Impeach Barr Too

Today the United States House of Representatives will vote on the Articles of Impeachment against Donald Trump and will almost certainly approve them by a party line vote with a couple of dissenting Democrats, one of whom has announced he’s switching parties. There’s discussion of making Justin Amash (Independent – MI), who was a Republican until he announced support for impeachment, one of the managers of the Senate trial, if this was a Law & Order episode he’d be an assistant District Attorney. Members of the Senate will be jurors, the judge will be Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Jury member Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) has publicly stated that he is coordinating with the Donald Trump as to how the Senate trial will be handled even though doing so violates his oath as a juror in the trial held in the Senate. If you made such a statement after being selected as a juror member you’d be booted off the jury and possibly jailed for contempt of court. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has made similar statements. Both men would recuse themselves of if they had any integrity. Trump has been complaining about fairness since the impeachment inquiry began yet he seems uninterested in a fair trial as he’s quite happily been sending campaign donations to Senate Republicans who commit to supporting him in the impeachment trial. In any other trial that would be seen as bribing a juror.

Now that the House is about done with its part of impeaching Trump it’s time to address other serious matters. No, it’s not that the House hasn’t gotten anything else done as there are over 270 bills passed by the House that Mitch McConnell hasn’t allowed to see the light of day in the Senate. The next important job is to impeach Attorney General William Barr for obstruction of Congress, abuse of power and failing to faithfully execute his office.

Barr has held the office for 10 months and during that time he has made it clear that he serves the interests of Donald Trump rather than those of the United States. He misled Congress and the people of the United States through his words and deeds when the Mueller report was made public. He is implicated in the Ukraine scandal over Trump trading military aid and a White House visit for an investigation into a possible 2020 election opponent due to having withheld the whistleblower complaint from Congress. Barr criticized the conclusion of his own department's inspector general who reported that the FBI had a legitimate basis for launching an investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 election and the possibility that the Trump campaign was involved. In addition, Barr has defied congressional subpoenas regarding the 2020 census and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's claims that a citizenship status question was added at the request of the Department of Justice. The Supreme Court has determined that the justifications for the question offered by the DOJ were contrived and made up after the fact in order to conceal the real reason.

Through his actions Attorney General Barr has politicized the Department of Justice and undermined trust in the law by acting in the interests of a president who has committed impeachable offenses instead of upholding his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States, therefore he should be impeached and removed from office.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 18, 2019

Mueller Report Evidence Favors Impeachment

It’s been a week since the release of the redacted version of the long awaited Mueller report. As the policy of the Department of Justice is that a sitting president cannot be indicted no matter the crime, Special Counsel Robert Mueller ended his report with the following statement: "Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President 's conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

That’s quite different from what Attorney General William Barr claimed when he first summarized the 448 page document. Barr tried to use Obi Wan Kenobi’s “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” Jedi mind trick. Fortunately the American public aren’t all weak minded Imperial Stormtroopers and we aren’t buying it.

The section identified as Trump Campaign and the Dissemination of Hacked Materials has a high concentration of material redacted and labelled as “Harmful to ongoing matters”, meaning releasing that information might jeopardize ongoing investigations and possible prosecutions. According to the report there are thirteen such ongoing investigations, other sources indicate that half of those are being conducted by the US Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, at least one in New Jersey and one in California.

The un-redacted majority of the report makes clear that senior members of the Trump campaign went so far as to setup a meeting with a group of Russians with the intent to conspire with them and likely would have if only the Russians had real dirt on Hillary. My understanding of the law is that such behavior qualifies as conspiracy with a foreign power against the United States and that’s a crime even if it was ultimately unsuccessful. That being said there is no clear evidence that Donald Trump, Senior was a party to that conspiracy.

On the other hand the case for obstruction of justice by Trump is most compelling. Trump committed clearly criminal acts repeatedly, speaking both publicly and privately to subordinates suborning perjury and tampering with witnesses by suggesting pardons and issuing threats of retribution. Trump’s efforts to get Don McGahn to change the record of his conversations with Trump so there would be no evidence that he demanded FBI Director James Comey be fired is just the most egregious of several such criminal acts.

We should all remember that impeachment is not the same as a criminal trial and the same standards of evidence don’t apply nor at the penalties the same. Unlike a criminal trial the standard isn’t guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s more can Congress and the American people trust this individual to act in the best interest of the nation. As to penalties there is no provision in the constitution for fines or imprisonment simply removal from office.

One of my major complaints about the Obama administration is that he failed to hold George W. Bush and his staff accountable lying to start the Iraq war and the torture and other war crimes committed. I hope Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t make the same mistake.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - April 26, 2019

End of the Beginning for Trump Investigations

It’s not unusual for people to get upset when a District Attorney declines to prosecute someone that many, often including the prosecutor and police, believe is guilty. It’s frustrating and we often want to blame the system. That’s a mistake, we as a nation set a high bar for a guilty verdict and prosecutors don’t often want to waste their limited resources trying a case when they don’t believe they can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Declining to prosecute is not exoneration; it is an admission that they have been unable to find sufficient evidence to support a guilty verdict. Often that simply means the guilty party has done a good job hiding the evidence or that there is no fingerprint or DNA left at the scene of the crime that provides conclusive proof.

In the case of Trump or a member of his family or campaign leadership possibly conspiring the Russians to influence the 2016 election there’s plenty of suspicious activity but without someone on the inside confessing or providing documentation there is no way to know for sure and certainly no way to prove such a conspiracy in court.

On the topic of Obstruction of Justice Attorney General William Barr’s letter to congress specifically says: “The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’" This is another case of suspicious activity but not enough concrete evidence to prove guilt. Remember Eliot Ness never proved Al Capone was a gangster or bootlegger or that he’d committed numerous murders. Ness’ teammate Frank Wilson of the Treasury Department proved tax evasion which is why Capone finally went to jail.

There are still half a dozen prosecutions and investigations going on in the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York which specializes in financial crimes and where Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen is cooperating. Some of the investigations that may lead to prosecuting Donald Trump include a pair of campaign-finance violations for hush payments that Cohen says he made to two women at Trump's direction shortly before the 2016 election to keep them from talking about alleged affairs with the then-presidential candidate, as well as the financial irregularities of the Trump Organization and Trump's inaugural committee.

Based on Michael Cohen’s public testimony before congress we already know that Trump overstated the value of various assets in order to get a loan, that’s bank fraud – a felony. He also understated the value of assets when reporting his taxable income, that’s tax evasion – another felony. In fact those two crimes are some of what Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates pleaded guilty to have gone to prison for.

It’s been reported that there are as many other investigations ongoing into Trump, the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign in other venues as there are in the Southern District of New York. Then there are the various House committees looking into Trump’s taxes and various other activities, so Mueller handing in his final report isn’t the end, it’s just the end of the beginning.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 29. 2019