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Jul 11
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Tonight’s news dump felt different to me, as if Trump has
realized that he is in trouble in the upcoming election, and rather than
trying to court the independent voters he needs to win reelection honestly,
is focusing instead on doing all he can to protect himself from indictments
and to charge up his base.
First, though, while there is much political news, the biggest
story remains the coronavirus. Today the U.S. had more than 68,000 new
coronavirus cases in a single day, the seventh single-day record in the last
11 days. Yesterday’s number—also a record—was 59,886. Our death toll has
topped 136,000, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top advisor to the president on the
coronavirus, says he hasn’t briefed the president in two months, and is not
being allowed on television because of his dire warnings about the pandemic.
The Republican governors of Florida, Arizona, and Texas, where
infections are spiking, are caught between the reality of the virus and
Republican ideology.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis has been refusing to release
data on hospitalizations, but the state today revealed that there are almost
7000 Floridians in Florida hospitals, sick with Covid-19. Florida is now one
of the world’s epicenters for the disease, but DeSantis says he will not slow
the state’s reopening.
In Arizona, now leading the U.S. in the growth of new Covid-19
cases with 4,221 new cases today, Governor Doug Ducey has ordered bars, movie
theaters, gyms, and water parks closed to stop the spread of the virus. Bar
owners are suing him.
And in Texas, where Houston hospitals have run out of room for
more patients and are turning them away, county Republican parties have voted
to censure Governor Greg Abbott for requiring face masks to slow the spread
of the virus. They say such an order is government overreach.
Now politics: Today Attorney General William Barr, who is
packing the Department of Justice with his own loyalists, announced the
appointment of a new U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Seth
D. DuCharme will take over for Richard P. Donoghue, who will move to the main
Justice Department to oversee investigations around the country. Both men are
close to Barr. DuCharme has been working with John Durham, whom Barr has
tapped to try to undermine the evidence in the Mueller Report. The EDNY has
been investigating irregularities in the financing of Trump’s inauguration
festivities.
In any normal era, this unusual change would be the day’s
major story, but it was eclipsed today by the news that Trump has commuted
the sentence of his friend and associate Roger Stone, who was supposed to
surrender on Tuesday to serve a 40-month sentence. A jury convicted Stone of
obstructing Congress, lying to investigators, and tampering with a witness.
When Trump insisted that Stone was being persecuted for his politics, the
judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, answered that Stone “was not
prosecuted for standing up for the president; he was prosecuted for covering
up for the president.”
Nonetheless, Trump continued to attack Stone’s conviction.
First, Barr’s Department of Justice abruptly reduced its recommended sentence
for Stone against the wishes of the career prosecutors who handled Stone's
case. That led to a crisis in the DOJ, as the four prosecutors quit the case.
When Jackson handed down a 40-month sentence, Trump turned
against the jury that had convicted Stone, insisting without evidence that
the forewoman was a biased anti-Trump activist who had tainted the jury. The
judge shot down that argument, pointing out that Stone’s lawyers had not
challenged her status when they could have, but, identified by Trump
supporters, the forewoman—who had, after all, been doing her civic duty--
became a target.
Stone’s legal troubles stemmed from his attempt to be the
go-between who funneled stolen emails from Wikileaks, a front for Russian
intelligence, to the 2016 Trump campaign. But his connection to Trump is much
longer and deeper: the men have known each other for many years, and it was
Stone who brought his former associate Paul Manafort onto Trump’s campaign in
summer 2016. Manafort was fresh from advising the political career of a
Russia-linked oligarch in Ukraine, and was present at the Trump Tower meeting
on June 9, 2016 when Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner met with Russian
agents. Manafort turned the flagging campaign around, and if there are
skeletons in the campaign closet, it is likely that Stone would know of at
least some of them.
This afternoon, before the announcement, NBC news
correspondent Howard Fineman tweeted “Just had a long talk with [Roger
Stone]. He says he doesn’t want a pardon (which implies guilt) but a
commutation, and says he thinks [Trump] will give it to him. 'He knows I was
under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation
considerably. But I didn’t.'”
This statement indicates, of course, that Trump is hiding
criminal behavior, and that his commutation of Stone’s sentence is a bribe to
keep him quiet. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) sure saw it that way: “This is,
like, super simple, right? Stone had info that would have put Trump in jail.
He told Trump he'd obstruct justice if he got clemency. Trump agreed. If you
think it went down another way, you haven't been paying attention to the last
40 years of Donald Trump,” he tweeted.
It is interesting that Trump did not pardon Stone, but rather
commuted his sentence. A presidential pardon takes away a person’s right to
stay silent in court under the right established by the Fifth Amendment to
the Constitution not to self-incriminate. It does so because there is no need
to worry about conviction: you've been pardoned. A commutation does not take
away that right, so Stone now cannot be compelled to testify.
There is widespread condemnation of this commutation, and
yesterday even the DOJ said it supported Stone’s imprisonment. But Trump
clearly doesn’t care. His long statement upon issuing the grant of clemency
was a rehash of his usual accusations about “the Russia Hoax that the Left
and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine
the Trump presidency.”
It was red meat for his base, and that appears to be what’s on
the menu these days. Today Trump hit at educators, a traditional target of
the right: “Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left
Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury
Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status… and/or Funding, which will
be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our
children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!” he tweeted.
And yesterday we learned that Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) is planning to offer a six-day “citizens academy” course to
train people in what ICE does, including the arrest of immigrants. “You have
been identified as a valued member of the community who may have interest in
participating in the inaugural class of the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Chicago Citizens
Academy,” read a letter from ICE Chicago Field Office Director Robert
Guadian. The program will “serve as a pilot for nationwide implementation,”
it said. The course will include training in “defensive tactics, firearms
familiarization and targeted arrests,” according to the letter, although when
asked about it, ICE spokeperson Nicole Alberico said “The goal is to build
bridges with the community by offering a day-in-the-life perspective of a
federal law enforcement agency.”
Finally, there was news about one of Trump’s favorite Fox News
Channel shows, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Today, Carlson’s chief writer, Blake
Neff, had to step down when it came out that for years he had been posting
vile racist, homophobic, and sexist language on an online forum of
like-minded fellow-travelers.
It appears there was at least some overlap between what Neff
posted on the forum and what appeared on Carlson’s show.
—-
Notes
Romney slams Trump for 'historic corruption'
after he commutes Roger Stone's prison sentence
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July 11, 2020 09:46 AM
Sen. Mitt Romney tore into President Trump’s
decision to commute his ally Roger Stone’s prison sentence.
“Unprecedented,
historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person
convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” the Utah
Republican tweeted Saturday morning.
Unprecedented,
historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person
convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.
It was the strongest statement of disapproval yet from a high-profile Republican after the White House announced on Friday that the president was commuting Stone’s entire three-year prison sentence, which does leave intact his criminal record.
Romney, the Republican
Party's presidential nominee in the 2012 election, became the
first senator in U.S. history to vote to convict a president from his
own party during the impeachment trial of Trump in February.
Stone, 67, was set to
report to prison on Tuesday. An emergency appeal to extend his Tuesday
surrender date because of the pandemic was rejected by the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit prior to the commutation announcement on Friday.
The White House
statement said that Stone "would be put at serious medical risk" if
sent to prison and claimed that he was "treated very unfairly" by the
courts.
Stone, who maintained
his innocence, noted to journalist
Howard Fineman on Friday, right before he was granted clemency, that he
had stayed loyal to the president after he was convicted of lying to
congressional investigators, obstructing a congressional investigation, and
attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness.
“He knows I was under
enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation
considerably. But I didn’t," Stone said.
Washington Post: Trump commutation
of Roger Stone's sentence an 'unforgivable betrayal' of office
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July 11, 2020 12:41 PM
The Washington
Post editorial board blasted President Trump's decision to commute
Roger Stone's sentence.
The opinion piece, which declared the
commutation to be an "unforgivable betrayal" of his office, was
published Friday night, hours after the White House announced Stone would not be
serving any of his three-year prison sentence.
Stone, a longtime
friend and associate of the president, had been convicted of charges stemming
from the U.S. government's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016
election.
The Washington
Post editorial board called the president's decision "a
perversion of justice," which amounts to "one of the most nauseating
instances of corrupt government favoritism the United States has ever
seen."
"The president
seems to be doing his best, within the confines of the U.S. constitutional
system, to emulate the gangster leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin,
a man whose ruinous reign Mr. Trump has always admired," read the
editorial. "If the country needed any more evidence, Friday confirmed that
the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself."
Stone, 67, still keeps
his criminal record because he was not pardoned. He was convicted of lying to
congressional investigators, obstructing a congressional investigation, and
attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness. Stone told journalist
Howard Fineman on Friday, right before he was granted clemency, that he
was "under enormous pressure to turn on" Trump but refused to do so.
The White House called
Stone's sentence unjust. A statement released Friday also noted that Stone, who
had raised concerns about the coronavirus, "would be put at serious
medical risk" if sent to prison. He was set to begin his sentence next
week. After being granted clemency, Stone
said Trump "saved my life."
Congressional Democrats
and at least one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney, criticized the commutation as an
act of "corruption."
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