Chris Hedges's Blog, page 97

Ralph Nader: American Seniors Are Being Duped

While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA)—a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit at the expense of enrollees.

Almost one third of all elderly over 65 are enrolled in these numerous, complex MA policies the government pays so much for monthly. The health insurance industry wants more enrollees as they continue to press Congress for more advantages.

Medical Disadvantage would be a more accurate name for the programs, as insurance companies push to corporatize all of Medicare, yet keep the name for the purposes of marketing, deception, and confusion.

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“All this anxiety, dread, and fear, all these arbitrary denials of care—prompted by a pay-or-die commercial profit motive—all these restrictions of what doctors or hospitals you can go to, do not exist in Canada.”

Elderly people enrolled in MA will experience its often merciless denials when they get sick. As hospital expert—attorney, physician, Dr. Fred Hyde put it: “It’s not just what you pay, it’s what you get.”

Start with the cross-subsidy of MA from TM. In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated these overpayments would cost the federal government $157 billion over the coming decade. Obama’s Affordable Care Act started to reduce these subsidies to the giant insurers, but they still amount to many billions of dollars per year.

Add that with Medicare Disadvantage you are restricted to networks of vendors. That restricts your choice for competence and skills, and sometimes, requires you to travel longer distances for treatment. This could mean fewer enrollees will utilize their healthcare and more profits for the insurance companies.

Under Medicare Disadvantage you are subject to all kinds of differing plans, maddening trapdoor fine print, and unclear meaning to the insurers arguing no “medical necessity” when you’re denied care.

The advertisements for Medicare Disadvantage stress that you can sometimes get perks—gym memberships, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, as enticements, but they avoid telling you they are not so ready to cover serious needs like skilled nursing care for critically ill patients.

Under Medicare Disadvantage, there is no Medigap coverage as there is for TM. Co-pays and deductibles can be large. Under a recent Humana Medicare Advantage Plan in Florida, your co-pay for an ambulance is up to $300, up to $100 co-pay for lab services, and another $100 for outpatient x-rays.

A few years ago, UnitedHealthcare corporations dismissed thousands of physicians from their MA networks, sometimes immediately, sometimes telling their patients before telling their physicians.

Dr. Arthur Vogelman, a gastroenterologist, said he received a termination letter in 2013 from UnitedHealthcare. He appealed, documenting his successful treatment of many patients. The company denied his appeal, with no reason, as it had for thousands of network physicians.

Dr. Vogelman called it “an outrage. I have patients in their 80s and 90s who have been with me 20 years, and I’m having to tell them that their insurer won’t pay for them to see me anymore. The worst thing is I can’t even tell them why.” Except that the company wanted more profits.

After a lengthy protest by national and state medical societies in 2013, UnitedHealthcare began to be less aggressively dismissive.

Studies show the main reason MA enrollees return to TM is how badly the corporate insurers treated them when they became sick.

Medicare itself is getting overly complex. But nothing like the ever changing corporate rules, offerings, and restrictions of Medicare Disadvantage. How strange it is that AARP, with its Medigap insurance business run by UnitedHealthcare, doesn’t advise its members to go with the obviously superior Traditional Medicare. AARP reportedly receives a commission of 4.95% for new enrollees on top of the premiums the elderly pay for the Medigap policy from United Healthcare. This money—about seven hundred million dollars a year—is a significant portion of AARP’s overall budget.

AARP responded to my inquiries into their Medicare Advantage policy saying that it does not recommend one plan over another, leaving it to the uninformed or misinformed consumer. That’s one of AARP’s biggest cop-outs—they know the difference.

There is no space here to cover all the bewildering ins and outs of what corporations have done to so-called managed Medicare and managed Medicaid. That task is for full-time reporters. The government does estimate a staggering $60 billion in billing fraud annually just on Medicare—manipulating codes, phantom billing, etc. You need the equivalent of a college-level course just to start figuring out all the supposed offerings and gaps.

Suffice it to say that, in the words of Eleanor Laise, senior editor of Kiplinger’s Retirement Report, “the evidence on health care access and quality decidedly favors original Medicare over Medicare Advantage, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation review of 40 studies published between 2000 and 2014.”

All this anxiety, dread, and fear, all these arbitrary denials of care—prompted by a pay-or-die commercial profit motive—all these restrictions of what doctors or hospitals you can go to, do not exist in Canada. All Canadians have a Medicare card from birth; they have free choice of health care vendors. There are few American-style horror stories there; patients have better outcomes, and almost never even see a bill. The whole universal system costs half per capita of that in the U.S., where over 80 million people are uninsured or underinsured—still! (See singlepayeraction.org, for civic action to rid Americans of this perverse chaos).

YouTube Is Breaking Its Own Rules About State-Sponsored Videos

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In a recent episode of “60 Minutes,” a political talk show broadcast on Russian television, the hosts discussed the case against Maria Butina, the Russian gun activist who was recently released from prison in the U.S. after pleading guilty to conspiracy to act as a foreign agent. One of the co-hosts remarked that while the Americans charged Butina with spying, “all of it turned out to be nonsense.” Sympathetic to this interpretation of events, the studio audience erupted in applause.

The hourlong show — not to be confused with the venerable CBS program — airs weeknights on the state-owned Russia 1 television network, which boasts the second-largest viewership in the country. Episodes can also be watched on YouTube, where the channel has 353,000 subscribers. Under a policy YouTube instituted last year, a box should have appeared beneath the video about Butina, explaining that the program is “funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.” Earlier this week, it didn’t, potentially leading some viewers to mistake its nationalistic commentary for a nonpartisan news report.

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by E.J. Dionne Jr.

Such omissions aren’t uncommon. A review by ProPublica shows that YouTube’s implementation of its policy to flag state-sponsored media channels has been haphazard, giving governments in Russia and elsewhere an opportunity to spread propaganda surreptitiously. The world’s most popular streaming service allowed 57 channels funded by the governments of Iran, Russia, China, Turkey and Qatar, among others, to play videos without labels.

ProPublica found the unlabeled channels by visiting the main pages of state-sponsored broadcasters, such as Russia 1, and following the links to other featured programs, such as “60 Minutes.” Many of the channels discovered by ProPublica played local news, investigative documentaries and political analysis, while others featured sports recaps, singing competitions, flamenco dancing and medical advice.

These unmarked channels suggest that YouTube has failed to prioritize its fight against disinformation, said Jennifer Grygiel, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who studies social media. “It’s a huge issue when people around the world don’t know when they’re interacting with media produced by governments,” Grygiel said. “When corporations like YouTube don’t have mandates in the form of regulation, how they enforce and enact their own policies will be less than stellar.”

After ProPublica presented a list of the videos to YouTube, the company immediately labeled 35 of the 57 government-funded channels, including “60 Minutes.” A YouTube spokesperson said that the company’s efforts to label videos accurately are ongoing, and that it has invested heavily in improving the news experience for viewers.

YouTube decided against labeling 22 channels identified by ProPublica, but it’s not entirely clear why. A YouTube spokesperson said that they didn’t meet its guideline that channels must be owned by “news publishers” in order to be labeled because they carried other types of content. Yet many government-funded news publishers offer a variety of news and non-news programs. For example, China Central Television is the country’s main news network, and videos from its news channels are labeled as “funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government,” but four of the CCTV sports and entertainment channels flagged by ProPublica remain unlabeled. Nor did the company label a handful of Russia-owned talk shows and cultural programs, which discussed news and historical events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall. A YouTube spokesperson declined to clarify what counts as “a news publisher,” who makes that judgment, and how.

YouTube rolled out contextual labels for state-funded media outlets in February 2018, amid criticism that the platform was promoting misinformation, propaganda and conspiracy theories. According to a YouTube spokesperson, a combination of machine learning and human reviewers has “identified and labeled hundreds of these channels.” Other social media platforms are following YouTube’s lead, with Facebook starting to label “state-controlled” media pages and advertisements this month.

YouTube executives touted the additional context as part of the company’s effort to empower viewers to evaluate their news sources. In the wake of the 2016 election, the Google subsidiary had come under fire for facilitating the rise of RT. Formerly known as Russia Today and described by intelligence officials as “the Kremlin’s principal international propaganda outlet,” RT became one of the site’s most-watched news sources. (In 2013, RT was the first news channel on YouTube to reach 1 billion views.)

Nevertheless, several channels from RT escaped labeling. Among them is the channel for “451 Degrees,” a German-language talk show produced by RT, which has recently promoted false conspiracy theories about Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Hong Kong protests, respectively. According to the show, which has 44,700 subscribers and appears to take place in a basement, Merkel was a Stasi collaborator and the protests were engineered by Western powers.

Eleven channels funded by the U.S. government also weren’t labeled, including news reports from Al Hurra, part of the Middle East Broadcasting Network, whose channel has 256,000 subscribers. Videos from the main English-language page for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty carry labels, but related channels promoted by the page, which feature Radio Liberty content in Russian, Bulgarian, Belorussian, Ukrainian and Croatian, did not. YouTube subsequently labeled all of the U.S. channels ProPublica brought to its attention.

The United States Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which oversees the U.S.-funded international broadcasters Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Network that includes Al Hurra, had previously alerted YouTube to the erratic labeling of its content. According to Shawn Powers, USAGM’s chief strategy officer, the agency told YouTube this year that its policy was “not being implemented evenly across our networks and across others.”

In a July 2019 email to Google, which USAGM shared with ProPublica, the agency complained that outlets from North Korea, Iran and China were unlabeled. The Iranian channels were doing “direct messaging on behalf of the regime” and “spreading conspiracy theories,” USAGM said.

YouTube declined to comment on its handling of USAGM’s concerns.

This month, Radio Liberty’s then-unlabeled Russian-language channel posted an hourlong documentary, “Only the Russian People Can Defeat Putin,” featuring interviews with notable dissidents, such as Garry Kasparov. To Americans, Radio Liberty’s reporting may seem uncontroversial, but Russian government mouthpieces have accused the network of advancing a misinformation campaign. Last December, amid rising tensions in Ukraine, the hosts of “60 Minutes” lampooned the American-funded outlet for suggesting that the war in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine was the result of Russian aggression. A commentator on the program, dissenting from the Kremlin’s spin, implored viewers to find out the truth for themselves, shouting, “Open up YouTube!”

Lapses in YouTube’s labeling have been pointed out publicly before. In February 2018, shortly after the labeling began, the Committee to Protect Journalists noticed that out of 37 state-funded public media outlets on YouTube, 18 channels lacked labels. This past June, Reuters reported that 14 Russian-backed YouTube channels with millions of views had not been properly identified as state-sponsored. Following inquiries from Reuters, YouTube subsequently labeled 13 of them.

In August, YouTube’s labeling feature, already available in the U.S., India and much of Western Europe, was introduced in Hong Kong. Some journalists were dismayed that outlets such as the BBC — which is publicly funded but editorially independent — were labeled along with Chinese government stations that denounced the recent anti-government protests. YouTube, for its part, says it doesn’t judge the quality or objectivity of news content. It notes that “the information panel providing publisher context is based on information about the news publisher made available by Wikipedia and other independent third-party sources. It is not a comment by YouTube on the publisher’s or video’s editorial direction, or on a government’s editorial influence.”

That explanation hasn’t satisfied public broadcasters, like PBS and the BBC, which have criticized YouTube for labeling them despite their editorial independence. YouTube describes PBS as an “American public broadcast service” and the BBC as “a British public broadcast service.”

USAGM has objected to YouTube’s labels on the grounds that they conflate editorially independent media, like Voice of America, with outlets like RT.

“Part of me says congratulations to social media platforms for taking this on seriously, and I don’t want to understate how hard it is to get those policies right,” Powers said. “But this mischaracterizes our network, which is editorially independent by law.”

RT isn’t happy either. Anna Belkina, RT’s deputy editor in chief, said that the labels create a double standard. Privately funded channels, Belkina said in an email, are viewed “as somehow superior, agenda-less, unbiased and more legitimate than publicly funded counterparts — solely on the basis of their funding structure, which lets them avoid any labeling whatsoever. The public is being coerced into a biased Google world view, rather than being able to judge content on its merits.”

YouTube’s difficulties are merely the latest example of a global communications platform struggling with the definition of propaganda and the implications of profiting from it. In August, Facebook and Twitter accepted money from Chinese state-run media outlets to feature ads that appeared to discredit the Hong Kong protesters. Following the negative press, Twitter said that it would refuse advertisements from state-media organizations that lacked editorial autonomy.

YouTube says it is redoubling its efforts against disinformation as the 2020 election approaches, in part by promoting more authoritative content in search results and appending links to “credible sources, including Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia” for videos on topics vulnerable to conspiracy theories. To some social media researchers, the labeling mishaps bode ill for these other initiatives. “I think YouTube is doing this right,” Grygiel added. “But they’re not doing this well.”

Linda Kinstler, Moira Weigel, and Katie Zavadski contributed translation services to this report.

Biden Under Fire for Telling Protester to ‘Vote for Trump’

During a campaign event in Greenwood, South Carolina Thursday night, former Vice President Joe Biden told a protestor who confronted him over the Obama administration’s mass deportation policies to “vote for Trump,” prompting outrage from immigrant rights groups and activists.

“You should vote for Trump,” Biden repeated as Carlos Rojas, an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha, urged the former Vice President to depart from the destructive record of the Obama White House and support a moratorium on deportations.

Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, refused to agree to the demand, insisting that he will “prioritize deportations only of people who have committed a felony or a serious crime.”

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Rojas replied that he wants to ensure immigrants living in the United States don’t have to live in fear of deportation and separation from their families.

“You have the power, as a candidate, to actually commit to stop all deportations from day one—and we want to hear you say that,” Rojas said.

Watch the exchange, which quickly went viral on Twitter:

“YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR TRUMP” – @JoeBiden.

An immigrant leader confronted Biden in Greenwood, SC about her fear of ICE. She said it’s hard for the community to trust him because he defends Obama’s deportations.

Then Biden told the Cosecha organizer translating to vote for Trump. pic.twitter.com/A410FSKdiu

— Movimiento Cosecha (@CosechaMovement) November 22, 2019

In a statement (pdf) following the town hall, Rojas said, “By now, it is clear that the immigrant community cannot trust Biden.”

“Any candidate who claims to be against Trump’s raids and family separations needs to commit to a full moratorium on deportations,” Rojas added. “We won’t accept empty promises of immigration reform, while our families are torn apart. ​We cannot allow history to repeat itself.”

Biden was also confronted by climate activists from Friends of the Earth during the Greenwood event, which came a day after the 2020 Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta.

“Please don’t take money from corporations,” said a woman in the audience.

“I do not take money from corporations,” replied Biden, whose campaign last month greenlighted the creation of a super PAC organized by corporate lobbyists who serve clients in multiple major industries, including fossil fuels.

“You listen to Bernie too much, man, it’s not true,” added Biden, referring to rival 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Tonight I and some @foe_us friends got thrown out of a @JoeBiden rally for telling the truth about his record with the @NoFossilMoney pledge. Just before this, they threw out dreamers as the crowd chanted “deport them.” This campaign is not ok, y’all. https://t.co/rml66oaZM6 pic.twitter.com/y1LqU31gkc

— drew hudson (@wealsoherdcats) November 22, 2019

Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager, responded on Twitter that the activists “listen just the right amount.”

“And they are right,” Shakir added.

Former Baltimore Mayor Enters Guilty Pleas in Fraud Case

BALTIMORE — The disgraced former mayor of Baltimore pleaded guilty Thursday to federal conspiracy and tax evasion charges in a case involving sales of her self-published children’s books and exposing once again the depths of corruption in the city.

Catherine Pugh pleaded guilty in federal court in Baltimore to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government and two counts of tax evasion. She pleaded not guilty to seven counts of wire fraud that were included in the indictment unsealed a day earlier.

The case centers on sales of her self-published “Healthy Holly” books to nonprofits and foundations to promote her political career and fund her run for mayor. Pugh, a longtime Democratic politician who was elected mayor in 2016, resigned under pressure in May.

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Pugh faces up to 35 years in prison. U.S. Attorney Robert Hur said she could be sentenced to about five years based on sentencing guidelines, but a judge would make the final determination. Her sentencing is set for Feb. 27.

Pugh only spoke to answer questions from the judge. She mostly rested her face on her hands, occasionally spoke to her attorney and swiveled on her chair.

“I do,” she said after U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow asked her whether she agreed that several facts presented by prosecutors, including how books were shuffled from a city warehouse, were true.

Wearing a pinstriped dark coat and scarf, she silently walked out of the courthouse flanked by attorneys after the hearing and left in a waiting SUV. Defense attorney Steven Silverman declined to comment.

Hur said Pugh’s admissions of guilt “demonstrated that she betrayed the trust placed on her.”

Prosecutors explained how Pugh, helped by her aide Gary Brown Jr., double-sold the illustrated paperbacks and failed to deliver them to institutions they were purchased for, including the Baltimore City Public Schools. They said Pugh used the proceeds to fund straw donations to her mayoral campaign and to renovate a house.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Martin Clarke detailed how the University of Maryland Medical System — one of the state’s largest employers — came to be Pugh’s biggest book customer. The system paid Pugh a total of $500,000 for 100,000 copies that were meant to be distributed to schoolchildren, but about 60,000 of those books were sent to a city warehouse and a Pugh office from where thousands were later removed to give to other customers.

Pugh never delivered the other 40,000 books that the health system purchased for city schools. The system wrote the first check for the books in 2011 and the last one last year.

Pugh, 69, had previously served in the state Senate, where she sat on a committee that funded the medical system. She also sat on the hospital network’s board from 2001 until the scandal erupted in March.

The system described some of the purchases as “grants” in federal filings. Pugh returned the last $100,000 payment and described the deal as a “regrettable mistake” after the scheme was uncovered.

Brown and another city employee, Roslyn Wedington, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government and filing a false tax return. Their sentencing hearing hasn’t been scheduled.

Pugh became Baltimore’s second mayor in less than a decade to step down because of scandal. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon left office in 2010 as part of a plea deal for misappropriating about $500 in gift cards meant for needy families.

The charges against Pugh came as the city has struggled with violent crime and other cases of public corruption, as well as a major police scandal. This is the fifth consecutive year the city has had more than 300 homicides.

Corruption in Baltimore has regularly fed headlines.

State Sen. Nathaniel Oaks, a Democrat, was sentenced in 2018 to three and a half years in prison in a bribery case. This year, former Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa pleaded guilty to three counts of failing to file federal tax returns.

Baltimore also is still grappling with another police scandal: A task force created to get illegal guns off the streets spent years ripping off drug dealers and stealing money from citizens.

Meanwhile, the police department remains under a federal consent decree requiring sweeping reforms. It was authorized in January after the U.S. Justice Department released a scathing report detailing longstanding patterns of racial profiling and excessive force within Baltimore’s police force.

Federal authorities began investigating city police following the April 2015 death of a young black man, Freddie Gray, while in the custody of officers.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, who entered the job in March, has unveiled a plan to lower the high rates of violent crime. He also is seeking to transform a police department that is distrusted by many citizens because of past police misconduct.

In April, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed emergency legislation to overhaul the University of Maryland Medical System’s board of directors, after Pugh’s shadowy book deals became the public face of a wider self-dealing scandal in the system.

“The people of Baltimore, and all Marylanders, should be able to have confidence in the honesty and character of the people they elect to office,” Hogan, a Republican, said Wednesday. “It is completely unacceptable anytime a public official violates the public trust. That’s why I pledged to put an end to business as usual, clean up the mess, and restore integrity in government.”

No Time Like the Present for Mr. Rogers’ Radical Kindness

Who would have figured Fred Rogers for the most effective, fast-acting corrective to the toxic Trump years?

Last year there was Morgan Neville’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and Maxwell King’s bestseller, “The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Mr. Rogers.”

This week, there is Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” framed like an episode of the educator’s PBS show, yet aimed at adults. Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) is both the narrator and costar. The episode’s theme is forgiveness. “Forgive,” Mr. Rogers says. “The decision we make to release a person of our anger for him.”

Understand that this is not a Rogers biography. It is a parable of friendship, however unlikely, that grows between the gentle, trusting TV host and a cynical, suspicious journalist, Tom Junod, here named Lloyd Vogel. (Here is Junod’s 1998 Esquire article, which inspired the film.)

Hanks, quiet and earnest, wears the red cardigan—and it suits him. He deflects Lloyd’s confrontational questions with a beatific smile. Still, Lloyd (Matthew Rhys of “The Americans”) escalates his queries. When Rogers turns the tables to ask Lloyd questions about himself, the journalist is confused, like a child who thinks he’s wielding a real sword before recognizing that it’s an inflatable one. And—sssssssss—it’s losing air.

In time, Lloyd will learn that you don’t bring a sword to a nice fight. And that he would be a happier, more productive, man, spouse and father if he could release his own father (Chris Cooper) from his anger jail.

Heller, director of “Diary of a Teenage Girl” and “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, is no stranger to Lloyd’s bitterness and self-involvement. This is her third movie to feature world-class narcissists. In the spirit of Mr. Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister who chose children as his ministry, she is infinitely forgiving.

Heller uses whimsy the way Fred Rogers used his smile: to get to the essentials, to bring things to a human, graspable scale. The film’s transitions from Manhattan, where Lloyd lives, and Pittsburgh, where Fred lives, are made out of small-scale modeling clay representations of the two cities, resembling something one might encounter on the set of “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” At first, I thought they were cutesy. But because they made me smile, they had the effect of reducing stress hormones in my system, like seeing a waggy-tailed puppy. Before long, I realized the transitions were soothing me in the way that Fred was soothing Lloyd.

“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” is about the small encounters that lead to human change. Mostly it’s about listening and making others feel heard. The acting, blessedly, is life-size.

The intelligent script from Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue is not a portrait of Fred Rogers, but that of his process, involving mindfulness and affirmation.

Several times during the film, and especially at its conclusion, I thought of Maya Angelou’s observation, “At the end of the day people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”

I can report that “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” took me to a place I haven’t been lately, in America or at the movies. It made me feel centered, optimistic and peaceful. It was a beautiful night at the multiplex.

Korean Peninsula Troubles Pose U.S. Security Challenge

HANOI, Vietnam — Defense Secretary Mark Esper is returning from Asia with the U.S. still facing a trio of troubles on the Korean peninsula that pose risks to the national security of the U.S. and one of its most important alliances in the region.

The toughest of these problems, and arguably the most consequential, is North Korea’s refusal to restart negotiations with Washington on eliminating its nuclear weapons.

Esper, who was returning Thursday to Washington, has no direct role in nuclear diplomacy, but he had hoped that his decision to postpone a military flying exercise with South Korea — which North Korea had criticized as provocative —would help nudge the North back to the negotiating table.

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In announcing the postponement in the Thai capital last weekend, Esper called it an “act of goodwill” that would not degrade the combat readiness of U.S. and South Korean air forces. But the North quickly rejected the gesture.

A senior North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, said the U.S. must scrap the military drill completely and abandon its hostility against his country if it wants to see the resumption of the nuclear negotiations.

Esper told reporters Thursday in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, that he was disappointed by the North’s negative response.

“But I don’t regret trying to take the high road, if you will, and keep the door open for peace and diplomacy,” he said.

At stake is the possibility of a return to the level of tension that not long ago pushed both sides toward war.

Esper himself asserted last week that when he became Army secretary in late 2017, “we were on the path to war; it was very clear to me because the Army was making preparations.”

Bruce Bennett, a North Korea analyst at the RAND Corp., a federally funded think-tank, sees a dangerous diplomatic disconnect.

“North Korea has been unwilling to explain what an end to ‘U.S. hostile policy’ means other than to say that the U.S. must no longer treat North Korea as an enemy,” Bennett said in an email exchange this week. “The dozens of U.S. statements saying that the United States does not seek to destroy the regime have not met this North Korean requirement.”

Bennett thinks it’s possible that the North will be satisfied with nothing less than a withdrawal of all 28,500 American troops from South Korea and a dissolution of the U.S.-South Korean defense alliance that emerged from the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea has demanded that the U.S. come up by the end of this year with a mutually acceptable approach to resuming negotiations on eliminating the North’s nuclear weapons and the infrastructure that supports it.

“They may move in a different direction” at that point, Esper said Thursday. “So I think we have to keep pressing forward. It’s too important not to keep trying.”

Complicating that effort is a new fissure between Seoul and Washington. The Trump administration is demanding a five-fold increase in the amount Seoul pays to keep U.S. troops in the country — up from just under $1 billion this year.

Esper is not leading those negotiations, but he said in Seoul last week that South Korea is wealthy enough to pay more. Shortly after that, the talks led by the State Department broke down. Seoul’s view is that Washington is making an unreasonable demand for billions more in payments.

Esper dismissed reports that the U.S. is threatening a partial troop withdrawal if Seoul does not meet Washington’s payment demands.

“We’re not threatening allies over this,” he said.

The third rift in relations that Esper encountered in Seoul is a standoff between South Korea and Japan — both U.S. defense treaty allies. Seoul says it will withdraw this week from an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, despite U.S. urgings that they settle their differences.

In Seoul, Esper told his Japanese and South Korean counterparts privately and in public that their dispute was only benefiting North Korea and China. But his words seemed to make no difference.

EPA Prosecutions of Polluters Approach Quarter-Century Lows

WASHINGTON — Criminal prosecution and convictions of polluters have fallen to quarter-century lows under the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, deepening three years of overall enforcement declines, according to Justice Department statistics.

And while the administration says it’s focusing on quality over quantity in pollution cases, using its enforcement resources to go after the biggest and worst offenders, an Associated Press analysis found little sign of that so far in court cases closed in 2019.

The criminal pollution cases initiated, and won this year, under the Trump administration, appear to be smaller one-offs, such as an Alaska fishing captain who let a reality TV show crew film his cheering crew as it dumped waste overboard into an Alaskan strait in 2017.

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EPA spokeswoman Melissa Sullivan said Thursday it was “not unusual” for complex criminal cases to take years to move from initial investigations to filing of charges. Sullivan said that some statistics, such as a one-year rise from 107 to 133 in total number of defendants charged in criminal cases, were up in 2019.

“We have devoted substantial resources to larger, more complex investigations with more benefit to the environment and public health,” Justice Department spokesman Wyn Horbuckle said in a statement. “Such cases have resulted in billions of dollars in criminal penalties.”

But an environmental watchdog group and a former regional EPA criminal enforcement official said three years of falling enforcement numbers show the Trump administration gutting criminal investigations and prosecutions at the agency.

“These numbers in the last three years, what they show is the dismantling, intelligently, of this program,” said Michael Hubbard, a former special agent in charge for the EPA’s criminal investigation division in New England.

It’s the Trump administration “getting away with increasing the risk to health and the environment at the benefit of corporate officials who want to make more money,” Hubbard said.

“By any recognized metric, the odds of corporate polluters facing criminal consequences have reached a modern low,” stated Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA enforcement attorney and executive director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility watchdog and advocacy group. “Every year under Trump has seen a further enforcement decline.”

The Trump EPA says its emphasis is on working with polluters to bring them into compliance with public health and environmental protections, but says it prosecutes when necessary.

Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse compiled the records from Justice Department and EPA cases for fiscal year 2019, which ended in September.

The EPA sent 190 cases to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution, the figures show. That’s up from 166 last year, the second year of the Trump administration, but otherwise the lowest since George H.W. Bush’s first term in 1990.

The Justice Department filed 75 EPA prosecutions in fiscal year 2019. That’s the lowest number since 1994, and down from a high of 198 in Bill Clinton’s second term.

Justice Department investigators won 60 federal convictions on pollution cases referred by the EPA, the fewest since 1995, according to the Syracuse University figures.

Convictions and settlements and sentences against big corporate offenders for fiscal year 2019 largely involved cases originated in the Obama administration but finished by the Trump administration, as with a $1.95 million penalty against Hyundai Construction Equipment Americas Inc. for importing diesel engines that fell short of U.S. clean-air requirements, the EPA’s summary of 2019 convictions and resolutions show. EPA started that investigation in 2015 after a whistleblower tip.

The EPA said some other enforcement categories showed gains for the year. That included 170 possible criminal cases opened by the EPA, up from 129 last year.

Criminal fines increased from $28 million in 2018 to $45 million, the agency said.

Conservation groups and former EPA officials, including Hubbard, say Trump administration cuts in enforcement agents at EPA are one of the biggest reasons for the criminal enforcement declines.

“It’s always resource-driven,” Hubbard said.

Even if the EPA is opting to focus its enforcement on the biggest cases it can manage, for enforcement officials, “if I got nobody in the store, I can’t sell any product,” Hubbard said.

The EPA had 145 investigative agents on staff as of February, down from 175 in 2012, Whitehouse, the PEER chief, said.

Scott Pruitt, Trump’s first EPA chief until scandals forced him from office, frequently pressed investigative agents into bodyguard duty for his unusual 24-hour protection detail.

Sullivan, the EPA spokeswoman, said the agency has 158 agents on staff now, and is hiring more.

The Trump EPA says it is putting more emphasis than previous administrations on working with polluters to bring them into compliance with public health and environmental protections but also prosecutes when necessary.

The administration’s argument that it’s focusing on getting the really big offenders is similar to that of the Obama administration, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director of the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

But even if big new criminal cases start popping up in the future to prove environmental investigators have been busy under the Trump administration, it might not be the safest policy, Hartl said.

If you’re a small- to average “polluter then you’ll go, ‘Oh, I’m just a small-time polluter,’’’ Hartl said. “What’s your incentive?” he asked. “’They won’t come after me.”

Trump’s Criminality Can Galvanize the Left

What follows is a conversation between journalist Jeet Heer and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

GORDON SONDLAND: I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question. Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously with regard to the requested White House call and The White House meeting? The answer is yes.

MARC STEINER: And of course, that was Ambassador Sondland. And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News. Good to have you with us.

There’s more impeachment proceeding than any of us can really watch or follow; however, it is on and we will follow and cover it. And we’ll talk about what happened yesterday with Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Jennifer Williams testifying. But we’ll start by looking at what Ambassador Sondland had to say today and this morning, and then probe what the impeachment process really means politically given what the polls tell us about the relative intransience of the American voting public. Let me welcome back national correspondent for The Nation Jeet Heer. Jeet, good to have you back with this.

JEET HEER: Good to be here.

MARC STEINER: So let’s do start. We should start here with Sondland, as I said. So let’s watch these clips of what Sondland did have to say and kind of probe a little bit what just happened this morning and how significant, if at all, it is.

GORDON SONDLAND: In July and August of 2019 we learned that The White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid. I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but I never received a clear answer. Still haven’t to this day. In the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations of the 2016 elections and Burisma as Mr. Giuliani had demanded.

MARC STEINER: So even though he never said this was a quid pro quo, and that seems to be a lot of things hinging on. He did kind of say that he opposed this and he’s kind of backpedaling. We’ve seen already that Trump has tweeted or said today attacking him as well already. I don’t know how much longer he’ll have this job.

JEET HEER: Because I think the thing to bear in mind is this is a real Trump supporter. He gave a million dollars to Trump and he got–as is common in America–an ambassadorship, an important ambassadorship. And he is basically saying he was involved in all of this and he’s in the thick of it and his understanding is that there was a quid pro quo. Now you can say, well he also says that those words were used. But I mean, that’s like saying like, “Well, the godfather just said, ‘I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.’” He was like, “I’m just making an offer.”

MARC STEINER: Well this is almost like I was thinking that if that if Trump actually knew any civil rights gospel songs, which he probably doesn’t yet, he’d be singing Which Side are You On Boy, trying to figure out what’s going on here.

JEET HEER: It’s pretty clear now that he’s on Sondland’s side; that Sondland wants to try to get out of this. He realizes he’s in a mess and what he’s trying to do is give as much information, but also try to not implicate himself. And that’s why he’s saying he wasn’t told this or that. I think there’s some of the stuff that Sondland’s saying that is actually not very credible. He’s saying that he wasn’t aware until late that it involved Biden, but if you follow the news at all, everybody knew it involved Biden.

MARC STEINER: So do you think some of the mainstream press has kind of put this as a John Dean moment when he turned on a Richard Nixon that he was a linchpin to get the impeachment process moving with the Nixon? Some people were saying this is that, I’m not quite sure it is.

JEET HEER: Yeah. Well it is that in the sense that this is somebody who was on the president’s side was giving a huge credible, basically credible testimony about the corruption. The difference with John Dean is that it was a very different country. And with Dean the game was up because Republicans in Congress and the Senate were willing to listen and convert. I actually think that there’s every evidence so far that this won’t happen, that he will not be a linchpin because the Republicans will stick with Trump.

MARC STEINER: So let’s take a look at this other piece with Sondland and talking about the relationship with Giuliani.

GORDON SONDLAND: Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States. We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt. If we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose a very important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president’s orders.

MARC STEINER: “We follow the president’s orders,” he says, Jeet. Your thoughts on that. But also when you look at it Sondland’s testimony,I think as you said, he’s kind of running scared and wants to back away and not be caught up in this himself. But for Democrats, Republicans, is he a hostile witness? Is he a friendly witness? What role is he playing here?

JEET HEER: Well, I mean I think that the thing is I think the Republicans thought until this morning that he was going to be a friendly witness for them. And if you look at Devin Nunes’s opening remarks, you’ll say that “Whoa, you’re warning that this guy’s going to be smeared because he’s going to be defending the president.” And you know, that is not how it turned out. And so this was very dramatic for that reason. I actually think that he Sondland–and probably under the advice of his lawyers–has decided that he has to start giving people up. And Giuliani is the most convenient person for people to give up or many reasons. And there’s a real indication… And not just Sondland, but also Republicans themselves. If you look at the question of the Republicans, they want to try to make this all about a rogue element, which was “Giuliani was pushing us,” as if Giuliani was not following Trumps orders.

MARC STEINER: So I’m going to switch to the essay for a moment as we kind of wrap this up and kind of bring it to where we are today. This is some of the testimony from Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Let’s take a look at this.

ALEXANDER VINDMAN: Fully anticipated the Ukrainians would raise the issue of a meeting between the presidents. Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland start to speak about the requirement that Ukraine delivers specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate, and it had nothing to do with national security.

JIM JORDAN: Your former boss, Mr. Morrison, is going to be sitting right where you’re sitting, and he’s going to testify. And I want to give you a chance. I think we’re bringing you a copy. I want to give you a chance to respond to some of the things Mr. Morrison said in his deposition. Mr. Morrison said this, “I had concerns about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman’s judgment and others had raised concerns about Alex’s judgment.” When Mr. Morris was asked by Mr. Castor, “Did anyone ever bring concerns to you that they believe Colonel Vindman may have leaked something?” Mr. Morrison replied, “Yes.” So your boss had concerns about your judgment; your former boss, Dr. Hill, had concerns about your judgment; your colleagues had concerns about your judgment and your colleagues felt that there were times when you leaked information. Any idea why they have those impressions, Colonel Vindman?

ALEXANDER VINDMAN: Mr. Jordan, I would say that I can’t say why Mr. Morrison questioned my judgment. We had only recently started working together. He wasn’t there very long, and we were just trying to figure out our relationship. Maybe it was different cultures, military culture versus–

JIM JORDAN: And Colonel, you never leaked information?

ALEXANDER VINDMAN: I never did. Never would. That is preposterous that I would do that.

MARC STEINER: So we got pretty kind of vociferous with Vindman yesterday and Lieutenant Williams as well. So when you look at that testimony and what happened today, and then again when you look at what Vindman also said yesterday when he said, “In retrospect I should have seen that connection that you meant between Burisma and Biden differently. And had I done so, I would have raised my own objection.” So let’s talk a bit about the importance just in terms of looking at this impeachment process, how yesterday fits into today and what that saying to the American people.

JEET HEER: Sure. Well, as I mentioned, Sondland is the sort of voice of a Trump appointee and Vindman is really the sort of voice of the professional­–the nonpartisan government National Security Bureaucracy. Now I think there’s reasons to question that bureaucracy in the sense that they have their own agenda and he’s really wanted this alliance with Ukraine; and we can question that. But the attacks that were being launched on Vindman were very scurrilous. And you know, they were sort of questioning his patriotism and suggesting he has a dual loyalty to Ukraine. I don’t think the Republicans were playing a very good hand there, because one could question the advice the military gives, and a president has a right to reject the advice that National Security Bureaucracy gives. To question their patriotism without evidence, that seems like very scurrilous.

MARC STEINER: So let’s take a look at a couple of things here politically before we close, and how we think progressives and others have to respond to what’s going on. We’ve seen and we’ll have a clip here in just a minute of people kind of pushing this, the anti-Russian angle, and “we have to support Ukraine in their struggle with Russia.” We’ll look at that. So when you look at this in the moment, think about how progressives proceed without falling into the hands of any others who want to wage this campaign against Russia and to support widening our military influence internationally. And that’s a real question many people have. This is a very tricky line to walk right here at the moment. Let’s take a look at this.

ADAM SCHIFF: In 2014, Russia invaded the United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire.

GEORGE KENT: For the past five years, we have focused our united efforts across the Atlantic to support Ukraine and its fight for the cause of freedom and the rebirth of a country free from Russian dominion and the warp legacy of Soviet institutions and post-Soviet behavior; a Europe truly whole, free, and at peace. Our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace.

MARC STEINER: So let’s wrestle with this for a moment. I want to wrestle with this. Because part of what’s fueling this is the military establishment and the diplomatic establishment, and certain parts of the folks who are behind the Democratic Party as well, really in a quandary about how to deal with Trump and a quandary about what they’re doing to their established order–how they work things out internationally and nationally. So how do you respond to that? Because you can fall into it going, “Yes, yes, yes! Go get them!” Or you can start saying, “Well let’s have some nuance here and talk about why these impeachments here are so important or not and not fall into this trap.”

JEET HEER: What is it that Trump did wrong? What Trump did wrong is not that he disregarded the National Security establishment. Obama did the same thing. They had wanted him to send military aid to Ukraine in 2014-2015 and he said, “No,” he would send humanitarian aid but not military aid. And nobody would want to impeach Obama for that. The president has a right to do that. But Trump’s actions were not based on some sort of strategy. They’re based on a desire smear a political rival. And a president has a right to make foreign policy, but a president does not have the right to use his office and the power of the presidency to smear a rival. It’s a misuse–abuse of power. So I think it’s very important for the left to really emphasize a point. The criminality of Trump is the abuse of office, and this is not about Ukraine policy. You can completely reject the mainstream Ukraine policy that the establishment is pushing and still think that Trump should be impeached.

MARC STEINER: So, but what does this politically mean as we kind of conclude this? What does all this mean politically? If you look at this latest Marist NPR poll that came out that they had on Morning Edition–I think it was this morning and yesterday as well–and it shows a very divided America where people are already taking these hard positions. If you look at that poll, you can see that overall only 40% of the people say that they would even change their minds. Maybe they might change their minds. Democrats has only 25, Republicans only 24, Independents is 39; and the divide is very deep here, as you can see. So politically when you are confronting the most blatantly white nationalist regime ever in the modern history of The United States… Politically, what’s this mean for us? Are we getting so sucked into the impeachment we’re forgetting what it means to organize about the future of America?

JEET HEER: Yeah. Well, I think that the danger is that we let the impeachment belong to the establishment, and I actually think that this is a real argument for left organizations to try and take over the impeachment themselves, to try to use it to make it this issue about Trump’s criminality because he’s a white nationalist, but he’s also a white nationalist criminal. And I mean, it’s true that most people are on partisan lines, but there is a segment of the population–like about 20% to 30%–that’s kind of convertible. And the important thing is that people who hate Trump are the majority. And you have to mobilize those people and you have to use the weapons that you have on hand. And I think in this case it’s a very legitimate weapon that you know, this guy’s a criminal. And to emphasize his criminality is a good wedge to get into everything else that’s wrong with them.

MARC STEINER: And I don’t disagree with the fact that I think he’s acts in very criminal ways and he always has before he was President of The United States. But I mean, when you look at this and you look at the Democrats and what we talked about earlier, defending Ukraine–and nobody’s really talking about defending Ukraine at the moment–that was being run by fascists, literal fascists, people who sympathize with the Nazis, were okay with killing all the–

JEET HEER: I mean, the problem is of course it’s a Democratic establishment policy who have chosen the grounds for impeachment. And they chose the grounds that are the most favorable to wanting to maintain the status quo. But the fact that the president is a criminal is not a minor matter, and it raises all sorts of issues with the legitimacy of the regime. And I think that for the left, there’s a real opportunity here to use this to educate the population and to organize and educate at the same time.

The attack that Trump was making was really an attack on American democracy. I mean, one could be completely indifferent, or see Ukraine and want a different European policy and still think that what Trump was doing was to try to undermine American democracy. And the that goes to the heart of that issue of white nationalism that you talk about. Trump represents a minority movement in America. He got less votes than his rival and the Republicans get less votes in the Senate; they get less votes in the house. But because of the American system, they’re overrepresented. So to talk about how these people could only stay in power by committing crimes is a way of highlighting that this is an illegitimate minority movement that is trying to thwart American democracy.

MARC STEINER: Well, Jeet Heer, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you. I appreciate your perspective always, and we look forward to many more conversations around this and other things. Thank you so much for your time today.

JEET HEER: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

MARC STEINER: Always good to have you. And I’m Marc Steiner here for The Real News Network. Thank you all for joining us. Please let us know what you think. Take care.

‘Corruption’ Probe Meant Bidens, Impeachment Witnesses Say

WASHINGTON — Key impeachment witnesses said Thursday it was clear that President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was pursuing political investigations of Democrats in Ukraine, in testimony undercutting Trump’s argument that he only wanted to root out Ukrainian corruption.

State Department official David Holmes said he understood that Giuliani’s push to investigate “Burisma,” the Ukrainian gas company where Joe Biden’s son Hunter served on the board, was code for the former vice president and his family. Former White House adviser Fiona Hill warned that Giuliani had been making “explosive” and “incendiary” claims.

“He was clearly pushing forward issues and ideas that would, you know, probably come back to haunt us and in fact,” Hill testified. “I think that’s where we are today.”

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Testimony from Hill and Holmes capped an intense week in the historic inquiry and reinforced its central complaint: that Trump used foreign policy for political aims, setting off alarms across the U.S. national security and foreign policy apparatus.

Democrats allege Trump was relying on the discredited idea that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election as he sought investigations in return for two things: U.S. military aid that Ukraine needed to fend off Russian aggression, and a White House visit the new Ukrainian president wanted that would demonstrate his backing from the West.

Hill, a former aide to then-national security adviser John Bolton, sternly warned Republican lawmakers — and implicitly Trump — to quit pushing the “fictional” narrative that Ukraine, rather than Russia, interfered in U.S. elections as an impeachment defense. Trump has told others testifying in the inquiry that Ukraine tried to “take me down” in the 2016 election. Republicans launched their questioning Thursday reviving those theories.

Hill declared: “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternative narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

Her testimony also raised fresh questions whether Bolton, who has yet to defy White House orders for officials not to testify, would appear in the inquiry. In what was seen as a nudge to her former boss, Hill said those with information have a “moral obligation to provide it.”

The landmark House impeachment inquiry was sparked by a July 25 phone call, in which Trump asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for investigations into Biden and the Democratic National Committee. A still-anonymous whistleblower’s official government complaint about that call led the House to launch the current probe.

Hill and Holmes both filled in gaps in previous testimony and poked holes in the accounts of other witnesses. They were particularly adamant that efforts by Trump and Giuliani to investigate the Burisma company were well-known by officials working on Ukraine to be the equivalent of probing the Bidens. That runs counter to earlier witnesses Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt Volker, the former Ukraine special envoy, who insisted they had no idea there was a connection.

Holmes, a late addition to the schedule, also undercut some of Sondland’s recollections about an extraordinary phone call between the ambassador and Trump this summer. Holmes was having lunch with Sondland in Kyiv and said he could overhear Trump ask about “investigations” during a “colorful” phone call with Sondland.

After the phone call, Holmes said Sondland told him Trump cared about “big stuff,” including the investigation into the “Biden investigation.” Sondland said he didn’t recall raising the Bidens.

During Thursday’s testimony, the president tweeted that while his own hearing is “great” he’s never been able to understand another person’s conversation that wasn’t on speaker. “Try it,” he suggested.

Holmes also testified about his growing concern as Giuliani orchestrated Ukraine policy outside official diplomatic channels. It was a concern shared by others, he testified.

“My recollection is that Ambassador Sondland stated, “Every time Rudy gets involved he goes and f—s everything up.”

Holmes testified that he grew alarmed throughout the year, watching as Giuliani was “making frequent public statements pushing for Ukraine to investigate interference in the 2016 election and issues related to Burisma and the Bidens.”

Hill left the White House before the July phone call that sparked the impeachment probe, though she was part of other key meetings and conversations related to Ukraine policy. She opened her testimony with an impassioned plea for Republicans to stop peddling an alternative theory of 2016 election interference and helping Russia sow divisions in the United States.

“This is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for,” she said about the currently American political climate. “They would pit one side of our electorate against the others.”

She warned that Russia is gearing up to intervene again in the 2020 U.S. election. “We are running out of time to stop them,” she testified.

Trump — as well as Republicans on the panel, including ranking GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of California — continue to advance the idea that Russian interference was a “hoax,” and that it was Ukraine that was trying to swing the election, to stop Trump’s presidency.

“That is the Democrats’ pitiful legacy,” Nunes said in his opening remarks. He called it all part of the same effort, from “the Russia hoax” to the “shoddy sequel of the impeachment inquiry.

Hill, who became a U.S. citizen in 2002, told lawmakers she was the daughter of a coal miner in the northeast of England, noting it is the same region George Washington’s ancestors came from.

Hill said Bolton told her separately he didn’t want to be involved in any “drug deal” Sondland and Trump’s acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney were cooking up over the Ukrainian investigations Trump wanted.

In Moscow on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was pleased that the “political battles” in Washington had overtaken the Russia allegations, which are supported by the U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Thank God,” Putin said, “no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore. Now they’re accusing Ukraine.”

___

Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Laurie Kellman, Zeke Miller, Matthew Daly and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

Prosecutors Zero in on Trump Foundation’s CFO

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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.’s criminal investigation of the Trump Organization is scrutinizing the actions of one of the president’s oldest and most trusted deputies, ProPublica has learned.

The focus on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, a 72-year-old accountant now running the business with Trump’s two adult sons, stems from his involvement in arranging a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump (which Trump has denied).

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, or SDNY, contended that the Trump Organization had improperly booked reimbursements for the hush-money scheme as “legal expenses,” with the aid of sham invoices. They granted legal immunity to Weisselberg and later closed their 18-month investigation with the guilty plea of one Trump associate, Michael Cohen. But Weisselberg’s immunity deal applied only to federal proceedings.

Now Vance’s state grand jury is examining whether Weisselberg, among others — and even the Trump Organization — should face state criminal charges for falsification of business records, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Neither Weisselberg nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment. Vance, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

A handful of lawyers and investigators from Vance’s office, led by Chris Conroy, chief of the DA’s major economic crimes bureau, traveled to the federal minimum-security prison camp in Otisville, New York, on Oct. 30 to meet for the third time with Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter. Much of the discussion involved Weisselberg.

Neither the president nor his sons appear to be in Vance’s crosshairs at this point in the investigation, which is at an early stage, according to the source familiar with the investigation. But, the source added, New York prosecutors are far from ruling that out.

The investigation is playing out amid an unusually public conflict between the offices of the Manhattan DA and the U.S. attorney, which are headquartered across the street from each other in Lower Manhattan.

Vance originally launched his investigation back in August 2018, after Cohen’s guilty plea and public testimony revealed the Trump Organization’s deceits.

But when one of Vance’s staffers placed a courtesy call to inform the federal prosecutors of their investigation, according to the source familiar with the investigation, the DA was asked to “stand down.” The reason: The U.S. attorney’s office said it was still investigating the Trump Organization, pursuing additional targets. (A spokesperson for the SDNY declined to comment.) Vance agreed to put his investigation on hold.

As late as May 2019, federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge William Pauley that their investigation was “ongoing.” For months before that, the SDNY seemed to be gathering evidence for possible charges against people beyond Cohen. At least, that was the public impression created by the prosecutors’ decision to grant immunity and non-prosecution agreements, respectively, to Weisselberg and executives with the National Enquirer, who collaborated with Cohen on a second hush-money payoff, to former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. (Trump denied that relationship, too.)

Vance’s probe remained on hold for nearly a year — until July 18, 2019 — when Pauley revealed that federal prosecutors had informed him their investigation was “effectively concluded.”

With that, the Manhattan DA quickly restarted his state investigation. On Aug. 1, a grand jury subpoenaed an array of records from the Trump Organization involving the hush-money payments and Cohen’s work for Trump. The DA contended that the subpoena applied to Trump’s tax records.

Over the next few weeks, Trump’s business turned over 3,376 pages of documents, court filings show. Those documents did not include tax records. A subsequent filing by the DA asserted that “approximately two-thirds” of those 3,376 pages consisted of “non-substantive Google alerts.”

On Aug. 29, the DA subpoenaed Mazars USA, Trump’s accounting firm, demanding Trump’s personal and business tax returns dating back to 2011, as well as work papers and financial statements. Lawyers for the president then filed suit in federal court on Sept. 19 to quash the Mazars subpoena.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case, backing Trump’s request to keep the dispute in federal, rather than state, court. The DOJ supported further delays to consider Trump’s claims in federal court, but it did not then take a position on the merits of the underlying dispute.

The DOJ pleadings were co-signed by the SDNY. Privately, SDNY representatives, wary of appearing to do Trump’s bidding, insisted that their office’s role was limited, likening it to merely serving as local counsel.

That’s when the tensions between the federal and state prosecutors surfaced — but they were largely ignored by the press, which focused on the bigger issue of whether the president can quash the subpoena for his taxes. Vance’s office bristled at the DOJ’s unusual decision to jump in with support from the SDNY.

The Manhattan DA’s office argued in court that the delay caused by the SDNY’s request to stand down has harmed its ability to bring a case. The clock is now running out on the DA’s ability to bring misdemeanor false-records charges. Because the last disguised reimbursement payment, signed by Trump, is dated Dec. 5, 2017, the two-year statute of limitations expires next month. (Convicting a person of a misdemeanor fake-records charge requires proving an “intent to defraud,” according to lawyers. The charge can also be prosecuted as a felony, which has a five-year statute of limitations. Proving the felony requires not only establishing an intent to defraud, but also that the intention was aimed at committing or concealing a second crime, such as claiming improper deductions on a tax return or making a false representation on a financial statement.)

At a hearing in federal court on Sept. 25, Carey Dunne, general counsel for the DA’s office, complained that the feds were aiding Trump’s efforts to run out the clock: “It is what they want in the end. … What that means, if they get further delay, basically they win and we lose, without an adjudication by this court, and that’s not what should happen today.”

Dunne made a similar argument in an Oct. 3 letter to the federal judge overseeing the subpoena battle. As he put it, “delaying enforcement of the subpoena will likely result in the expiration of the statutes of limitation that would apply to some of the transactions at issue in the grand jury investigation.” Dunne called the DOJ’s involvement “all the more audacious in view of the fact that, until quite recently and for more than a year, DOJ prosecutors in this very district conducted a highly publicized grand jury investigation into some of the very same transactions and actors that have been reported to be at issue in this matter.”

Federal district and appeals courts quickly rejected Trump’s claim of blanket immunity from criminal investigation, and he has now petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case. If the court refuses to hear it, Vance’s investigators could be combing through Trump’s tax records by year-end. A decision to hear the case would push any resolution well into 2020.

The scrutiny of Weisselberg stems from his reported role in hiding the hush-money payments. Cohen gave congressional committees a detailed account of how, at Trump’s direction, he strategized with Weisselberg in October 2016 about how to fund the $130,000 payment to Daniels.

The adult-film actress was then threatening to go public. It was a fraught moment, immediately after the broadcast of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump talked about grabbing women by their genitals, and just one month before Election Day.

Cohen testified that he and Weisselberg argued over which one of them should come up with the hush money. Eventually, Cohen tapped a home-equity line of credit, a funding source that would be hidden from his wife. According to government filings, it was decided the Trump Organization would reimburse Cohen through monthly payments disguised as a legal retainer, and Cohen submitted sham invoices to paper over the deceit. Along with Donald Trump Jr., Weisselberg signed two of the monthly checks for Cohen. Trump signed six others.

Prosecutors said Cohen carried out his actions “in coordination with and at the direction” of Trump, who they identified in filings as “Individual-1.” Those filings identified two other Trump Organization figures — “Executive-1” and “Executive-2” — as processing Cohen’s phony monthly invoices. Those two executives were the Trump Organization’s controller, Jeff McConney, a 32-year veteran of the company, and Weisselberg, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Previous published reports incorrectly identified Weisselberg as “Executive-1” and McConney as “Executive-2.”) McConney did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

One of Cohen’s lawyers later released a surreptitious recording Cohen made of a September 2016 conversation with Trump discussing the arrangement to pay McDougal. In it, Cohen is heard telling Trump: “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.”

Cohen was the only identified participant in the scheme to be charged in the federal investigation. (In addition to federal tax and false-statement crimes, he pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions for the payoffs, which benefited Trump’s campaign by silencing the women through Election Day.) A DOJ policy memo barring federal prosecution of a sitting president protected Trump.

That shield, however, doesn’t apply in state court, making the president, Trump Organization executives including Weisselberg (whose federal immunity, as noted, also doesn’t apply in state proceedings) and even the Trump Organization itself potential targets.

A company can be charged if a high-ranking officer with authority to “bind” the business engages in illegal conduct, according to Adam Kaufmann, a white-collar attorney and former investigations chief for the Manhattan DA’s office.

Weisselberg’s employment dates back to the era of Fred Trump, the president’s father, and he has a reputation as the ultimate company man. In deposition excerpts filed by the New York attorney general in her case against the Trump Foundation — which resulted in its shutdown, admissions of wrongdoing and an order to pay $2 million to charity — Weisselberg, who served as the foundation’s treasurer, was questioned about Trump’s use of the charity for a political event before the Iowa presidential primary.

He described receiving a phone call one morning in January 2016, as he was preparing for a dental appointment, asking him to fly to Iowa that night to write “some checks.” What did he think about this request “to bring the checkbook,” an assistant attorney general asked. “It doesn’t matter what I thought,” Weisselberg replied. “He’s my boss. I went.”

As for Cohen, he has been attempting to insert himself into the investigation as a witness. His lawyers have been laboring to reduce his three-year term, offering the carrot of Cohen’s cooperation regarding what they claim is a litany of Trump Organization crimes. Recently, word was conspicuously leaked that he had stories to tell about his own contact with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the Rudy Giuliani associates indicted for using foreign funds to influence U.S. elections.

Federal prosecutors, who last year declined to urge a major reduction in the range for Cohen’s projected prison term, citing “a pattern of deception that permeated his entire life,” among other things, have rebuffed repeated entreaties from Cohen’s lawyers to reengage. Cohen’s lawyers had hoped such cooperation would prompt federal prosecutors to request a special post-sentence “Rule 35” reduction in his prison term before the one-year window for such a request expired.

The Manhattan DA’s team, with different targets and no power to urge a sentence reduction, has been more receptive. At the team’s last meeting with Cohen and his lawyers, they discussed the possibility of obtaining a trove of evidence that federal agents seized in the raids on Cohen’s apartment, office and hotel suite in April 2018. The feds recently returned a flash drive containing the evidence — including files, contracts, notes and tape recordings — to Cohen’s legal team.

Cohen’s legal team, which includes Lanny Davis, has also urged congressional leaders to intervene on his behalf. Cohen’s team is promoting a new, albeit improbable, image for the man who once was proud to call himself Trump’s fixer: “the John Dean of his generation.”