#maggie haberman

[porterdavis]

Sick burn (but true)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Joe Heller

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 17, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 18, 2023

A story in the New York Times today by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage, and Maggie Haberman outlined how former president Donald Trump and his allies are planning to create a dictatorship if voters return him to power in 2024. The article talks about how Trump and his loyalists plan to “centralize more power in the Oval Office” by “increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.” 

They plan to take control over independent government agencies and get rid of the nonpartisan civil service, purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran Trump’s Office of Management and Budget and who now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus. They envision a “president” who cannot be checked by the Congress or the courts.

Trump’s desire to grab the mechanics of our government and become a dictator is not new; both scholars and journalists have called it out since the early years of his administration. What is new here is the willingness of so-called establishment Republicans to support this authoritarian power grab. 

Behind this initiative is “Project 2025,” a coalition of more than 65 right-wing organizations putting in place personnel and policies to recommend not just to Trump, but to any Republican who may win in 2024. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, once considered a conservative think tank, that helped to lead the Reagan revolution.

A piece by Alexander Bolton in The Hill today said that Republican senators are “worried” by the MAGAs, but they have been notably silent in public at a time when every elected leader should be speaking out against this plot. Their silence suggests they are on board with it, as Trump apparently hoped to establish. 

The party appears to have fully embraced the antidemocratic ideology advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, who argue that the post–World War II era, in which democracy seemed to triumph, is over. They claim that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, a market-based economy, immigration, and so on—weaken a nation by destroying a “traditional” society based in patriarchy and Christianity.

Instead of democracy, they have called for “illiberal” or “Christian” democracy, which uses the government to enforce their beliefs in a Christian, patriarchal order. What that looks like has a clear blueprint in the actions of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has gathered extraordinary power into his own hands in the state and used that power to mirror Orbán’s destruction of democracy.

DeSantis has pushed through laws that ban abortion after six weeks, before most people know they’re pregnant; banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity (the “Don’t Say Gay” law); prevented recognition of transgender individuals; made it easier to sentence someone to death; allowed people to carry guns without training or permits; banned colleges and businesses from conversations about race; exerted control over state universities; made it harder for his opponents to vote, and tried to punish Disney World for speaking out against the Don’t Say Gay law. After rounding up migrants and sending them to other states, DeSantis recently has called for using “deadly force” on migrants crossing unlawfully.

Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both “weaponized” against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile. 

“Our current executive branch,” Trump loyalist John McEntee, who is in charge of planning to pack the government with Trump loyalists, told the New York Times reporters, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

It has taken decades for the modern-day Republican Party to get to a place where it rejects democracy. The roots of that rejection lie all the way back in the 1930s, when Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt embraced a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure. That system ushered in a period from 1933 to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced, especially after the government also began to protect civil rights. 

Members of both parties embraced this modern government in this period, and Americans still like what it accomplished. But businessmen who hated regulation joined with racists who hated federal protection of civil rights and traditionalists who opposed women’s rights and set out to destroy that government. 

In West Palm Beach, Florida, last weekend, at the Turning Points Action Conference, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) compared President Biden’s Build Back Better plan to President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society programs, which invested in “education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and big labor and labor unions.” She noted that under Biden, the U.S. has made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.” 

Well, yeah.

Greene incorrectly called this program “socialism,” which in fact means government ownership of production, as opposed to the government’s provision of benefits people cannot provide individually, a concept first put into practice in the United States by Abraham Lincoln and later expanded by leadership in both parties. The administration has stood firmly behind the idea—shared by LBJ and FDR, and also by Republicans Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower, among others—that investing in programs that enable working people to prosper is the best way to strengthen the economy. 

Certainly, Greene’s speech didn’t seem to be the “gotcha” that she apparently hoped. A March 2023 poll by independent health policy pollster KFF, for example, found that 80% of Americans like Social Security, 81% like Medicare, and 76% like Medicaid, a large majority of members of all political parties.  

The White House Twitter account retweeted a clip of Greene’s speech, writing: “Caught us. President Biden is working to make life easier for hardworking families.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[greatooglymooglyyy]

proofreading the last ride rn guys. fair warning it is... long. the chapters won't all be so long i promise. love yaaaaaa

[antebellumite]

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6upw44

nothing better in here than the post 40 minute mark ( and everything with mike schmidt. )

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former President Donald Trump and his team have spent days since the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago trying to assemble a "team of respected lawyers" but keep getting rejected, according to The Washington Post.

"Everyone is saying no," a prominent Republican lawyer told the outlet.

Trump is scrambling to find an experienced team of attorneys to defend him amid mounting legal crises. The Justice Department is investigating him under the Espionage Act after he took classified records, including some labeled "top secret," to his Mar-a-Lago residence. He also faces legal scrutiny in the DOJ's investigation into the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as a state civil probe in New York and a Fulton County, Ga., criminal investigation into his efforts to overturn his loss in the state.

Jon Sale, a former Watergate prosecutor who is now a prominent Florida defense attorney, told the Post he turned Trump down last week.

"You have to evaluate whether you want to take it," he said. "It's not like a DUI. It's representing the former President of the United States — and maybe the next one — in what's one of the highest-visibility cases ever."

Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich defended the quality of the former President's legal team, noting that it also includes former federal prosecutors Evan Corcoran, who represented former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in his losing battle against the DOJ, and James Trusty, who was behind Trump's letter threatening a highly dubious defamation lawsuit against CNN for describing his election lies as lies.

"The President's lead counsel in relation to the raid of his home, Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran, have decades of prosecutorial experience and have litigated some of the most complex cases in American history," Budowich told the Post. "President Trump is represented by some of the strongest attorneys in the country, and any suggestion otherwise is only driven by envy."

While Corcoran and Trusty submitted filings in the case, Trump's other attorneys have been tasked with making his case to the public in media appearances.

The most visible Trump attorney has been Christina Bobb, a former anchor at the right-wing outlet OAN, where she pushed election conspiracy theories that got the network sued by defamation by Dominion Voting Systems. Bobb's federal legal experience is largely limited to a "handful of trademark infringement cases on behalf of CrossFit" while she worked for a law firm in San Diego, according to the Post. Bobb has already undermined Trump's baseless claim that the FBI may have "planted" evidence during the search while no one was looking, revealing that Trump and his family were able to watch the entire raid through CCTV.

Trump's other Florida-based lawyer is Lindsey Halligan, a Florida insurance lawyer that handles residential and commercial claims but has never handled a federal case.

Trump's other attorney in the documents investigation is Alina Habba, who has a small practice near Trump's Bedminster, N.J., golf club. She previously worked as general counsel at a parking garage company. Habba has also represented Trump in his dubious lawsuits against the New York Times, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and his niece, Mary Trump.

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman noted that this is Trump's seventh or eighth legal team since he became President.

"Finding a new one has been a challenge amid his desire to treat this as a short term PR issue as opposed to a longer term legal one," she wrote.

The New York Times reported last week that one of Trump's lawyers signed a statement in June certifying that Trump had returned all classified documents to the National Archives after a grand jury subpoena was issued in the case. Investigators subsequently learned from inside sources that there were still classified documents at the resort. It's unclear which of Trump's attorneys signed the document.

"You get these guys who just live to be around him, and mistakes get made," an unnamed attorney told the Post. "These guys just want to make him happy."

"Either the attorney acted in good faith on what turned out to be false factual representations made by Mr. Trump or someone else communicating on his behalf, in which case Mr. Trump or his proxy would have criminal jeopardy for false statements or obstruction of justice, or the attorney knowingly gave false assurances to the government," David Laufman, the former head of the DOJ's counterintelligence division, told the Post. "And it's hard to believe that a lawyer knowingly would have lied to the government about the continued presence of classified documents."

Trump, who has faced myriad legal scandals from two impeachments to local criminal investigations, has repeatedly struggled to find elite attorneys to represent him.

"In olden days, he would tell firms representing him was a benefit because they could advertise off it. Today it's not the same," former Trump lawyer-turned-critic Michael Cohen told the Post. "He's also a very difficult client in that he's always pushing the envelope, he rarely listens to sound legal advice, and he wants you to do things that are not appropriate, ethically or legally."

Another attorney recalled Trump's legal team urging him to avoid tweeting about the Mueller investigation early in his presidency only to see a tweet about it before they even got to the end of the White House driveway. "Several people said Trump was nearly impossible to represent and that it would be unclear if they would ever get paid," the Post reported.

"This is not good," one Trump confidant told the outlet. "Something big is going to pop. Somebody needs to be in charge."

[deadpresidents]

I'm interested in hearing any new reading suggestions or updates on what you've been reading lately?

My reading tastes have been all over the place during the last two months, but here's what I've been reading since Labor Day or so:

•The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama (BOOK | KINDLE) by Gabriel Debenedetti A fascinating look at one of the closest relationships between a President his Vice President in American history, why their dynamic was so successful, and how the Obama-Biden partnership was sometimes much more complicated than we realized.

•Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America (BOOK | KINDLE) by Maggie Haberman It's no surprise that Maggie Haberman was able to fashion her top-notch reporting and unparalleled access into one of the better overall biographies of who Donald Trump is and has been his entire life -- and how it has helped tear our country apart.

•The King: The Life of Charles III (BOOK | KINDLE) by Christopher Andersen

•United and Independent: John Quincy Adams on American Foreign Policy (BOOK | KINDLE) by Patrick J. Garrity & Ben Judge [Editors]

•The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson (BOOK | KINDLE) by Jeff Pearlman Pearlman's sports books are always difficult to put down, and it was easier to tackle the legendary Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl than it was to put down this in-depth biography about him.

•James K. Polk and His Time: Essays at the Conclusion of the Polk Project (BOOK | Kindle not available) by Michael David Cohen [Editor]

•War Songs [Library of Arabic Literature] (BOOK | KINDLE) by 'Antarah ibn Shaddad

•Salman's Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia (BOOK | KINDLE) by Madawi Al-Rasheed [Editor]

•Nasser: The Last Arab (BOOK | KINDLE) by Saïd Aburish

•The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition: A Compendium of Knowledge from the Classical Islamic World (BOOK | KINDLE) by Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwayri

•A Gift of Joy and Hope (BOOK | KINDLE) by Pope Francis

Beginning in July, I also decided to try to read as much of Sir Richard Francis Burton's complete works, in unabridged form, as I possibly could. Last year, I read the three-volume, unabridged edition of his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah -- originally published in 1855 -- and it was pretty challenging, but also an extremely captivating account of his journeys and observations, and finishing the series felt like an accomplishment along the lines of climbing a mountain or something. So, I set out to try to read as many of his other (many, many, many) books. I've finished a couple of them over the past couple of months, but let's just say that the overall goal is a work-in-progress. As long as "progress" isn't defined as actually completing my goal anytime soon.

[arlengrossman]

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

The former president and his backers aim to strengthen the power of the White House and limit the independence of federal agencies. By Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman/ New York Times/ July 17, 2023 Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping…

[higherentity]

[tomorrowusa]

Yeah, Trump is blaming Melania for GOP difficulties in the midterm elections. 

According to multiple reports, Donald Trump is in the midst of an hours-long meltdown, given the number of candidates he endorsed who have lost, and the fact that a GOP sweep would have positioned him well to announce a 2024 run for the White House. “Trump is livid” and ”screaming at everyone,” an adviser to the ex-president told CNN’s Jim Acosta Wednesday morning, with the adviser adding that his boss only had himself to blame for backing “bad candidates.”

Likewise, Maggie Haberman tweeted that Trump “is indeed furious this morning, particularly about Mehmet Oz,” who lost to John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, despite conservatives claiming Fetterman is brain-dead. According to Haberman, the 45th president “is blaming everyone who advised him to back Oz” and, hilariously, that blame apparently extends to Melania Trump, whose recommendation to back Oz Trump has reportedly described “as not her best decision.” (You know, up there with the one she made, as a young Eastern European model, to marry a gasbag real estate developer and move into the penthouse where he’d clearly told the decorator, “I want it to be like gold threw up in here.”) Oh, to be a fly on the ketchup-stained walls of Mar-a-Lago tonight!

Haberman also noted on Wednesday that “there are people pushing Trump to reschedule his [2024] announcement next week,” in light of the poor showing by his candidates of choice, though that might be unlikely to happen given that it “would be acknowledging he’s wounded by yesterday.” Trump, of course, will never admit that he screwed up and that the only one he has to blame here is himself.

I can’t wait for what his niece, psychologist Mary Trump, has to say about this latest narcissistic outburst by Uncle Donald.

Let’s hope he doesn’t delay his announcement to run in 2024. The GOP civil war between Trump and DeSantis can’t start too soon.

[antebellumite]

They all meet up in Abby’s apartment around midnight. They all have places to go, things to do, people to be, but still – they need this. This symbol of closure since they can’t get any closure. They were all pawns to someone else’s game – a game that seems to have no winners, only losers; no plot, only exposition; no substance, only stupidity. She and Glenn were played, Robert and Abby were played, Jim and Jake were played, Katie was played, and Sally Priebus was played. They were all played and for what? For nothing, that’s what. It’s barely been a day since she decided it, and already she regrets not publishing that article.

-- lay me down, my love ( in absentia luci, tenebrae vincunt )

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former President Donald Trump has told aides he might comply with a subpoena to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee, as long as he can do so live, The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported.

According to Haberman, Trump has told aides he's not opposed to the idea of testifying before the Committee, as long as it's on his terms.

The information was a contribution by Haberman to The Times's live coverage of Thursday's Committee hearing.

Some of his aides appear not to be enthusiastic about the idea.

"He should not," a Trump adviser bluntly told The Daily Beast.

Most witnesses has testified behind closed doors, with the Committee presenting clips prepared in advance to play in live hearings.

Those with particularly notable testimony, such as former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, testified live after initially submitting evidence in private.

If Trump testified he would have to do so under oath, risking perjury charges if were to lie.

In a series of live hearings in recent months, the Committee has argued that Trump was central to a plot to overturn his election defeat in 2020.

This culminated in the chaos on January 6, when his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to halt Joe Biden's certification as President.

"He is required to answer for his actions," Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the Committee said in announcing the subpoena at Thursday's hearing.

Trump has repeatedly characterized the Committee as a partisan witch hunt, while continuing to praise the rioters and push the election-fraud conspiracy theories that inspired them.

In a Truth Social Post on Thursday, he described the Committee is a "a giant scam, presided over by a group of Radical Left losers, and two failed Republicans."

GOP leadership turned down the opportunity to select members of the party to take part.

Some analysts expect Trump to challenge the subpoena in courts, a process that could take months.

The Committee's power to seek legal penalties against a former president if he refuses to comply are unclear. If Republicans win back control of the House in November's midterms they are all but certain to annul the Committee and cancel its subpoenas.

Trump is under increasing legal pressure. There are multiple investigations around his bid to overturn the 2020 election, the New York Attorney General is probing his business practices in the state, and the FBI is examining his retention of government records after leaving office.

[lenbryant]

More Looted Classified Material

Long Post: Did anyone check Putin's file cabinet?

Material From Russia Investigation Went Missing as Trump Left Office

A binder given to the Trump White House contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods.

Material from a binder with highly classified information connected to the investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election disappeared in the final days of Donald J. Trump’s presidency, two people familiar with the matter said.

The disappearance of the material, known as the “Crossfire Hurricane” binder for the name given to the investigation by the F.B.I., vexed national security officials and set off concerns that sensitive information could be inappropriately shared, one of the people said.

The material’s disappearance was reported earlier Friday by CNN. The matter was so concerning to officials that the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed about it last year, a U.S. official said.

The binder consists of a hodgepodge of materials related to the origins and early stages of the Russia investigation that were collected by Trump administration officials. They included copies of botched F.B.I. applications for national-security surveillance warrants to wiretap a former Trump campaign adviser as well as text messages between two F.B.I. officials involved in the inquiry, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, expressing animus toward Mr. Trump.

The substance of the material — a redacted version of which has since been made public under the Freedom of Information Act and is posted on the website of the F.B.I. — is not considered particularly sensitive, the official said.

But the raw version in the binder contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods. (The publicly available version contains numerous portions that were whited out as classified.)

It is not clear if the missing material comprises the entire original binder of material provided to the White House for Mr. Trump’s team to review and declassify in part before leaving office.

Among other murky details, it is not known how many copies were made at the White House or how the government knows one set is missing.

The binder has been a source of recurring attention since January 2021, just before Mr. Trump left office. At the time, Mr. Trump’s aides prepared redactions to some of the material it contained because the president — who was obsessed with the Russia investigation and believed his political enemies had used it to damage his presidency — planned to declassify it and make it public.

Officials made several copies of the version with the redactions, which some Trump aides planned to release publicly.

Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, had a copy of material from the binder given to at least one conservative writer, according to testimony and court filings.

But when Justice Department officials expressed concerns that sharing some of the material would breach the Privacy Act at a time when the department was already being sued by Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page for having publicly released some of their texts, the copies were hastily retrieved, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Trump was deeply focused on what was in the binder, a person close to him said. Even after leaving the White House, Mr. Trump still wanted to push information from the binder into the public eye. He suggested, during an April 2021 interview for a book about the Trump presidency, that Mr. Meadows still had the material.

“I would let you look at them if you wanted,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “It’s a treasure trove.”

Mr. Trump did not address a question about whether he himself had some of the material. But when a Trump aide present for the interview asked him, “Does Meadows have those?” Mr. Trump replied, “Meadows has them.”

“We had pretty much won that battle,” Mr. Trump added, referring to questions about whether his 2016 campaign had worked with Russia. “There was no collusion. There was no nothing. And I think it was maybe past its prime. It would be sort of a cool book for you to look at.”

George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Mr. Meadows, said the former chief of staff was not responsible for any missing material. “Mark never took any copy of that binder home at any time,” he said.

A person familiar with the matter said, shortly after the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 by F.B.I. agents looking for classified documents, that they had not found any Crossfire Hurricane material.

Adding to the confusion about the material and who was in possession of it, a set of the Russia investigation documents that Mr. Trump believed he had declassified did not have their classification markings changed when they were given to the National Archives, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

At the time, Mr. Trump was in a standoff with the archives over the reams of presidential material he had taken with him upon leaving the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, and was resisting giving back. So Mr. Trump told advisers he would give back those boxes in exchange for the Russia-related documents.

Aides never pursued his suggestion.

In the run-up to the 2020 election, John Ratcliffe, then Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified around 1,000 pages of intelligence materials related to the Russia investigation, which Trump allies used to try to discredit the inquiry.

In 2022, Mr. Trump made John Solomon, a conservative writer who had been briefly given the binder before it was retrieved, one of his representatives to the National Archives. This allowed Mr. Solomon to see Trump White House records deposited with the agency. He later filed a lawsuit against the government over the binder, seeking access to what he said were declassified documents from the binder being denied to him by the archives.

A court filing he submitted in August described the binder as about 10 inches thick and containing about 2,700 pages. The publicly released version is 585 pages; it is not clear what accounts for the discrepancy.

The filing said Mr. Solomon had been allowed to thumb through a version of the binder at the White House on Jan. 19, 2021. The contents, it said, included a 2017 F.B.I. report about its interview of Christopher Steele, the author of a dossier of unverified claims about Trump-Russia ties; “tasking orders” related to an F.B.I. confidential human source; “lightly-redacted” copies of botched surveillance warrant applications; and text messages between the F.B.I. officials.

The filing said Mr. Solomon or an aide had gone back to the White House that evening and had been given a copy of the materials in the binder in a paper bag, and that separately a Justice Department envelope containing some of the documents had been delivered to his office.

But as Mr. Solomon’s office was scanning the larger set, the filing said, the White House requested that the documents be returned so certain private details could be removed. Mr. Meadows promised Mr. Solomon he would get back the revised binder, it said, but he never did.

When Mr. Solomon later tried to see the binder within the Trump White House records at the National Archives, he said, the agency denied him access to a box of 2,700 pages “with varying types of classification and declassification markings” that it said it was obligated to treat as highly classified. The agency also told him it did not have the declassified version of the binder that Mr. Solomon had briefly possessed, because the Justice Department still has it.

Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent reporting on the 2024 presidential campaign, down ballot races across the country and the investigations into former President Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman

[iffltd]

Jake Tapper in Conversation with Maggie Haberman: All the Demons are Here