TGIF 7/10/20

Ready for the week's good list/bad list fun and games? Let's dive in. 

First up? Snitty Snitty Bill Barr and his extortion/quid pro quo Human Resources debacle, surrounding the removal of US Attorney Geoffrey Berman from the Southern District of New York office. Berman testified before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week, and his opening statement was a fun read, for sure. 

There was Barr's meeting invite, no purpose given; food was provided, but no one ate - a bad sign, for sure. Berman was pressed to take a different role within DOJ as a 'resume builder' - but he wouldn't have to do anything, "just sit there" until after the election to see what would come next. (That would look good on anyone's resume, don't you think?)  If Berman wouldn't take a different position, or resign, Barr told him he'd be fired - "and getting fired from my job would not be good for my resume or future job prospects," even though there were no issues with his performance.  

And then, of course, Berman found out via press release that he was "stepping down" and being replaced by someone from the New Jersey US Attorney's office, which "would have been unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained." Berman then issued his own statement, basically stating rumors of his career demise were unfounded. And then, of course, there was the public release of a letter telling him he had been fired by Trump. I don't know about you, but the DOJ sounds like a place unlikely to make any 'best workplace' list - at least not for the next few months, unless you're sitting around doing nothing.

Staying in the 'Names Beginning with B' category, let's look at this story from Town Hall, the self-described "#1 conservative website." Here's the headline: Joe Biden Says Police Have 'Become the Enemy,' 'Absolutely' Should Defund Them - holy basement bunker, Batman - makes you wonder what's going on, doesn't it?

Have the mad lefties yanked him completely over to the dark side of progressive radical Marxist anarchy, just these few short months before the election, and just a few short weeks after he said this in a USA Today op-ed?

While I do not believe federal dollars should go to police departments violating people's rights or turning to violence as the first resort, I do not support defunding police. The better answer is to give police departments the resources they need to implement meaningful reforms, and to condition other federal dollars on completing those reforms.

And then, he itemized several of those reforms. So, again, have the rioting, violent anarchists stolen Papa Joe? Hell no, they haven't - Papa Joe is still Papa Joe. Here's what he actually said:

Surplus military equipment for law enforcement, they don't need that. The last thing you need is an up-armored Humvee coming into a neighborhood - it's like the military invading; they don't know anybody, they become the enemy. They're supposed to be protecting these people.

And the 'defunding' part of the headline?

The specific question he was asked was this: "But do you agree we can redirect some of the funding?" And his answer was "Yes. Absolutely..." and he went on to describe some of his ideas on prison reform, having already given a number of ideas on how to change policing.

Clearly the #1 conservative website took a few words out of context and assumed that no one would actually watch the interview containing the alleged offensive comments. But wait -- they'd never do that, right? I thought just the #fakenews #MSM did that whole sound-bite BS, silly me.

And speaking of silly, remember that kerfuffle between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and NPR's Mary Louise Kelly? He called her a liar in a statement, he berated her in person, made her point out Ukraine on an unlabeled map, dropped a boatload of f-bombs, and more. Which made his comments about the Chinese Communist Party the other day pretty ironic - take a look. I added some emphasis for you.

What we found in China is the Chinese Communist Party was simply incapable...they're incapable of being transparent, of accepting criticism, of allowing reporters to ask them questions that they find uncomfortable that elicit the truth and the facts... They're afraid that the truth will be something that will not shine a happy light on what took place, and so instead they chose to hide and obfuscate and deny basic truth... this is the - this is a fundamental and fatal flaw for authoritarian regimes...

And speaking of fundamental flaws... sorry. And speaking of transparency, we've learned that the president has "aced" a cognitive test. We don't know when he took it, but we do know how he did - because he told his buddy Sean Hannity all about it

Hannity asked Trump whether, in his opinion, Biden had the 'alertness, trying to be charitable here, the strength and stamina...you're in the job, I'd argue the toughest job in the world..." After saying that Biden has been brainwashed by the radical left, and telling gloom and doom stories of a stock market crash, abolishing of the police, and the US ending up like Venezuela, he finally answered the question.

He hasn't taken any cognitive tests because he couldn't pass one.  I actually took one when I -- very recently, when I - when I was - the radical left were saying, 'is he all there? is he all there?' And I proved I was all there, because I got - I aced it. I aced the test. And he (Biden) should take the exact test, a very standard test. I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors. And they were very surprised. They said, 'that's an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did." But he should take that same test. 

For more on the nature of the test, here's Sarah Cooper to tell you about it.

TGIF, everyone.  Have a safe weekend.

Sunday School 6/21/20

Happy Father's Day, everyone.  Ready to dive in to the classrooms?  

CNN's State of the Union and Jake Tapper's conversation with Preet Bharara, CNN Senior Legal Analyst and former US Attorney from the Southern District of NY.

Bharara was there to talk about the firing of Geoffrey Berman, the most recent US Attorney for the SDNY. First off, he said he doesn't know if Berman will testify before any Congressional committees. Reflecting on his own experience after he was fired by Trump, he said that lots of folks wanted to hear from him, but the standard operating procedure is not to talk about ongoing investigations, even when you're no longer in office. 

And about impeaching Barr? He'll leave that up to Congress, but did say 

...the attorney general of the United States made a public misrepresentation about whether or not Geoff Berman as stepping down from office.  It was clearly not the case. It was clearly a falsehood... and I think that conduct alone shows there's some sort of unfitness for office... I know it's not the biggest thing in the world... but you make a representation that's not true, that's a problem for most people in any profession. It's a particular problem if you're the attorney general of the United States of America.

And Bharara said all of this probably stems from the president wanting Berman gone, and that it wasn't a case of the department losing confidence in Berman, since he was offered other positions within the DOJ.  And, 

Given that fact, and the weirdness of it, and all the other evidence that the president wasn't happy with how things were going in the Southern District, and wanting to make sure that they were stayed and they kept their place, stayed in their lane, that lane being loyalty to the president, I think it's a reasonable conclusion that the decision to get rid of Geoff Berman was not done in good faith.

Hard to disagree with him on that.

Chuck Todd had Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on Meet the Press.  Schiff said he can't accept the explanation that Trump was "just trying to do a favor for a golfing buddy" by moving him to the US Attorney position in New York City,

given the pattern and practice of the president in seeking to use the justice system to reward friends, punish enemies, protest people he likes, and Bill Barr's willingness to carry that water for the president.

Schiff, like Rep. Jerry Nadler, who talked with Jake Tapper, said he hopes that Berman will testify before Congress. He also said 

It's, you know, I think, the most disastrous mismanagement of the Justice Department in modern memory. And like so much of what we have seen (with) this administration, it doesn't come as a surprise anymore. But yet, it's completely demoralizing to the people in the Department and dangerous to the rule of law. 

Moving on to Bolton, Schiff said he's seen the excerpts of the book, but hasn't read it yet - and "there's a tremendous amount to be disturbed about the substance of" the excerpts.

... we warned during the (impeachment) trial that you could only count on Donald trump to do what's right for him, not what's right for the country. And John Bolton says that is exactly this president's pattern and practice...

Todd reflected back on a pre-impeachment conversation he had with Schiff, about Bolton and not forcing him to testify, and he wondered if Schiff regretted not having fought harder to get Bolton's testimony in the House before voting on the Articles of Impeachment. Schiff said no.

I think, indeed, our decision has been vindicated by the fact that we are still in court now over a year later trying to get (Don) McGahn to testify. Bolton said he would sue us if we subpoenaed him. We would still be trying to get John Bolton's testimony today. 

And, he said, the House "made the case" when they urged the Senate to call Bolton during the trial, that "the senators would one day have to explain why they didn't want to hear from him when they had the opportunity. " 

He also said Bolton lacked the "basic courage and patriotism" and that it was "only greed that made him come forward in this book..."  It's hard to disagree with Schiff, too.

Finally, a quick check-in with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who talked with Jon Karl on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Here, too, the conversation started out with the Geoffrey Berman thing.  

Karl wondered if he thought that Berman would actually testify. Jeffries said he hoped at some point the Judiciary Committee would hear from him,

because I think he has a lot to say about a continuing pattern of chaos, crisis and corruption that we have seen from the Trump administration from the very beginning until this very day.

Karl pointed out that the president "gets to hire, gets to choose, nominate, appoint, in the case of acting US attorneys" - so doesn't he also have the right to fire them?  Jeffries pointed to the "long tradition...of there being no political interference" between the executive and the DOJ,

which is the primary vehicle at the federal level for ensuring that there's equal protection under the law, liberty and justice for all, anchored in the principle that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not a government of a dictator or a monarch or a king.

He added that Nadler has the "full support" of the Speaker on wanting to have a hearing on this type of interference between the White House and Justice. 

Karl then asked whether John Bolton was right in his criticism about how the House handled the impeachment, keeping it so narrowly focused. That's a no.

Not at all. John Bolton is a political opportunist and a profiteer. He had the opportunity to step forward and participate in the House impeachment inquiry and share any information he had about wrongdoing by president Trump and other members of his administration, and he declined. 

And, he said, it was the Senate that committed malpractice in terms of acquitting Trump, and "now it's in the hands of the American people.

Karl's final question: If the Dems retain the House, should Nancy Pelosi step aside so there could be a black Speaker of the House? 

Not at all. Nancy Pelosi has done a phenomenal job as speaker leading our 'for the people' agenda... She has been a legendary speaker working with a historically diverse caucus, leading us forward. And I look forward to her continuing to do so in the next Congress.

See you around campus, in accordance with all applicable CDC guidelines, of course.