Shakesville: Intelligence

Showing posts with label Intelligence. Show all posts

We Resist: Day 883

a black bar with the word RESIST in white text

[Donald] Trump ordered an attack on Iran on Thursday in retaliation for the downing of a surveillance drone in the Strait of Hormuz but called the operation off just before it was due to occur because it would have caused extensive casualties, he said Friday.

In a series of morning tweets, Trump said he called off strikes on three Iranian sites minutes before they were to be launched because he was informed of the likely loss of life among Iranians.

"We were cocked & loaded to retaliate last night on 3 different sights when I asked, how many will die," Trump tweeted. "150 people, sir, was the answer from a General. 10 minutes before the strike I stopped it."

Such a death toll was "not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone," Trump wrote, adding: "I am in no hurry, our Military is rebuilt, new, and ready to go, by far the best in the world. Sanctions are biting & more added last night. Iran can NEVER have Nuclear Weapons, not against the USA, and not against the WORLD!"

Trump's Friday morning tweets appeared to gloss over the fact that he was the one, as commander in chief, who had ordered the retaliation against Iran in the first place.

Unless he wasn't.

What kind of president only asks after ordering a military strike how many potential casualties there would be? The kind of president whose warmongering advisors are potentially the ones who really ordered the strike and the kind of president who needs a bullshit excuse to explain why he ended up stopping it after his puppet-master gave a public order to stand down.

I mean, are we really meant to believe that Donald Trump cares about sparing lives when he's actively facilitating the deaths of children in his concentration camps? Please. Donald Trump doesn't do anything out of compassion.

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[Content Note: Video may autoplay at link] Olivia Gazis at CBS News: Justice Department Review of Intel in Russia Probe Fuels Fears of Politicization. "A mix of concern, confusion, and defiance has spread through elements of the intelligence community as a murky picture emerges of Attorney General William Barr's review of its investigative and analytical work on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In particular, current and former intelligence officials are questioning the purpose and propriety of the attorney general's intention, first reported by The New York Times, to enlist John Durham, the U.S. attorney for the District of Connecticut, in scrutinizing the analytical judgments that led a group of agencies to conclude that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to boost then-candidate Trump's electability."

Absolutely chilling. This is straight-up intimidation of the intelligence community. They are no longer allowed to be patriots; they must only be loyal to Donald Trump.

Jamie Ross at the Daily Beast: Trump Threatened Time Magazine Reporter with Prison over Photo of Kim Jong Un Letter. "Donald Trump freaked out and threatened a Time magazine reporter with prison after the publication's photographer apparently tried to take a snap of a letter sent to him by Kim Jong Un. Trump reportedly asked to go off-the-record while he showed off the letter to reporters, but then became enraged after the photographer appeared to try to capture it. 'Excuse me— Under Section II— Well, you can go to prison instead, because, if you use, if you use the photograph you took of the letter that I gave you... Confidentially, I didn't give it to you to take photographs of it, so don't play that game with me,' the president is quoted as saying in the transcript."

This would have been unthinkable during another administration. This and the item above demonstrate how far removed we are from anything resembling normalcy in under three years of Trump's presidency.

Tierney Sneed at TPM: Will a Trump Trade Move Create an Election Mess for Overseas U.S. Voters?

The Trump administration has supported plenty of moves to make it harder to vote. But an under-the-radar action [Donald] Trump took last year, as part of his trade war with China, may be a case of him just stumbling into that outcome, election experts fear.

Trump is threatening to withdraw from the international body that oversees global mail delivery, putting at risk the stability and reliability of the current system of sending and receiving mail internationally.

Any disruption to the international postal service, voter advocates say, could make an already difficult process of casting ballots for Americans abroad even more complicated. Among those who stand to be affected are members of the military overseas, whose ability to vote while serving their country has always been a politically sensitive issue.

Yeah, so, I'm not inclined to pretend that this was an accident, nor that Trump just happened to "stumble" into yet another way to suppress the vote of a population highly likely to vote against him in large numbers. This is more of the Republican Party's overt democracy-killing fuckery. Goddammit.

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[CN: Nativism; abuse] Renée Feltz at Rewire.News: 'Willful Recklessness': Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention. "With the 2020 election approaching, the Trump administration is taking steps to extend the detention of migrant families despite documented concerns from the medical community — including two doctors under federal contract to monitor the facilities where migrant families are held. ...The administration has buttressed its push to detain more families by arguing that few of them show up for their immigration court hearings if they are released." But that is a damnable lie: "Almost six out of every seven families released from custody had shown up for their initial court hearing."

Exactly one year ago, I warned that indefinite family detention was the objective. And here we are. FUCK.

David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O'Connell, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee at the Washington Post: When Trump Visits His Clubs, Government Agencies and Republicans Pay to Be Where He Is. "In all, his scores of trips have brought his private businesses at least $1.6 million in revenue, from federal officials and GOP campaigns who pay to go where Trump goes, according to a Washington Post analysis. They gave Trump valuable marketing opportunities — to showcase his opulent properties on an international stage. Trump's preference for his own properties also has reshaped the GOP fundraising schedule, with benefits for the Trump Organization. About one-third of all the political fundraisers or donor meetings that Trump has attended — 23 out of 63 — have taken place at his own properties."

This should be a fucking scandal, and instead it's a blip. It's a profound, brazen violation of the emoluments clause, and Trump should be impeached for this self-enrichment alone, no less everything else he's doing.

I don't know where else to put this, so I'm just going to put it here:

Anyway, Amazon will pay $0 in taxes on $11,200,000,000 in profit for 2018 https://t.co/teJd8CHL5Q
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) June 20, 2019

And finally... [CN: Sexual harassment and abuse] Josh Israel at ThinkProgress: Roy Moore, Accused Child Molester and Twice-Removed Judge, Announces 2020 Senate Run. Fucking goblin.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Today in Rampaging Authoritarianism

Donald Trump has "joked" (that is, projected precisely what he intends to do under the auspices of "humor" in order to accuse anyone who expresses alarm of being humorless and overreacting) on multiple occasions about staying in office longer than the two terms to which U.S. presidents are limited by law.

Yesterday, he did it once again.

Felicia Sonmez at the Washington Post reports:

[Donald] Trump on Sunday floated the possibility of staying in office longer than two terms, suggesting in a morning tweet that his supporters might "demand that I stay longer."

The president, who will kick off his reelection campaign on Tuesday with an event in Orlando, has previously joked about serving more than two terms, including at an event in April, when he told a crowd that he might remain in the Oval Office "at least for 10 or 14 years."

...Trump last month floated the notion of being given two bonus years as president to make up for the time former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III spent on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. The president shared a tweet in which Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. declared, "Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup."

Last year, Trump also joked about doing away with term limits in a speech to Republican donors at his Mar-a-Lago estate in which he praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for doing so.

"He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said, according to CNN. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."

This latest "joke" about not leaving office also comes on the heels of Trump saying, "I don't leave."

As I wrote on Twitter: "Note that in every one of Trump's 'jokes' about staying in office beyond two terms is the implicit certitude that he will be reelected to a second term."

The thing is: "When not if" is a pretty standard linguistic approach by incumbents. But most of them aren't using that trick within the context of suggesting that they will ignore term limits, nor against the backdrop of having colluded with a foreign government to win in the first place.

Relatedly, there was a major story in the New York Times this weekend about the U.S. attacking Russia's power grid, and I'll set aside for now the entire fuckery of the Times publishing that information, because, as Ryan Goodman noted on Twitter, there's a "blockbuster story" buried within the piece:

Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place "implants" — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.

Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.

So, the intelligence community is running the country, or at least part of it, without even telling Donald Trump.

Over two years ago, I warned that Trump's war on the intelligence community was leading to what is effectively dueling coups between the Trump administration and the national security bureaucrats — and that, if Trump fights back, it's going to get extremely ugly.

We must understand that Trump's comments about staying in office are situated within the context of a bureaucratic apparatus that is undermining his presidency. His "jokes" about not leaving office may well be shots across the bow at the intelligence community's threat to the Republican consolidation of power behind Trump.

And that is the best case scenario. A worse possibility is that the intelligence community is happy to let Trump go on being a figurehead while they run the show, because they've decided they have no use for democracy, either.

In any case, our democracy is in critical peril. And many of the people who swore oaths to protect it are the ones now endeavoring, for their own various ends, to destroy it.

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Trump Empowers Barr to Declassify Intelligence as He Audits Russia Probe

Another move by Donald Trump that is just stunningly brazen: He has given Attorney General Bill Barr the unilateral power to declassify secret intelligence as part of an audit of intelligence agencies' investigation of Russian election interference.

And naturally, he's orchestrating this grand authoritarian maneuver under the auspices of "transparency."

Devlin Barrett, Carol D. Leonnig, Robert Costa, and Colby Itkowitz at the Washington Post report:

[Donald] Trump has granted Attorney General William P. Barr "full and complete authority" to declassify government secrets, issuing a memorandum late Thursday that orders U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate promptly with Barr's audit of the investigation into Russia's election interference in 2016.

The president's move gives Barr broad powers to unveil carefully guarded intelligence secrets about the Russia investigation, which the attorney general requested to allow him to quickly carry out his review, according to the memo.

"Today's action will ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions," the White House said in an accompanying statement, which Trump then tweeted.

...The move is likely to further anger Democrats who have said that Barr is using his position as the nation's top law enforcement official to aggressively protect the president and attack his critics.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee leads one of the ongoing congressional investigations of Trump, called the action "un-American." Trump and Barr, Schiff said in a statement Thursday night, are conspiring to "weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies." ‬

The president is the government's highest authority over whether national secrets remain classified. His order gives Barr significant authority over agencies that typically hold their secrets close and don't declassify them easily.

This is very bad. I don't even know what else to say other than that. It's another catastrophic erosion of our democracy, and it demands accountability, and there is no one empowered to deliver consequences who feels inclined to do it.

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We Resist: Day 812

Ronald Vitiello, acting director of U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), announced Wednesday that he will leave his post effective Friday, becoming the latest in a string of top-level officials to resign from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The recent departures leave DHS in a state of disrepair just months before apprehensions on the southern border are expected to reach their yearly peak. According to CBP data, apprehensions historically reach their apex in May.

Vitiello's resignation comes one week after [Donald] Trump pulled his consideration for ICE director, reportedly because senior adviser Stephen Miller believed Vitiello was not tough enough on immigration enforcement.

This as there are (unconfirmed) reports of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) engaging in shooting drills on the border. I am really frightened about what the next escalation in Trump's vile nativist agenda will bring.

Not unrelatedly, Aphra_Behn is live-tweeting her reading of Benjamin Carter Hett's The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise of Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, and it is a thread you should definitely read.

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Aaron Blake at the Washington Post: William Barr's Highly Questionable Use of Trump's 'Spying' Talking Point. "At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday morning, Barr confirmed that he is looking into what he called 'spying' on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. 'I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016,' Barr said. 'I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.' When pressed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on whether he indeed viewed it as 'spying' on Trump's campaign, Barr said, 'I think spying did occur.' ...That is a highly disputed term when it comes to what the FBI did relative to the Trump campaign in 2016." To put it mildly!

Barbara McQuade at the Daily Beast: Barr Sounds More and More Like Trump's Roy Cohn. "Although the FBI's conduct should not be immune from scrutiny, government officials typically refer to intelligence activities as 'surveillance' or 'collection.' The use of the loaded term 'spying' raises skepticism of his impartiality. In addition, Barr stated, 'I think there was probably failure among a group of leaders there at the upper echelon.' He has reached this conclusion even though he hasn't 'set up a team yet' to investigate. Barr's testimony revealed a mindset that is consistent with the Trump narrative of an FBI that is out to get him. This is the attorney general appointed by Trump after Trump criticized Barr's fired predecessor, Jeff Sessions, for failing to protect him. Does Trump finally have his Roy Cohn?"

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Caroline Kelly at CNN: Ex-DNI: 'Stunning and Scary' that Barr Would Raise Spying Allegation. "Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Wednesday it was 'both stunning and scary' that Attorney General William Barr would tell lawmakers that Donald Trump's 2016 campaign was spied on. 'I thought it was both stunning and scary,' Clapper, who served under President Barack Obama, told CNN's Anderson Cooper. 'I was amazed at that and rather disappointed that the attorney general would say such a thing. The term 'spying' has all kinds of negative connotations and I have to believe he chose that term deliberately.'"

I have been writing about Trump's war on the intelligence community since (GOOD GOD) December of 2016, before he was even inaugurated, and in May of 2017, I shared a piece by Michael J. Glennon, a professor of international law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a former counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who outlined a scenario in which Trump emerges victorious in his battle with the intelligence community, and "a revamped security directorate could emerge more menacing than ever, with him its devoted new ally." And here we are, with Trump emerging not just as an ally of a malicious security directorate, but as its unchecked and unaccountable leader.

Meanwhile, as Trump and Barr lay the groundwork to have show trials of investigators who rightly viewed him as a security risk to the nation:

"Mar-a-Lago may present the worst counterintelligence nightmare the country has faced since the Cold War." Besides Trump himself, of course. https://t.co/ZhmA49CEqD
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 11, 2019

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Kathryn Kranhold at NBC News: Twice as Many Companies Paying Zero Taxes Under Trump Tax Plan. "At least 60 companies reported that their 2018 federal tax rates amounted to effectively zero, or even less than zero, on income earned on U.S. operations, according to an analysis released today by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The number is more than twice as many as ITEP found roughly, per year, on average in an earlier, multi-year analysis before the new tax law went into effect. Among them are household names like technology giant Amazon.com Inc. and entertainment streaming service Netflix Inc., in addition to global oil giant Chevron Corp., pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co., and farming and commercial equipment manufacturer Deere & Co."

As I noted in comments on today's Primarily Speaking thread, Senator Elizabeth Warren is not happy about this state of affairs and has announced a plan that would force these companies to start paying at least part of their fair share: The Real Corporate Profits Tax would apply "to the profits very large American companies report to their investors — with no loopholes or exemptions. ...This new tax only applies to companies that report more than $100 million in profits — about the 1200 most profitable firms in the country last year. That first $100 million is left alone, but for every dollar of profit above $100 million, the corporation will pay a 7% tax. ...That means Amazon would pay $698 million in taxes instead of paying zero."

Speaking of tax evasion... Kate Riga at TPM: Under Pressure from Tax Probe, Trump's Older Sister Steps Down from Judgeship. "Donald Trump's older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, has stepped down from her role as a federal appellate judge and thus ended the scrutiny into whether she and her siblings' fraudulent tax schemes constitute a breach of judicial conduct. According to a Wednesday New York Times report, the investigation was launched due to the Times reporting that Barry and her siblings financially benefited from chicanery and fraud committed in the 1990s."

And speaking of crooks...

When someone announces they are going to run for office.... any office no matter the party. Red or Blue they need to be VETTED! People flocked to Avenatti when he said he would run in 2020. This is the kind of candidate that like Trump is compromised and can be manipulated. https://t.co/UAyF5aeY9L
— Nadine van der Velde (@nadinevdVelde) April 11, 2019

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[CN: Christian Supremacy] Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire.News: The Supreme Court Considers Giving Conservative Christians a License to Discriminate…Again. "The Masterpiece Cakeshop decision most certainly did not grant the plaintiffs the broad-scale license to discriminate against LGBTQ people that they had asked for during oral arguments. That's why it took less than four months for evangelicals to return to the Court with another case involving a baker turning away a same-sex couple because of a religious objection to marriage equality. On Friday, the Supreme Court will consider whether to grant review. If it does, Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries could be one of the next term's most important cases."

[CN: War on agency] Laura Hancock at Cleveland.com: 'Heartbeat' Abortion Ban on Its Way to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. "The Ohio General Assembly sent a bill to Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday afternoon that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. The House passed the bill 56-40, mostly along party lines, as people on both sides of the abortion debate loudly protested outside the chamber. Shortly after, the Ohio Senate voted 18-13, also largely on party lines, to agree to changes made in the House to Senate Bill 23. DeWine has said he would sign a heartbeat bill."

[CN: Nativism] Amanda Holpuch at the Guardian: U.S. Immigration Police Broke Facebook Rules with Fake Profiles for College Sting. "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated Facebook policy by creating fake social media profiles tied to the University of Farmington, a sham university it created to identify people committing immigration fraud. More than 600 students, nearly all Indian citizens, were caught up in the scheme, which the Guardian has found included fake Facebook profiles created by the nation's second largest federal investigative agency, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division. 'Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear on our public-facing Law Enforcement Guidelines page,' a Facebook representative told the Guardian."

[CN: Privacy violations; sexual assault] Matt Day, Giles Turner, and Natalia Drozdiak at Bloomberg: Amazon Workers Are Listening to What You Tell Alexa.

The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as "Taylor Swift" and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word — or come across an amusing recording.

Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn't Amazon's job to interfere.

Holy shit.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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And Now Trump's Revenge Commences

Having endeavored to keep Special Counsel Bob Mueller's report from public view at least long enough to define the narrative of its secret contents, Attorney General Bill Barr is now undertaking the job of enacting Donald Trump's revenge on the people whose early investigations led to the special investigation of his collusion with Russia.

Naturally, Republican lawmakers like Lindsey Graham and Jim Jordan have jumped on board to help facilitate the revenge plot.

Chris Strohm and Billy House at Bloomberg report:

Attorney General William Barr has assembled a team to review controversial counterintelligence decisions made by Justice Department and FBI officials, including actions taken during the probe of the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter.

This indicates that Barr is looking into allegations that Republican lawmakers have been pursuing for more than a year — that the investigation into [Donald] Trump and possible collusion with Russia was tainted at the start by anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Justice Department.

...Republican Lindsey Graham, who's a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has already pledged to pursue the issue in the Judiciary Committee he leads.

..."That's great news he's looking into how this whole thing started back in 2016," Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said Tuesday of Barr's interest in the issue. "That's something that has been really important to us. It's what we've been calling for."

Indeed, Congressional Republicans have been calling for punitive investigations of the investigators, while Trump's base of deplorable cultists has continued calling lock her up.

They want show trials, Trump is leveraging his mighty power in order to give them what they want, and the rest of his despicable party is falling right in line.

Failing actual show trials of his "enemies," Trump and the GOP will nonetheless communicate that anyone who comes for the president will lose — and had better be prepared to get a target on their own backs. The message is that the Department of Justice is now a weapon of vengeance.

Utterly chilling, by explicit design.

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This Is a Big Deal

Another Donald Trump policy change with major implications flying under the radar today: Donald Trump has revoked "an Obama-era requirement for reporting civilian casualties that resulted from U.S. intelligence operations in non-combat areas across the globe."

Trump struck a section of an executive order issued by former President Barack Obama, which required both the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to report on civilian casualties that occurred during their operations. There are other provisions that still require the Pentagon to report on civilian casualties caused by military operations outside of combat areas.

"I don't know why they're being coy," said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the private Federation of American Scientists. "They are not saying 'We don't want to report CIA operation casualties,' but that's what they're doing. They are eliminating reporting of casualties arising from CIA operations."

Emphasis mine.

This is particularly concerning to me because of the administration's continual drum-banging on Venezuela and the history of covert U.S. interventions in Latin America. I worry that this is, in fact, a signal that the administration is preparing for an operation in Venezuela. Or elsewhere.

I also want to note that this policy change is being made while we don't have a permanent Secretary of Defense, as Sarah Kendzior noted yesterday in a good thread on Twitter.

As I've said before, Trump loves to make these sorts of sweeping policy changes while there is an acting cabinet head, because they are sycophants who give him zero pushback.

This is a big deal. I am so angry and so frustrated that it will slide by virtually unnoticed.

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We Resist: Day 741

"Billionaire" isn't a qualification. It's the description of a person who is hoarding more resources than they could use in 100 lifetimes while other people are starving. It's the name for a human dragon sleeping on its pile of rubies and gold.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 29, 2019

Here are some more things in the news today...

John Wagner and Shane Harris at the Washington Post: Trump Blasts U.S. Intelligence Officials, Disputes Assessments on Iran and Other Global Threats. "[Donald] Trump lashed out at U.S. intelligence officials Wednesday, calling them 'extremely passive and naive' about the 'dangers of Iran' and pushing back on their assessments of the Islamic State and North Korea during a congressional hearing. ...Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also weighed in. 'The President has a dangerous habit of undermining the intelligence community to fit his alternate reality,' Warner said in a tweet. 'People risk their lives for the intelligence he just tosses aside on Twitter.'"

When Russia is involved it’s always shady!
Venezuelan lawmaker says that the empty Russian plane (500 person capacity) that arrived yesterday was there to pick up 20 tons of gold from the central bank
Destination unknown https://t.co/eHYPGX53S9
— Olga Lautman (@olgaNYC1211) January 30, 2019

I still don't understand what Trump (and Pence) are doing in Venezuela, although I am damn certain that their interest does not end at regime change. I do think they are interested in further destabilizing the region, to what ends I'm not sure, and I suspect there's a possibility of waging a false war with Russia in Venezuela, with the purpose of pillaging oil and other regional resources (including state treasure; see above) and the tangential benefit of creating the illusion that Russia and the U.S. are still adversaries and that the U.S. president isn't a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin. In any case, I'm very freaked out and worried for the people of Venezuela.

Emma Loop at BuzzFeed: A House Democrat Is Targeting Steven Mnuchin's Business Dealings in the Russian Sanctions Fight. "A House Democrat is demanding answers about an alleged business deal that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had with an associate of a Russian oligarch whose companies recently received US sanctions relief. California Rep. Jackie Speier, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Mnuchin last week seeking answers about a deal he reportedly made in 2017 with an associate of Oleg Deripaska's, the billionaire aluminum magnate whose companies Treasury surprisingly announced it would be taking off the formal sanctions list in December."

Igor Derysh at Salon: With Sanctions Lifted, Trump Transition Member Gets Board Position on Russian Oligarch's Company. "On Sunday, the Treasury Department lifted the sanctions on three companies owned by Deripaska 10 months after it imposed them, citing Russia’s 'malign activity around the globe.' Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also personally sanctioned because the government accused him of threats to rivals, bribing government officials and links to organized crime. As part of the deal to have the sanctions lifted, Deripaska agreed to dilute his control of EN+, the parent company of the Russian aluminum giant Rusal. ...On Monday, EN+ announced seven new board directors, including Christopher Burnham, who served on Trump's State Department transition team and previously worked as an executive at Deutsche Bank." Deutsche Bank. Of course.

As an Intelligence warrior my mission was to identify imminent threats to our great nation. A megalomaniacal, delusional #RussianAsset who thinks he knows better than all of us is the greatest threat this nation has ever faced. Our Constitution gives us tools to #DisArmTheThreat https://t.co/iKWwB0dspZ
— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) January 30, 2019

Danny Hakim at the New York Times: N.R.A. Seeks Distance From Russia as Investigations Heat Up. "When a delegation of high-profile donors, boosters, and board members from the National Rifle Association traveled to Russia in 2015, they visited a gun factory in Moscow, took in a ballet, and met with members of Vladimir Putin's inner circle. But now the N.R.A. is seeking to distance itself from the trip, after revelations that a Russian woman who helped arrange it, Maria Butina, was conspiring to infiltrate the organization. The trip has been a subject of scrutiny in at least four inquiries into the N.R.A.'s ties to Russia; questions about the N.R.A. have also surfaced in the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Newly empowered congressional Democrats are now stepping up efforts to uncover how much money the N.R.A. received from Russia, and whether the group served as a conduit for Russian funds into the 2016 Trump campaign."

Casey Michel at ThinkProgress: Hacked Emails List Right-Wing Fundraiser Partying with Russian Fascists and Oligarchs. "Last month, a new leak site called Distributed Denial of Secrets went live, compiling a cache of hacked emails and documents of Russian officials, confidants of sanctioned Russian oligarchs, and those steering Russian interference efforts. Among the revelations: A higher-up at the Bradley Foundation, one of the main financiers of right-wing groups in the U.S. — including the Daily Caller News Foundation and anti-immigrant organizations — apparently attended a notorious 'pro-family' conference in Russia in 2014, held shortly after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine."

Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: Mueller Witness' Team Gamed Out Russian Meddling...in 2015. "Days after Donald Trump rode down an escalator at Trump Tower and announced he'd run for president, a little-known consulting firm with links to Israeli intelligence started gaming out how a foreign government could meddle in the U.S. political process. Internal communications, which The Daily Beast reviewed, show that the firm conducted an analysis of how illicit efforts might shape American politics. Months later, the Trump campaign reviewed a pitch from a company owned by that firm's founder — a pitch to carry out similar efforts."

Christopher Bing and Joel Schectman at Reuters: Special Report: Inside the UAE's Secret Hacking Team of U.S. Mercenaries.

Stroud had been recruited by a Maryland cyber security contractor to help the Emiratis launch hacking operations, and for three years, she thrived in the job. But in 2016, the Emiratis moved Project Raven to a UAE cyber security firm named DarkMatter. Before long, Stroud and other Americans involved in the effort say they saw the mission cross a red line: targeting fellow Americans for surveillance.

"I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons," she told Reuters. "I am officially the bad kind of spy."

The story of Project Raven reveals how former U.S. government hackers have employed state-of-the-art cyber-espionage tools on behalf of a foreign intelligence service that spies on human rights activists, journalists, and political rivals.

Interviews with nine former Raven operatives, along with a review of thousands of pages of project documents and emails, show that surveillance techniques taught by the NSA were central to the UAE's efforts to monitor opponents.

There is much more at the link.

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Greg Sargent at the Washington Post: Howard Schultz Is Anything But a Realist. "The idea that a billionaire with no political experience is just what we need is particularly galling amid our current disastrous experiment. And Schultz would run as a 'centrist independent,' which appears to mean 'economically conservative and socially liberal,' but there's not a great constituency for that. ...At the core of this sort of centrism is the idea that there's a hallowed middle ground that — simply by virtue of being equidistant between arbitrarily designated and presumptively equivalent 'extremes' — is inherently sensible, virtuous, and above all, non-ideological. This idea is certainly seductive to far too many people. But it doesn't give rise to anything resembling realism. In a way, it's a rigid ideology all its own."

Pilar Melendez at the Daily Beast: Howard Schultz Shocked a Box of Cheerios Costs Four Dollars. "Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, amid a media tour rife with awkward moments, got stumped by Morning Joe on Wednesday when asked: 'How much does an 18-ounce box of Cheerios cost?' 'An 18 ounce box of Cheerios? I don't eat Cheerios,' the billionaire responded to host Mika Brzezinski. When she revealed the price was four dollars, Schultz was shocked. 'That's a lot,' he said."

There are a whole lot of reasons that the cultural enamourment with billionaires and the attendant belief that they are inherently qualified to be political leaders are garbage. Among them is this: Anyone who is a billionaire is de facto completely out of touch with the lives of the majority of the population. They have no comprehension about what life is really like. One cannot effectively and decently lead people whose lives they fundamentally don't understand.

And, truly, no president of a wildly and wonderfully diverse nation can know and understand the lives, needs, interests, struggles, and successes of everyone in the country. But living in a separate, elite economic stratosphere is insulating, even for the empathic and curious.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 30, 2019

[Content Note: Class warfare] Ally Boguhn at Rewire.News: Diapers, Tampons, Nursing Bras: The Trump Shutdown's Unseen Costs for Working Families. "Corinne Cannon, founder and executive director of the Greater D.C. Diaper Bank, told Rewire.News Friday that the organization saw 'a pretty drastic increase in requests for help for individuals' during the government shutdown. The diaper bank, operating in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia for more than eight years, normally provides 'diapers, period products, formula, breastfeeding supplies, adult incontinence supplies, and other hygiene products' to social service organizations that then distribute them to those in need. But during the government shutdown, there was 'a massive increase in need,' Cannon said. 'We had an increase in requests for individuals, an increase in requests from organizations — we saw a lot of folks who we've never talked to about diaper needs before coming [to us].'"

[CN: Nativism] John Wagner and Erica Werner at the Washington Post: Trump Digs In on Border Wall Funds as Congressional Negotiators Prepare to Convene. "Trump warned Wednesday that congressional negotiators would be 'wasting their time' if they do not discuss his demand for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, which led to a 35-day partial government shutdown that ended last week with a temporary truce. The president's message, delivered in a morning tweet, came hours before a bipartisan, bicameral committee was set to meet for the first time to broker a compromise over border security funding and avert another shutdown, with Democrats continuing to resist Trump's demand. 'If the committee of Republicans and Democrats now meeting on Border Security is not discussing or contemplating a Wall or Physical Barrier, they are Wasting their time!' Trump wrote on Twitter."

Fucking hell.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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The Shutdown Is Impeding Federal Investigations

This is fine (this is not fine): The longer the shutdown drags on, the more it is impeding federal investigations, which, according to federal officers, makes the shutdown itself "a serious national-security threat."

Natasha Bertrand at the Atlantic reports:

FBI agents have lost irreplaceable sources. Joint Terrorism Task Force officers can't get into the bureau's computer systems. Federal investigations are being stymied by a lack of resources. The partial government shutdown, now in its 33rd day, has become a serious national-security threat, the FBI Agents Association said on Tuesday.

Over the past several weeks, the association has been compiling stories from agents about the the shutdown's impact on the bureau's operations. One agent, speaking anonymously, said his unit had "lost several sources who have worked for months, and years, to penetrate groups and target subjects" due to the inability to pay confidential sources.

"These assets cannot be replaced," the agent said. "Serving my country has always been a privilege, but it has never been so hard or thankless."

Another agent reported: "Not being able to pay Confidential Human Sources risks losing them and the information they provide FOREVER. It is not a switch that we can turn on and off."

Others complained that their investigations were being slow-rolled, with dozens of grand-jury subpoenas going undelivered. "The operational impacts of this shutdown are immeasurable," said one agent in the Northeast region.

Naturally, many people will automatically wonder how the Special Counsel's office is being impacted, and that is certainly a concern. The corrupt president shutting down the government while he is under investigation is effectively (if not explicitly) yet another attempt to obstruct justice.

But there are other cases of grave urgency being affected, too — including, naturally, drug trafficking and human trafficking and terrorism cases that are ostensibly so important to Donald Trump that he had to shutdown the government over getting funding for a wall to prevent drugs and human traffickers and terrorists from entering the country.

(Never mind that the vast majority of trafficking does not happen across the southern border, nor is it a key point of entry for terrorists.)

Trump is famously hostile to the rule of law, and he doesn't care if the entire justice system grinds to a fucking halt during this shutdown. Nor does the rest of his party, who could put a stop to this mess, but refuse.

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We Resist: Day 725

One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don't have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day.

So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.

Stay engaged. Stay vigilant. Resist.

* * *

Earlier today by me: Quite a Weekend for Russian Puppet Donald Trump and Julián Castro Announces Candidacy for President. And ICYMI late Friday: An Observation About the Shutdown.

Here are some more things in the news today...

Paul McLeod and Tarini Parti at BuzzFeed: This Is Now the Longest Government Shutdown in U.S. History and There's No End in Sight. "The ongoing government shutdown became the longest in United States history Saturday, and there is no end to the standoff in sight. [Today] marks the [24th] day of the partial shutdown, breaking the previous record of 21 days set during Bill Clinton's presidency between December 1995 and January 1996. That shutdown affected only a third as many workers. ...Friday was supposed to be payday for government workers. Around 800,000 people — roughly half of whom are furloughed, half of whom are deemed essential and must work without pay — missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began. Cracks are already starting to show. TSA workers are calling in sick in droves. Low-wage subcontractors are losing wages they'll likely never get back. Even the organization tasked with stabilizing the spike in asylum claims at the southern border has been largely shut down."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course. People who rely on food stamps are going to have to try to find other sources of food if the shutdown doesn't end soon. Federal prisoners are soon going to start feeling the effects of a major barrier to their accessing resources, including food. People who live in federally subsidized housing may start having trouble making rent. The shutdown is already grim for millions of people, and it's going to escalate fast.

Meagan Flynn at the Washington Post: Compelled to Work without Pay, Federal Employees Sue Trump, Accusing Him of Violating 13th Amendment. "A group of federal employees working without pay during the partial government shutdown are likening the predicament to involuntary servitude in a lawsuit filed last week, accusing [Donald] Trump and their bosses of violating the 13th Amendment. ...Employees at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Bureau of Prisons, and Federal Aviation Administration have already filed lawsuits against the administration through their respective unions, among others. But this case, filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, diverges from the others by invoking the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the aftermath of the Civil War. The four plaintiffs, who are from Texas and West Virginia, work for the departments of Justice, Agriculture, and Transportation; one is an air traffic controller. The lawsuit also claims violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act, among other statutes."

Martin Pengelly and Oliver Laughland at the Guardian: Trump Rejects Lindsey Graham's Proposal to Reopen Government. "On day 24 of the partial government shutdown, the longest in history, Senate Republicans seemed best placed to negotiate a reopening of shuttered federal departments and threatened services and the restoration of pay to 800,000 workers. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has worked assiduously to get close to Donald Trump, said he told the president he should reopen the government temporarily, to pursue a deal. Some Democrats voiced support. But on Monday morning, en route to New Orleans where he is due to address a farming convention, Trump told reporters he had rejected Graham's suggestion. 'I'm not interested,' he said of the senator's proposal. 'I want to get it solved. I don't want to just delay it. I want to get it solved.'"

Ariel Edwards-Levy at the Huffington Post: Most Americans Hold Trump Responsible for Government Shutdown, New Polls Show. (As well they should!) "Most Americans hold [Donald] Trump responsible for the partial government shutdown, according to a slate of just-released surveys, including the fourth wave of HuffPost/YouGov's shutdown tracking poll. The share of Americans who regard the shutdown as “very serious” now stands at a new high of 50 percent... 57 percent of Americans say they hold Trump at least partially responsible for the shutdown, an uptick from the 49 to 51 percent who have said the same in previous weeks."

My profound sympathies to everyone who is already being affected by the shutdown. Please feel welcome and encouraged to leave suggestions in comments for how others can best support those who rely on federal paychecks and/or services.

* * *

John Wagner at the Washington Post: Trump Denies Working for Russia, Calls Past FBI Leaders 'Known Scoundrels'. "Trump on Monday flatly denied that he worked for Russia, and he called FBI officials who launched a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether he did 'known scoundrels' and 'dirty cops.' ...'I never worked for Russia,' Trump said as he prepared to leave for an event in New Orleans, adding: 'Not only did I never work for Russia, I think it's a disgrace that you even asked that question because it's a whole big fat hoax. It's just a hoax.'" ...'He was a bad cop and he was a dirty cop,' Trump said of Comey. The president also attacked former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe as 'a proven liar and was fired from the FBI.' ...Speaking more broadly of FBI leadership at the time, Trump said 'the people doing that investigation were people that have been caught that are known scoundrels. They're ... I guess you could say they're dirty cops.'"

It's interesting (cough) that Trump's entire defense against charges he is a Russian asset is to talk shit about the U.S. intelligence community, i.e. calling them scoundrels, but never to talk shit about Putin, as in "I'd never work for such a scoundrel." https://t.co/DxtE28YDO9
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 14, 2019

Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani at ThinkProgress: Senate Democrats to Push Vote Blocking Sanctions Relief for Russian Oligarch's Companies. "Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Saturday that sanctions on Oleg Deripaska's businesses should remain in place. He announced that he will force a vote disapproving the Trump administration's decision through a 2017 sanctions law, the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which requires a simple majority vote. Senate Democrats would need the support of a few Republicans to pass the bill and send it on to the House." This is something Schumer would not have to do if Trump and the Republican leadership weren't beholden to the Kremlin.

Further reminders that it's not just Trump who's compromised and/or voluntarily traitorous...

“Vekselberg is connected to a few people in Trump’s inner circle. In 2014, on a trip to Moscow, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner met with Emin Agalarov and attended a private fundraising dinner with Vekselberg," @olgaNYC1211 explains in my latest: https://t.co/P5jkMWobv2
— Cristina Maza (@CrisLeeMaza) January 14, 2019

Betsy Woodruff at the Daily Beast: Kremlin Blessed Russia's NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says. "The Kremlin has long denied that it had anything to do with the infiltration of the National Rifle Association and the broader American conservative movement. A U.S. intelligence report reviewed by The Daily Beast tells a different story. Alexander Torshin, the Russian central bank official who spent years aggressively courting NRA leaders, briefed the Kremlin on his efforts and recommended they participate, according to the report [which also] notes that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was fine with Torshin's courtship of the NRA because the relationships would be valuable if a Republican won the White House in 2016."

In related news... Jessica Schneider and Eli Watkins at CNN: Attorney General Nominee Says Mueller Should Be Allowed to Finish Report. "Attorney General nominee William Barr said that, if confirmed, he would let special counsel Robert Mueller finish his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and believes the results should be made public. 'On my watch, Bob will be allowed to complete his work,' Barr intends to say to Congress at the start of his Senate hearing Tuesday, according to prepared testimony released on Monday. 'I believe it is in the best interest of everyone — the President, Congress, and, most importantly, the American people — that this matter be resolved by allowing the special counsel to complete his work,' he will say."

On its face, that certainly sounds like good news. Problem is, as I have been saying for more than a year now, Mueller's investigation has effectively, even if not intentionally, created loads of time and space for Republicans to so thoroughly consolidate power that they won't have to care about or even let the public see his conclusions, even if those conclusions recommend serious consequences for Trump and/or anyone else in his administration. The more time Mueller gives them, the more time they'll have to keep consolidating power and, not incidentally, stacking the judiciary. Barr, who by the way is old friends with Mueller, knows this. Of course he's happy to give Mueller all the time in the world.

The question for Senate Democrats during Barr's hearing is not whether he'll allow Mueller to finish, but whether he will support public disclosure of his findings, whenever they are delivered.

* * *

[Content Note: Anti-choicery]

Says the guy who's overseen a hideous rollback of reproductive rights in his state. Kasich is (literally) the reason why I coined the phrase "the perfidy of civility." https://t.co/kuBiNnXuUi
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) January 14, 2019

Lindsay King-Miller at Rewire.News: The Real Question Now May Not Be How to Save Abortion Rights, but How to Prepare for Their Absence.

Having written about abortion rights and their opponents since the mid-2000s, including for Rewire.News, journalist Robin Marty was quick to dispense with hand-wringing over the future of Roe; as she sees it, an overturn is now inevitable.

Kennedy's retirement "was essentially a signal saying Roe v. Wade was up for grabs," she told me over the phone.

Marty's thread [on the subject] quickly garnered enough attention that she turned it into a HuffPost article, and then a book proposal, and then a book. After a breakneck round of drafting and editing, Handbook for a Post-Roe America will be available January 15.

...Much of what Marty discusses will not be new to those already involved in pro-choice organizing, but for people who have never considered the possibility of a world without Roe, her analysis is accessible without oversimplifying. She separates the feasible from the counterproductive: "Yes, buying a bunch of [emergency contraception] feels like a really proactive way to stick it to Trump and the rest of the anti-abortion politicians. But remember, most EC has a shelf life of three to four years, and in some cases the clock may already be ticking."

Throughout the book, Marty also points out the ways in which racism, poverty, and other oppressions restrict access to abortion beyond what is specified in the law. She highlights the importance of a reproductive justice framework that "goes far beyond just reproductive health and rights to highlight the intersections of race, class, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, religion, and the other intersections of women and people's lives."

...As reproductive rights organizers have insisted for generations, Handbook points out that making abortion illegal "does not stop people from seeking it, it only divides them into those who have the resources to find a safe abortion where it is legal, and those who attempt illegal abortions with a variety of success." And despite the specter of wire coat-hangers and "back-alley" abortions hanging over any debate about reproductive rights, Marty acknowledges that self-managed abortions, particularly medication abortions, are a safer and more viable option today than in decades past.

Handbook is cautious about emphasizing that it does not offer medical advice, but merely reproduces information that is available elsewhere. "I definitely talked to some lawyers," Marty told me with a laugh. Nonetheless, Marty does offer detailed explanations of various approaches to self-managed abortion, including reprinting a diagram explaining how to make a vacuum aspirator to perform the early abortion procedure called menstrual extraction.

The overall focus of the book, however, is less about preventing or ending unwanted pregnancies than it is about maintaining abortion access wherever possible.

And finally, in partial good news... AP at the Guardian: Judge Blocks Trump Administration Contraception Rule. "A judge in California on Sunday blocked from taking effect in 13 states and Washington D.C. Trump administration rules which would allow more employers to opt out of providing women with no-cost contraception. Judge Haywood Gilliam granted a request for a preliminary injunction by California, 12 other states, and Washington D.C. The plaintiffs sought to prevent the rules from taking effect as scheduled on Monday while a lawsuit against them moved forward. But Gilliam limited the scope of the ruling to the plaintiffs, rejecting their request that he block the rules nationwide."

At least it's something.

What have you been reading that we need to resist today?

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Trump Straight-Up Lies About James Clapper

This morning, before everyone became consumed by the cancellation of the U.S.-North Korea summit, Donald Trump started the day on Twitter, as is his habit, tweeting a straight-up lie about former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: "Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE — a terrible thing!"

This is a lie to which Trump will certainly return many times, so, even though the news has moved on for the moment, it's important to address this, because we'll definitely be coming back to it.

Many people quickly pointed out on Twitter that Clapper in no fashion said what Trump claims he said. For example:

Trump grossly twists Clapper's actual remark. Clapper said the FBI was spying "on what the Russians were doing"; asked if the FBI was spying "on Trump's campaign," he said, "No, they were not." pic.twitter.com/VRqaqtWaWP
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 24, 2018

If you can't view the embedded screencap of the transcript, during the interview on which Trump is basing this dishonest claim, Clapper responded to a direct question about whether the FBI was spying on Trump's campaign with: "No, they were not. They were spying on — a term I don't particularly like — but on what the Russians were doing. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage and influence which is what they do."

Clapper is then asked why Trump wouldn't be happy about that; that is, why would a U.S. president and ostensible patriot not be pleased that the intelligence community was protecting his campaign from foreign meddling. To which Clapper bluntly responds, "He should be."

Exactly so.

Clapper was interviewed on PBS' Newshour by Judy Woodruff last night, and he made a more detailed clarification about why "spy" isn't even the right term:

Well, I think he's kind of distorted what I was trying to say, which was — actually took aversion to the term spy, which I don't like anyway, but particularly it's inappropriate in this context.

A big gulf between a spy in the traditional sense employing spycraft or tradecraft, and an informant, who's open about what — who he was and the questions he was asking. The intent, though, is the important thing, wasn't to spy on the campaign, but rather to determine what the Russians were up to.

Were they trying to penetrate the campaign, gain access, gain leverage, gain influence? And that was the concern that the FBI had. And I think they were just doing their job and trying to protect our political system.

Trump's deliberate obfuscation of that distinction, and of the objective (national loyalty) of the investigation, is all part of his ongoing campaign to discredit the intelligence community — a campaign that could only have a single purpose: To question the motives and integrity of agencies who will certainly find evidence of his collusion.

And in a very real sense, Trump's war on the intelligence community is itself an act of collusion, because, as Clapper also noted, to undermine the U.S. intelligence community is also a goal of the Russians:

And I said this some time ago, that, you know, there's an assault on our institutions, both internally — from both internal and external sources. The external source is Russia. The internal source is our President, is attacking these institutions that have served this country long and well.

And, you know, there's not a whole lot of — these are actually fragile, and if they're not protected and nurtured over time, we risk losing them, and not all that much different between where we are today and being a banana republic.

I highly recommend watching the entire interview. There is also a complete transcript at the link.

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Trump to Pardon Scooter Libby

[Movie Trailer Voice] In a world ... where nothing matters ... a wreck of a human being who became President of the United States ... decided to blow up EVERYONE'S BRAINS ... by pardoning the only man ... who had ever faced consequences ... for the outing of a spy ... by another president and his band of sadistic minions ...

JUST IN: Pres. Trump poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, sources tell @ABC. https://t.co/orZpqBnjJP pic.twitter.com/WYOdfe4GsP
— ABC News (@ABC) April 13, 2018

Wow. The one bit of accountability after the Bush administration exposed a spy in retribution for her husband's criticism, and Trump is going to undo it. A message about investigating presidents, and another shot over the bow at the intelligence community. https://t.co/zRD8fBjWlB
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) April 13, 2018

Additionally, Trump is telegraphing to participating witnesses in Special Counsel Bob Mueller's investigation that they will get pardoned if they fall on their swords to protect him.

As you may recall, just last month the New York Times published a report that one of Trump's lawyers had discussed the possibility of Trump pardoning Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort with their lawyers, which, because it could be construed as an attempt to persuade them to behave in a certain way to earn that pardon, could constitute an attempt to obstruct justice.

This, too, is another attempt at obstruction — but unless there's a record of Trump declaring his intent to pardon Libby in the hope of influencing Mueller's witnesses, there will probably never be any consequences for it.

It's utterly galling that Trump is unwinding the one historical mark of accountability for the wantonly indecent, unethical, and outright criminal Bush administration. What a perfect gift, from one president with aggressive contempt for the law to another.

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BREAKING: Trump Declassifies Nunes Memo; Congress Publishes It

Donald Trump has declassified Rep. Devin Nunes' memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department. It was declassified "in full" and no redactions were made. Congress (that is, the Republican majority) is now free to release it to the public.

Trump, who spent this morning on Twitter escalating his feud with the FBI and the Justice Department, made an incredibly inappropriate and distressing statement, upon the announcement of the declassification.

Pres. Trump says GOP memo has been declassified: "Congress will do whatever they're going to do. But I think it's a disgrace what's happening in our country...A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves." https://t.co/OfR9pu29Wo pic.twitter.com/wJHEptrGrk
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 2, 2018

The memo was sent to Congress; it was declassified. Congress will do whatever they're going to do. But I think it's a disgrace what's happening in our country. And when you look at that, and you see that, and so many other things, what's going on— [nods and mumbles] A lot of people should be ashamed of themselves, and much worse than that.

So I sent it over to Congress. They will do what they're going to do. Whatever they do is fine. It was declassified. And let's see what happens.

But a lotta people should be ashamed. Thank you very much.

Reporters asked if Trump still had confidence in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which he refused to answer. He was then asked if the memo makes it more likely that he will fire Rosenstein.

"You figure that one out," replies @POTUS to question about whether #NunesMemo makes it more likely he'll fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) February 2, 2018

Congressional Republicans wasted no time in publishing the memo [pdf], of course.

And, as expected, it alleges that senior government and law enforcement officials abused their authority by favoring Democrats over Republicans during the election, based on cherry-picked and/or misrepresented information.

In the simplest terms: the memo is a Republican's claim that the FBI was wrong to use information from a former top spy in applying for a warrant, because the former top spy didn't like Trump, was kind of a leaker, and was working (eventually) for Democrats.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 2, 2018

In addition to being dishonest, the memo is also just self-evidently stupid. As stupid as it is dangerous, because countless people who don't know better — and many people who should know better — are going to believe its mendacious contents.

The biggest scam in the memo is misrepresenting as partisanship what was actually a profound and justified distrust of Donald Trump.
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 2, 2018

Trust in federal law enforcement and the Justice Department will erode even further, despite the fact that any sensible person should be asking themselves why the Republican Party has a vested interest in undermining public trust in institutions that hold corrupt federal officials accountable.

We were already mired in a constitutional crisis, and now it will get even worse.

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This Is a Constitutional Crisis

Last night, Rep. Adam Schiff, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, disclosed that Democrats had discovered the Republican Chair of the Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, had sent to the White House an altered version of his reckless memo alleging bias at the FBI and Justice Department. Because the president has to decide whether the document will be publicly released, Nunes sending a different memo is a big deal.

BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 1, 2018

In his letter to Nunes, Schiff wrote:

After reviewing both versions, it is clear that the Majority made material changes to the version it sent to the White House, which Committee Members were never apprised of, never had the opportunity to review, and never approved.

This is deeply troubling, because it means that the Committee Majority transmitted to the White House an altered version of its classified document that is materially different than the version on which the Committee voted. The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the Committee never approved for public release.

Not only did Nunes alter the memo before sending it to the White House; he did so after explicitly assuring Democratic Rep. Jim Himes that he would not alter it.

In a formal meeting, I asked Chairman Nunes not once, but twice, if his memo would be released precisely as we reviewed it. He said yes. Then altered it. pic.twitter.com/vWa1oFz9qX
— Jim Himes (@jahimes) February 1, 2018

Schiff wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post that Nunes' memo "crosses a dangerous line." FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly met with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Monday to make "a last-ditch plea" and warn about "the dangers of publicly releasing" the memo. The Department of Justice has also warned House Republicans against releasing the memo. And the FBI issued a formal statement yesterday expressing "grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy."

To be blunt: The minority party of the legislative branch and the intelligence community are essentially now in open war with the legislative branch majority and the executive branch.

And it is all because the president and his party are trying to stop an investigation into the subversion of our democratic process by a foreign adversary.

This is a constitutional crisis. It is not hyperbole to say that the very future of the republic is at stake.

Detailing what has led us to this point, under the troubling but accurate headline "Trump's Saturday Night Massacre Is Happening Right Before Our Eyes," Norm Eisen, Caroline Fredrickson, and Noah Bookbinder at Politico write: "All this has built steadily toward a crisis for American democracy — a Saturday Night Massacre in slow motion."

Two days ago, G. Willow Wilson published an important thread on Twitter, in which she noted that living in a dictatorship doesn't suddenly, in a single moment, feel different than what life felt like previously. "It's a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does," she wrote. "I've lived in one dictatorship and visited several others — there are still movies and work and school and shopping and memes and holidays."

A dictatorship often comes in steps, with slow erosions of public institutions, the rule of law, a free press, democratic processes, and the feeling of safety in exercising rights that still ostensibly exist.

"So if you're waiting for the grand moment when the scales tip and we are no longer a functioning democracy, you needn't bother," Wilson continued. "It'll be much more subtle than that. It'll be more of the president ignoring laws passed by congress. It'll be more demonizing of the press."

It will be — it is — the President of the United States deciding to make public a mendacious memo in direct contravention of all sage counsel and no matter the cost, because it's politically expedient for him to do so and because he refuses to be bound by the trust we have imparted in the office of the presidency and its holder, to prioritize what's best for the country over what's best for himself.

This crisis was inevitable, the moment that Donald Trump was allowed to step foot inside the Oval Office.

He did not have the nation's best interests at heart then, he does not now, and he never will.

And if his despicable party ever did, that moment has long since passed.

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Authoritarianism Watch: A Deeply Chilling Monday Night

Tonight, Donald Trump will deliver the State of the Union address, and the state of our union is profoundly unwell. We are a deeply divided nation with lots of troubles domestically and abroad; the president and his party are diligently dismantling our democratic systems and scoffing at the rule of law; and it is increasingly clear that our problems are far bigger than the midterm elections can solve.

After Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe was forced out yesterday, leaving us with one fewer person with even an infinitesimal inclination to hold this president to account, Rep. Adam Schiff, the highest ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, disclosed that the Republican Party was acting against the nation's best interests yet again by voting to release Rep. Devin Nunes reckless and menadacios memo alleging that the FBI committed surveillance abuses during the 2016 election.

Breaking: "It is a sad day.. today this committee voted to put the President's personal interest, perhaps their own political interest above the national interest" - Rep. Adam Schiff on House decision to release Nunes memo: pic.twitter.com/kaXSpKHlR8
— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) January 29, 2018

Schiff: A very sad day, I think, in the history of this committee. As I said to my committee colleagues during this hearing, sadly we can fully expect that the President of the United States will not put the national interest over his own personal interest, but it is a sad day indeed when that is also true of our own committee — because today this committee voted to put the president's personal interest, perhaps their own political interest, above the national interest, in denying themselves even the ability to hear from the Department [of Justice] and the FBI [why the memo should not be released].

Republicans on the committee would not even allow FBI Director Christopher Wray to brief them on the actual intelligence, which is a pretty clear indication they know that what's in Nunes' memo is dishonest trash that Wray would contradict. Instead, they would brook no dissent from their invented "facts," and voted to release the memo publicly (unless Trump instructs them to keep it secret within five days).

That was not the only disclosure that Schiff made following their meeting. He also reported that Republicans are investigating the FBI and the Department of Justice.

.@RepAdamSchiff says @DevinNunes made it official today: "According to the majority, the FBI is under investigation and so is the Department of Justice. This is a wholesale broadside against two of our respected institutions."
— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) January 29, 2018

Then, late yesterday, Elana Schor at Politico reported that the Trump administration informed Congress the new Russia sanctions they imposed in a bipartisan bill passed last summer would not be implemented.

A State Department spokesperson said by email that the administration is "using this legislation as Congress intended to press Russia to address our concerns related to its aggression in Ukraine, interference in other nations' domestic affairs and abuses of human rights."

Potential targets of future penalties "have been put on notice, both publicly and privately, including by the highest-level State Department and other U.S. government officials where appropriate, that significant transactions with listed Russian entities will result in sanctions," the spokesperson added.

...In addition to the sanctions on entities doing business with Moscow's defense and intelligence sectors, the sanctions law also called for the administration to produce by Monday a list of oligarchs linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a report on the consequences of sanctioning Russia's sovereign debt. The sanctions law was crafted partially in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The administration released the unclassified version of the oligarchs list late Monday, after its announcement on the non-issuance of new sanctions. The Treasury Department noted that the roster "is not a sanctions list" and that individuals listed do not "meet the criteria for designation under any sanctions program" as a result of their inclusion.

The list named 114 individuals who serve "senior political figures" in Putin's government, as well as 96 oligarchs with close ties to Moscow. It is unclear whether Congress received the sovereign debt report also due Monday, which is likely to contain classified information. The State Department spokesperson added: "Further details are contained in a classified report we have submitted to Congress."

Those are the same sanctions over which Putin threatened "painful" retaliation against American civilians if they were enforced, and that is the same oligarchs list which, just yesterday, Putin's Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would consider a "direct and obvious attempt to influence" the Russia elections in March.

So Trump has just completely caved to Putin's bullying.

And, in doing so, the executive branch of the United States government has unilaterally overruled the legislative branch.

Let us be very clear about what has happened here: The U.S. president has asserted himself as an authoritarian and fundamentally undermined the basic tenets of the U.S. democracy in order to do the bidding of the Russians, while his party uses their majority in Congress to try to discredit or outright quash investigations into that president's collusion with the Russians.

As I have said many times before: The collusion is right out in the open.

And we are losing the republic because there is simply not enough urgency to even have a frank public conversation about that, no less to disempower a president who is a blatant traitor.

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