Except for #4 (which we are kinda in the midst of), I doubt any of the above is going to really happen, especially #3.Not saying it will happen, but I would not be completely surprised if we get a sequence of events like:
1. Barr releases the report with minor redactions because he is feeling pressure from Mueller and others and does not want to come off as too much of a lackey.
2. Report shows damning information regarding obstruction and other offenses.
3. Trump loses his shit over Barr not supporting him by redacting literally anything threatening to him, fires Barr.
4.
Not saying it will happen, but I would not be completely surprised if we get a sequence of events like:
1. Barr releases the report with minor redactions because he is feeling pressure from Mueller and others and does not want to come off as too much of a lackey.
2. Report shows damning information regarding obstruction and other offenses.
3. Trump loses his shit over Barr not supporting him by redacting literally anything threatening to him, fires Barr.
4.
@mkraju
After the Barr letter came out, Trump was asked if Mueller acted honorably. "Yes, he did," Trump said. https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/25/politics/donald-trump-robert-mueller-acted-honorably/index.html … Before the redacted report comes out, Trump now says —->
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
The Mueller Report, which was written by 18 Angry Democrats who also happen to be Trump Haters (and Clinton Supporters), should have focused on the people who SPIED on my 2016 Campaign, and others who fabricated the whole Russia Hoax. That is, never forget, the crime.....
12:26 - 15 Apr 2019
Nah, this is normal. Everyone always says "OMG, his tweets mean [something]", and then nothing.
This is how it's always been.
god that uncleaned mirror is so distractingThursday release huh. I guess we should all hope for a.....good Friday.
First it was 6 Angry Democrats, then 13, and now 18. Their numbers keep growing!
Like 30 or 40 at least.To be fair to Trump, he's not wrong. There's a lot of angry democrats.
I was being sarcastic. The only thing that changed is now they actually know whats in the report.My read on this is that they had hoped/planned for Barr's "letter" to bury the report which, at a cursory glance at the original news bites, it had done. But then people did a double-take and the news didn't keep running with Barr's narrative and now you're actually stuck in a catch-22.
So, a monkey's paw.
No doubt, Barr has informed Trump and his legal team on the upcoming damages and there's a counter-narrative already building and being given several days to roll out before Barr releases the redacted report.
Stephen Miller's turn in front of a hot mic. I hope someone asks him about Richard Spencer.
"We don't see Stephen Miller as an expert," Thompson said. "He's a young man who has some novel ideas that most Democrats disagree with."
Some are already in effect, such as Trump's recent national emergency declaration or the practice of "metering" asylum claims at border stations — leaving migrants to either wait weeks for entry or instead seek apprehension by entering the United States illegally between official ports of entry.
Others are under consideration, such as a plan called "binary choice" that would give migrant families the option of remaining detained together or agreeing to a separation that would allow children to remain free from custody.
"Every single one of those policies, I believe, is driven by Stephen Miller and proudly embraced by Trump, and they're illegal on some level, and yet they're still trying to do it," Rice said. "We can do what we're meant to do, and we can have oversight."
Saying he has "novel ideas" pisses me off more than anything.Nadler on Sunday conceded that Miller is likely to invoke executive privilege to avoid testimony, but he said that would be a "misuse" of the claim. "He seems to be making the decisions — not the Cabinet secretaries who come and go," Nadler said.
Miller has "no legal or rational basis for him not to show up" before Congress, Rice said. "You cannot have the architect for these illegal policies act with complete impunity and no accountability."
Every time Nunes has tried to get info to make his case its only undermined him. If you think the facts are on our side, there's no reason not to go along with it.Nunes is not acting in good faith with this and I am sure Schiff realizes this.
First, Barr started out by saying that the history of internal Justice Department rules was a basis for not handing over the full opinion to Congress. "Chairman. Since its inception, the Office of Legal Counsel's opinions have been treated as confidential," Barr said.
That statement was misleading or false, and Chairman Edwards knew it.
Edwards quickly pointed out that the Department had released a compendium of opinions for the general public, including the 1980 one that Barr's secret opinion reversed. "Up until 1985 you published them, and I have it in front of me—'Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel'—the previous opinion."
Barr retreated. "It has been the long established policy of OLC that except in very exceptional circumstances, the opinions must remain confidential," Barr replied. The reference to "very exceptional circumstances" backtracked from what Barr had just said and what the letter sent to Rep. Edwards by the assistant attorney general had claimed.
When the OLC opinion was finally made public long after Barr left office, it was clear that Barr's summary had failed to fully disclose the opinion's principal conclusions. It is better to think of Barr's summary as a redacted version of the full OLC opinion. That's because the "summary" took the form of 13 pages of written testimony. The document was replete with quotations from court cases, legal citations, and the language of the OLC opinion itself. Despite its highly detailed analysis, this 13-page version omitted some of the most consequential and incendiary conclusions from the actual opinion. And there was evidently no justifiable reason for having withheld those parts from Congress or the public.
The Chair of the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, Rep. Don Edwards, then wrote to the Attorney General requesting the opinion, but he was rebuffed. An assistant attorney general wrote back. "We are unable to provide you with a copy of the 1989 opinion because it is the established view of the Department of Justice that current legal advice by the Office of Legal Counsel is confidential," she stated. But there was no categorical prohibition, as Barr himself would later admit in testifying before Congress. The assistant attorney general's letter itself included one glaring counterexample. "I am enclosing a copy of the 1980 opinion," she wrote, and she noted that the Department had released the 1980 opinion to the public in 1985.
Barr then pointed out his willingness to provide Congress with "our conclusions and our reasoning." This was the 13-page written testimony which contained a detail recounting of the views expressed in the OLC opinion. Chairman Edwards complained that Barr had violated the rules of the House by submitting his written testimony only that same morning of the hearing, rather than 48 hours in advance. Barr's timing meant that members of the committee and their staff were not well equipped to analyze or question the OLC's analysis. But at least they had the OLC's views in writing. Or did they?
Without the benefit of the OLC opinion, Professor Koh explained how Barr could be hiding important matters by asking Congress and the public to trust just the 13-page version. Koh wrote:
"Barr's continuing refusal to release the 1989 opinion left outsiders with no way to tell whether it rested on factual assumptions that did not apply to the earlier situation, which part of the earlier opinion had not been overruled, or whether the overruling opinion contained nuances, subtleties, or exceptions that Barr's summary in testimony simply omitted."
Koh's words proved prescient.
That proposition is a very difficult one to sustain, and as Brian Finucane and Marty Lederman have explained, Barr was wrong. The 1989 opinion ignored the President's constitutional duty to "take care" that US laws, including ratified treaties, be faithfully executed. And the opinion conflated the so-called political question doctrine, which is about whether courts can review an executive branch action, with the question whether an executive branch action is authorized or legal.
What's more important for our purposes is not whether the 1989 opinion was wrong on this central point, but the fact that Barr failed to disclose this "principal conclusion" to Congress.
Déjà vu.Barr's opinion not only failed to apply the Charming Betsy presumption in favor of international law; the opinion applied what might be called a "reverse Charming Betsy." Barr had reasoned that "in the absence of an explicit restriction" concerning international law, the congressional statute should be read to authorize the executive branch to violate international law. "Because, as part of his law enforcement powers, the President has the inherent authority to override customary international law, it must be presumed that Congress intended to grant the President's instrumentality the authority to act in contravention of international law when directed to do so," the opinion stated (emphasis added).
This probably deserves its own thread.
Yeah I don't see Rmoney becoming the nominee if Trump dumps out.Oh and if Trump quits or gets shafted then Romney is going to have extreme discomfort fighting a gay opponent.
I'm thinking "BINARY CHOICE" the way Jim Sterling says "PLAYER CHOICE" in his obnoxious gaming CEO voice.
Media journalists and former intelligence and DOJ lawyers basically sat on Barr's entire past for months.Have at it. Shame this didn't come up during his confirmation.