While the brightest and best of the nation's media are covering the great Get-Used-to -It flood of Texas, 2017, other stories are going barely or uncovered. A blind frog could find great stories in Houston, it doesn't need all of the brightest and best, but there they are.
Meanwhile, as the novelists say, a truly great drama is being enjoyed only by the fans of intrigue and danger. Trump actually moved his queen in pardoning Sheriff Joe Arpaio. So now Robert Mueller has the queen in a knight's fork.
We can chat about this after the break.
I, Trump last Friday pardoned Arpaio before Sheriff Joe had been sentenced and before his trial was even officially over. We know Trump intervened with Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to get the latest Arpaio trial stopped, and Sessions, bless his little heart, told Trump to flake off. That was bad. But the pardon was worse. National Review has a nifty little piece about why it was worse: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450953/rump-pardon-arpaio-gets-law-and-order-wrong-law-enforcement-at-its-worst-rewarded.
(Especially notice the part about how another one, Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, had a baby delivered by a mother in shackles in his jail, and when help arrived two hours later the baby was dead. Shackling pregnant women is a technique Clarke learned from Arpaio. Who may have learned it from Himmler. Clarke has a campaign book out that our non-reading president recommended by tweet. You wonder what Trump's ecclesiastical supporters think of his favorite law enforcers, but I guess they figure the boss isn't responsible for baby killers and child molesters, even if he creates the climate for it.)
But back to Trump. By inelegantly pardoning Arpaio before his sentence was finalized, Trump sent a message to all of those called to talk to Mueller's investigation of Soviet messing around with our election. (Remember that?) The message is: DON'T WORRY ABOUT MUELLER; I HAVE YOUR BACK BEFORE HE EVEN HANDCUFFS YOU. It must have seemed beautiful for a moment to people like Paul Manafort, Gen. Flynn and even Junior to know they can give Mueller the finger and get, in return, a gilt-edged pardon and an invite to Mar-a-Lago.
But now Politico reports, in another message to those called to talk to Mueller, that he is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/30/manafort-mueller-probe-attorney-general-242191 Most of the passages with Russians that we've heard about took place in Schneiderman's jurisdiction. So he might encounter a crime here or there. If Schneiderman prosecutes it will be for a state crime. And, ta-da!: The president's pardon power is just about absolute for federal crimes. But he can't do squat about convictions for state crimes.
I know Trump isn't as smart as Mueller. It looks like he isn't taking advice from anyone who is either. But we are left with a president who stands ready to misuse his office to interfere at both the front and back ends of federal investigations.
Once a fixed idea of duty gets inside a narrow mind, it can never get out.
ReplyDelete"I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure." - Mark Twain
See what was just posted on Commonweal: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/we-can%E2%80%99t-think-straight-about-government
ReplyDeleteThe fact that some people are spinning Arpaio as a victim makes me so angry. The man is a sadist. A county jail system shouldn't be a gulag. A prison shouldn't be one either, for that matter. But a county jail has people who haven't even been convicted of a crime yet. Not to mention that those serving sentences are guilty of lesser crimes, the truly hard core criminals will be in the state or federal prison systems.
ReplyDeleteThe treatment of pregnant women and handicapped people in Arpaio's jails was beyond appalling.
I didn't know about that legal finesse. Glad Impeller is tricky enough to set it up. We'll see if intelligence still has effect in this Age of Dolthood.
ReplyDeleteMueller not Impeller, thank you autocorrect.
DeleteI have also been following the Mueller-NY AG story. I'm a Politico fan too! :) But I don't know chess, so appreciate your spin! I am impatient for this game to play out, but remind myself that the Watergate investigation lasted more than two years before the Republicans could not find any reasons not to move to impeach and lots of reasons to make that move. One hopes that Mueller et all can get the evidence, and that the current bunch of GOP types will summon up enough courage (courage inspired by fear of losing their seats, most likely, rather than due to moral principle), to move to impeach. But, Trump likes to tough it out. He may take his inspiration from Clinton rather than from Nixon, assuming that the cowards will not vote to impeach, even if they hold a show trial.
ReplyDeleteOne story this week has one of the Trump legal associates denying he met with Russians in Prague, showing his passport as "proof" that he had not been there. I was in Prague two years ago. I got out my passport - nope, no stamp for Prague, even though I flew in. Since Prague is EU, you can also drive there from neighboring countries without going through an immigration stop - ensuring there will be no stamps with a date on it.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/trumps-lawyer-showed-you-the-cover-of-his-passport-heres?utm_term=.ytxQwm6Amm#.kgWqoZN6ZZ
If he is impeached, he will play the victim card to the hilt. Too bad, just so he is gone.
DeleteI just don't think impeachment will happen. I think Republicans see Trump as a one-term prez. I think Trump sees himself as a one-term prez. He doesn't have the attention span for more than four years. And I don't think that gives Mueller enough time to pull a case together and for impeachment to happen.
ReplyDeleteI expect the GOP will grit their teeth and bear it, perhaps looking for a candidate who will ditch Trump's base of disaffecteds--many of who purportedly don't vote and hate both mainstream parties--and reach out to moderate Democrats. Someone like Murkowski, Collins, Capitol, Kucinich, might pull in Democrats.
Meantime, Trump leaves or stay, the Democrats are having a hard time raising money. This does not bode well for 2018. I'm not giving them money until they pull together some kind of leadership coalition to talk about something other than Trump's latest travesties. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/10/the-democratic-partys-looming-fundraising-crisis-215474
Bernie has his own Our Revolution thing that seem stop be dying from the inside. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/26/bernie-sanders-our-revolution-grassroots-jeff-weaver
So, as a liberal with pink tinges, I see nothing in the Democratic party to make me happy, and I might go with a Repub who has enough brass to push back at Trump. At least we'd be safer in our beds.
Joe Arpaio. What a sad specimen of humanity. If there's any justice in the hereafter, he's going where it's real hot and there's only pink underwear.
Capito. I hate auto correct.
DeleteThe weather and the economy will probably outweigh both the Democrat and Republican efforts.
ReplyDeleteGenerally after events like Harvey the public for a while takes climate change seriously as happening now rather than in the distant future.
The economy is overdue for a slow down, maybe much more.
It takes a lot for people to become disaffected with the Republicans, but the failed war in Iraq and the economy under Bush did do that.
Jean, I'm not sure impeachment will happen either. In some ways, it would be better if he is not impeached, as he will simply dig in his heels and decide he's going to run again (he's already raising money for the next campaign) and his base will become newly energized. But if Mueller can assemble enough evidence to make it appear that they could move to impeach, it might be easier to convince him not to run again, or even to bow out early. Not sure if that's great either, as Pence is as bad as his boss on many issues, but he's sane and probably won't launch nukes if he's peeved, and he would be much more effective working with the GOP in Congress than Trump has been - not necessarily good that he would be better at getting things done, since those things might not be good to get done.
ReplyDeleteBut I think you are right - he does not really intend to be a two term pres, but he didn't intend to be pres at all, if the various analysts are correct. He thought he would lose and would simply start his own cable TV channel. He is clearly not enjoying the job - it's too hard and he has no idea what it means to work hard, to study. He doesn't get to be dictator and he's totally unhappy about the fact that we have three branches of govt, and that all govt employees are not his subjects to be fired at whim. He's never run a business where he was answerable to anyone - no stockholders, no boards of directors. Even the banks that lost money on him didn't do much about it and he convinced Congress at one point to put in some tax loopholes that allowed him to write off his losses. He ran for pres I think because he has ideas about what is wrong with the country - they may be exceedingly ill-informed ideas, but he is a showman, and he discovered he could belt out these ideas and get cheered. There seems to be nothing he likes better than being cheered. He is a sad man, pathetic in many ways, but he's got more power than any other individual on earth, so we have to keep praying for the generals (who would have imagined that - in the US?) since the GOP "leadership" doesn't know what to do with him, and the Dems are in disarray for the next election, as you note.
If Trump leaves office before his term is up, one might see some face-saving subterfuge concocted to convince him to leave of his "own" decision - perhaps a health issue? He does not look to be made to look like a fool, and is increasingly desperate for the cheers of his base. However, I read something that - if true - must really have him depressed. Not only was the crowd in Phoenix a bit smaller than he had expected (he fired his event manager because of it - perhaps he was supposed to go into the streets and corral people and force them into the venue?), but that "hundreds" of people left before he had finished speaking, and some had sat on the floor and became preoccupied with their phones. If that reporting is accurate, if his own "base" is getting bored with his rants, then convincing him to retire early, or at least to not run again, might be easier than otherwise. He will want to go out on top, or at least in a manner that he can pretend is on top.
Sigh.