens is no johnnie-come-lately. Alas, his truth-telling became mangled when he appeared on Friday
evening's Real Time. Prompted by Bill Maher's interview a moment earlier with
former Minneapolis police chief Medario Arrondo, at 16:57 of the video below,
the columnist can be seen contending "We also have to bear in mind
particularly at moments like this that 99.5 per cent of police officers do
their job honorably and courageously." Fortunately, Maher responded
"first of all, let's just say you're pulling that number out of your
ass."
Not content with being rebuked in the show itself, Stephen
(at 9'45 below gave it another shot in the Overtime segment (B.S. as Stephens,
B.M. as Maher, M.A. as "Rondo" Arradondo):
B.S.: Can I have one
question?
B.M.: Very briefly.
B.S.: Rondo, what
percentage of cops are good cops?
M.A.: Oh, the vast majority of the men and women who put on
that uniform and serve their communities.
B.M.: O.K., but he said 99.5 on the show. It's just a number
we don't have.
B.S. It's a figure
of speech.
B.M.: It's not a figure of speech. That's a number.
B.S.: It was intended
that way.
Of course, it's a number, however Stephens may have intended
it. If it were only a figure of speech, did Stephens mean 99%? 90%? How about
65%? The latter number would have still represent a greater percentage of
employees being "good" than in a lot of workplaces. There was no need
to exaggerate. "Most police officers are dedicated" alone would have
been a bold statement in mainstream media if made during the period when Tom
Cotton wrote his op-ed.
More substantive was the assertion made by Stephens at
18:24 of the show itself, when he said
Every week a cop in America is shot and killed- every single
week and this is a conversation we're not having but every police officer is
very well aware that he's going on on a squad car and he's getting out taking a
risk, and he's putting his life on the line and they deserve a lot more respect
than they get.
Maher responded "they, first of all, get a lot of
respect. A lot of people in this country are always bowing and scraping to
them."
That's objectively accurate. At the time of the G.F.
protests, far fewer people (especially in polite company) responded with the
obvious "all the lives matter" but with "blue lives
matter"- which is true. bit not a logical retort. Apples and oranges.
That's difficult to quantify, with facts and figures
unavailable actually to prove who is right. Fortunately, that's not the case
with the claim(s) that "every week, a cop in America is shot and killed-
every single week."
In 2022, 231 law enforcement officers were killed in the
"line of duty," 64 of them by gunfire. In 2021, 73 officers were
"feloniously killed," an increase of 27 from the 48 killed in 2020.
In 2017, there had been 46 "feloniously killed" and in 2012, 48.
Over the years, on average approximately one police officer
a week is shot and killed, although it's undoubtedly not "every single
week" because in some weeks there would be more than one fatality, in
other weeks, none. It's difficult to determine if the greater number recently
represents a pattern in the 22nd most dangerous job in the country. Even if it does, however, that alone does not indicate
little, or declining, respect for police in a country of over 350 million people.
In some quarters, there is unjustified hostility toward the
police. It was evident in the summer and early autumn of 2020, when virtually
no one dared admit to it. (The field of skepticism should not have been left to
the overwrought and bigoted Tucker Carlson.)
There is still hostility, an anger which goes far beyond the 40, 50, 60,
or even 70 law enforcement officers who will be killed by firearm this
year. But it does no good to exaggerate
wildly the number of "good" cops, nor to imagine that the public as a
whole afford them no respect.
The ballooning billions in money and munitions the United
States is sending to Ukraine is motivated by a Democrat revenge fantasy aimed
at taking out Vladimir Putin – as payback for stealing the 2016 election from
Hillary Clinton, Tucker Carlson said Monday night.
The Fox News host laid out the case in his opening
monologue, peppered with clips of Democratic leaders saying that “total
victory” is the only outcome they seek in the bloody conflict. Carlson set out
to define what they mean by that, even as the U.S. has already sent around $30
billion to uphold Ukraine’s so-far successful defense....
“That is why they are taking us to war with Russia,” he
said. “There are a lot of things going on here, but at some level, the core
motivation is just that simple. It’s not about ‘saving democracy,’ please. We
know it’s not about protecting the sacred borders of a sovereign country; we
know the Biden Administration doesn’t are about those principles because they
run our country and we see how they act.”
Of course, this is nonsense. Assisting Ukraine with military hardware without sacrificing the lives of our own citizens. is essential to a democratic nation's
effort at staving off conquest from a totalitarian state and helping blunt
Vladimir Putin's further designs on eastern Europe.
We know also because if Democratic officials wanted to
punish anyone for upending Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in favor of
Donald Trump, they wouldn't have to go abroad and spend billions of dollars to
do so. They could more cheaply target a party more responsible than Russia
for putting Mr. Trump into the White House. In an article ripping The New York
Times for its devastatingly misleading coverage late in that campaign, in which
the Times inaccurately claimed that Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump was
being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Will Bunch reminds
us
It was arguably the most consequential “October Surprise” in
the history of American presidential elections. In the waning days of the 2016
race, with polls showing Hillary Clinton clinging to a lead over Donald Trump,
two last-minute stories broke that rekindled on-the-fence voters’ ethical
doubts about Democrat Clinton and quashed a budding scandal around her GOP
rival.
Except the “October Surprise” was no surprise to one key
player: Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York City mayor and Trump insider who
later became the 45th president’s attorney. Late that month, Giuliani told Fox
News that the trailing Republican nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re
going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty
big surprises.”
Just two days later, then-FBI director James Comey revealed
the bureau had reopened its probe into Clinton’s emails, based on the possible
discovery of new communications on a laptop belonging to disgraced New York
politico Anthony Weiner. The news jolted the campaign with a particularly
strong boost from the New York Times, which devoted two-thirds of its front
page to the story — and the notion it was a major blow to Clinton’s prospects.
It was later reported that Comey was motivated to make the
unusual announcement about the laptop because he feared leaks from the FBI’s
New York field office, which, according to Reuters, had “a faction of
investigators based in the office known to be hostile to Hillary Clinton.”
Indeed, Giuliani bragged immediately after that he had sources in the FBI,
including current agents.
The supposed bombshell — it turned out there was nothing
incriminating or particularly new on the laptop — wasn’t the only FBI-related
story that boosted Trump in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. On Oct. 31,
citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the Times reported, “Investigating
Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article defused a
budding scandal about the GOP White House hopeful — at least until after
Trump’s shock election on Nov. 8, 2016. In the coming days and weeks, the basis
of that Times article would melt, but by then the most unlikely POTUS in U.S.
history was ensconced in the Oval Office.
There are many reasons for Trump’s victory, but experts have
argued the FBI disclosures were decisive. In 2017, polling guru Nate Silver
argued that the Comey probe disclosure cost Clinton as many as 3-4 percentage
points and at least 1 percentage point, which would have flipped Pennsylvania,
Michigan, and Wisconsin and handed her the Electoral College.
If Democrats wanted to seek and destroy anyone for
turning the election around, they probably would have focused on the FBI. They could have turned on it but instead have
consistently supported the bureau- while Republicans have been on the attack- for the past several years. Bunch adds
This week’s stunning corruption charges against a top FBI
spymaster who assumed a key role in the bureau’s New York office just weeks
before 2016′s “October surprise” — an agent who by 2018 was known to be working
for a Vladimir Putin-tied Russian oligarch — should cause America to rethink
everything we think we know about the Trump-Russia scandal and how it really
happened that Trump won that election.
The government allegations against the former G-man Charles
McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the
FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the
sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to
U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch
McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI
in 2016.
Recognizing that The Times should apologize for its role in
"this fiasco," Bunch argues that The Times should apologize for its
"flawed coverage" in this "fiasco," which can be attributed
to "its near certainty that Clinton would win and a desire to show its
aggressiveness toward a future president seemed to have skewed its
coverage."
There were some individuals, probably Rudy Giuliani and
Charles McGonigal among them, who did not harbor that certainty that Hillary
Clinton would win the election.
Giuliani, a former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and
McGonigal, a high-ranking FBI official in the New York office, had in common
one thing- the New York field office of the FBI.
The decision of director James
Comey to publicize widely an investigation of Hillary Clinton while hiding one
of Donald Trump is the major reason the former Senator and Secretary of State
lost the presidential race to a corrupt businessman and accomplished
actor. Besides whitewashing history, the failure of the news media
to acknowledge the connection between the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the election outcome has given dishonest individuals such as Tucker Carlson license
to undermine support given by the USA, and especially the Democratic Party. to
the people of Ukraine.
At the beginning of the "Overtime" segment of Friday evening's
Real Time, a viewer asked one of Bill Maher's guests, whistleblower Frances
Haugen "why did Congress fail to hold social media companies accountable
for their role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol?" Haugen, the
data engineer who exposed Facebook documents in 2021, blamed Facebook for its
slow response in turning on safety measures on 1/6/21, noted she testified
extensively before the Committee. She stated also
I believe none of that was included- the final write-up
report, like it wasn't one of the attributable things. I think part of it was
cut. The January 5 committee felt it needed to educate the public on a very
broad set of issues and that I think they had to pick and choose on, like, how
many things are we going to walk people down that road.
The proper answer is "Liz Cheney." However, while
Haugen's reply was mildly disappointing, Bill Maher's response was really bad.
The host responded
Which was smart. That committee was smart. I mean, it didn't
do anything. No, I've seen interviews with the Republicans and nothing changes
anybody's mind about anything. But you can't blame the committee. They put on a
show and it was a good show. That was a smart decision- I'm sorry but they had a lot of fish to fry
and that one, O.K.
A good show or, when the media was less interested in
performance, what would have been called a "cover-up." The National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex was directed to "investigate the facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol" to include "activities of intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the Armed Forces, including with respect to intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination and information sharing" within the government. The committee, as led by the de jure chairperson and de facto chairperson, wanted no part of examining these "branches and other instrumentalities of government."
In a PBS report shortly before release of the final report
of the committee, correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez seemingly made the
case for a September 11- style commission to study the Capitol attack. Having
held no person or agency ultimately responsible for the nation being unprepared
for the attack on the World Trade Center, that committee itself has been
overrated ever since.
Barron-Lopez spoke to two individuals familiar with the
nation's intelligence apparatus. Former Secret Service agent Evy Pompouras
remarked "you should see this information was passed to this person at
this rank, and what did that person do with that information? You do really
need to see names and ranks."
Former FBI agent Tracy Walder explained
I think, in the final report, what I would really like to
see is accountability. I think that's
the bottom line, whether it's the Secret Service or the FBI or local police,
for not taking some of these threats seriously. And they need- either need to
have new training in place, in terms of how to understand some of these
threats, or we need to look at creating a federal domestic terrorism statute.
There may have been merely a breakdown in communications, as
the 9/11 commission found in the period preceding 9/11/01. However, January 6 committee member Adam
Schiff noted "The Secret Service had advance information more than 10 days
beforehand regarding the Proud Boys' planning for January 6. We know now, of
course, that the Proud Boys and others did lead the assault on our Capitol
building."
Donell Harvin, who oversaw the Fusion Security Intelligence
Center for the District of Columbia on 1/6/21 and testified thrice before the
committee, noted
The committee report surmises that going forward, “the best
defense against [the danger to the Capitol] will not come from law enforcement,
but from an informed and active citizenry.” This is poetic at best, misleading
at worst. The thoughts and actions of those who want to incite or commit
violence can’t be controlled, especially when they use the First Amendment as a
shield. The “best defense” against that danger is a physical defense posture
informed by the intelligence and directed by competent leaders.
Actually, misleading and reprehensible at worst. Harvin concludes
Two years after a deadly assault on our democracy, we are no
closer to correcting the system processes and cultures that turned an obscure
and mundane day on the electoral calendar into a massive failure of government
o be immortalized in the history books.
Liz Cheney is a conservative Republican and institutionalist
with a fierce, justified hatred of Donald J. Trump. She did not want the
committee to dilute its single-minded focus on the 45th President with an
inquiry into the failure of the defense apparatus or of law enforcement, and de
jure Chairman Bennie Thompson, no bold progressive he, gladly obliged. Analysis of financing of the attempted coup was left on the cutting room while Republicans Mike Pence and Bill Barr (the latter a Maher favorite) were favorably treated by the committee. It is its legacy to have exposed the danger posed by one
insurrectionist President- and nothing else. Bill Maher and other people of wealth
and influence, especially those with friends in high places, must be pleased
and satisfied.
There must be a nationwide shortage of Kamala Harris flavored Kool-Aid because this guy is hoarding and drinking it all.
Warren stops short of backing Harris for VP in 2024
So many of us have pointed out the problems with Elizabeth Warren for years. Her response here is indefensible. https://t.co/hynQ9K1kGo
— @david_darmofal@mstdn.social (@david_darmofal) January 27, 2023
WGBH in Boston on January 27 reported that upon being asked, Senator Warren stated that President Joe Biden should run for re-election. However
Her response to a follow-up question of whether Harris
should be his running mate was less concrete.
“I really want to defer to what makes Biden comfortable on
his team,” she said. “I’ve known Kamala for a long time. I like Kamala. I knew
her back when she was an attorney general and I was still teaching and we
worked on the housing crisis together, so we go way back. But they need — they
have to be a team, and my sense is they are — I don’t mean that by suggesting I
think there are any problems. I think they are.”
Whatever Warren's reasoning, that was not only a defensible answer, it was the only answer that would make any sense. Speaking in the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 22 to honor the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Vice President had remarked (at 2:28 of the video below)
So we are here together because we collectively believe and
know America is a promise. America is a
promise. It is a promise of freedom and
liberty — not for some, but for all.
A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence that we
are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Be clear. These
rights were not bestowed upon us. They
belong to us as Americans.
Harris is correct that the rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness- however they exist at varying times and in varying contexts- were not bestowed upon us but belong to us specifically as Americans. In most nations they do not exist or do so only in limited measure.
Nevertheless, Harris' statement was an unforced error and politically tone-deaf. It enabled the right wing to jump on her for leaving out a portion of the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Of course, opposition to abortion rights is not grounded in a pro-life sensibility but in a preference for forced-birth. Nevertheless, conservatives label themselves "pro-life" or "for life" and the media gladly obliges them this myth.
As transcribed above, the Vice-President's first and the third paragraphs were good while the second should have been promptly flagged as seriously problematic. With her periodic gaffes and mediocre record before becoming Vice President, an obvious question is "why, Kamala?" or as Elizabeth Warren may be- and should be- thinking "why Kamala?"
As virtually everyone across the nation and- if center/left cable news media has had anything to do with it- across the world knows by now
Five former Memphis police officers were indicted Thursday
on murder charges in the death of Tyre Nichols, whose beating after a traffic
stop was captured on video that “sickened” a top Tennessee law enforcement
official.
Police had said that Nichols was supposedly stopped for
reckless driving, but Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis said early Friday morning
an investigation and review of available camera footage had found "no
proof" of that.
The officers involved — Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley,
Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr. and Justin Smith — were fired after, Davis
said, they violated department policies during the Jan. 7 stop that led to
Nichols' death.
All five former officers were charged with second-degree
murder, two counts of official misconduct, two counts of aggravated kidnapping,
one count of official oppression and one count of aggravated assault,
prosecutors announced.
But it shouldn't stop there, George.
Police departments, and our country generally, need more Harry Dunns. https://t.co/b7QgRyXiBL
All those disposed toward prayer should pray for the comfort of the family and the victim's loved ones, though the individuals calling for "prayers" after murders and tragedies typically are individuals who wouldn't pray if their lives depended on it.
It appears Harry Dunn is calling for guilty verdicts for the five officers, now ex-officers, charged with murdering Tyre Nichols. However, justice should be the highest priority and there have been few details thus far revealed, let alone a trial (or plea) or a guilty verdict. If Dunn is suggesting that we can assume that the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County prosecutors have it right and there has been no overcharging, there is at least one lesson we haven't learned from the black lives movement of two-and-a-half years ago. A need for vengeance should apply in some capital cases, though I'm sure that's not what Dunn/Conway are referring to, especially being this is not a first degree murder case.
Certainly, police brutality can never be acceptable and it is safe to assume from what little we know that considerable brutality was applied by police to the victim. This, and this sort of thing, also should not be acceptable:
A barber who had just became a father for the second time was
shot dead while cutting hair last weekend, according to police in Tennessee.
Darwin Hill, 29, was on a house call in southeast Memphis
when he was shot at about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, January 21.
Detectives said Hill and a woman had been hit when a gunman
fired into the home. The woman, who has not been named, was critically wounded,
according to CBS affiliate WREG.
The Gun Violence Archive, which collects information about
shootings all over the country, states that 17 people have been shot dead in
Memphis since January 1. There have been 53 fatal shootings in Tennessee since
the start of the year.
Seventeen fatal shootings occurred in the first 26 days of the year in Memphis. In that city alone, seventeen people now are dead who should not be. The circumstances of each were unique However, a killing such as that of Darwin Hill- minding his own business and struck down while working in a house pierced by a bullet- is especially tragic. As the attention of the nation and to a lesser extent, the world, turns toward the evidently horrific killing of Tyre Nichols, we should remember, mourn, and address the victimization endured, and largely tolerated, every day of innocent Americans.
Dana Bash interviewed Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin on
Sunday's edition of CNN'sState of the Union. Conceding "the White House
response to this nothingburger has been slow-footed and dull," Charlie Pierce remarks
Into this manufactured melee have come some of the
president's fellow Democrats. From the AP:
Biden should be “embarrassed by the situation,” said
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, adding that
the president had ceded the moral high ground on an issue that has already
entangled former President Donald Trump. Special counsels appointed by Attorney
General Merrick Garland are investigating both cases. “Well, of course. Let’s
be honest about it. When that information is found, it diminishes the stature
of any person who is in possession of it because it’s not supposed to happen.
... The elected official bears ultimate responsibility,” Durbin said.
"Ceded the moral high ground" implies that El Caudillo
del Mar-A-Lago now occupies a piece of that "moral high ground." The
former president* hasn't been within an area code of any "moral high
ground" since he took his first breath of air. Lord, why did you make
Democrats so dim?
Truth be told, the Senator never stated (full transcript of
segment below) that President Biden has "ceded the moral high
ground." Bash asked him asked him whether the President "has kind of
lost the high ground" and Durbin responded
Well, of course. Let's be honest about it. When that
information is found, it diminishes the stature of any person who is in
possession of it, because it's not supposed to happen. Whether it was the fault
of a staffer or attorney, it makes no difference. The elected official bears
ultimate responsibility. And we have to worry, since this new group that has
taken over control of the House of Representatives has promised us endless
investigations, confrontations, impeachments and chaos, what is going to
happen.
Still, Durbin did generally agree with the thrust of Bash's
question and maintained "it diminishes the stature of any person who is in
possession of it." Durbin did get around to contrasting the responses of Donald
Trump and of Joe Biden to discovery of documents, noting
what happened and followed from it is significantly
different. Donald Trump defied those who knew the documents were in place and
ultimately led to, involuntarily, a court order and a search of his Mar-a-Lago
hotel resort to find out how many documents were there.
Contrast that with Joe Biden. Embarrassed by the situation,
as he should have been, he invited the government agencies in to carefully look
through all the boxes he had accumulated. It's a much different approach.
That's not good enough. American voters aren't going to be
impressed with Joe Biden cooperating with a Department of Justice and an FBI it no
longer holds up in such high respect (in part due to Trumpy attacks). It's a mere legal matter- except insofar as
there was a motive for the former President to obstruct an investigation in
contrast to the cooperation thus far demonstrated by the current President and
former Vice President Pence, who has now reported the existence of documents in
his Indianapolis home.
Since the Biden difficulties emerged, there has been no
discussion and virtually no speculation about the reasons either possessed classified documents in insecure locations. That is the major distinction
between Biden and Trump. No one suspects that Joe Biden squirreled away
documents to barter with the Saudis, the Russians, or the North Koreans. But
Donald Trump may have done so. No one suspects that Joe Biden is possessing
them so that if he is indicted, he has collateral in negotiations with the
Justice Department, state or city authorities. But Donald Trump may have done
so.
Nonetheless, now the American people think that the only
difference between Biden and Trump is that Biden played nice with the federal
government. They believe this because Durbin and other Democrats have
encouraged them to believe that. Democrats refuse to suggest nefarious motives
on the part of Donald Trump, which virtually every Democrat and most
independents believe characterize the former President.
And another thing- please stop with this
"embarrassed" thing. In a fair and just world, this would account for
something. Americans would appreciate their leaders recognizing their
wrongdoing and feeling guilty about it. However, not only do people realize this
is not a fair and just world, most voters of the left or the right, whatever their reasons, no longer believe this even of the USA. Not only does
an admission of embarrassment come off as weak, it is a virtual admission of guilt.
We have here a classic example of Democrats believing the
press is their friend. Dana Bash plays a video clip of Durbin labeling the
hoarding of documents at Mar-a-Lago "an outrage, a literal outrage,"
asks if Biden's behavior "was also an outrage," and the Senate's
second leading Democrat replies "and its heart, the issue is the same.
Those documents should not have been in the personal possession of either Joe
Biden or Donald Trump." If media
personalities suggest Joe Biden=Donald Trump, the question should be turned
back on them.
The response of the two men been dramatically different, but
the track record and motives very likely
are, also. Some Democrats such as Dick
Durbin much prefer to play defense rather than offense, to admit guilt, error,
or embarrassment rather than focusing on their opponents. It's a defeatist
media strategy and losing one.
And, Senator, I just should say sorry in advance if I have
to interrupt you to go to that press conference. But we will go back.
And, while we are waiting, I want to turn to the new
classified documents that the FBI found at the president's house in Delaware.
It was a 13-hour search. That happened on Friday. It's just the latest
revelation of the president having classified items that he shouldn't have.
You have been in Congress for 40 years. You have handled
classified material for a lot of those years, probably most of them. How
concerned are you about this?
DURBIN: Well, I'm concerned.
There's a standard that we follow when it comes to members
of Congress and classified information. The door to my office is closed. The
person who presents the document to me takes it out of a locked briefcase,
hands it to me and watches as I read it, when I finish reading it, and he takes
it back and puts it in the briefcase and leaves the scene.
I mean, that's how carefully we review these documents. To
think that any of them ended up in boxes in storage one place or the other is
just unacceptable.
But, having said that, let me make this point clear. Joe
Biden has said from the start: We are going to be totally transparent about
this. Let the chips fall where they may. I'm going to open my home voluntarily
to a search, not the first search, I'm sure, of his offices and home.
He has shown total cooperation in this effort. That is a
sharp contrast to President Trump.
BASH: Well, I want to -- speaking of former President Trump,
I want to play something that you said last year about the classified documents
found at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DURBIN: It's an outrage. It's a literal outrage. For the
president to take this important information down to his home in Florida, and
then store it in a closet with traffic, people back and forth in his resort and
golf course, is an outrage.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Is it also an outrage for the current president to
have what appears to be multiple classified documents in multiple locations?
DURBIN: At its heart, the issue is the same. Those documents
should not have been in the personal possession of either Joe Biden or Donald
Trump.
But what happened and followed from it is significantly
different. Donald Trump defied those who knew the documents were in place and
ultimately led to, involuntarily, a court order and a search of his Mar-a-Lago
hotel resort to find out how many documents were there.
Contrast that with Joe Biden. Embarrassed by the situation,
as he should have been, he invited the government agencies in to carefully look
through all the boxes he had accumulated. It's a much different approach.
It is outrageous that either occurred. But the reaction by
the former president and the current president could not be in sharper
contrast.
BASH: They are. They're very different, no question about
that.
Having said that, you are a politician. You have been around
for a while, and you understand how these things play out. Do you fear that,
because of that, the current president has kind of lost the high ground on this
notion of classified information being where it shouldn't be?
DURBIN: Well, of course. Let's be honest about it.
When that information is found, it diminishes the stature of
any person who is in possession of it, because it's not supposed to happen.
Whether it was the fault of a staffer or attorney, it makes no difference.
The elected official bears ultimate responsibility. And we
have to worry, since this new group that has taken over control of the House of
Representatives has promised us endless investigations, confrontations,
impeachments and chaos, what is going to happen.
[09:15:00]
I only have one word for those who are dubious as to whether
that will happen, and the word is Benghazi. How long did we spend going through
Benghazi hearings in the Republican-controlled House in the past? Now imagine
the MAGA Republicans and what they're setting out to do. I'm sure that they are
going to have investigations to our heart's delight.
BASH: I want to turn to the debt ceiling, sir.
The White House insists they are not going to negotiate with
Republicans who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt
limit, so America doesn't default on its debt. Do you think the president
should negotiate?
DURBIN: No, absolutely not.
Let's get to the bottom line here. Those who are posing for
holy pictures as budget balances, the MAGA Republicans, should note one important
fact. Almost 25 percent of all of the national debt accumulated over the
history of the United States, 230 years, was accumulated during the four years
of Donald Trump.
So, the notion that there is some partisan holy position
that they're taking and that they're going to fight this battle of the matter
of principle, when they enacted tax cuts for the wealthiest people of America
during the Trump administration, they added dramatically to the national debt
which we are now facing.
Having done that, they need to face the responsibility of
paying for it. That is what the debt limit is about. And if we play games with
this, if we delay this, if we have short-term extensions of the national debt,
we run the very risk of a recession in this economy, millions of Americans out
of work and interest rates going even higher, denying people an opportunity to
buy a home or a car. And this economy will be stalled.
We shouldn't play games with the national debt.
BASH: When Joe Biden was vice president, I'm sure you
remember, back in 2011, he was the lead negotiator on negotiations for spending
cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
But you think -- you're saying you think it's different
because of what happened during the Trump years?
DURBIN: I think it's different, not just because of the
Trump years being the origin of much of this debt, but by the new House of
Representatives, 15 ballots, Dana. You were there. You saw it, or at least
witnessed it on television, 15 ballots to choose the speaker.
And he gave the authority to each member of the House to
initiate a vote of no confidence on a daily basis. I mean, this is a House of
Representatives which is under control of the MAGA Republicans at this point.
And I'm fearful that very few constructive things will emerge.
BASH: Before I let you go. I have to ask about the Supreme
Court. You are, of course, Senate Judiciary chairman.
You saw what happened at the court. They announced this week
that they were unable to determine who leaked the draft decision overturning
Roe vs. Wade last year. Clerks had -- and employees had to sign a sworn
affidavit saying that they didn't leak the draft opinion.
The justices -- neither the justices nor their spouses
actually had to sign affidavits. So, do you believe that that was a mistake?
Should they have to do so to figure out where the leak comes -- came from?
DURBIN: Listen, the universe of people who are suspects in
this leak of an opinion of the Supreme Court is really a small universe.
It includes the justices and their families, if they had
access to this opinion, which I assume some of them did. They should have gone
into the -- at least a position of assertions by each one of the justices as to
what they did or did not do when it came to these opinions.
But I find it hard to imagine, with the small group of
people who had access to this opinion, they couldn't come up with more
information.
BASH: Are you going to try, in your capacity as Judiciary
chair?
DURBIN: No, I don't think this is an area where we can go in
with any kind of force and make for a changed result at this point.
BASH: OK. OK.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, thank you so much,
and, I should say, the Senate whip. Thank you so much for joining me this
morning. Appreciate it.
This was not Bill Maher's finest two minutes. But it may have been Bill Barr's finest hour.
When Bill Barr was Attorney General, he usually didn’t come out and directly lie. He would slant the truth, selectively quote documents, and mislead through statements that were technically accurate but highly misleading.
It may have been the finest hour of the former Attorney General because he proved a skillful prevaricator throughout but most notably when talking of the Mueller report. Andrew Weissman, who worked under Special Counsel, Mueller, puts on those bones meat which Mariotti was unable to do with the 64 characters of a tweet. He explains
Here’s the now-familiar backstory: After Barr on March 24,
2019, released a summary of the Mueller report on President Donald Trump’s 2016
campaign and Russia’s interference in that election, special counsel Robert S.
Mueller III sent him a letter complaining that the summary failed to “fully
capture the context, nature, and substance” of his report and its conclusions.
When the report itself came out the next month, it became clear that Barr’s
summary had indeed been misleading in some significant ways. And eventually a
federal judge — a Republican-appointed one, no less — issued a scathing review
of the matter that called Barr’s “candor” and “credibility” into question.
Barr has given media interviews since the end of the Trump
administration. But unlike his appearances on Fox News, Barr’s discussion with
Bill Maher on HBO this weekend paired him with a potentially more critical
host.
In what was otherwise a relatively chummy interview, Maher
did briefly press Barr on the subject of the summary, saying the way he
“mischaracterized” the Mueller report was “shady.”
Barr defended his handling of the matter. But in doing so,
he rolled out some of the most misleading aspects of his summary all over
again.
“I felt that I had to say something to give the bottom line
of what [Mueller] had decided,” Barr said. “Number one, I said that he had
found there was no collusion.”
This isn’t strictly accurate now, just as it wasn’t strictly
accurate back when Barr first said it. In fact, as we came to find out, Mueller
said explicitly in his report that he wasn’t examining the nonlegal concept of
collusion.
“Collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability
found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal
law,” the Mueller report reads. “For those reasons, the Office’s focus in
analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in
federal law.”
Barr’s use of the “no collusion” phrasing was suspect not
just because the report didn’t directly address it, but because it matched
Trump’s own mantra and defined the amorphous term in a way Trump surely
approved of. And it’s arguably even more jarring today, given that a later
bipartisan Senate report, released in August 2020, detailed perhaps the most
significant example to date of a high-ranking Trump campaign aide working with
someone it described as a “Russian intelligence officer.”
As the federal judge noted in his opinion, issued a few
months before that revelation:
Attorney General Barr’s summary failed to indicate that Special
Counsel Mueller “identified multiple contacts — ‘links,’ in the words of the
Appointment Order — between Trump [c]ampaign officials and individuals with
ties to the Russian government” … and that Special Counsel Mueller only
concluded that the investigation did not establish that “these contacts
involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump [c]ampaign
and Russia” … because coordination — the term that appears in the Appointment
Order — “does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law.”
In his interview this weekend, Barr proceeded to defend his
summary of the second portion of Mueller’s report, having to do with whether
Trump obstructed justice during the investigation.
Mueller “states, colon, that he does not find there was
obstruction, but he is not exonerating the president. Okay? I used his exact
language,” Barr said. “Then I said he punted but I’m making the decision, and I
say, based on the report, there was no obstruction. And the discussion about
how there was no obstruction was not me characterizing Mueller, but me stating
my conclusion. So those are the facts.”
Again, the issue here isn’t so much inaccuracy as spin.
Perhaps the main problem with Barr’s initial summary and his
news conference on the day the Mueller report was released is that he elided
the reason Mueller didn’t accuse Trump of obstruction. Barr’s implication was
clearly that Mueller had examined the evidence and could not come to a
conclusion. But Mueller’s report was explicit that he believed it wasn’t his
place to accuse Trump of a crime, regardless of the evidence — because of
long-standing Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president.
Barr did not mention this. And in fact, when asked at the news conference
whether Mueller punted because of that policy, Barr talked around the question.
(This was the other main part of Barr’s summary the judge deemed to be
misleading.)
On Maher’s show, Barr again oversimplified. He pitched the
report as Mueller saying he didn’t “find there was obstruction.” In fact,
Mueller laid out five instances in which he suggested Trump’s conduct appeared
to satisfy the criteria for an obstruction charge. Mueller at one point did say
that “this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime” — but
in the context of an extended discussion about why he felt he wasn’t even
allowed to make such a conclusion.
Instead, Barr focused on the fact that the final
no-obstruction call was his own, which is indeed how it was presented at the
time. But the problem was always about how he described Mueller’s views and
findings and how they fed into Barr’s own.
Four years later — and even after creating some distance
between himself and Trump — Barr seems to still fail to “fully capture the
context, nature, and substance” of the report.
Trump campaign officials in 2016 engaged in extensive contacts with Russia and/or WikiLeaks, did not report them to law enforcement, then lied about to investigators about the contacts. Despite its failings, the Mueller report never denied there was collusion and laid out an extremely strong case that what non-lawyers call "collusion" was present. Bill Barr remains a deeply dishonest and clever individual while Bill Maher had a very bad evening.
