The Trump administration made a huge mistake in overselling the “EXONERATION” thing. That was bad enough. But “bad enough” is never “bad enough” with the Trump admin. They decided to have a press conference.
That’s what really did it.
They underestimated the American media’s ability to learn from its mistakes (Yes, they heard you after the Barr Letter) and the American people’s ability to see through bullshit. But, I suspect that isn’t what is going to risk their careers. The media and voters never threatened them.
No.
They just lost all credibility, all sense of even “faux-normalcy,” within the very institutions most needed to protect Trump, and Barr, from here on out, DOJ, FBI, IRS .
A reminder: Not “everything” came out today. There is still much to cover up, but maybe no one left wanting to “cover” anything.
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There WAS a way to sell this, a way to “lessen the blow.”
Play up how unprecedented the attack had been, play up that they weren’t politicians — that’s their appeal, right? — play up just how shifty those Ruskies can be. Play up: “Yeah, hell, if we had to do it all over again, we’d damn sure not do some things. We understand better now. Most of those mistakes were made early on … but even then, ultimately, we didn’t commit a crime, and we now enter a new period where we will be more focused on transparency, learning from the mistakes …”
TRUE, that’s not in Trump’s nature, but it WAS one way to diffuse the magnitude of the revelations coming out today. Had Trump had REAL aides, REAL political consultants, and REAL lawyers, THAT would have been the way to play it. He could have transitioned from that to, “Now let’s look at ensuring a fair election in 2020 …” and it might, literally, have been put behind him.
It would have also have sent a message to the people doing the investigations, and prosecuting the matters. Keep faith in the system, it can work.
Not now.
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Barr will rue the day that he decided he needed to “get ahead” of the release. Here’s but a sampling of stories from around the net: The Daily Beast: isn’t buying Barr’s “exoneration” or … anything.
But when the redacted report was finally released to the public, it outlined 10 episodes of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, including: ordering James Comey to drop the FBI investigation into national security advisor Michael Flynn; directing the White House counsel to fire Mueller; dictating a message to Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the Mueller probe; telling witnesses publicly not to cooperate; having Cohen not contradict him in congressional testimony about Trump Tower Moscow; trying to hide emails exposing Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians for “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
That quote isn’t even from the story entitled: Mueller Report Shows How Grown-Ups Kept Trump’s Tantrums From Becoming Clear Crimes.
You know it’s bad when Fox News is forced to report “what others are saying” about Barr’s press conference. From FOX: Media outlets pan AG Barr before release of redacted Mueller report
Anchors on both CNN and MSNBC suggested, for instance, that Barr had either engaged in a cover-up or turned himself into an untrustworthy political actor. Newsbusters.org, a conservative media watchdog, compiled a montage of the media's jabs at Barr.
The NY Times is no longer willing to be fooled: Don’t Trust Barr. Verify His Redactions.
The schedule for Thursday said there was a news conference by the attorney general. But there was no news to share, and William Barr behaved more like the president’s defense attorney than the nation’s top law-enforcement officer.
Are you starting to get the idea?
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That’s a random sampling, and note, even on Fox, there’s no EXONERATION in all caps. That’s because the last thing that was ever going to come about from an honest report — and Mueller is honest — is exoneration.
So, given how bad it was, why would Barr go on TV and tell us it wasn’t bad?
I don’t know, but it was a mistake. It was a huge mistake.
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Imagine you are a career official at the DOJ, or FBI, or CIA. You have spent your life making half — or less — what you could make, attempting to be a “public servant” through various administrations.
Yes, you are aware that politics is going to infuse everything, but you’re used to a certain level of it.
You are NOT used to this. You are not used to hearing the president is telling people to lie, he’s declaring an investigation as “the worst thing that ever happened to him,” and you’re damn sure not used to having the A.G. act as “Roy Cohn” for Donald Trump, something — may I remind you — that even Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions couldn’t or wouldn’t, do.
But Barr could, would, and did.
Up until today, you could have thought: “Let the process play out, let’s see the investigation, and how the DOJ handles the OSC.”
Up till today. Not tomorrow. They “saw” how it all played out. The A.G. had a news conference.
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This matters, because even though we have the Mueller Report, there is a ton we don’t have. We don’t have Trump’s taxes. In fact, we don’t have much of anything on Trump’s finances. The MONEY.
You think the “under Audit” thing is going to work now? Is anyone going to trust ANYONE under Trump to play “fair” with respect to financial documents? You know the ones, the money stuff, the things Trump really worries about?
Does this read a little differently, today, than just a couple days ago when the story came out? Dems Subpoena Deutsche Bank as They Probe Trump Finances
House Democrats issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and other banks Monday as part of several congressional probes into the finances of President Trump and the Trump Organization …. reported Deutsche Bank loaned over $2 billion to Trump for real estate deals over nearly two decades, even when other banks refused to do so. Trump still had over $300 million in outstanding loans from Deutsche Bank when he took office in 2016.
As Charlie Pierce has said for years: With Trump, it is ALWAYS about the money.
We won’t know the “full truth” until we know the full truth about the money.
That stuff is “ongoing” in the SDNY and NYAG office. It is the “current investigation” that could be “harmed” with release of redacted stuff, of which, there was much. Guess who is investigating those cases? Guess who has THAT evidence? The stuff about the MONEY? Career servants in DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, and on and on.
Think anyone in those offices trusts Trump and/or Barr right now? Think anyone in those offices thinks they can be protected by either Trump or Barr right now? How do you trust “playing by the rules” when the “rules” require you to listen to a boss who is clearly a criminal?
All these smart people on TV talking about Barr not looking like an A.G.? Yeah, there are real attorneys at DOJ smarter than three of the ones on TV … thinking the exact same thing.
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Now everyone sees what things look like in the light of day. McGahn looks like a hero. Hell, Jeff Sessions looks like a hero! Who thought they’d ever see this: “Heroes, McGahn and Sessions.”
But what two names come to the forefront in terms of people who look like asses?
Trump, and Barr.
They WAY overplayed their hand.
It didn’t need to be this way. They could have feigned some sort of humility, some sort of responsibility. They didn’t. What they did, instead, was insult the intelligence of the U.S. media, the U.S. public, and much much more damningly, the people who continue to work for them, who might be continued to be asked to “risk” on their part.
Let’s be clear, there is still much that wasn’t in the Mueller report. The MONEY.
The people who safeguard those records are still in the federal government, and they got a crash course today in how things play out in the light of day.
They got a course in where the A.G. is going to go from here on out. Lawless, unprincipled, reactive, and reckless. Even those who might be inclined, can no longer trust that Barr will “do it right,” even if “do it right” is supposedly “protect Republicans.”
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Every one of those employees — the principled ones, of which there are many, at least one for every Trumper — would rather be a Jeff Sessions, today, than a William Barr, or Donald Trump. Even on Fox.
There are very few mistakes a politician can make that are bigger than alienating the intelligence community, and law enforcement community, in one fell swoop.
Especially when one still has crimes to hide.
“Hiding” is so March 24th. Congress will have hearings.
Barr is going to rue this day, and his over the top play. He lost all his credibility today. One might ask, does he really “lead” the Department of Justice if no one at DOJ has faith in him? To be either fair, or competent? Because today he demonstrated he can’t be either one.
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It is ON now.
We know just how dirty Trump can be, or at least we have a taste as to how dirty Trump can be, and even Fox cannot ignore it.
There are still secrets to protect, but who is going to protect them?
The DOJ? The IRS? The Treasury Secretary? They are being asked right now, to protect the biggest of the biggest, the MONEY.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday, the deadline given by House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal for Trump to release his tax returns, that he will not do so while under audit — a defense he has used for the past 3 years. Trump's lawyers sent a letter to the Department of Treasury counsel last week dismissing the request for returns as politically-motivated.
They might continue to try to hide, just as Barr tried, or they might not, like McGahn and Sessions, both of whom will be sleeping well tonight.
In the end, Trump got his Roy Cohn. But Roy Cohn was a criminal, and Barr is, too. Barr could have chosen to hide a little better, but underestimated us. That won’t be the end of him.
Underestimating the people that work under him, THAT is what truly threatens them. Because there are still many secrets to protect, but who will protect them?
All of those smart attorneys, and investigators, they have to be looking at each other nervously. The press conference told them what they might have willfully refused to believe just earlier today. They cannot ignore it now.
Everything changed today. Barr took the Mueller Report, fckt it all up, and shoved it outside. But it’s the Barr doctrine, unleashed today from the podium to the inside, into DOJ and FBI, that might seal all their fates going forward.
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My novels, in which paradigms shift faster than a press conference at DOJ, oh and there’s one shitload of “collusion” in them. Normal old Republican-Reptilian collusion. Ike had it right all along.