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andrew mccabe
Trump Decries Mueller Probe as 'Attempted Coup' Launched by 'Dirty Cops'
President's comments came just before Attorney General William Barr asserts that "spying did occur" on Trump's 2016 campaign.
Apr 10, 2019
President Donald Trump said Monday that the genesis of the Mueller probe into alleged Russian election interference and obstruction of justice was "an attempted coup" that amounted to treason.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump dismissed the report as "phony" and the result of "an illegal investigation."
"Everything about it was crooked," he said. "It was an illegal investigation" launched by "dirty cops."
"This was an attempted coup. This was an attempted take-down of a president."
"This was an illegal witch hunt," he went on to say. Apparently referring to those behind the report, he said, "what they did was treason."
The characterization of the investigation mirrors that recently given by Fox News host and Islamophobe Jeanine Pirro, though the president himself has used the language before.
Last month he suggested those who helped launch the probe had done "treasonous things" and may face retribution. And, back in February, Trump agreed with right wing Fox News guest Dan Bongino's allegation that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe were trying to carry out "an illegal coup attempt."
Attorney General William Barr, however, chose to not echo the president while he was delivering testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.
Responding to Sen. Jack Reed's (D-R.I.) question about whether he'd also call it a "witchhunt," Barr said, "I'm not going to characterize. It is what it is."
Last month, Barr issued a summary of the report, and said it did not have provide evidence of collusion.
Barr likely curried favor with Trump when he told the Senate committee, "I think spying did occur" on the Trump campaign during the 2016 campaign.
"The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that," he said.
Barr told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report would be made public "within the week."
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Moving Beyond the Mueller Investigation
The Mueller investigation should never have been considered the sole means by which the Trump presidency would be taken to task
Mar 29, 2019
After nearly two years of investigations that spawned dozens of indictments and convictions of a significant number of Donald Trump's close associates and colleagues, the special counsel's inquiry into the 2016 election has come to a close. While the grand jury that Robert Mueller convened is continuing its work, and a number of ongoing investigations have emerged, Mueller's final report has been delivered to the attorney general's office as required. The new AG, William Barr, appears to have done what Trump hoped he would: spin the report's findings as positively as possible. And now America is supposed to simply move on.
As the political battle over making Mueller's report public plays out in the halls of Congress, another war is being fought on the left. Broadly speaking, there have been two schools of thought among liberals and leftists on the special counsel's probe. Many felt that the investigation was a waste of time and that there was no point in placing faith in Mueller using the legal system to end the train wreck of Trump's presidency. Additionally, this faction contended, the special counsel propagated unwarranted anti-Russian views and a new Red Scare. On the other, more centrist end of the spectrum was the idea that Trump is a Russian stooge, bought and paid for by Vladimir Putin, and that the Mueller investigation would save the nation from the treasonous figurehead.
The truth is a bit more complicated.
There is no doubt that Trump had business interests in Russia and was hoping to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. If anything is predictable about Trump, it is that he is driven by money and prestige. Trump has also made no secret of trying to impress Putin, which shouldn't surprise us, given that he has had similar infatuations with other dictatorial figures, such as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. There is also ample evidence that Russia attempted to influence the U.S. elections in 2016, resulting in Mueller's indictments of more than a dozen Russian nationals and, as Barr summarized, the special counsel found "two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election."
If Richard Nixon represented the worst of American presidential hubris once upon a time, Trump has rewritten government's standards for presidential behavior and redrawn the baseline of tolerance to such an extent that the checks and balances we once proudly touted are now meaningless.
The major question that remains is whether Trump knowingly solicited help from Russians to win the presidency. According to his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, Trump knew about damaging information about his election rival that was, per Mueller's assessment, obtained by Russian operatives and released through WikiLeaks (although Cohen admitted he did not have any direct evidence of collusion). But what Mueller found in answer to that question we don't yet know. All we know is the quote that Barr chose to share in his four-page summary of Mueller's report: "[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." And while Trump has gleefully interpreted that to mean "Complete and Total EXONERATION," new polls (here and here) show that the majority of Americans have a different opinion. The only way to clear the air is to release in its entirety the report that was paid for by taxpayers. Indeed, if Trump and his Republican allies are so confident that the report exonerates the president, they should demand its release to prove their point--and most House Republicans apparently agree.
Perhaps the most egregious outcome of the Mueller investigation has been Trump's reaction to the idea of being investigated. Not only did the president, on many occasions, publicly denounce the investigation as a partisan "witch hunt," intended to politically hurt him, he took steps to try to curtail the investigation and install friendly overseers, and made almost no attempt to hide his efforts. As recently as a few weeks ago, he derided his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation, saying, "How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, 'Thanks, Jeff, but I'm not going to take you.' " And indeed, Trump fired Sessions and replaced him with an AG he could count on: William Barr--a man who has made his allegiance to presidential authority and power quite clear. Trump's attacks on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his firing of FBI Director James Comey also illustrated just how badly he wanted to end the investigation.
And yet Mueller reportedly did not find good enough reason to charge the president with obstruction. The specific quote from the report that Barr chose to share publicly was that "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Indeed, reports emerged that Mueller indicated weeks ago to Justice Department officials that there were to be no charges of obstruction.
In an eloquent historical framing of this failure to charge on obstruction, The New York Times' Peter Baker wrote, "Under the theory that Mr. Trump's legal team advanced, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. work for the president and therefore a president can order investigations opened or closed, fire prosecutors, grant pardons or otherwise use his constitutional power even if it seems overtly self-interested or political." Baker added that Mueller's refusal to accuse the president of obstruction even when Trump brazenly threw up numerous rhetorical and political roadblocks means that a president has "almost complete leeway to thwart any effort by federal law enforcement authorities to scrutinize his actions, almost as if he were a king."
The Mueller investigation should never have been considered the sole means by which the Trump presidency would be taken to task. Special counsel regulations are the product of government legislation aimed at exposing nefarious deeds by crooked presidents. They were never meant to address the underlying injustices and rotten political culture that have spawned the terrifyingly abusive executive branch we have today. The corrective to those injustices and that rotten culture lies in the realm of grassroots activism, concerted organizing and meaningful education to create a constructive cultural shift in our nation, so that we never again face a head of state like Trump.
Still, the Mueller investigation should have borne some fruit. If Richard Nixon represented the worst of American presidential hubris once upon a time, Trump has rewritten government's standards for presidential behavior and redrawn the baseline of tolerance to such an extent that the checks and balances we once proudly touted are now meaningless. Perhaps there is some shred of substance in the actual report that we have yet to see. Barring that, what the Mueller debacle shows us is that our current political and legal system is incapable of ensuring that madness never rules the Oval Office.
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How to Avoid a War in Venezuela
When the United States chose to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president – along with a group of Latin American countries – and ban oil trade with the Maduro government, it was betting that the pressure would be sufficient to topple the regime quickly. So, now what?
Feb 25, 2019
One month after Juan Guaido, the speaker of Venezuela's National Assembly, said he was assuming the powers of the Venezuelan presidency, currently held by Nicolas Maduro, the country's political crisis remains far from over. Tensions have escalated to the point that a full-blown civil war--a seemingly implausible scenario just weeks ago--is now becoming increasingly possible. At least four people died and hundreds were injured in violent clashes at Venezuela's borders last weekend as government forces opened fire on an attempt by the opposition to bring aid convoys into the country.
The Maduro regime is authoritarian, militarized, and ready to kill civilians to maintain power. The society is bitterly divided between the revolutionaries inspired by Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, and a large and aggrieved opposition. Each side despises the other. The question is therefore a complex and practical one: what to do to help guide Venezuela away from civil war and toward a peaceful and democratic future?
On this great challenge, US President Donald Trump's administration has gravely miscalculated. When the United States chose to recognize Guaido as Venezuela's president - along with a group of Latin American countries - and ban oil trade with the Maduro government, it was betting that the pressure would be sufficient to topple the regime. As a former senior US official told the Wall Street Journal, "they thought it was a 24-hour operation."
"Venezuela's neighbors and world leaders must put aside the US military option. Venezuela needs mediation leading to new elections, not war."
This type of miscalculation predates the Trump administration. In mid-2011, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must "step aside." Similarly, in 2003, George W. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" shortly after the US invasion of Iraq. All of these cases reflect the arrogance of a superpower that repeatedly overlooks local realities.
Maduro's ability to withstand intense US pressure is not a surprise to close observers of Venezuela's military. The centralized structures of command and control of military intelligence, as well as the personal interests of senior officers who control major chunks of the economy, make it highly unlikely that the army will turn on Maduro. US provocation might create a schism between military commanders and more junior officers, but that would only make the plunge into a bloody civil war more likely. To date, there have been no defections among high-ranking officers with direct control of troops.
Faced with the prospect that regime change will not come quickly, the Trump administration and some parts of Venezuela's opposition have begun seriously considering military action. Echoing language recently used in a speech by Trump, Guaido wrote on Saturday that he would formally request the international community to "keep all options open." Similarly, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who has acted as a self-appointed guru for Trump on Venezuela, warned on Twitter that Maduro's actions had opened the door to "multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago."
Actually, these ideas appear to have been on Trump's mind for some time. As former acting FBI director Andrew G. McCabe revealed recently in his book The Threat, Trump said in a 2017 meeting that he thought the US should be going to war with Venezuela. McCabe quotes Trump as sayin:: "They have all that oil and they're right on our back door." The comments echo Trump's 2011 statement that Obama let himself get "ripped off" by not demanding half of Libya's oil in exchange for US help in overthrowing dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi.
US military interventions are not driven only by economic and business interests. Being tough on Maduro is also highly popular with many Cuban-American and Venezuelan-American voters in Rubio's home state of Florida, which will be a key battleground in the 2020 presidential election.
Advocates of US military intervention regularly cite the cases of Panama and Grenada as precedents for rapid US-led regime change. Yet, in contrast to those two countries, Venezuela has a well-armed military of more than 100,000 soldiers. Of course, the US could defeat the Venezuelan army, but one need not be blind to the atrocities of authoritarian regimes to understand that, as has happened repeatedly in US wars in the Middle East, attempts to overthrow such regimes often end in catastrophe.
Even without military intervention, US sanctions policies, if sustained, are bound to create a famine. By cutting off Venezuela's oil trade with the US and threatening to sanction non-US firms that do business with Venezuela's state-owned oil company, the Trump administration has created one of the most punitive economic sanctions regimes in recent history. But rather than provoking a coup, economically isolating a country that essentially feeds itself with its oil export revenues could lead to mass hunger instead.
Venezuela's neighbors and world leaders must put aside the US military option. Venezuela needs mediation leading to new elections, not war. It also needs an urgent, interim period of political truce in 2019 to end the devastating hyperinflation, restore flows of foodstuffs and medicines, and reconstitute the electoral rolls and institutions for a peaceful and credible election in 2020.
A pragmatic approach might involve the current government continuing to control the army, while technocrats backed by the opposition take control over finances, the central bank, planning, humanitarian relief, health services, and foreign affairs. Both sides would agree to a timeline for a national election in 2020, and to an internationally supervised demilitarization of daily life, with a restoration of civil and political rights and physical security in the country.
The United Nations Security Council should oversee such a solution. Chapter VII of the UN Charter gives the Security Council the mandate to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression" and to take actions to "restore international peace and security." The Security Council is also the right venue pragmatically, as the US, China, and Russia all have financial and political interests in finding a peaceful solution in Venezuela. All three countries could readily agree to a path to elections in 2020. Encouragingly, Pope Francis and the governments of Mexico and Uruguay have also offered to help facilitate mediation to find a peaceful way forward.
Trump and other US leaders say that the time for negotiation has passed. They believe in a short, quick war if necessary. World leaders--and those in Latin American countries first and foremost--should open their eyes to the risks of a devastating war, one that could last for years and spread widely.
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