Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 140
August 11, 2023
August 11, 2023
As I try to cover the news tonight, I am struck by how completely the Republican Party, which began in the 1850s as a noble endeavor to keep the United States government intact and to rebuild it to work for ordinary people, has devolved into a group of chaos agents feeding voters a fantasy world.
The big news today was the hearing in Washington, D.C., where Department of Justice prosecutors argued for a protective order to stop former president Trump from intimidating witnesses and tainting the jury pool in the case against him for trying to stop the counting of electoral votes that would decide the 2020 presidential election.
Trump appears to have given up on winning the cases against him on the legal merits and is instead trying to win by whipping up a political base to reelect him, or even to fight for him. He has filled his Truth Social account with unhinged rants attacking the justice system and the president, and on Sunday his lawyer, John Lauro, echoed Trump as he made a tour of the Sunday talk shows, misleadingly suggesting that Trump had been indicted for free speech. In fact, the indictment says up front that even Trump’s lies are protected by the First Amendment, but what isn’t protected is a conspiracy that stops an official proceeding and deprives the rest of us of our right to vote and to have our votes counted.
A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1; when he was arraigned on August 3, the magistrate judge warned him that it is a crime to “influence a juror or try to threaten or bribe a witness or retaliate against anyone" connected to the case. Trump said he understood.
The next day, he posted on Truth Social: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Justice Department lawyers promptly sought a protective order to limit what information Trump and his lawyers can release. Trump has a longstanding pattern of releasing misleading information to bolster his position among his base, and lawyers are concerned that he will continue to intimidate witnesses and try to taint the jury pool in hopes of getting the trial venue moved.
Days later, Trump told an audience in New Hampshire that he would not stop talking about the case, and called Special Counsel Jack Smith a “thug” and “deranged.” He has continued to post such messages on social media.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan reinforced that Trump’s focus on politics had no relevance in her court of law. Justice reporter for NBC News Ryan Reilly noted: “The word of the Trump hearing today: yield. Came up six times, as in: ‘the fact that he's running a political campaign currently has to yield to the orderly administration of justice.’”
Chutkan agreed to the protective order but agreed with Trump’s team that it would not include any material already in the public domain. She also prohibited Trump from reviewing materials with “any device capable of photocopying, recording, or otherwise replicating the Sensitive Materials, including a smart cellular device.”
Finally, she warned Trump’s lawyers: “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements in this case…. I will take whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of these proceedings.” If Trump repeats “inflammatory” statements, she said, she will have to speed up his trial to protect witnesses and keep the jury pool untainted.
Just what that might mean was illustrated today when a judge revoked the bail of former FTX cryptocurrency chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried for witness tampering and sent him to jail. Prosecutors say Bankman-Fried was leaking the private diary entries of his former girlfriend to the New York Times to discredit her testimony against him.
In Ohio, where voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected the attempt of the Republicans in the legislature to stop a November vote on an amendment to the state constitution protecting abortion rights, Republicans tried to stop the inclusion of that amendment by challenging its form. Today the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously rejected that lawsuit. The proposed amendment will be on the ballot in November.
After demanding that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in charge of investigating and charging Hunter Biden, be named a special counsel and then charging that Weiss had asked for and been denied that status—both he and Attorney General Merrick Garland denied that allegation—Republicans are now angry that Garland today gave Weiss that status.
Weiss requested that status for the first time earlier this week, and Garland granted it, although both Weiss and Garland had previously said Weiss had all the authority that status carries. Now House Republicans say appointing Weiss a special counsel is an attempt to obstruct Congress from investigating the Bidens. For all that Republicans are in front of the cameras every day insisting President Biden is corrupt, there is no evidence that President Biden has been party to any wrongdoing.
One of the things such behavior accomplishes is to distract from the party’s own troubles, including the inability of House Republicans to agree to measures to fund the government after September. Far-right extremists are still angry at the spending levels to which House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed in a deal to raise the debt ceiling last June, and are threatening to refuse to agree to any funding measures until they get cuts that the Senate will never accept.
The House left for its August break after passing only one of the twelve bills it needs to pass, and when it gets back, it will have only twelve work days before the September 30 deadline. This chaos takes a toll: when the Fitch rating system downgraded the U.S. long-term rating last week, the first reason it cited was “a steady deterioration in standards of governance.” It explained: “The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.”
Another thing this chaos does is convince individuals that the entire government is corrupt. On Wednesday, as Biden was to visit Utah, FBI agents shot and killed an armed man there who made threats against him, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other officials who have been associated with Trump’s legal troubles: Attorney General Garland, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York attorney general Letitia James. Craig Deleeuw Robertson described himself as a “MAGA Trumper.”
It seems we are reaping the fruits of the political system planted in 1968, when the staff of Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon reworked American politics to package their leader for the election. “Voters are basically lazy,” one of Nixon’s media advisors wrote. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we…seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable.”
The confusion also takes up so much oxygen it’s hard for the Democrats, who are actually trying to govern in the usual ways, to get any attention. Today was the one-year anniversary of the PACT Act, officially known as the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022. The law improves access to healthcare and funding for veterans who were exposed to burn pits, the military’s waste disposal method for everything from tires to chemicals and jet fuel from the 1990s into the new century.
According to Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), the PACT Act has already enabled more than 4 million veterans to be screened for toxic exposure, more than 744,000 PACT Act claims have been filed, and hundreds of thousands of veterans have been approved for expanded benefits.
Biden spoke in Utah about the government’s protections for veterans and why they’re important. In addition to the PACT Act, he talked about his recent executive order moving the authority for addressing claims of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and murder outside the chain of command to a specialized independent military unit—a move long championed by survivors and members of Congress.
Today the White House released a detailed explanation of “Bidenomics” along with resources explaining why the administration has focused on certain areas for public investment and how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have supported that investment. That collection explains why the administration is overturning forty years of political economy to return to the system on which the U.S. relied from 1933 to 1981, and yet it got far less traction than the fight over the protective order designed to keep Trump from attacking witnesses.
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Notes:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.28.0_5.pdf
https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/2023-ohio-2786.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/03/1191901829/trump-indictment-arraignment-news
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/us/politics/trump-judge-protective-order.html
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/11/1191362886/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sbf-crypto-fraud
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-lawyer-john-lauro-indictment-defense-rcna98509
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/#jan-six
https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/08-11-2023/gop-funding-meeting/
https://apnews.com/article/utah-biden-fbi-assassination-threat-f9b31d6cd8e432870e4f8949cdb45b92
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/politics/biden-executive-order-sexual-assault-military/index.ht
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-guy-who-threatened-to-assassinate-biden
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/11/judge-warns-trump-speed-trial-00110870
Joe McGinnis, The Selling of the President, 1968 (London: Andre Deutsch, 1970), pp. 36, 41–45.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2023/08/11/iia-resources/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/09/comer-biden-analysis/
Twitter (X):
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August 10, 2023
August 10, 2023
“Good Lord, Who Among Us Hasn’t Paid For A Clarence Thomas Vacation?” David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo asked this morning. Kurtz was reacting to a new piece by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski in ProPublica detailing Justice Thomas’s leisure activities and the benefactors who underwrote them.
Those activities include “[a]t least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.” The authors add that this “is almost certainly an undercount.”
Thomas did not disclose these gifts, as ethics specialists say he should have done. House Democrats Ted Lieu (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and Hank Johnson (D-GA) have said Thomas must resign. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who has led the effort to extricate the Supreme Court from very wealthy interests for years, commented: “I said it would get worse; it will keep getting worse.”
Thomas’s benefactors, Murphy and Mierjeski noted, “share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence.” That ideology made Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who has been in the news for the release of his December 6, 2020, memo outlining how to steal the 2020 presidential election, speculate that Thomas was the Supreme Court justice the plotters could count on to back their coup. “Realistically,” Chesebro wrote to lawyer John Eastman, “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas—do you agree, Prof. Eastman?”
Last Saturday, Republican leaders in Alabama illustrated that their ideology means they reject democracy. After the Supreme Court agreed that the congressional districting map lawmakers put in place after the 2020 census probably violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a lower court ruling that required a new map went into effect. But Alabama Republican lawmakers simply refused.
Alexander Willis of the Alabama Daily News reported that at a meeting of the Alabama state Republican Party on Saturday, the party’s legal counsel David Bowsher applauded the lawmakers, saying, “House Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy doesn’t have that big a margin, that costs him one seat right there. I can’t tell you we’re going to win in this fight; we’ve got a Supreme Court that surprised the living daylights out of me when they handed down this decision, but I can guarantee you, if the Legislature hadn’t done that, we lose.”
Paul Reynolds, the national committeeman of the party, went on: “Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”
Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall added: “Let’s make it clear, we elect a Legislature to reflect the values of the people that they represent, and I don’t think anybody in this room wanted this Legislature to adopt two districts that were going to guarantee that two Democrats would be elected…. What we believe fully is that we just live in a red state with conservative people, and that’s who the candidates of Alabama want to be able to elect going forward.”
The determination of Republican officials to hold onto power even though they appear to know they are in a minority is part of what drove even Republican voters in Ohio to reject their proposal to require 60% of voters, rather than a simple majority, to approve changes in the state constitution.
Meanwhile, today’s July consumer price index report showed that annual inflation has fallen by about two thirds since last summer, a better-than-expected number suggesting that measures to cool the economy are working without hurting the economy. Real wages have outpaced inflation for the last five months, and unemployment is at a low the U.S. hasn’t seen since 1969.
At the same time, the country is ending one of the last pieces of the social safety net put in place during Covid: the rule that people on Medicaid could remain covered without renewing their coverage each year. That rule ended in April, and states are purging their Medicaid rolls of those who they say no longer qualify. In the last three months, 4 million people have lost their Medicaid coverage, mostly because of paperwork problems. (Texas dropped an eye-popping 52% of beneficiaries due for renewal in May.)
Biden officials have tried to pressure states quietly to fix the errors—including long waits to get phone calls answered and slow processing of applications, as well as paperwork errors—but yesterday released letters it had sent to individual states to warn them they might be violating federal law. Thirty-six states did not meet federal requirements.
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Notes:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/clarence-thomas-free-vacations
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/10/propublica-clarence-thomas-supreme-court-00110654
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000189-db17-db28-a589-dfd7b1100000
https://aldailynews.com/alabama-republicans-frame-redistricting-case-as-threat-to-political-power/
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/10/cpi-inflation-july-2023-.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/bidens-health-care-wins-undone-medicaid-00110389
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/10/biden-administration-states-medicaid-00110686
https://www.medicaid.gov/sites/default/files/2023-08/ar-may-2023-unwinding-data-ltr.pdf
Twitter (X):
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kylegriffin1/status/1689717009565585408
August 9, 2023
August 9, 2023
New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage, and Luke Broadwater yesterday reported that in a memo dated December 6, 2020, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro laid out a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that he acknowledged was “a bold, controversial strategy” that he believed the Supreme Court would “likely” reject.
Still, he presented the plan—while apparently trying to distance himself from it by writing “I’m not necessarily advising this course of action”—because he thought it “would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats, and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”
The plan was essentially what the Trump campaign ultimately tried to pursue. It called for Trump-Pence electors in six swing states Biden had won to meet and vote for Trump, and then to make sure that in each of those states there was a lawsuit underway that “might plausibly” call into question Biden’s victory there. Then, Vice President Mike Pence would take the position that he had the power not simply to open the votes but also to count them, and that the 1887 Electoral Count Act that clarified those procedures was unconstitutional.
Key to selling this strategy, Chesebro wrote, was messaging that constructing two slates of electors was “routine,” and he laid out a strategy of taking events and statements out of context to suggest support for that messaging.
This was, of course, a plan to deprive American voters of their right to have their votes counted, as the federal grand jury’s recent indictment of former president Trump charged, but Chesebro concluded: “it seems advisable for the campaign to seriously consider this course of action and, if adopted, to carefully plan related messaging.”
Three days later, Chesebro wrote specific instructions to create those fraudulent electors, and they were off to the races.
Chesebro is identified as Co-Conspirator 5 in the grand jury’s recent indictment of Trump.
It is an astonishing thing to read this memo today.
Forty-nine years ago, on August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon wrote one line to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “I hereby resign the Office of President of the United States.” In late July the House Judiciary Committee had voted to recommend articles of impeachment against the president for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress for his attempt to cover up the involvement of his people in the June 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Watergate break-in was part of the Nixon campaign’s attempt to rig the 1972 election, in this case by bugging the Democrats’ headquarters, and Republicans wanted no part of it. When the White House produced a “smoking gun” tape on August 5, revealing that Nixon had been in on the cover-up since June 23, 1972—and implying that he had been in on the bugging itself—those Republicans who had been defending Nixon abandoned him.
On the night of August 7, 1974, a group of Republican lawmakers led by Arizona senator Barry Goldwater met with Nixon in the Oval Office and told him that the House as a whole would vote to impeach him and the Senate would vote to convict. Nixon decided to step down.
Although Nixon did not admit any guilt, maintaining he was resigning only because the time it would take to vindicate himself would distract from his presidential duties, his replacement, Gerald R. Ford, granted “a full, free, and absolute pardon” to Nixon “for all offenses against the United States which he…has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.”
Ford said that the trial of a former president would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”
Only fifteen years later, the expectation that a president would not be prosecuted came into play again when members of President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council ignored Congress’s 1985 prohibition on aid to the Nicaraguan Contras who were fighting against the socialist Nicaraguan government. The administration illegally sold arms to Iran and funneled the profits to the Contras.
When the story of the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, government officials continued to break the law, shredding documents that Congress had subpoenaed. After fourteen administration officials were indicted and eleven convicted, the next president, George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vice president, pardoned them on the advice of his attorney general William Barr. (Yes, that William Barr.)
The independent prosecutor in the case, Lawrence Walsh, worried that the pardons weakened American democracy. They “undermine…the principle…that no man is above the law,” he said. Pardoning high-ranking officials “demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office, deliberately abusing the public trust without consequences.”
Walsh’s warning seems to be coming to life. The Republican Party now stands behind a man whose legal troubles currently include indictment on 40 counts for taking and hiding classified national security documents and on four counts of trying to steal an election in order to stay in power.
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Notes:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/chesebro-dec-6-memo/ce55d6abd79c2c71/full.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/02/us/politics/trump-jan-6-memos.html
https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.asp
“Text of Walsh Response to Bush Pardon,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1992.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/07/politics/trump-indictments-criminal-cases/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/09/ken-chesebro-memos-trump-coconspirator-00110458
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/politics/trump-indictment-fake-electors-memo.html
August 8, 2023
Hi Folks:
Substack was down when I finished last night, and after waiting until 4:00 to see if it would come back, I gave up and went to bed. Just awake now and sending. Sorry about that— I couldn’t think of a way to let you know what the issue was. In the future, if you’re worried about me, check Facebook, where I did post this last night. Guessing that both of these sites won’t go down at the same time (although that assertion probably guaranteed they will!).
H.
As he designated the new Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni–Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument today, President Biden explained that protecting the approximately 1,552 square miles—4,046 square kilometers, or almost a million acres—of land to the north and south of the Grand Canyon “is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet. It’s good for the economy. It’s good for the soul of the nation. And I believe…in my core it’s the right thing to do.”
His administration has been pursuing the promise he made when he first took office to protect 30% of all the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. He noted that the administration has protected 9 million acres in Alaska, 225,000 acres in Minnesota, 50,000 acres in Colorado, 500,000 acres in Nevada, and 6,600 acres in Texas. It has restored protections for three national monuments the previous administration had gutted: Grand Staircase–Escalante and Bears Ears in Utah and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the New England coast. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is working on creating a maritime sanctuary by protecting 770,000 square miles in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii.
The administration is also, he said, honoring his commitment “to prioritize respect for the Tribal sovereignty and self-determination, to honor the solemn promises the United States made to Tribal nations to fulfill federal trust and treaty obligations.” The protected land is home to 3,000 cliff houses, cave paintings, and other Indigenous cultural sites. Biden explained that the land being protected and the land already protected as the Grand Canyon National Monument had been Indigenous homelands.
Tribes had been excluded from those lands and have worked to protect the lands and waters there from the aftershocks of development, for example, cleaning up abandoned mines. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included funding to clean up such industrial pollution in the region, including the abandoned oil wells that leak toxic gases into the air and hazardous chemicals into the water. That work is underway.
Biden suggested this designation was also part of the administration’s effort to address climate change, calling out the historic investments in that effort funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, a claim that might well resonate in a state that has seen temperatures of more than 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) in Phoenix for 31 straight days.
According to the White House proclamation on the establishment of the new monument: “The natural and cultural objects of the lands have historic and scientific value that is unique, rich, and well-documented.” By creating the monument, Biden said, “we’re setting aside new spaces for families to hike, bike, hunt, fish, and camp—growing the tourism economy that already accounts for 11 percent of all Arizona jobs.”
But Republican leaders and uranium mining interests opposed the designation of the new monument because it will stop the development of new mines to access the approximately 1.3% of the nation’s known uranium reserves that lie inside the monument. While the two mines already operating in the monument are grandfathered in and other reserves are elsewhere, mining interests in Arizona wanted new development. They claim the uranium in the area, which could be used in nuclear reactors, is vital to U.S. security.
Science reporter Justine Calma of The Verge explained today that past uranium mining left 500 abandoned mines on Navajo Nation land and that pollution from the mines has been linked to life-threatening illnesses among children there.
In a letter to Biden, Haaland, and the heads of the Bureau of Land Management and of the U.S. Forest Service, House Republicans Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, and committee member Paul Gosar of Arizona called the new designation “another strident abuse of the Antiquities Act” and demanded documents justifying the decision to put the area’s uranium out of developers’ reach.
In Ohio’s important election today, voters rejected the attempt of the Republican-dominated legislature to strengthen minority rule in the state by making it harder for a political majority to change the constitution. High turnout resulted in a vote whose unofficial count was about 57% against and about 43% in favor. Even key Republican districts voted against the measure.
For more than a century, Ohio voters have been able to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot so long as they get a certain number of signatures, and the amendment passes if it gets more than 50% of the vote. But the overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in June 2022 sparked a strong backlash across the country. In Ohio, abortion rights activists began to collect signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November, and it was clear they would succeed (in July they submitted 70% more signatures than they needed).
So in May, Ohio Republican legislators set a special election in August to require more signatures to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot and a threshold of 60% of the vote, rather than a simple majority, for the amendment to pass. That’s a very high bar, although, ironically, two amendments that tried to stop political gerrymandering—the practice that has given Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature—passed with about 75% of voters…and the Republicans ignored them.
Only last December the legislature ended most August elections because the traditionally low turnout made it easy for special interests to win by flooding the state with advertising money to energize a small base.
Although the position of secretary of state is supposed to be nonpartisan because the office oversees the state’s elections and appoints every county’s election board, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, said: “This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
But the implications of making it harder for voters to change laws stretched beyond Ohio. As pro-choice ballot initiatives keep winning, Republican-dominated legislatures across the country are trying to make it harder for citizens to use ballot initiatives. Republican attempts to stop voters from challenging their policies, especially in states where gerrymandering has given them far more seats in the legislature than would accurately represent their support, will echo beyond the issue of abortion to any policy voters would like to challenge.
A former chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Republican Maureen O’Connor, told Sam Levine of The Guardian that the proposed measure “absolutely is minority rule…. If you get 59.9% of a vote that says yes, 40.1% can say no. This is the way it’s gonna be. We can thwart the effort of the majority of Ohioans that vote. And that’s not American.”
Notes:
https://apnews.com/article/grand-canyon-national-monument-biden-9382960f18408dce7aec52f103404e11
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824490/joe-biden-new-national-monument-grand-canyon-uranium-mine
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/eenews/f/eenews/?id=00000189-d5db-d1b8-adff-f5dfcac90000
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/08/ohio-election-issue-1-abortion/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/politics/ohio-special-election/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/ohio-election-issue-1-results.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/us/ohio-referendum-constitution-abortion.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/06/ohio-issue-1-vote-democracy-future-republicans
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/08/republicans-ohio-vote-abortion-constitution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/08/ohio-referendum-abortion-republicans/
https://www.ohiosos.gov/secretary-office/duties-responsibilities/
Twitter:
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August 7, 2023
August 7, 2023
Things feel unsettled these days, partly because of chop in the prosecutorial waters surrounding the actions of former president Trump, partly because of changes in the U.S. economy, partly because of turmoil brought by climate change, and partly because of what appears to be the instability of a global realignment. This realignment has been forced by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the global effort to stand against that aggression.
Over the weekend, on August 5 and 6, representatives of 40 countries met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to explore the contours of peace between Ukraine and Russia. Russia was not invited to the meeting, but all the other members of BRICS (the economic organization made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) attended, illustrating Russia’s increasing isolation.
In February 2022, just before Russia invaded Ukraine, China and Russia pledged a “friendship without limits.” But that friendship appears to have frayed as what Russia seemed to think would be a quick land grab has stretched on for almost a year and half, straining Russia’s resources and isolating it from the global community. China sent its special envoy for Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Russia, Li Hui, to the talks in Saudi Arabia.
Reporting on the weekend’s meeting, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that China’s “increasing misalignment with Russia on any settlement to end the war in Ukraine was…evident at the talks.” It noted the observation of the Financial Times that Chinese representatives were “keen to show that [China] is not Russia,” and that Russia appears to be more and more isolated from other nations. The ISW assesses that “China is not fully aligned with Russia on the issue of Ukraine and that Russia and China’s relationship is not a ‘no limits partnership’ as the Kremlin desires.”
Laurie Chen and Martin Quin Pollard of Reuters reported yesterday that China’s willingness to attend the talks in Saudi Arabia after declining to join earlier talks in Denmark likely indicates a recognition that it should participate in credible peace initiatives. Shen Dingli, an international relations scholar based in Shanghai, said that Russia is “bound to be defeated,” so China must try to cooperate with other nations without speeding Russia’s collapse.
Bloomberg noted that increasing tensions between China and Russia do not indicate a rift between the two countries so much as a way to create some space between the two. In a phone call today with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi reaffirmed that the nations are “good partners.”
Ukraine’s request for the meeting in Saudi Arabia seemed designed to isolate Russia further, as Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky made the case that the terms on which he is demanding any peace be based on universal principles behind which other nations can unite.
Russia has continued its attack on Ukrainian grain supplies, damaging another 40,000 tons of grain destined for Africa, China, and Israel on August 2. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian counteroffensive continues, although it is advancing more slowly than Ukrainian officials had hoped.
China has its own issues with the global community. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reported today that since 2020, Chinese operatives have penetrated Japan’s defense networks in one of the most damaging hacks of Japan’s modern history. And Italy, which in 2019 was the only major western economy supporting China’s Belt and Road Initiative to tie together world markets and boost trade between China and Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, is now planning to pull back from the project.
On Sunday, Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto told a newspaper that signing the deal was “an improvised and atrocious act…. We exported a load of oranges to China; they tripled exports to Italy in three years.” An expert on Italian relations with China says Italy wants to demonstrate a close alignment with “the U.S., Western camp” while keeping a stable relationship with China.
World affairs have shifted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Notes:
https://www.barrons.com/news/russian-strike-damaged-40-000-tonnes-of-grain-kyiv-26e0ae2d
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-7-2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/ukraine-war-saudi-arabia-russia.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/07/middleeast/saudi-arabia-ukraine-talks-china-mime-intl/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/07/china-japan-hack-pentagon/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/belt-road-initiative-china-plans-1-trillion-new-silk-road-n757756
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-suggests-exit-chinas-belt-road-shift-us-rcna97230
August 6, 2023
August 6, 2023
On August 6, 1880, Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield gave one of his most famous speeches. Then a congressional representative from Ohio, Garfield was in New York City to make peace with Roscoe Conkling, a Republican kingmaker who hated him and his insistence on clean government.
In the evening, Garfield spoke to a crowd of well-wishers, made up in large part of men who had fought in the Civil War, as Garfield had. The one-time college professor spoke directly to the “Boys in Blue,” telling them “how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it.” He told them that they, the soldiers of the Civil War, represented the same ideas of union embraced by the men who framed the Constitution.
“Gentlemen,” said Garfield to great applause, “ideas outlive men; ideas outlive all earthly things. You who fought in the war for the Union fought for immortal ideas, and by their might you crowned the war with victory. But victory was worth nothing except for the truths that were under it, in it, and above it. We meet to-night as comrades to stand guard around the sacred truths for which we fought. And while we have life to meet and grasp the hand of a comrade, we will stand by the great truths of the war.”
In 1880, four years after unreconstructed southern Democrats had taken control of all the former Confederate states and cemented the process of taking the vote away from Black men, Garfield promised that “we will remember our allies who fought with us.” He explained: “Soon after the great struggle began, we looked behind the army of white rebels, and saw 4,000,000 of black people condemned to toil as slaves for our enemies; and we found that the hearts of these 4,000,000 were God-inspired with the spirit of liberty, and that they were all our friends.”
As the crowd applauded, he continued: “We have seen white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union; but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin.” To great cheers, he went on: “Our comrades escaping from the starvation of prison, fleeing to our lines by the light of the North star, never feared to enter the black man's cabin and ask for bread.” “That’s so!” yelled a man in the crowd. “In all that period of suffering and danger, no Union soldier was ever betrayed by a black man or woman.”
“[S]o long as we live we will stand by these black allies,” Garfield said. “We will stand by them until the sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of our Constitution, shall shine with equal ray upon every man, black or white, throughout the Union. Fellow-citizens, fellow-soldiers, in this there is the beneficence of eternal justice, and by it we will stand forever….” To wild cheers, Garfield concluded: “[T]he Republic rises on the glorious achievements of its dead and living heroes to a higher and nobler national life. We must stand guard over our past as soldiers, and over our country as the common heritage of all.”
In an era in which the smart money said the Democrats, with their promise to overturn the Reconstruction laws that established a legal framework for racial equality, would win the 1880 election, Garfield squeaked into the White House.
But he did not live long enough to put his vision into law. After his death, the Republican Party slid away from the protection of equal rights, focusing instead on protecting big business, its leaders looking the other way as state laws increasingly kept Black Americans and immigrants from voting so long as that same focus on state power prevented national regulation of business.
But those who believed in civil rights never gave up. In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) organized “to promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States,” and worked to secure “complete equality before the law,” including voting rights.
NAACP members publicized racial atrocities and insisted that authorities enforce the laws already on the books. By the 1960s, those protecting Black rights ramped up their efforts to register voters and to organize communities to support political change. When voter registration workers disappeared during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, popular anger at their disappearance gave Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson leverage to pressure Congress to act. It passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in part to make it easier to vote.
After voters put Johnson back into the White House in November 1964, voting rights activists stepped up their efforts. In Selma, Alabama, where the voting rolls were 99% white even though Black Americans outnumbered white Americans, law enforcement officers harassed activists. After officers beat and shot an unarmed man marching for voting rights in a town near Selma, Black leaders planned a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to voter suppression.
Law enforcement officers met the protesters on March 7, 1965, with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. On March 15, Johnson addressed a national televised joint session of Congress to ask it to pass a national voting rights act. “Our fathers believed that if [their] noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy,” he said. “The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people.”
He submitted to Congress voting rights legislation, and Congress delivered.
On August 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act to guarantee Black Americans the right to vote.
“Today is a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield,” Johnson told the American people in a televised joint session of Congress. The Civil War had promised equality to all Americans, but that promise had not been fulfilled. “Today is a towering and certain mark that, in this generation, that promise will be kept.”
“I pledge you that we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy,” Johnson said.
That resolve did not hold. In the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act. Republican-dominated states immediately found ways to keep minority voters from the polls and their votes from being counted, and in 2020, then-president Trump tried to throw out the votes of people in majority Black districts in order to overturn the results of that year’s presidential election. On July 10, 2023, House Republicans introduced a sweeping “election integrity” bill that would loosen campaign finance regulations and make it harder to vote.
Eight days later, on July 18, Democrats in the House and Senate reintroduced the Freedom to Vote Act, which would make it easier for all Americans to vote, end partisan gerrymandering, require transparency in campaign donations to try to limit dark money in elections, and protect state and local election officials. “The story of American democracy is one of a relentless march towards further equality,” said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “The Freedom To Vote Act would rectify one of the great historic harms of our past and put us closer to our goal of a fully representative democracy.”
And then, on August 1—last Tuesday—the Department of Justice charged Trump under laws Congress passed during Reconstruction to protect the Black Americans’ political rights. Trump is charged with conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding—violating a law passed to stop Ku Klux Klan terrorists from breaking up official meetings in the late 1860s—and obstructing that proceeding: the counting of electoral votes.
Trump is also charged with conspiring “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States—that is, the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted.”
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Notes:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.12900200/?sp=2&st=text
https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-the-american-promise
August 5, 2023
August 5, 2023
While there is news today, it is also the anniversary of the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay, which is one of my favorite stories. I’m guessing we could all use a break from the drumbeat of today’s events to remember yesterday’s.
The story of the Battle of Mobile Bay started long before August 5, 1864. By the spring of 1864, victory in the Civil War depended on which side could endure longest. Confederates were starving as they mourned their many dead; Union supporters were tired of losing sons to battles that seemed to accomplish nothing.
President Abraham Lincoln knew he must land a crushing blow on the South or lose the upcoming presidential election. If he lost, the best Americans could hope for was a negotiated peace that tore the nation in two. In March 1864, Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant commander-in-chief of all the Union armies, hoping that this stubborn westerner could win the war.
Grant set out to press the Confederacy on all fronts. In the past, the Union armies had acted independently, permitting Confederates to move troops to the places they were most needed. Grant immediately coordinated all the Union armies to move against the South at once.
In the East, the Army of the Potomac would hit Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. In Georgia, William T. Sherman’s western troops would smash their way from Tennessee to Atlanta. Finally, Grant wanted the U.S. Navy to move against Mobile, Alabama, a port on the Gulf Coast so well protected by shifting sands that it had become the major harbor for the blockade runners that still linked the Confederacy to Europe. Grant hoped this strategy would lock the South in a vise.
By midsummer, the plan had faltered. The Army of the Potomac had stalled in Virginia after an appalling 17,000 casualties at the Battle of the Wilderness, 18,000 at Spotsylvania, and another 12,000 at Cold Harbor, where soldiers pinned their names and addresses to the backs of their uniforms before the battle so their bodies could be identified. Sherman was stopped outside Atlanta. And the Navy had run aground up the Red River in Louisiana as it made a feint in that direction before the move against Mobile Bay. Union morale was so low that even President Lincoln thought he would lose the election and the war would end in an armistice.
By late summer, the pressure was on Admiral David G. Farragut to deliver a victory in Mobile Bay. After weeks of waiting for reinforcements, on the morning of August 5, Farragut ordered the captains of the fourteen wooden ships and four ironclads under his command to “strip your vessels and prepare for the conflict.”
At 5:40 a.m., with the wooden ships lashed together in pairs and the ironclads protecting them, the vessels set out in a line to pass the three forts and four warships that guarded the harbor above water, and the minefield that guarded all but a 500-yard channel below. The admiral’s flagship, the Hartford, was in the second pair in line, behind the Brooklyn and its partner.
As the ships proceeded under heavy fire, going slowly to stay behind the lumbering ironclads, the foremost ironclad hit a torpedo, turned over, and sank instantly, taking all hands with it. Aware he was on the edge of the minefield, the commander of the Brooklyn hung back, throwing the whole line into confusion under the pummeling of the land batteries. Farragut ordered the captain of the Hartford to take over the lead. As the Hartford passed the stalled Brooklyn, the Brooklyn’s captain warned that they were “running into a nest of torpedoes.”
“Damn the torpedoes!” Farragut allegedly shot back. “Full speed ahead!”
By 10:00 a.m., the U.S. Navy had taken Mobile Bay, cutting off all Confederate contact with Europe. It was the victory the Union needed, and others followed in its wake: Atlanta fell on September 2, and the Army of the Potomac began to gain ground in Virginia.
Finally able to believe that victory was near, voters rallied behind Lincoln’s determination to win the war and backed his administration in November. They gave him 55% of the popular vote and gave the Republicans supermajorities in both the House and the Senate.
Damn the torpedoes, indeed.
August 4, 2023
August 4, 2023
Army Chief of Staff General James McConville, the 40th person to hold that position, retired today. Because Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has put a hold on military promotions for the past 8 months, there is no Senate-confirmed leader to take McConville’s place. There are eight seats on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the group of the most senior military officers who advise the president, homeland security officials, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. Currently, two of those seats are filled by acting officials who have not been confirmed by the Senate.
Politico’s defense reporter Paul McLeary wrote that as of today, there are 301 senior military positions filled by temporary replacements as Tuberville refuses to permit nominations to go through the Senate by the usual process. Two more members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will retire before the end of September.
Politico’s Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman illustrated what this personnel crisis means for national security: “U.S. forces are on high alert in the Persian Gulf,” she wrote today. “As Tehran attempts to seize merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. is sending warships, fighter jets and even considering stationing armed troops aboard civilian vessels to protect mariners. Yet two of the top senior officers overseeing the escalating situation aren’t where they’re supposed to be.”
Two days ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a memo that the “unprecedented, across-the-board hold is having a cascading effect, increasingly hindering the normal operations of this Department and undermining both our military readiness and our national security.” Today he reiterated: “The failure to confirm our superbly qualified senior uniformed leaders undermines our military readiness.” He added, “It undermines our retention of some of our very best officers. And it is upending the lives of far too many of their spouses, children and loved ones.”
Tuberville, who did not serve in the military, likes to say "there is no one more military than me.” And yet, thanks to him and the Republican conference that is permitting him to hold the nominations, we are down two chiefs of staff tonight.
Meanwhile, on July 26, when soldiers took charge in Niger, a country central to the fight against Islamic terrorists and the security of democracy on the African continent, the U.S. had no ambassador there. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was blocking the confirmation of more than 60 State Department officials the same way that Tuberville was blocking the confirmation of military officials.
Paul claimed he was blocking State Department confirmations because he wanted access to information about the origins of COVID, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the department had “been working extensively” with Paul, providing the documents and other information he had requested. “But unfortunately, he continues to block all our nominees.” Paul complained that he had been only given private access, and wanted to “take those documents out.”
As of July 17, the current Senate had confirmed only five State Department nominees. On that day, Blinken wrote to each senator to express “serious concern” about the delays. He told reporters that he respects and values the Senate’s “critical oversight role…[b]ut that’s not what is happening here. No one has questioned the qualifications of these career diplomats. They are being blocked for leverage on other unrelated issues. It’s irresponsible. And it’s doing harm to our national security.”
Ambassadors “advance the interests of our country,” he said, and not having confirmed ambassadors “makes us less effective at advancing every one of our policy priorities—from getting more countries to serve as temporary hubs for [immigrant visa] processing, to bringing on more partners for global coalitions like the one we just announced to combat fentanyl, to support competitive bids for U.S. companies to build…critical infrastructure projects around the world.”
Our adversaries benefit from these absences, not only because they offer an opening to exploit, but also because “[t]he refusal of the Senate to approve these career public servants also undermines the credibility of our democracy. People abroad see it as a sign of dysfunction, ineffectiveness—inability to put national interests over political ones.”
Blinken noted that “[i]n previous administrations, the overwhelming majority of career nominees received swift support to advance through the Senate by unanimous consent. Today, for reasons that have nothing to do with the nominees’ qualifications or abilities, they are being forced to proceed through individual floor votes.” More than a third of the nominees had been waiting for more than a year for their confirmation.
Late on July 27, the day after the conflict began in Niger and the day before the senators left for their summer recess, Paul lifted his hold, tweeting that the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent agency that administers foreign aid, had agreed to release the documents he wanted. The Senate then confirmed career diplomat Kathleen A. FitzGibbon as ambassador to Niger, as well as ambassadors to other countries including Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Guyana, Ethiopia, Jordan, Uganda, and Italy.
But FitzGibbon did not arrive in Niger before the U.S. government on Wednesday ordered “non-emergency U.S. government personnel” and their families to leave the country out of concerns for their safety.
The attack on our nation by individual Republicans seems to be a theme these days. After yesterday’s arraignment on charges that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired and attempted to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspired to overturn Americans’ constitutionally protected right to vote, Donald Trump today flouted the judge’s warning not to try to influence jurors. He posted on social media: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”
Prosecutors from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith tonight alerted the court to Trump’s threat when they asked the court for a protective order to stop him from publishing information about the materials they are about to deliver to his lawyers. They expressed concern that publishing personal information “could have a harmful chilling effect on witnesses” or taint the jury pool by telling potential jurors too much before the trial.
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Notes:
https://www.army.mil/article/268883/40th_chief_of_staff_of_the_army_final_message_to_the_army_team
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/15/1187530846/tuberville-senate-rules-abortion-military
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/04/tuberville-hold-as-james-mcconville-retires-00109833
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/04/persian-gulf-tuberville-hold-00109909
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/lloyd-austin-tommy-tuberville-memo/index.html
https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-remarks-to-the-press-9/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/politics/senate-confirms-ambassador-nominees/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/article/niger-coup-military-explainer.html
https://www.congress.gov/nomination/118th-congress/43
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/02/united-states-embassy-niger-coup-00109408
https://www.rcfp.org/judge-delays-trial-after-blaming-newspaper-tainting-jury-pool/
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23898465/protectiveorder.pdf
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance "If you go after me..."Today, Donald Trump issued what can only be construed as a shot across the bow, after the Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya admonished him during arraignment yesterday that he must not commit any new crimes while on a pre-trial bond—the thing that’s keeping him out of jail before trial—and that efforts to influence or intimidate witnesses, jurors or oth…Read more9 hours ago · 421 likes · 44 comments · Joyce VanceTwitter (X):
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August 3, 2023
August 3, 2023
In a special election today, voters reelected Tennessee state representatives Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, whom the Republican supermajority in the state house voted on April 6 to expel for their participation in a demonstration in favor of gun safety. “Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken,” Jones tweeted. The Tennessee legislature will convene on August 21 for a special session.
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tweeted: “Congratulations [Brother Jones] on your decisive victory and return to the Tennessee legislature! So pleased that the voters have sent you back where you belong—pursuing justice and opportunity For The People.”
At the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C., this afternoon, in the same courtroom where a number of defendants charged with crimes associated with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have been tried, the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned. He is charged with conspiring to defraud the United States and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.
He is also charged with conspiring to take away “the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured…by the Constitution and laws of the United States…the right to vote, and to have one’s vote counted,” as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in office over the wishes of the American people.
After Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya read the counts against him, Trump entered a plea of not guilty on all four charges. The judge warned him that one of the conditions of his release was that he must not commit new crimes. Then she added to that standard warning an unusual one, warning him that any attempts to influence a juror would be a crime.
The lead prosecutor for the United States, Thomas Windom, asked the judge for a speedy trial; Trump’s attorneys refused to agree, saying it would take a long time to review the huge amount of evidence. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hash out this difference when she presides over the case. The first hearing is scheduled for August 28.
And so, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., Trump became the 1,078th person charged with federal crimes in connection with the events of January 6, 2021.
Trump and his loyalists insist that the case against Trump attacks his right to free speech, although the grand jury’s indictment agrees that Trump had the right to lie about the election and charges him instead with illegal attempts to overturn its results.
Yale history professor Timothy Snyder noted: “That Trump will be tried for his coup attempt is not a violation of his rights. It is a fulfillment of his rights. It is the grace of the American republic. In other systems, when your coup attempt fails, what follows is not a trial.” While Trump has tried to whip up his supporters to fight for him, only a few turned out today to protest the proceedings, likely in part because the prosecutions of January 6 rioters have shown there are serious consequences for such actions.
Forty Democratic representatives today asked the Judicial Conference to authorize cameras in the courtroom during Trump’s trial. “It is imperative the Conference ensures timely access to accurate and reliable information surrounding these cases and all of their proceedings, given the extraordinary national importance to our democratic institutions and the need for transparency,” they wrote. “If the public is to fully accept the outcome, it will be vitally important for it to witness, as directly as possible, how the trials are conducted, the strength of the evidence adduced and the credibility of witnesses.”
Also today, while all eyes were on the former president’s arraignment, House Republicans on the Oversight Committee released the transcript of their July 31 interview with Devon Archer, former business associate of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s 53-year-old son. Democrats on the committee had protested the Republicans’ spin on the closed-door interview and had been clamoring for the release of the transcript.
Archer was supposed to be a key witness for the Republicans’ allegations, but in fact the transcript supported the Democrats: Archer testified that he had never seen Hunter Biden involve his father in business discussions and that he had no evidence that then–vice president Biden changed U.S. policy to help Hunter. He said he knew nothing about the $5 million bribe to each Biden Republicans have been alleging.
He testified that he had no knowledge of wrongdoing by Biden senior, who was not involved with the Ukrainian company Burisma on whose board Hunter sat, and that he believed it was important to Hunter Biden to follow the law.
What emerged from the interview was a very different picture than Trump Republicans have been alleging in the media: Biden was calling his son every day around the time of his other son Beau’s death, just to check in, and the younger Biden sometimes put the call on speakerphone. Archer said: “Hunter spoke to his dad every day…[a]nd so in certain circumstances…if his dad calls him at dinner and he picks up the phone, then there’s a conversation. And…you know, the conversation is generally about the weather and, you know, what it’s like in Norway or Paris or wherever he may be.”
The transcript also revealed complaints by Democrats on the committee that the Republicans have kept information and documents about their investigation into Hunter Biden from Democratic committee members, forcing the Democrats to get their information “mainly from press statements…and leaks to press outlets.” The Republicans claim to have “a hard drive in their possession that they have refused to date to provide to committee Democrats.” They also limited the ability of Democrats to ask questions of Archer. “This obviously raises strong concerns that committee Republicans are once again attempting to cherry-pick facts, which has been an ongoing issue in this probe.”
Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said: “The transcript released today shows the extent to which Congressional Republicans are willing to distort, twist, and manipulate the facts presented by their own witness just to keep fueling the far-right media’s obsession with fabricating wrongdoing by President Biden in a desperate effort to distract from Donald Trump’s third indictment and the overwhelming evidence of his persistent efforts to undermine American democracy.”
In contrast, on Newsmax tonight, Trump lawyer John Lauro appeared to confirm his client’s guilt when he tried to defend Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election by saying that “at the end, he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify. But what he didn't do is, you know, send in the tanks….” Legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Joyce White Vance tweeted: “Sounds like a coup to me.”
Meanwhile, this afternoon the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office announced a series of road closures beginning on August 7 in downtown Atlanta near the Superior Court of Fulton County and the Fulton County Government Center. At the end of July, the sheriff’s office put up security barricades around the courthouse.
The extra security measures might indicate that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis is about to announce the results of the grand jury’s investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia: "I took an oath, and…the oath requires that I follow the law,” Willis said today. “And…if someone broke the law in Fulton County, Georgia,...I have a duty to prosecute, and that's exactly what I plan to do.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/03/trump-court-appearance-dc-indictment/
https://schiff.house.gov/imo/media/doc/trump_trial_transparency_letter.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/08/01/trump-charges-2020-election-probe/
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/trump-to-make-first-court-appearance-in-election-theft-case
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/03/inside-courtroom-trump-arraignment-00109777
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/03/trump-indictment-violence/
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Devon-Archer-Transcript.pdf
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/politics/fulton-county-courthouse-trump-security/index.html
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance ArraignmentToday, the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was arraigned on criminal charges. Again. This time, it was on charges that should shake even the former president’s strongest supporters to the core, although it's highly unlikely that they will. That is not to say that the charges Trump faces in New York or the federal charges of gross m…Read more14 hours ago · 1,252 likes · 169 comments · Joyce VanceTwitter (X)
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August 2, 2023
August 2, 2023
There have been more developments today surrounding yesterday’s indictment of former president Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in office over the wishes of the American people.
Observers today called out the part of the indictment that describes how Trump and Co-Conspirator 4, who appears to be Jeffrey Clark, the man Trump wanted to make attorney general, intended to use the military to quell any protests against Trump’s overturning of the election results. When warned that staying in power would lead to “riots in every major city in the United States,” Co-Conspirator 4 replied, “Well…that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 permits the president to use the military to enforce domestic laws, invoking martial law. Trump’s allies urged him to do just that to stay in power. Fears that Trump might do such a thing were strong enough that on January 3, 2021, all 10 living former defense secretaries signed a Washington Post op-ed warning that “[e]fforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”
They put their colleagues on notice: “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo recalled today that military leaders told Congress they were reluctant to respond to the violence at the Capitol out of concern about how Trump might use the military under the Insurrection Act.
Political pollster Tom Bonier wrote: “I understand Trump fatigue, but it feels like the president and his advisors preparing to use the military to quash protests against his planned coup should be bigger news. Especially when that same guy is in the midst of a somewhat credible comeback effort.”
On The Beat tonight, Ari Melber connected Trump Co-Conspirator John Eastman to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). Just before midnight on January 6, 2021, after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Eastman wrote to Pence’s lawyer to beg him to get Pence to adjourn Congress “for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.” On the floor of the Senate at about the same time, Cruz, who voted against certification, used very similar language when he called for “a ten-day emergency audit.”
An email sent by Co-Conspirator 6, the political consultant, matches one sent from Boris Epshteyn to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, suggesting that Epshteyn is Co-Conspirator 6. The Russian-born Epshteyn has been with Trump’s political organization since 2016 and was involved in organizing the slates of false electors in 2020. Along with political consultant Steve Bannon, Epshteyn created a cryptocurrency called “$FJB, which officially stands for “Freedom. Jobs. Business.” but which they marketed to Trump loyalists as “F*ck Joe Biden.” By February 2023, Nikki McCann Ramirez reported in Rolling Stone that the currency had lost 95% of its value.
Since the indictment became public, Trump loyalists have insisted that the Department of Justice is attacking Trump’s First Amendment rights to free speech. Indeed, if Giuliani’s unhinged appearance on Newsmax last night is any indication, it appears that has been their strategy all along. Aside from the obvious limit that the First Amendment does not cover criminal behavior, the grand jury sidestepped this issue by acknowledging that Trump had a right to lie about his election loss. It indicted him for unlawfully trying to obstruct an official proceeding and to disenfranchise voters.
Today, Trump’s former attorney general William Barr dismissed the idea that the indictment is an attack on Trump’s First Amendment rights. Barr told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “As the indictment says, they're not attacking his First Amendment right. He can say whatever he wants. He can even lie. He can even tell people that the election was stolen when he knew better. But that does not protect you from entering into a conspiracy. All conspiracies involve speech. And all fraud involves speech. Free speech doesn't give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”
Rudy Giuliani has his own troubles in the news today, unrelated to the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. His former assistant Noelle Dunphy is suing him for sexual harassment and abuse, and new transcripts filed in the New York Supreme Court of Giuliani’s own words reveal disturbing fantasies of sexual domination that are unlikely to help his reputation. (Historian Kevin Kruse retweeted part of the transcript with the words, “Goodbye, lunch.”)
The chaos in the country’s political leaders comes with a financial cost. According to Fitch Ratings Inc., a credit-rating agency, the national instability caused by “a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years” has damaged confidence in the country’s fiscal management. Yesterday it downgraded the United States of America’s long-term credit rating for the second time in U.S. history.
Fitch cited “repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions,” “a complex budgeting process,” and “several economic shocks as well as tax cuts and new spending initiatives” for its downgrade. The New York Times warned that the downgrade is “another sign that Wall Street is worried about political chaos, including brinkmanship over the debt limit that is becoming entrenched in Washington.”
The timing of the downgrade made little sense economically, as U.S. economic growth is strong enough that the Bank of America today walked back earlier warnings of a recession. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that the key factors on which Fitch based its downgrade had started in 2018 and called the downgrade “arbitrary.” The editorial board of the Washington Post called the timing “bizarre.” But the timing makes more sense in the context of the fact that House Republicans could not pass 11 of 12 necessary appropriations bills before leaving for their August recess.
The White House said it “strongly disagree[d]” with the decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating, noting that the ratings model Fitch used declined under Trump before rebounding under Biden, and saying “it defies reality to downgrade the United States at a moment when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.” But it did agree that “extremism by Republican officials—from cheerleading default, to undermining governance and democracy, to seeking to extend deficit-busting tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations—is a continued threat to our economy.”
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Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/us/politics/boris-epshteyn-co-conspirator-6.html
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/01/steve-bannon-boris-epshteyn-fjb-crypto/
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jeff-clarks-insurrection-act-remark-was-even-worse-than-it-sounds
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/why-bank-america-sees-soft-200200020.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/business/dealbook/fitch-us-credit-rating-downgrade.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/02/fitch-downgrade-national-debt-credit/
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