David Corn's Blog, page 14

House Hearing Spotlights Special Counsel Robert Hur’s Sleazy Assault on Biden

At a House committee hearing convened by Republicans on Tuesday, Robert Hur—the former special counsel who investigated President Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents—became a bit of ping pong ball. Republicans used his report, which declared there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges against Biden, to slam the president as a crook and to deride him as mentally incompetent. But they also pointed to Hur’s decision not to prosecute as a sign that there’s a double-standard in the Justice Department. The Deep State, Republicans asserted, had weaponized the system to protect Biden while simultaneously targeting Donald Trump, who has been indicted for swiping classified information and obstructing justice. (This conspiracy theory ignores the fact Hur is a registered Republican.)

The Democrats, meanwhile, hailed Hur’s report for noting that the Biden case is significantly different from the Trump case. Biden returned documents when first informed they were in his possession, consented to a search of his Delaware home, and cooperated fully with the investigation. Trump allegedly lied about what he had and took steps to hang on to the material and block the inquiry. But the Ds also excoriated Hur for depicting Biden in his report as “a sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The hearing was, of course, not designed to resolve questions and disputes surrounding Hur’s investigation but as a stage for political combat. It cast a bright light on the brazen hypocrisy of Republicans, such as Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. James Comer, who railed against Biden and suggested he should have been indicted but who have had nary a word of rebuke for Trump regarding his alleged pilfering of top-secret records and his subsequent efforts to hide them and impede the investigation. 

The hearing also put Hur on the hot seat for supplying partisan fodder to Trump and the Republicans. 

When the Hur report was released last month, headlines and news stories zeroed in on that one line denigrating Biden’s memory. For Republicans, this was manna from heaven: an official report that backed up their relentless campaign to portray Biden as an out-of-touch dunderhead with diminished cognitive abilities. The GOP went to town, and many media outlets doubled-, tripled, and quadrupled-down on the Biden-is-too-old narrative, paying much less attention to Trump’s slip-ups and rambling sentences. 

Hur had the right to discuss in his report what Biden could and could not remember during his two long interviews with Hur. (Trump did not sit for an interview with Jack Smith, the special counsel handling his case.) There is nothing wrong with a special counsel pointing out what an interviewee did or did not recall and whether there was a particular pattern. Depositions are typically loaded with I-do-not-recalls, as targets and witnesses are routinely told by lawyers to respond in that fashion if they are not absolutely sure about a recollection. When Trump provided written replies to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating the Russian attack on the 2016 election and Trump’s possible obstruction of justice, he repeatedly stated he did not recall the action, meeting, or conversation at hand—and many of these events had occurred within the previous year. Just last month, in assessing a massive fine against Trump for fraud, a New York judge noted that he found Ivanka Trump’s “inconsistent recall, depending on whether she was questioned by [the state AG’s office] or the defense, suspect.”

But with his characterization of Biden as a kindly old fellow with significantly diminished recall, Hur did much more than stick to the facts. He was stating a subjective opinion, and he did so in the form of speculation. This loaded comment came as part of Hur’s explanation of why he would not file charges against Biden, even if the Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president didn’t exist. He noted that a prosecutor, in determining whether to bring a case, had to anticipate the line of defense a suspect would deploy at a trial. Hur wrote:

Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. While he is and must be accountable for his actions-he is, after all, the President of the United States-based on our direct observations of him, Mr. Biden is someone for whom many jurors will want to search for reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Here was Hur predicting that Biden would try to play on jurors’ sympathies by presenting himself as a kindly elder with a shot memory. Would Biden do that? How could Hur know that? This is not a fact. As for stating that Biden appeared to Hur and his associates in this fashion, this characterization is open to dispute. A Washington Post analysis of the entire transcript of Biden’s sessions with Hur and his team concludes, “Biden doesn’t come across as being as absent-minded as Hur has made him out to be.”

During the hearing, Democrats lashed into Hur for tossing this explosive sentence into the nation’s already heated electoral debate. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) accused Hur of mounting a “trash and smear” of Biden, noting that Hur must have been aware that including this description of Biden in the report would cause a detonation. Hur indignantly rejected the notion that “partisan politics” played any role in his report. 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) drilled deep into this. “You chose,” he said to Hur, “a general pejorative reference to the president” that was sure to ignite a political firestorm. Hur clung to his position that “politics” had nothing to do with it. “You can’t be so naive,” Schiff shot back, claiming that Hur had to understand how these words would be “manipulated” by Trump and the Republicans. Hur did not say whether he realized or not what the impact would be. But it is hard to imagine that Hur, who came across as a savvy prosecutor, could have not seen how this observation would become ammunition for the political party of which he is a member. 

Schiff pointed out that under Justice Department rules, prosecutors are “not to prejudice the interests of a subject” who is not indicted. Hur argued that sharing this characterization was necessary for explaining his decision not to recommend a prosecution. Schiff pounded him further, noting Hur had conveyed a “subjective opinion” that was “extremely prejudicial.”

“You were not born yesterday…It was a choice,” Schiff said. 

Hur’s report had declared there was no criminal case against Biden, but with this one line, it became a political indictment of the president. 

During the hearing, Jordan, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and other Republicans hammered away on the issue of Biden’s age and mischaracterized Hur’s report as stating that the only reason he would not bring charges was because of Biden’s poor memory. Hur repeatedly attempted to correct this impression, noting that Biden’s lack of recall was merely one element of his decision. Yet for House Republicans, the hearing was not about accurately examining the finer points of Hur’s report. He had supplied them ammunition, and they were gleefully firing away.

Trump’s Back on Top. This Is Not Fine.

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

One of the most popular internet memes is the cartoon of a dog wearing a bowler and sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in a room engulfed by flames. “This is fine,” the pooch says. The image from comic artist KC Green became a viral sensation a decade ago, used a gazillion times since to convey the message: “This is not fine.” The Super Tuesday primary contests this week yielded one of the biggest not-fine moments in US history: The confirmation that Donald Trump (absent an act of God) will once again be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party. And far too many Americans are that dog, settled calmly within a conflagration and saying, “This is fine.”

The firehose of outrages in the Trump era has run nonstop for nine years of lies, hatred, sleaze, malfeasance, conspiracism, and demagoguery. The shock is gone. So many of us are exhausted. It might be hard to summon up the necessary indignation or fury at the fact that millions of Americans have voted to restore Trump to power—after he plotted to overturn an election and incited insurrectionist violence to overthrow the government. After he was twice impeached (and, in the second impeachment, found guilty by a bipartisan Senate majority that fell short of the two-thirds needed for conviction). After he was indicted twice for conspiring to mount a coup, and once for allegedly swiping top-secret documents, and once for paying hush money to a porn star to cover up an alleged extramarital affair. After civil trials found him guilty of massive business fraud and liable for sexual assault and defamation.

Of course, this is not fine. But the nation’s No. 1 problem is that millions view it as acceptable, if not desirable. The nation is a huge step closer to placing in the White House an authoritarian wannabe who attempted to annihilate the constitutional order and who has openly indicated that if elected he will move to seize greater power by seeking near total control of the civil service, ordering the Justice Department to launch criminal investigations of his political foes, and using the Insurrection Act of 1792—which hands the president unchecked power to deploy the US military on American streets—against domestic opposition. 

Trump’s restoration to the presidency is not preordained. But it does feel as if America is sleepwalking toward autocracy. An entire political party has rolled over for this narcissistic scoundrel. The conservative movement has become his cult. And right-wing media has become cheerleaders for his crusade of grievances, division, resentment, paranoia, and bigotry. All the pro-Trump forces amount to a minority of the nation. Most Democrats and many independents are alarmed by all this. Yet not enough Americans are worried about the peril at hand, and that may allow the authoritarians to slip past the gates.

This is a break-glass moment. Trump’s agenda for his sequel would subvert, if not blow up, democratic institutions and safeguards. His assaults on the republic might not be reversible. Alarm klaxons are not sounding loudly enough.

The New York Times this week offered one possible reason: Many voters have forgotten the tumult of the Trump years. The newspaper put it this way:

More than three years of distance from the daily onslaught has faded, changed—and in some cases, warped—Americans’ memories of events that at the time felt searing. Polling suggests voters’ views on Mr. Trump’s policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a hazy recall of one of the most tumultuous periods in modern politics. Social scientists say that’s unsurprising. In an era of hyper-partisanship, there’s little agreed-upon collective memory, even about events that played out in public.

The Times article observed, “The erosion of time appears to be working in Mr. Trump’s favor, as swing voters base their support on their feelings about the present, not the past.”

This is unsettling given the cataclysmic events of the Trump presidency. Besides its denouement with the Capitol Hill riot, there was the hellish pandemic in which Trump’s mismanagement led to the avoidable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This alone should be a disqualifier for Trump. But even that disaster gets lost in Trump’s foul wash.

The Times listed some of the more odious Trump episodes that now seem forgotten:

The recording of Mr. Trump saying he could grab women by the genitals. Praising Russian intelligence. Crudely disparaging African countries. Separating children from their parents at the Mexican border. Telling children Santa Claus isn’t real. Considering buying Greenland. Suggesting using nuclear weapons to stop a hurricane. Threatening to withhold aid from Ukraine if its president wouldn’t investigate the Biden family. Suggesting Covid patients inject bleach.

It also referenced Trump’s absurd love affair with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the government shutdown Trump caused, his broken promise to have Mexico pay for the border wall, his description of participants at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “very fine people,” and the January 6 riot.

Not surprisingly, this roll call left out much. Remember “shithole countries” and the greenlight Trump gave to Chinese President Xi Jinping for imprisoning Uyghurs in concentration camps? Also not on the list was the original sin of his presidency: Trump aiding and abetting the covert Russian operation that helped elect him president and his subsequent attempt to cover all that up with false claims it was a hoax. The Times won a Pulitzer for its coverage of this story, and it was missing.

During his rather-fine State of the Union address, President Joe Biden slammed Trump for his worst moments—January 6, “bowing” down to Vladimir Putin, bragging about killing Roe v. Wade—and depicted him as a danger to democracy. But even in a speech over an hour, Biden could only cover so much. (You can read my report on Biden’s State of the Union here.)

As I read the Times story, I wondered to what degree the paper of record and other media institutions bear some responsibility for all the forgetting. While the Times and other major outlets have often provided insightful coverage of Trump’s misdeeds, his authoritarian impulses and plans, and the threat he poses, they still often report on him as a conventional politician. I haven’t mounted a statistical analysis, but my hunch is that many of their stories on Trump are horse-race pieces that treat him as a prominent candidate. Such coverage tends to normalize this abnormal politician.

Perhaps this is being too harsh on the NYT. But there have been many outrageous actions from Trump that have not been highlighted in its pages. As I noted in December 2022:

The day after Donald Trump, a former president and the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, called for the “termination” of provisions of the US Constitution governing elections and essentially demanded that he be declared the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post ran a front-page story reporting Trump’s call for ripping up portions of the nation’s founding document. No mention of this even appeared in the Times that day. Trump’s unprecedented and dangerous statement was not deemed a big deal. This raised a question: Have major media players still not figured out how to cover Trump’s extremism?

The media is not the only cause of Trump amnesia. Human nature may be such that many of us are just not able to endlessly remain in a state of outrage and anger. Time can smooth out memories and, in some cases, even trauma. But those who do pay attention, and this includes journalists, are obliged to maintain the focus on the big story: A threat to the republic is upon us, and it will come to pass unless enough Americans decide this is not fine.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

Mother Jones illustration; Gripas Yuri/Abaca/Zuma

Joe Biden Got the Job Done

For over an hour on Thursday night, during the State of the Union address, President Joe Biden energetically presented a vibrant progressive agenda and repeatedly stuck it to Donald Trump. Yes, there were stumbles and linguistic slips, but Biden portrayed a vigor at odds with the caricatures that are constantly promoted by Trump and Biden detractors in the conservative media. Caricatures focusing on his age are then bolstered by seemingly endless coverage by the mainstream media. The president was aggressive from the git-go; Dark Brandon was in the room.

Biden opened strong, calling for congressional support for Ukraine and slamming “my predecessor” for bowing before Russian President Vladimir Putin and telling him to “do whatever the hell you want.” Biden then vowed, “I will not bow down.” Tying the fight against Russia in Ukraine to the battle to protect democracy in the United States, Biden pivoted to the Trump-incited insurrectionist riot on January 6, 2021, which occurred in the same room in which he was speaking. Staring at the Republicans present, Biden proclaimed, “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th.” He called on all in the chamber to say no to political violence. Democrats stood up and cheered; Republicans sat on their hands. Sitting behind the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson rolled his eyes.

In these initial minutes, Biden cornered the Trumpists: They were foes of democracy abroad and at home, a theme he returned to throughout the speech, as he relentlessly pounded “my predecessor.” MP “brags” about killing Roe v. Wade. MP, and “many of you in this chamber,” are “promising” to pass an abortion ban. During the Covid pandemic, MP “failed the most basic duty…the duty to care.” MP wants to end the Affordable Care Act and take away coverage for pre-existing conditions for a hundred million Americans. MP torpedoed the bipartisan immigration bill that included proposals from conservatives to bolster security at the border. MP did nothing on gun safety and after a recent school shooting in Iowa said that we should “get over it” and move forward. 

Biden didn’t merely highlight the differences between himself and King MAGA and his comrades, he shoved it in their faces. After the speech, while delivering a predictably hyperbolic and fear-mongering GOP response, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) derided Biden as a “dithering and diminished leader.” Had she not watched him? Biden’s blistering assault on Trump was vigorous and fierce. When he was heckled by Republicans, he shot back sharp one-liners. (“Oh, you don’t like that bill?” he jeered at Republicans who booed his remarks about the immigration bill that was negotiated by Republicans and then killed by Trump loyalists.) 

Biden still looks and moves like he’s 81 years old, but he was engaged and engaging, bantering with and goading the Republicans. Biden talked policy details like a pro. He was far more cogent than Trump ever is during his rambling rants at campaign rallies. 

As expected, Biden highlighted positive economic indicators and cited a long list of his accomplishments: the infrastructure bill and the 46,000 new projects it has generated (including removing lead pipes and bringing broadband to rural communities), the CHIPS Act, the revival of manufacturing, reducing the price of insulin, tax credits that lower the costs of health care premiums, $12 billion in funding for women’s health research, a reduction the student debt burden for millions, cutting credit card fees, and a wide variety of climate change initiatives. 

The speech also featured a lengthy wish list of progressive proposals: ending Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, lowering the price of prescription drugs and capping the annual costs of such medicines, tax credits for first-time home buyers, increasing affordable housing, establishing universal access to pre-school, increasing Pell grants, raising taxes on billionaires and corporations, upping pay for public school teachers, boosting the minimum wage, enhancing voter rights, protecting transgender rights, banning assault weapons. (There was plenty more!)

Recognizing the rift within the Democratic party over his support of Israel, Biden noted the horrific loss of life in Gaza and told the Israeli government that “humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.” The US military, he said, would lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters for Palestinians. Meanwhile, he vowed to keep working for a ceasefire that would include a return of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. “The only real solution is a two-state solution over time,” he declared, a position at odds with that of the current Israeli government. This is unlikely to calm the protests against him for supporting Israel’s assault in Gaza, but he highlighted the horrendous civilian casualties in Gaza more than he has done in the past. 

The heart (and soul?) of this speech was how Biden differentiated himself from Trump. Trump’s political narrative is dark and full of hate. In his speeches, he depicts America as a land of carnage or, as he recently put it, a “joke.” Poking fun at his age—”I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while”—Biden remarked, “My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values that have defined America. Honesty. Decency. Dignity. Equality. To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor. Now some other people my age see a different story. An American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution. That’s not me.”

Biden offered a stark definition of the choice in 2024. The other guy is all about anger and division, and he endangers democracy overseas and here. He is fixated on identifying and denouncing his enemies, rousing tribalistic ire, and amassing his own power. Biden presents himself as the guy who cares about the country as a whole and has a long to-do list for the benefit of many. And, perhaps best for Biden, at a time when questions about his age and capabilities have assumed a supersized role in the campaign, he showed he can fight. A State of the Union speech is supposed to be about this country. But they’re usually more about the person delivering them—this one, in particular. Biden deftly used this opportunity to demonstrate that while he may have lost a step or two, he still has the desire and the moves—at least, some of them—to take on a wannabe autocrat and perhaps even save American democracy. 

Biden Should Go Dark Brandon at Tonight’s State of the Union

A president only has a few chances during a reelection campaign to command the attention of the many voters who don’t follow the daily ins and outs of American politics. These moments include the acceptance speech at the nominating convention, the occasional Oval Office address (when world events call for one), and the State of the Union. Tonight, President Joe Biden needs to use this annual report to Congress to reinforce an essential message of his campaign: Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. And he ought to do so in a big and bold manner.

Certainly, Biden will sell the accomplishments of his three years in office: his legislation that boosted infrastructure spending, lowered the prices of some prescription medicines (including insulin), spurred the domestic production of computer chips, expanded programs to address climate change, sped the delivery of Covid vaccinations, delivered broadband to rural areas, and established moderate gun safety measures. He will tout his success in leading NATO’s response to Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. He will talk about pressing issues, including the war in Gaza and the crusade against women’s reproductive freedom in the United States. He will point to the positive economic indicators: employment (up!), inflation (down!), consumer confidence (up!). But he cannot let pass the chance to slam Trump in a unique fashion.

Biden will be standing in the House chamber, where three years ago violent insurrectionists attacked the US Congress, assaulting Capitol Hill police officers and sending lawmakers running for safety. They did so at the instigation of Trump, who incited them with his false claim that a conspiracy of Deep Staters, Democrats, the media, voting machine companies, election workers, and others (the Chinese!) had stolen the election from him. In this setting, where marauders ransacked the citadel of democracy, calling for the death of the vice president and shouting threats against the speaker of the House, Biden will have the opportunity to remind voters of that moment and note that the Republicans present in the room have decided that it would be fine to return to power the man responsible for all that.

Biden, no doubt, would like to promote himself as a bipartisan champion, and cite those bills he passed with GOP support. He will surely note that he collaborated with a bipartisan gang of senators to craft an immigration package that was then torpedoed by Republicans in the Senate and House at Trump’s urging. But this is also the time to place political niceties aside and hammer Trump and his cult.

Imagine the drama. Biden staring down GOP legislators and declaring something like: “Many of you, but not all of you, supported Donald Trump’s promotion of a baseless charge that led to violence in this very room and threatened our republic and the peaceful transfer of power. Afterward the Senate Republican leader plainly said, ‘There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.’ He also rightly criticized former President Trump for sitting idly by, watching the riot on television, and taking no action to stop the violence being waged by his supporters. The Republican leader in the House said the same, telling us that President Trump ‘bears responsibility’ for the ‘attack on Congress by mob rioters.'”

Then, after a pause: “And now you guys want to put this man back in office? A guy who caused a riot right here? Are you kidding me?”

Next, Biden could point out that Trump and his supporters have plans for increasing his power should he return to the White House, and those schemes include granting Trump far more control over the civil service, allowing him to order the Justice Department to launch criminal investigations of his political opponents, and using the Insurrection Act of 1782—which hands the president unchecked power to deploy the military on American streets—against any domestic opposition. “So,” Biden might say, “not only do you want to install in the White House a fellow who sent violent MAGA extremists into this building to overturn an election, you want to give him more power. No disrespect intended, but that’s nuts.”

Such talk would grab attention. If Biden could pull this off, it would demonstrate that he indeed has verve and vigor. There are several reasons why the age issue has been tougher for Biden than Trump, but one is that Trump is not afraid to show voters that he’s a mean SOB. In fact, that’s his brand. Though Trump’s speeches are full of verbal slips and trains of thought that run off the rails, the hateful anger he deploys can be seen by some voters as a sign of vitality. Aggression and malice can also be indications of mental decline, but in a public performance they can come across as displays of energy. 

An aggressive, in-your-face move by Biden—one based on a completely accurate accusation—would show voters that he still has it (or, perhaps, enough of it). Bill Clinton once said that in politics it is better to be strong and wrong than weak and right. A flash of this sort of strength could help Biden address those questions about his age. It would have the benefit of being true and highlight one of the sharpest arguments against a Trump restoration. This is the moment to let Dark Brandon be Dark Brandon. 

It Can Happen Here

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis published the novel It Can’t Happen Here, which told the story of fascism triumphing in the United States. The book was a reaction to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and the spread of demagogic populism in the United States by Huey Long, the strongman governor of Louisiana, and Father Charles Coughlin, the wildly popular antisemitic radio preacher. In Lewis’ alternative universe, a politician named Buzz Windrip, who champions “traditional” values and who promises to restore America to greatness, defeats FDR in the presidential election of 1936 and then through a self-coup seizes dictatorial powers. He establishes a paramilitary force to do his bidding, curtails the rights of women and minorities, and locks up dissidents and political foes in concentration camps. Eventually, his reign leads to civil war. It’s a grim tale.

The title of his book was the proper use of irony (the expression of an idea through language that normally means the opposite). While many Americans at the time looked at the failure of democracy in Europe and thought that the United States would be immune to such retrograde forces, Lewis, whose wife, journalist Dorothy Thompson, had reported on developments in Germany (and was the first American journalist to be expelled from the Nazi state), believed otherwise.

America did not succumb to the fascist wave. Long was assassinated. Coughlin was forced off the air. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II led to the end of the America First movement that might have produced a demagogic alternative to Roosevelt. No Buzz Windrip emerged.

Over eight decades later, the ghost of It Can’t Happen Here haunts American politics. Donald Trump has often been compared to Windrip, and various commentators have harkened back to Lewis’ novel to explain the threat Trumpism poses to American democracy.

Looking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (a.k.a. CPAC), recentl held outside Washington, DC, last week, one can wonder if it is indeed time to once again crack open the Lewis novel. At a panel led by Steve Bannon, the convicted (for contempt of Congress) and indicted (for money laundering) top strategist of the MAGA right, Jack Posobiec, a prominent conspiracy theorist of the alt-right, declared, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this right here.” He apparently was referring to the Trumpian vanguard present in the room, and Bannon interjected, “Amen.” Posobiec, an early promoter of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to a dangerous shooting at a Washington, DC, restaurant, added, “All glory is not to government. All glory to God.”

Were they joking? It didn’t sound like it. Other speakers at CPAC demonized those outside the MAGA realm. Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), who’s angling to be Trump’s veep pick, proclaimed, “There are two kinds of people in this country right now. There are people who love America, and there are those who hate America.” Stephen Moore, a Trump adviser, asserted that “one of the most evil left-wing organizations in America is the AARP.” For his part, Trump, at CPAC, brayed that the United States will fall apart if President Joe Biden is reelected. He painted quite the picture. Medicare, Social Security, and health care will “collapse,” along with public education and the economy. The US will be “starved of energy.” Hamas would run wild in American streets. Guns will be confiscated, and the suburbs will be “destroyed.” The stock market will implode. America will be obliterated in a world war.

Trump and his minions were engaged in an orgy of despisal akin to the “Two Minutes of Hate” Orwell imagined in 1984. And Trump was hardly breaking new ground at CPAC. Months ago, he used the fascistic term “vermin” to lambaste his political foes, and more recently he complained that migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the United States.

These latest outbursts provide even more reason to wonder if Lewis’ worries ought to be updated for the present. After all, Trump did plot to retain power illegally and incited violence to do so—and following that he remained the leader of one of the two national parties, has been supported by tens of millions of Americans, and has a good shot at winning the 2024 presidential election. And now he’s deploying classic fascistic rhetoric and fearmongering, and his fellow cultists in the GOP and conservative movement are enthusiastically cheering him on, depicting those who don’t agree with them as enemies of America, and openly threatening democracy and embracing autocracy.

With all this going on, my colleagues at Mother Jones and I picked a good time to launch a new project we’re calling “It Can Happen Here,” which is producing short video reports on the latest signs of creeping authoritarianism and the danger it poses to the American political system. These videos are designed for posting on various social media sites (Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok), where they can serve as bite-size reminders of what’s occurring. Here are the first few we’ve posted:

Here's our latest #ItCanHappenHere video. Please share.pic.twitter.com/kmqgKPhW6y

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) February 23, 2024

Here's the latest #ItCanHappenHere report. Someone has to keep track of the creeping authoritarianism that threatens American democracy. pic.twitter.com/nO84gWpPjL

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) February 13, 2024

"The American Experiment” is facing its biggest stress test yet.@DavidCornDC's new series reveals how seemingly unalike events are part of a more significant trend that points to gearing up for an unprecedented takeover of the executive branch.

Because yes, it CAN happen here. pic.twitter.com/lfO1sn6ZDC

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 9, 2024

We’re still working out some of the bugs and tweaking the formatting. (The producer of the videos, Sam Van Pykeren, is a wizard.) As you can see, each one includes a caveat: We don’t want to hype the threat, but we don’t want to ignore the warning signs. It’s important to not go overboard and come off as a Chicken Little. But let’s not dismiss the real peril the republic faces: A man who plotted to subvert the constitutional order is in a position to regain power, and his crew has been cooking up plans to implement authoritarian policies and to inject Christian Nationalism into the US government, should Trump manage a comeback.

Would Trump go as far as Windrip? He vows to deport millions of people, which would require massive detention camps. He has consistently pledged he would prosecute and imprison his critics and rivals. He has said (jokingly or not) he would act as a dictator only on his first day in office. He has threatened to use the power of government to crush media outlets he doesn’t favor. This is all Windripish. Moreover, throughout MAGA-land, it’s easy to find Trumpists who denigrate democracy and scheme work-arounds to direct elections. And the Alabama Supreme Court justice who last week handed down an opinion stating that fertilized embryos are people—a ruling that imperils in vitro fertilization treatments—has stated that the Bible dictates that conservative Christians ought to rule over government, as well as business, media, and education.

Those who believe in a demographically diverse, socially and culturally tolerant, and democratic America would be fools to turn a blind eye to this tide. For some, warning of fascism might seem hyperbolic. But it appears that Trump and his team do worry about being portrayed as endangering democracy, for they have resorted to assailing Biden as the real threat to democracy. This projection/rubber-and-glue tactic is as good an indication as any that concerns about the wellbeing of American democracy in a Trump 2.0 era are well-founded.

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” This quote is often attributed to Lewis, but there’s no proof that he ever said or wrote that. But the line sounds like it came from Lewis, and it certainly does apply to the present moment. Consequently, I expect we will be busy with our “It Can Happen Here” videos. You’ll be able to see them, if you follow me on Twitter/X (@davidcorndc), Threads (@davidcorn1), Instagram (@davidcorn1), or Facebook. As we say in each video, if we don’t pay close attention to this, it can happen here.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

The Smirnov Affair: MAGA Republicans Are Useful Idiots for Russian Intelligence

In June 2020, a businessman and fixer named Alexander Smirnov, who was also an FBI informant, passed his handler at the bureau an potentially explosive tip: The owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had told him that he had paid $5 million each to Joe Biden and his son Hunter so the elder Biden, then vice president, would stop an investigation into the firm. Last year, that allegation became a key component in the Republican effort to impeach the president. But according to federal prosecutors, it was all a lie. Nine days ago, Smirnov, an Israeli and American citizen who had worked with oligarchs over the years and had been a confidential FBI source for a decade, was indicted for making false statements to federal investigators.

Smirnov’s indictment is a big deal and blows up a huge chunk of the GOP’s impeachment drive. But, more important, his allegedly phony accusation did not occur in a vacuum. It is part of a larger story of the rotten relationship between Russian intelligence and the Trump cosmos.

A year before Smirnov dropped this (presumably counterfeit) dime on the Bidens, Rudy Giuliani—who at the time was Donald Trump’s personal lawyer—took a trip to Ukraine that he publicly said was for the purpose of digging up dirt on the Democratic presidential contender. Giuliani was particularly focused on the unfounded claim that Biden, as veep, had orchestrated the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor to end a probe of Burisma. Giuliani’s agenda included pressing the Ukrainian government to launch investigations that could yield derogatory information about Biden. (These Giuliani machinations would lead to Trump’s first impeachment.) In the following months, Giuliani’s endeavor was aided by Russian operatives spreading disinformation about the Bidens. In fact, Trump’s own intelligence establishment and his Treasury Department would later publicly declare that Russian agents were mounting an operation to discredit Biden to help Trump win reelection. 

It appears likely that Smirnov’s supposedly false statements to the FBI were connected to this covert Kremlin campaign. According to the prosecutors in the Smirnov case, in 2023 he told the FBI he had been in touch with Russian officials. Later, during an interview with the FBI after he was arrested, Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence had been involved in “passing a story” about Hunter, according to court filings.

Add all this up and it looks as if Russia succeeded in inserting an explosive allegation—$10 million in secret payments to the Bidens!—into the MAGA bloodstream and boosted the GOP impeachment crusade against the president. In other words, the Republicans—and all their comrades at Fox and other right-wing media outlets that trumpeted Smirnov’s allegation against the Bidens—have been useful idiots for Moscow.

The Smirnov case has generated plenty of headlines and has caused the leading Republican impeachers—namely, Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan—to look foolish. (Downplaying the revelations about Smirnov, they still insist they have a case.) But it’s important to view the Smirnov affair in this wider context: Republicans and the MAGA right have eagerly participated in Kremlin scheming to undermine Biden.

This Moscow plot has been a matter of public record for years. In February 2020, intelligence officials briefed House lawmakers that Moscow was interfering in the election to assist Trump’s reelection. (This briefing, of course, angered Trump, who had refused to acknowledge that a covert program authorized by Russian leader Vladimir Putin helped him win the White House four years earlier, and he replaced the acting director of national intelligence.) Months later, William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, issued a statement declaring that Russia “is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden…Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”

That was related to Giuliani’s endeavor. The NCSC statement noted that a pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian named Andriy Derkach, the son of a former KGB official, was “spreading claims about corruption…to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.” In September 2020, Derkach was sanctioned by Trump’s Treasury Department, which called him “an active Russian agent for over a decade” and declared he was one of a group of “Russia-linked election interference actors.” Treasury said Derkach had maintained “close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services” and had “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.” Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, remarked, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.” 

And who was working with Derkach to spread the false story that Joe Biden had blocked an investigation of Burisma? Giuliani. At one point, Derkach staged press conferences in Kyiv and played secretly recorded tapes of Biden speaking by phone with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Derkach insisted the recordings supported Giuliani’s allegations about Biden. Yet the tapes revealed no misconduct. This was a disinformation stunt. Ukrainians critical of Russia speculated that the tapes originated with Russian intelligence.

Giuliani never expressed shame for hooking up with a Russian agent. He publicly admitted he was in touch with Derkach and called him “very helpful.” He said that he and Derkach had spoken about Ukraine many times.

It was a bizarre situation. Giuliani, once known as “America’s Mayor,” was in cahoots with a Russian covert operation—and every Republican and Fox News host who amplified the Biden allegations he was peddling were Kremlin helpmates. When Giuliani helped make public the contents of a laptop that Hunter had left behind at a computer repair shop in Delaware, conservative media seized the occasion to boost the false charges about Joe and Hunter Biden being spread by this Russian operation. (The laptop contained explosive material about Hunter, but its contents did not, as the New York Post and other right-wing outlets falsely asserted, prove the conspiracy theory that Biden had intervened to protect Burisma.)

After the 2020 election, more information emerged about Moscow’s undercover attempt to smear Joe Biden. In the final days of the Trump administration, the Treasury Department sanctioned several Derkach associates in Ukraine for disseminating and promoting “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations involving a U.S. political candidate.” These Ukrainians, the Treasury said, “have made repeated public statements to advance disinformation narratives that U.S. government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine. These efforts are consistent with and in support of Derkach’s efforts, acting as an agent of the Russian intelligence services, to influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.”  A State Department statement echoed this declaration, reporting that Derkach and his pals had pushed “malicious narratives” to affect the 2020 contest. (This past November, Ukrainian authorities charged Derkach and two of the other US-sanctioned Ukrainians with treason, contending they had colluded with Russian intelligence to assist Giuliani’s disinformation scheme.)

The bottom line: According to Trump administration officials, the Biden-Burisma allegations were in part (if not wholly) the work of Russian operatives. Yet Trump, the MAGA right, and their media allies have been beating this drum for years, and once the GOP won back the House in 2022, it became impeachment fodder. Then Comer, Jordan, and the rest of their crew embraced Smirnov’s charges, even though they were not substantiated and even though they were in sync with a known Russian disinformation plot that targeted Biden to aid Trump. Moreover, it was highly suspicious that Smirnov shared his allegations with his FBI handler in June 2020—after not mentioning them for years—just when Giuliani and other Trumpers were striving to tar Joe Biden with this false tale. 

But none of that matters for the Party of Trump and its leader. They seem unconcerned about collaborating—colluding?—with a Kremlin operation. After all, it worked for Trump in 2016, and since then he and his cult have demonstrated no reluctance to be exploited by Russia or to exploit Russian disinformation, even as Putin wages a horrendous war in Ukraine and intensifies his repressive and murderous reign at home. The Smirnov case—of which there is much more to learn—shows not only that Trump and the GOP are Putin dupes; they are willing dupes.

RFK Jr. Super-PAC Puts Promoters of Conspiracy Theories on the Payroll

A songwriter who produces rap songs with conspiracy theories about Covid; an academic who has championed debunked and bizarre notions about 9/11, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, the 2020 election, and other public events; a polygraph examiner who wrote a novel tying Russian mobsters and sexual predators who exploit disabled children to a government plot to cover up the tie between vaccines and childhood autism; and the head of an autism activists group who believes pharmaceutical companies, Big Tech, the media, and the government are scheming to acquire total control of humanity—these are some of the people hired as consultants by American Values 2024, the super-PAC that’s supporting the independent presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr.

American Values 2024, which spent $7 million to air a controversial pro-RFK Jr. ad during the recent Super Bowl, was co-founded by Mark Gorton, the chair of a computerized trading firm, and Tony Lyons, the head of Skyhorse Publishing, which has published books by Kennedy that promote conspiracy theories and debunked notions about vaccines and Covid. (One big seller: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.) In 2022, Skyhorse released a book—with a foreword written by Kennedy—that advanced the unsubstantiated claim that Covid vaccinations have led to an epidemic of “sudden deaths.” Lyons’ firm has also put out books by Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, Michael Cohen, and Norman Mailer, as well as several tomes from dirty trickster and Trump-schemer Roger Stone, including Stone’s book claiming that Lyndon Baines Johnson killed John Kennedy. Lyons’ company recently acquired Regnery, a conservative press that has published Donald Trump, Sen. Rand Paul,  Sen. Ted Cruz, and Ann Coulter. The firm proclaims on its website that it “maintains a firm stance against censorship and aims to provide a full spectrum of political, theological, cultural, and philosophical viewpoints to counter the increasingly biased environment in mainstream media.”

Given the close and lucrative relationship connecting Lyons and Skyhorse to Kennedy and his conspiracy-mongering, it may not be surprising that the super-PAC Lyons leads has fierce anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists on its payroll. But it is unusual for a political action committee to be home to such a collection of paranoia peddlers. Here’s a list of several.

John Gilmore

Gilmore is the head of a nonprofit called the Autism Action Network that grew out of a group of parents of “vaccine-injured children” who maintained there was a link between the use of mercury in vaccines and autism—a notion that public health experts have rejected. AAN is listed as a partner on the website of Children’s Health Defense, the well-funded anti-vax nonprofit that Kennedy has led. In 2021, Gilmore’s group and Children’s Health Defense held an online panel discussion titled “The Covid Vaccine on Trial: If You Only Knew…” that featured Kennedy and other anti-vaxxers. That list included Gilmore, and he asserted that Covid vaccines were part of an immense plot mounted by “oligarchs” worth “literally trillions of dollars” to gain control of the world. Gilmore said: “We’re living in extraordinary times, and we’re also living in dangerous times. With the advent of Covid-19, it is obvious to everyone that big pharma, big media, big tech and big government have coalesced into a tightly interlocked oligarchy unprecedented in American history, or world history for that matter. And the oligarchy has insatiable desire for power. It seeks to control everything: What we see, what we say, what we think, what we buy, what happens to our bodies. And they want to force you to inject Covid-19 shots into your body and to your children’s bodies, but we aren’t going to let that happen.”

In January, Gilmore tweeted, “I wonder how much the Mexican cartels are paying the Biden gang to keep the border open?” In another recent X post, he called Covid “a US financed bioweapons project.” According to American Values 2024’s filings with the Federal Election Commission, in 2023 Gilmore received $157,500 from American Values 2024 for what the super-PAC called “management consulting.”

Louis Conte

The father of two children with autism, Conte is a board member of the Autism Action Network and a member of the executive leadership team of HealthChoice, a nonprofit that notes on its website that it “embraces a philosophy that sets a goal of zero vaccine and other medical adverse events.” In 2014, he co-wrote a book with Lyons titled Vaccine Injuries that was released by Skyhorse. That year, Skyhorse also published a novel by Conte, The Autism War. In this book, according to the publisher’s description, a suburban cop and father of a child with autism confronts corrupt government officials, the pharmaceutical industry, Russian gangsters, and sex offenders who prey on disabled children to challenge shadowy forces that “viciously attack those who question vaccine safety.” According to his LinkedIn profile, Conte has been an acquisitions editor at Skyhorse since 2014. He also has run a polygraph examination business. The firm’s website—which recently ceased operating—notes that Conte conducts lie detector tests “for pre-employment, personal matters including infidelity, sex offender post conviction, domestic violence, tenant screening and sexual addiction.” American Values 2024 paid Conte, Lyons’ co-author and employee, $52,200 for research services. 

Billy Kozis

Kozis has worked for Children’s Health Defense. He is a also a rapper who goes by the handle Kozi-19 ; he has written or co-written rap songs that spread conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations. On “I’m Unvaccinated,” he suggests these vaccinations lead to merging “humans with robots.” On “Pushing Poison,” a reggae-ish song by Venice Beach Dub Club that features Kozi-19, the lead singer claims that Covid vaccines cause blood clots and death, that the scientists advocating vaccination believe “there are too many people living in this world,” that vaccination proponents are “merchants of death” who benefit from “physical distress,” and that these people who are “pushing poison” want control of the world. Kozis was paid $47,600 by American Values 2024 last year for social media consulting. 

Mark Crispin Miller

A tenured professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University, Miller has been a cheerleader for a variety of conspiracy theories. (Miller considers the term “conspiracy theory” a “meme” used to “discredit people engaged in really necessary kinds of investigation and inquiry.”) Miller, who once was a regular contributor to Harper’s and The Nation, has been a prominent 9/11 truther, claiming the Bush-Cheney administration allowed the attacks to occur to accrue a political advantage. He has promoted the idea that the horrific Sandy Hook school shooting was faked to increase popular support for gun safety measures. He has also  questioned the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. He insists that the Democrats stole the election from Donald Trump in 2020. As the Chronicle of Higher Education noted in a 2021 article headlined, “The Professor of Paranoia,” Miller “suggests the beheading of the journalist James Foley by ISIS combatants was faked” and “excoriates Black Lives Matter as a CIA-funded operation intended to ‘demonize white people’ in order to ‘foment as much violent division as possible.'”

Naturally, Miller applied his conspiracism to the Covid pandemic, decrying lockdowns as “corona-fascism,” assailing mask mandates as “the most successful fear campaign in world history,” and declaring coronavirus vaccines were a “rushed, inhuman witch’s brew of nanoparticles, human DNA (from fetal cells), and toxic adjuvants.” He also suggested that Covid was part of a covert operation to kill off “useless eaters” in nursing homes. In 2020, one of his students complained Miller was pushing Covid disinformation in the classroom and sending students links to “many far-right and conspiracy websites, such as The Charlie Kirk Show, Zero Hedge,…WorldNetDaily.” This sparked a controversy, with faculty members calling for a review of his conduct. Miller claimed “academic freedom” and sued his colleagues for libel. His lawsuit was dismissed last year. The pro-RFK Jr. super-PAC paid Miller $3,000 in June for “consulting.”

It’s unclear exactly what these four campaign aides have done for American Values 2024. The descriptions provided in the super-PAC’s financial disclosure filings are vague. None of them responded to requests for comments. Asked by Mother Jones to discuss these campaign aides and their work, Lyons replied with a text message: “Our policy is to keep the internal workings, policies and strategies of the super-PAC strictly confidential. All payments are of course public information. I’m happy to discuss the Super Bowl ad or why we support Kennedy, what we like about his policies, how our ballot access initiatives are going etc.”

While Mother Jones was reporting this article, it was contacted by Michael Kane, who identified himself as the grassroots manager for American Values 2024 and an employee of Children’s Health Defense. He attacked Mother Jones‘ coverage of both the anti-vax movement and Russia’s covert operation to help Donald Trump during the 2016 election. He insisted that the terms “anti-vax” and “conspiracy theorist” are “slurs.” (Kane, a founder of the anti-vax group Teachers for Choice, recently published on Instagram a post suggesting that Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are on “#TeamPedophile.”) Mother Jones asked Kane if he could provide details about Gilmore, Conte, Kozis, and Miller. “Send me an email,” he said. Kane did not respond to a subsequent email. Kane was paid at least $52,7000 by American Values 2024 for communications consulting and grassroots organizing in the last five months of 2023, according to FEC records. 

For years, Kennedy has sat atop an empire that disseminates false information and encourages conspiracy theories. And it’s been a profitable enterprise. Children’s Health Defense raised $23.5 million in 2022, and Skyhorse presumably has made millions of dollars publishing his books for readers who reside within Kennedy’s anti-vax cosmos. Now veterans of that world are making money off the Kennedy campaign, as the super-PAC and the campaign each haul in millions of dollars.

Recently, Kennedy hired Del Bigtree, one of most notorious anti-vaxxers, to be his campaign’s communications director. Bigtree produced an anti-vax film that has been debunked. He has said that tycoon John D. Rockefeller, back in the day, tried to “seize control of humanity through the regulation of medicine.” He recently sent a letter to supporters calling the Covid pandemic “the greatest psychological operation the world has ever experienced” and asserted that “in order to stop the globalist’s New World Order, we need a miracle.” He hailed Kennedy as that miracle. Bigtree has also been an election denier. On January 6, 2021, he spoke at a “MAGA Freedom Rally DC,” a block from the Capitol, and declared election machines did not work. In the second half of last year, the Kennedy campaign paid Bigtree’s company, KFP Consulting, $128,550 for communications consulting, according to FEC records.

Conspiracism resides at the center of Kennedy’s politics. As he has steered his paranoia- and misinformation-drenched movement into the political realm, his comrades in conspiracy have joined him for what appears to be a profitable ride. 

Why Trump’s Sleaziest Criminal Case Is So Important

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s indictment-o-rama, the politerati have considered the criminal case filed in New York City against the former president by District Attorney Alvin Bragg to be a sideshow. Though this case has key elements of a bona fide scandal—porn star! hush money! alleged extramarital affair!—pundits and politicos have struck a dismissive attitude toward Trump’s Stormy Daniels mess and the legal peril it poses him. Perhaps because it’s not as weighty a matter as swiping top-secret documents or attempting to overturn an election by subverting the constitutional order of the republic. Also perhaps because this caper involves the less-sexy charge of falsifying business records to hide a possible violation of election law. Bor-ing, right?

Yet on Thursday, a New York City judge kicked aside a Trump motion to cancel the prosecution and set a trial date for March 25. Presuming there are no postponements in this case, this means the first criminal trial of a former president will focus on Trump’s effort to pay off an adult movie actor in the weeks before the 2016 election. Up to now, the presumption was that special counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump would come before a jury first, with Smith’s stolen-documents case, the Georgia RICO case, and the Bragg case lagging behind. But Trump has successfully delayed the two Smith trials with assorted motions and maneuvers, and the Georgia case has hit its own snag, as District Attorney Fani Willis has had to defend herself against the allegation that her romantic relationship with a fellow prosecutor working on the case somehow amounts to a conflict of interest.

It might be fitting that the sleaziest case will go first. But this prosecution ought not to be diminished. It also involves alleged criminal actions taken to influence an election—or prevent an election from being influenced by Daniels’ claim that Trump had a tryst with her at a 2006 charity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe while his wife, Melania, was home with 4-month-old Barron. And here’s an important fact: The Justice Department and a federal court have already declared that a crime occurred in the commission of this $130,000 payoff.

Those of you who might need a refresher course in the Trump-Daniels Affair are fortunate. About a year ago, I published a comprehensive rundown of this nasty business based on court records and public accounts. If you believe possessing a thorough knowledge of all this will impress your friends, you should read this article. But for our purposes now, you only need to recall this: Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging the bribe paid to Daniels, and he was sent to the hoosegow for that and other infractions of the law. That is, a crime did happen. The question now is whether Trump will be held accountable for it.

It’s tough to keep track of all of Trump’s legal woes. But you might remember that when the feds were prosecuting Cohen, they referred to Trump as “Individual-1” in their court filings. In the sentencing memo that the US attorney’s office filed in December 2018 after Cohen pleaded guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution with the Daniels payment and to other unrelated charges, the prosecutors stated that regarding that payoff to Daniels, Cohen “acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.”

Trump’s Justice Department said the hush-money payment was a federal crime, and its prosecutors declared in an official proceeding that Trump had been a co-conspirator and caused this crime to be committed. Yet nothing happened to Trump. Cohen was shipped off to federal prison in upstate New York to serve two and a half years.

This episode raised the question of high-level corruption. Following the resolution of Cohen’s case, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York intended to continue investigating the matter, which could have included further probing Trump’s role. But in his book, Holding the Line, Geoffrey Berman, who served as the US attorney for the Southern District, revealed that Bill Barr, who became attorney general around this time, tried to kill “the ongoing investigation”—and that Barr in a “highly unusual” move suggested that Cohen’s conviction be reversed. Berman wondered if Barr’s goal was “to ensure that the president could not be charged after leaving office.”

It was classic: The boss got off; the lieutenant did the time. Bragg seeks to remedy this unfairness. Legal experts will tell you that the case—with its 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide the $130,000 payment—is not a slam dunk. But it is important. As Norm Eisen, a former Obama White House counsel, puts it, “It is really an election interference case—the gateway drug to what later developed with election interference in 2020.” And in the aftermath of Trump’s $83 million loss in the sexual assault and defamation civil case brought against him by E. Jean Carroll, a trial that showcases Trump’s alleged infidelity could reinforce negative attitudes about his personal conduct.

And there’s more: This is a state prosecution, not a federal affair. Should Trump be convicted in this case, he could not pardon himself if he were to return to the White House. Nor could he order this case shut down were it to last that long due to appeals. One wonders what might happen if Trump is sentenced to prison and he wins the election. Will he defy the New York legal system? Will marshals from the Empire State seek to haul him in and find themselves in a standoff with Secret Service agents? As bizarre as the Trump years have been, they can become wilder.

While it made sense for Smith to go first with a trial related to Trump’s effort to end American democracy, that’s not what’s in the script now. The hush-money case, which forces Americans to once more confront Trump’s scuzziness, ought not to be scoffed at. It reveals so much about the man: his phoniness, his personal dishonesty, his hypocrisy, his corruption. Of his many alleged crimes, it may not be the greatest. But it may be the Trumpiest.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

Joe Biden’s Age Is an Issue. So Is How the Media Covers It.

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

Joe Biden’s age has become a black hole. The gravitational pull of this issue is shaping—or misshaping—the political cosmos. In recent days, it overshadowed Donald Trump’s apparent reckless invitation to Vladimir Putin to invade NATO allies and his full-on use of fascistic rhetoric to attack the Democrats. And there’s a chicken-and-egg dilemma here.

Is Biden’s eight decades truly the paramount issue it seems to be or is this a product of media hype driven by the hit-job report issued by special counsel Robert Hur, a former Trump-appointed US attorney? A front-page New York Times article that sought to examine why Biden’s longevity is more of a problem than Trump’s 79 years pointed out that Trump has not “felt the same blowback.” It noted:

The response suggests profound differences, not only between the two men, but in how they are perceived by the American public, and in what their supporters expect of them—a divide that could play a major role in the coming presidential election.

Yes, the old perception angle. Left out of the equation by the NYT is how each man is portrayed. There is a relationship between public attitudes and media coverage. Obviously, some voters possess a degree of concern over Biden’s age, but that concern can certainly be heightened by how news outfits cover the matter. When the New York Times floods the zone with stories about Biden’s age—as it has done the past few days—is it reflecting popular unease or encouraging it? Probably both. During one of its many reports on the Hur report, CNN asked, “Is Biden’s age now a bigger problem than Trump’s indictments?”

Seriously?

It is definitely newsworthy that Hur’s report included derogatory observations about Biden’s memory. But these gratuitous descriptions were backed up only with snippets of purported evidence, and Hur’s editorializing about Biden’s memory seemed designed to spark the firestorm it did. What was lacking in the spasm of breathless coverage that ensued was context. Which is often the great sin of mainstream media.

To its credit, the Washington Post published a day-after piece that did offer a healthy dash of needed perspective. The article, based on interviews with scientists who study memory, reported:

They noted that the cognitive abilities of Biden and Trump can’t be evaluated based on anecdotal memory lapses. Formal evaluations are needed to truly assess someone’s brain health. But they noted that memory lapses at any age are surprisingly normal and, for most people, aren’t a signal of mental decline.

So forgetting this or that might not indicate a mental slide. But you wouldn’t know that from much of the coverage of the Hur report. Consequently, we don’t really know the full story about the inner workings of either Biden or Trump. Yet we’re all free to look at these two old guys—watch Biden walk stiffly and mistake the country governed by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or witness Trump confuse Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, slur words, and utter gibberish—and render our own judgements.

There’s no denying—or ought to be no denying—that some voters do see Biden as lacking the vim and vigor they want in the leader of the nation, despite his accomplishments. I, too, would have preferred Biden to bid farewell because I assess that his age, fairly or not, is a drag on the Democratic ticket—particularly for younger voters and voters who don’t follow politics as closely as you or I do. Yet if this topic is prioritized in the press above the threat that Trump poses to American democracy (and sensationalized), the national debate is warped and the republic imperiled.

As most Americans agree (according to polls), Trump tried to overturn an election and subvert the constitutional order. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Friday, he referred to the insurrectionist January 6 rioters who have been convicted as “hostages” and complained they are being “unfairly imprisoned” (while QAnon music played in the background). This is a former president and current presidential candidate legitimizing political violence, as well as a bonkers conspiracy theory. That is crazy. Yet this remark has gone largely unnoticed. Like many of Trump’s outrages it draws little more than a shrug from the national press—and no reaction from the leaders of his own party.

Why do Biden’s purported memory lapses receive more ink? Perhaps because it’s easier to spot or understand—and because people have become numb to Trump acting erratically and spouting outlandish stuff, which is basically his brand. The question is how should the media and the politerati process the Biden matter while giving at least equal attention (if not more) to Trump’s own possible cognitive issues and his alleged criminality and dangerous narcissistic authoritarianism? This appears to be a challenge for reporters working within the traditional confines of political reporting.

It’s also a tough subject for Democrats to handle. In the days since Hur’s report was released, numerous people have asked me how the Democrats could replace Biden as their 2024 banner carrier. If prominent Dems called on him to withdraw, wouldn’t that work? And why doesn’t a top Democrat enter the party’s primary contest? (Rep. Dean Phillips doesn’t count.) I don’t know if any of this is under discussion within high-level Democratic circles. I’ve asked a few Democratic sources, and so far no one has told me they’re aware of such talk occurring (though some might not share that information if a conversation of that nature were underway). But I can suss out the difficult issues here.

Senior Democrats—say Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Pelosi—would be highly unlikely to place public pressure on Biden to head home to Delaware unless they were sure that their suggestions would be heeded and that a well-known Democrat other than Vice President Kamala Harris would be willing to leap into the fray. Such a list probably includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (Don’t ask me why so many Democrats are down on Harris. That’s a topic for another day. Let’s just stipulate that they are.) Why would they need this guarantee? Otherwise, they would be out there undermining Biden in a way that would definitely hurt him in November if he’s the nominee. Imagine if this group of Democrats or others publicly state that Biden should step aside and he does not. That declaration would be handily used by Trump and the GOP against Biden. The ads would be devastating.

As for another Democratic contender parachuting in, it’s too late for that. The deadline for getting on the ballot for the Democratic primary in most states has passed. For example, the deadline for California was December 15. Thus, the only non-Biden alternative path forward appears to depend on a Biden withdrawal. Is it possible for Democrats to mount a mutiny at their convention that manages to overturn the rule compelling delegates to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged—which presumably would be Biden? This may be more the terrain of House of Cards. Bottom line: There’s no good mechanism for the Democrats to force Biden into retirement against his will. If he elects to bow out, the party can pick another champion.

In a way, it is indeed absurd to have such a conversation about Biden’s slips (if that’s all they are) when the presumptive GOP nominee represents a clear and present danger. But if the most important task at hand is to prevent a Trump restoration, should the mission for Democrats and progressives be to promote Biden as best they can (while highlighting the Trump threat) or find a way to field a new guy or gal? The first choice means figuring out how to overcome swing voters’ possible worries about Biden’s abilities. (And the Biden campaign and the party ought to try to accurately evaluate how deep these concerns are.) The second choice would require Biden’s assent and, if granted, could spark political chaos.

“Life is unfair,” John Kennedy once said. And it may be unfair that Biden faces political headwinds because of his age and verbal miscues and Trump does not. Still, this should not be ignored; complaining about it will not help Biden and the Democrats. Biden needs to do what he can to address the matter. (Challenge Trump to a bicycle race?) If he can’t offer a measure of reassurance, he ought to consider retirement—perhaps after the primaries—and allow the delegates to the Democratic convention to slug it out over who should be the nominee. He and his supporters have argued that he’s the only Democrat who has demonstrated he can beat Trump. But as time marches on, history does not always repeat.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, has been released in a new and expanded paperback edition. 

Here Are the Best Lines in the Court Decision Blasting Trump’s Immunity Claim

On Tuesday morning, a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, told Donald Trump to get lost. That is, it rejected his claim that as a former president he has total immunity for actions he took while in the White House. Trump had cooked up this argument to challenge the indictment filed against him by special counsel Jack Smith, who hit Trump with four charges for illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election.

The long-awaited 57-page ruling issued by the three-judge panel is not full of fiery rhetoric. But it does contain a few sharp punches aimed at Trump’s contention that a president should possess king-like power. Here are some excerpts.

The court said Trump has no special standing as a former president:

For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.

Trump argued that potential prosecution in the future could chill presidential action. The court said, no way:

Former President Trump argues that criminal liability for former Presidents risks chilling Presidential action while in office and opening the floodgates to meritless and harassing prosecution. These risks do not overcome “the public interest in fair and accurate judicial proceedings,” which “is at its height in the criminal setting.”

The court had a bit of a ha-ha moment, which many legal observers anticipated, when it pointed out that Trump’s lawyers had argued during his last impeachment that his actions related to the 2020 election were not impeachable and that the appropriate venue for judging them would be a courtroom. Gotcha, said the court:

[During] President Trump’s 2021 impeachment proceedings for incitement of insurrection, his counsel argued that instead of post-Presidency impeachment, the appropriate vehicle for “investigation, prosecution, and punishment” is “the article III courts,” as “[w]e have a judicial process” and “an investigative process . . . to which no former officeholder is immune.”

Trump said that without total immunity, former presidents would be mercilessly harassed. Unlikely, said the court, you’re the only president to be federally indicted:

[F]ormer President Trump’s “predictive judgment” of a torrent of politically motivated prosecutions “finds little support in either history or the relatively narrow compass of the issues raised in this particular case,” see Clinton, 520 U.S. at 702, as former President Trump acknowledges that this is the first time since the Founding that a former President has been federally indicted. Weighing these factors, we conclude that the risk that former Presidents will be unduly harassed by meritless federal criminal prosecutions appears slight.

The court noted that Trump’s position made no sense. How could the guy in charge of enforcing the law be above it?

It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity.

What also doesn’t make sense, the court said, was a policy that would allow a president to break laws just to overturn an election and stay in power. That could be the end of democracy:

We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a President has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power—the recognition and implementation of election results. Nor can we sanction his apparent contention that the Executive has carte blanche to violate the rights of individual citizens to vote and to have their votes count.

On the last page of its ruling, the court suggested that Trump’s argument threatens the entire constitutional order and, if adopted, could destroy the republic. 

At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the President beyond the reach of all three Branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the President, the Congress could not legislate, the Executive could not prosecute and the Judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.

Bottom line: Not on our watch, the court declared.