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Raising Arizona: How Jeff Flake can redeem his Party and save the Republic

At this point it’s obvious that the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is almost certainly something that our children are going to read about in their history books. One way or another, it looks to be the fulcrum upon which the Trump Presidency is set to pivot and at its center is Senator Jeff Flake.

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea is enough on its own to charge President Trump as a participant in a conspiracy to defraud the United States, circumvent campaign finance law, and illegally influence an election. The only reason Trump has not already been named and indicted as a conspirator is that it’s not entirely clear if the President can be indicted.

Should the Justice Department hand down an indictment, it will fall to the Supreme Court to determine if the mantle of the Presidency confers some sort of immunity. If Kavanaugh is on the Court it seems very likely that he’ll tilt the Court’s opinion against the Justice Department. If Kavanaugh is seated, the President will likely be immune to indictment.

But before Kavanaugh can be confirmed as a Justice, the Senate has to vote in his favor. Before the Senate can vote in his favor, the Judiciary Committee must issue a recommendation prior to discharging his confirmation to the whole of the Senate.

Senate Judiciary consists of twenty-one Senators: ten Democrats and eleven Republicans. A joint statement by all ten of the Judiciary Democrats, issued earlier today, states the following:

“Given the possibility of criminal wrongdoing by the President, doubts that Judge Kavanaugh believes a president can even be investigated, and the unprecedented lack of transparency regarding this nominee’s record, we should not move forward with hearings”

That’s 10 votes. They need 11 to recommend against confirmation. And that’s where Senator Jeff Flake enters the picture.

Flake is one of the eleven Republicans on the committee. He has said that he is retiring at the end of his term and, back in July, Flake suggested that he was undecided on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Flake has taken a harsher stance than most of his fellow Republicans on Trump, suggesting that he has “debased” the Presidency and drawing return fire from the Tweeter in Chief.

If Flake votes to recommend against confirmation, then Kavanaugh will face the Senate without the Judiciary Committee at his back. The partisan divide will still be there and the vote will still take place — the Judiciary Committee can’t outright block a nomination — but a confirmation in defiance of the Committee’s recommendation will be a hard fight, even in a majority-Republican Senate.

If Flake can be persuaded to oppose Kavanaugh in light of the President’s criminal behavior, he could take the first step down the long, hard road of rehabilitating the Grand Old Party from the disaster that has been the Trump Presidency.

Tell Congress What You Think

While there are plenty of other Republicans who can stop Kavanaugh’s nomination, Flake has a unique position right now. If you live in Arizona, today, your voice is louder than most. If you’re elsewhere, however, you should still tell your Senators what you think about Kavanaugh and any other issue on your mind. You can write to your Senators by sending the word Resist to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or as a Twitter direct message. If none of those work for you, Resistbot also supports old fashioned SMS: text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It takes 2 minutes to make a difference.

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Sex, Scandal, and Serious Politics

Stop. Breathe. Focus.

The news out of Manhattan and Alexandria is a whirlwind of salacious and titillating details. Manafort found guilty on eight counts of tax and bank fraud. Cohen pleads guilty to covering up the President’s extramarital affairs with a porn-star and a Playboy bunny. But that’s Tuesday. We still have more than half of the news cycle ahead of us.

You’re going to be told that this doesn’t matter. That Manafort is a good guy, targeted by a corrupt investigation. That Cohen is a snake seeking to drag the President’s good name through the mud. You’re going to be told that the entire thing — the sex, the lies, the fraud, and the dirty money don’t matter, that they’re non-stories hucked by a licentious media trying to profit off the pernicious and the sordid.

Don’t believe a word of it.

Laid bare, this is not a story about sex or about money. It’s a story about power, law, and accountability. Forget all of the juicy details: the following three things are incontrovertibly true.

  1. Michael Cohen bought Stormy Daniels’ silence in the run-up to the 2016 election in clear and willful violation of campaign finance laws.
  2. Michael Cohen made that deal on the direct order of Donald Trump.
  3. Donald Trump won the electoral college by the thinnest of margins — just 80,000 votes in three states.

Those three bullet points are a spear aimed at the Oval Office. Cohen’s testimony and his confession lay out plainly and clearly that Donald Trump was engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the United States and to violate campaign finance law that very likely influenced an election.

That ? is ? a? crime.

But it’s remarkably unclear if the President can actually be charged with a crime. It’s never happened before and the idea of the Executive Branch being forced to answer to the Judicial Branch is not one that the founding fathers saw fit to elaborate upon in their drafting of the Constitution. If charged or if subpoenaed, the Supreme Court will have to decide if the President can face charges or be compelled to testify.

And if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court when or if that case comes before it, his answer will most likely be “no.” No, the President can’t be charged with a crime because he is above the law. No, the President can’t be compelled to testify because he is not answerable to the courts.

Brett Kavanaugh will claim that it is Congress’ responsibility. And it is Congress’ responsibility. It is Congress’ responsibility to investigate the President, though they haven’t. It is Congress’ responsibility to protect the special counsel’s office, though they’re refused to. It it Congress’ responsibility to ensure that the Court does not become just another rubber stamp for a lawless, shameless, criminal administration.

It will decide that last one in September, with a Judiciary Committee hearing to start September 4th.

Tell Congress What You Think

Despite the titillating nature of the conspiracy, these are serious charges and it falls to the Congress to ensure that they’re taken seriously. Without pressure they won’t do that. The Republican House won’t consider impeachment and the Republican Senate will vote to confirm a Supreme Court Justice who will place the President above the law. You can tell them not to. You can write to your Representatives and Senators by sending the word Resist to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or as a Twitter direct message. If none of those work for you, Resistbot also supports old fashioned SMS: text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It takes 2 minutes to make a difference.

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Nunes Teaches Us How Congress Is Supposed To Work

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be

Devin Nunes didn’t know he was being recorded when he told a supporter the following

So therein lies what’s like your classic Catch-22 situation where we’re at a — it puts us in such a tough spot. If Sessions won’t un-recuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones, which is really the danger. That’s why I keep — and thank you for saying it by the way — I mean, we have to keep all these seats. We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away

 

Nunes is right. Since President Trump took his oath of office the Republican majority in Congress has acted like an umbrella for him. This is, fundamentally, not how Congress is supposed to work. Congress is a co-equal branch of government; its job isn’t to protect the President but to hold him to account. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The Trump administration is clearly not staffed by angels and neither Devin Nunes nor Paul Ryan seem terribly interested in doing their jobs when it comes to “obliging [government] to control itself.” But, just for fun, let’s recap what just 2017 would have looked like had Nunes, Ryan, and McConnell chosen Country over Party and held the White House to account in the same way they might have had a Democrat won in 2016 [alternate history in italics].

February 2017: Michael Flynn resigns over Logan Act violations during the transition. Congress opens an investigation into the transition team, calling Flynn in to testify, under oath. Flynn’s testimony implicates someone else on the transition team and Congress keeps digging either rooting out Russian corruption back in 2017 or setting the matter to rest then.

We could have just picked the alternate reality where Donald Trump is not President but nooooooooooooooo….. (Photo by Elijah O’Donell)

May 2017: Trump fires James Comey. Following Comey’s testimony before Congress, Robert Mueller is named Independent Counsel [Ed: Independent here meaning not beholden to the Justice Department and thus not able to be dismissed by the President or those who report to him] and charged, by Congress, with an examination of Russian election interference, obstruction of justice, and the Flynn affair. Totally independent of the executive branch, Mueller needs not fear political reprisal from the White House for his findings.

September 2017: Tom Price is forced out of Health and Human Services after it became clear he spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private air travel. Congress opens an investigation into travel and especially high-level expenditure in the Trump administration, eventually sweeping up Scott Pruitt before his corruption at the EPA reaches Captain Planet levels of cartoonish malfeasance.

October 2017: George Papadopoulos pleads guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian government while working with the Trump campaign. The ongoing Congressional Russia investigation doubles down on an already protracted fight with the White House over Congress’ ability to subpoena the executive branch. Papadopoulos, unable to claim executive privilege eventually agrees to testify. Over the next few months a veritable who’s-who of former Trump campaign and administration officials are compelled to testify before Congress.

That’s what 2017 should have looked like without the Republican majority Nunes is so interested in defending. Instead, it was one example after another of the breathtaking corruption of the Trump Administration and the complete complacency of the Republican Congress. If we are to “oblige [government] to control itself” there are going to have to be some changes on Capitol Hill.

Tell Congress What You Think

Until November, the best thing you can do to encourage Congress to do its job is to keep pressure on your Senators and Representatives. You can write to your both or either of them by sending the word Resist to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or as a Twitter direct message. If none of those work for you, Resistbot also supports old fashioned SMS: text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It takes 2 minutes to save the Republic.

Dispatches from the Resistance

 

 

Ed: Fortunately, it’s just Representative Nunes

 

 

 

 

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What “Collusion” Means

There’s no entry in the U.S. code for “collusion,” a fact which Trump and his apologists have been quick to point out in the unfolding drama around the campaign’s unprecedented fraternization with the Russian government.

So when you read “collusion” it’s important that you understand that it’s a shorthand for several things that happened in the course of the 2016 campaign. Those things have serious political and, if the Congress and the Courts do their job, legal ramifications. It’s up to the American People to insist that those branches of government do their jobs.

Receiving Aid From a Foreign Government

The story of the Trump Russia collusion probably begins well before the now infamous Trump Tower meeting, but that’s where the public knowledge of the affair picks up. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Rod Goldstone, Paul Manafort, and a bunch of Russians met at Trump Tower in July of 2016. Initially, Don Jr. and Kushner claimed the meeting was about “adoptions” (more on that later), but when it became clear that the New York Times had copies of the email chain, Don Jr. tweeted them out himself.

Of particular note is the following exchange:

Highlighting added by Resistbot. Source
Highlighting added by Resistbot. Source

Now that, in and of itself, is pretty damning but it’s not an open-and-shut case because it doesn’t prove what happened in the meeting. A tweet from the President makes denying that much harder, however:

Except it’s not “totally legal” or “done all the time in politics.” It’s against the law. Quoth the FEC:

“The [ Federal Election Campaign] Act and Commission regulations include a broad prohibition on foreign national activity in connection with elections in the United States…. In general, foreign nationals are prohibited from the following activities: Making any contribution or donation of money or other thing of value, or making any expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States;”

The FEC goes on to explain exactly what a “foreign national” is, but key among them is “foreign governments.”

Now, re-read Goldstone’s email:

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump”

That’s not just collusion. That’s a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. That’s a criminal offense. It’s what the Department of Justice back in 2014 called “Donation and Contribution by a Foreign National Aggregating $25,000 or more” and it carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Tack on the inevitable count of “Conspiracy to Commit Offenses Against the United States” and Trump Jr. and Kushner are looking at a decade of hard time each.

And if then-candidate or President Trump knew about it, he’s on the hook, too. (And he did know about it, because he dictated Trump Jr’s statement denying it.)

Tit For Tat

Really, the only way that Trump manages to keep his son, son-in-law, and possibly himself out of the DOJ’s crosshairs on this issue is if he can plausibly argue that the “documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” do not constitute a “thing of value” in the FEC’s sense of the term. On its face, this is absurd. An hour of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner’s time, alone, suggests that this offer was valued at many tens of thousands of dollars by the campaign; otherwise individuals much more distant from Trump himself would have been entrusted with it.

But let us return, momentarily, to that “adoption” explanation.

Adoption here is a bit of a code word. Quoting, again, the New York Times, “the issues of adoptions and sanctions are so inextricably linked as to be practically synonymous.”

Russia closed the door on American adoption of Russian infants back in 2012 with the Dima Yakovlev Law, also known as the anti-Magnitsky Law. As the nickname implies, Dima Yakovlev was a Kremlin response to the American 2012 Magnitsky Law which placed tough sanctions on the Russian government and Putin’s close circle of oligarchs in particular.

Putin shutting down U.S. adoptions was retaliation for Magnitsky, an attempt to use adoptive parents in the U.S. to gain leverage over the American political system. Discussions of re-opening adoptions thus hinge, pretty clearly, on ending Magnitsky and weakening sanctions against Russia.

This is where the trap snaps shut. If the discussions at Trump Tower in July of 2016 were about adoptions as well as Clinton then they were almost certainly about rolling back the Magnitsky act and its sanctions in exchange for the Clinton information. Indeed, it is hard to imagine both subjects coming up in the same meeting without at least an implied connection between them. If the meeting was about ending sanctions then there’s a clear, financial value that the Russians put on the meeting. While the Trump Administration might wish to represent the information as worthless, to the Russians anyway, the meeting — and thus the dirt — was worth billions.

That makes the “dirt” a “thing of value” and that, as they say, is the ballgame.

Tell Congress What You Think

As much as we now know about the details of the Trump/Russia plot, the Muller investigation almost certainly knows more. That has to be making Trump and his enablers in Congress very, very nervous. Public pressure, especially on Congress, to protect the Muller investigation is therefore key to ensuring that it is able to reach and publish its conclusions. You can write to your Representatives and Senators by sending the word Resist to Resistbot on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, or as a Twitter direct message. If none of those work for you, Resistbot also supports old fashioned SMS: text RESIST to 50409 to get started. It takes 2 minutes to save the Republic.