A Washington Post argument against impeachment: Trump is who he is

The debate over impeachment is growing both deafening and dispiriting.
On one side, liberal pols and pundits argue that the Democrats have an absolute duty to make the move against Donald Trump because he's so obviously broken the law — never mind Bob Mueller's lack of charges — and is so awful that history demands action, regardless of the political drawbacks.
Other pols and pundits on the left say impeachment would be futile and self-destructive, divide the country, obliterate the Democrats' agenda — and then ultimately fail in the Senate.
This has been cranked up across the media echo chamber for days, endless iterations of the same two arguments. It's gotten, honestly, rather boring.
And there's a surreal element to it as well. Impeachment is either very likely not going to happen (as long as Nancy Pelosi wields the gavel), or it will become an empty exercise (since 20 GOP senators would have to vote to dump Trump).
But now comes a different view, from one of Trump's least favorite newspapers.
Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post's longtime editorial page editor, has actually come out against impeachment. This is startling at first glance, because the Post's editorials, and Hiatt himself, have been harshly critical of Trump for years.
In fact, the editorial board wrote when Trump was nominated in 2016 that he was "uniquely unqualified to serve as president. A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world."
And, Hiatt says, they were right. But here's the twist:
"We thought his unfitness was evident before he was elected, and Americans chose him anyway ...
"To impeach him now for what the electorate welcomed or was willing to overlook isn't the democratic response. The right response is to defeat him in 2020."
Just in case anyone thought they were going soft on Trump.
Hiatt's argument, from the platform owned by Jeff Bezos, packs an added punch precisely because the paper has been so critical of Trump.
Many of Trump's traits — the blustering style, the mixed business record, the anti-immigrant attacks, the womanizing background, the slams against fake news — were on ample display during the campaign. People didn't think they were getting a choirboy or even a polished political practitioner. They wanted a disruptor.
On Russian interference, Hiatt says "the broad outlines were known before the election," such as Trump praising WikiLeaks for released the hacked Democratic emails.
On the Mueller report and alleged obstruction of justice, "Mueller found no underlying crime that would explain an attempt to obstruct; and Trump in the end did not prevent Mueller from completing his work ... Are we going to impeach a president for wanting to obstruct?"
Of course, Hiatt says Congress should continue to investigate and see where that leads, but should seriously pause "before impeaching Trump for the high crime of being who we knew he was before we elected him."
Now I'm sure this piece wasn't popular among some Post readers who want the president driven from the public square today. Nor will it be embraced by most of the right, which believes Trump is doing a great job and there's no case for impeaching him on the merits.
But for open-minded folks, there's a strong case here for not using the Constitution as a last resort to overturn an election, especially with another election approaching that can render a verdict on the incumbent.

DOJ reveals Dems acknowledged Barr subpoena was 'overbroad'; Nadler fires back, offers to meet 'without conditions'

Hours after the Department of Justice (DOJ) slammed House Democrats for planning a contempt vote against Attorney General Bill Barr -- and charged that Democrats had privately admitted their subpoena requests were "overbroad" -- House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler announced late Tuesday that he is open to negotiating with the DOJ "without conditions."
The remarkable turn of events reopened the possibility that Barr's contempt vote may be postponed or canceled, if both sides return to the negotiating table. Nadler, however, pointedly refused to cancel the planned contempt vote prior to beginning any new negotiations, as the DOJ had demanded.
At the same time, Nadler criticized what he called DOJ "brinksmanship," and blamed the Justice Department for purportedly cutting off negotiations on May 7.
The brouhaha began Tuesday morning with a DOJ letter, written by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd, that blasted House Democrats and Nadler, D-N.Y., for announcing they would vote next week on whether to hold Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn in contempt.
In its letter to Nadler, the DOJ publicly revealed that Democrats had acknowledged in a May 24 letter they were open to "further negotiations" regarding concerns that their subpoena demands were "unworkably overbroad." Nevertheless, Democrats announced just days later their plans to hold Barr in contempt for allegedly failing to comply with those demands.
The DOJ said it was "prepared to resume negotiations with the committee regarding accommodation of its narrowed Subpoena" -- as long as Democrats removed the "threat of an imminent vote by the House of Representatives to hold the attorney general in contempt."
"The department was disappointed by the committee's abrupt termination of ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a reasonable accommodation that respects both sides' legitimate interests regarding the materials sought," Boyd wrote to Nadler. "Further, the department is disappointed by news reports indicating that Democratic leaders have scheduled a contempt vote in the House of Representatives for June 11, 2019."
In his response late Tuesday, Nadler took issue with the DOJ's characterization of Democrats' May 24 letter, and insisted that Democrats had "always remained open to continuing negotiations. ... We are here and ready to negotiate as early as tomorrow morning."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., center, with Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., ahead of a hearing on the Mueller report last month. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

"I ... take exception to your characterization of how our prior accommodation efforts ended," Nadler wrote back to Boyd. "Contrary to the account in your letter, the Committee has always remained open to continuing negotiations. We had an offer on the table late on the evening of May 7 when the Department suddenly declared an end to the accommodation process. My staff was still in their offices after the close of business hours awaiting a counteroffer when the Department broke off negotiations with a letter demanding that the contempt vote—scheduled to begin the next day— be cancelled if we wished to proceed with the accommodations process."
Nadler continued: "At any rate, we are ready to proceed without conditions—as shown by the initiative we took with our detailed May 24 offer. I should add that, contrary to your argument that the Committee’s continuing accommodation efforts somehow suggest that our prior requests were overbroad, our offer to compromise was intended to respond to your prior objections by seeking a middle ground.  We urge the Department to do the same."
The DOJ's letter, meanwhile, had called on the House Judiciary Committee to "moot" its May 8 vote to hold Barr in contempt, which the DOJ called "premature and unnecessary." That vote came after congressional Democrats subpoenaed Mueller's full and unredacted report on his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
Republicans have countered that federal law protecting secretive grand-jury information would prevent Barr from turning over the entirety of the report. The DOJ has offered Democrats the opportunity to review the report, minus those grand jury-related redactions, in a secure setting -- but those offers have been rebuffed. (In a rare public statement last week, Mueller specifically remarked, "I certainly do not question the attorney general's good faith" in deciding to make the report "largely public.")
"It would hardly make sense for the full House of Representatives to act upon the committee's prior recommendation to hold the attorney general in contempt for not complying with a subpoena that even the committee now appears to acknowledge was overbroad in seeking immediate disclosure of the entirety of the special counsel's investigative files,” Boyd wrote.
That was a conspicuous reference to the previously unreported May 24 letter to the DOJ, in which the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee wrote to privately emphasize "the Committee's willingness to engage in further negotiations to resolve this dispute" -- only to resort to public political posturing, the DOJ charged.
The Democrat-led committee also offered to "identify specific materials that if produced would be deemed to satisfy the subpoena" in an effort to make the subpoena more workable, according to the DOJ, which quoted the Committee's letter verbatim.
"In your May 24, 2019, letter, the committee appears to recognize that the subpoena is unworkably overbroad and offers -- for the first time -- to narrow the subpoena's scope to cover a much more limited set of documents," the DOJ wrote. "The department believes that the committee's new offer reflects a more reasonable request and could mitigate some of the legal barriers to disclosure that we have discussed."
The letter continued: "The committee held its contempt vote only 19 days after issuing the subpoena. Traditionally, congressional committees have only proceeded with contempt votes after lengthy periods of negotiations have failed to reach an accommodation. For example, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee negotiated with the department over the Operation Fast and Furious subpoena for months, and only voted to cite Attorney General [Eric] Holder for contempt 252 days after issuing its subpoena."
Since 1975, according to the DOJ, "committees and subcommittees have averaged 103 days between issuing a subpoena to an executive branch official and holding a contempt vote. By any measure, the committee rushed its decision and bears responsibility for the termination of the accommodation process.”
But in his letter, Nadler took issues with those characterizations.
"We cannot agree that the House’s sense of urgency here is 'premature and unnecessary,'" Nadler wrote. "It has been over 100 days since we first initiated the accommodations process on February 22, 2019.  The pace with which we are proceeding is consistent with the exceptional urgency of this matter:  an attack on our elections that was welcomed by our President and benefitted his campaign, followed by acts of obstruction by the President designed to interfere with the investigation of that attack.  All of this misconduct was documented by the Special Counsel in the documents we now seek."
In a statement, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., highlighted the DOJ's revelation that Nadler apparently signaled a willingness to work with the DOJ.
“After racing to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt, Chairman Nadler finally seems ready to join the Justice Department at the negotiating table," Collins said. "When Judiciary Democrats wield subpoena power like a sword instead of a plow, their investigations bear little fruit. The House Intelligence Committee has shown us that working with the Justice Department in good faith yields documents. Abusing subpoena and contempt authority, however, has left the Judiciary Committee with little to show for its obsessively unreasonable demands."
As for McGahn, the White House has instructed its former top lawyer not to testify, saying he is legally immune from being compelled to testify about privileged discussions occurring in the course of his official duties. Democrats have responded that McGahn waived that privilege by agreeing to speak to Mueller.
Trump did not assert executive privilege to shield any aspect of the Mueller report itself, and has derided Democrats' efforts as politically motivated attempts to keep what he's called the "Russia collusion hoax" alive -- and to distract from or derail -- Barr's own ongoing probes into Justice Department and FBI misconduct.
News of the planned contempt vote came days after Barr said he has not received answers from the intelligence community that were "at all satisfactory" in the early stages of his review into the origins of the Russia investigation. Last month, Barr appointed the U.S. attorney from Connecticut, John Durham, to lead the investigation, which is to focus on the use of FBI informants and the alleged improper issuance of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to monitor a variety of individuals, including former Trump aide Carter Page.
A Barr contempt vote would be historic, but not unprecedented. In 2012, the GOP-controlled House's vote to hold the attorney general at that time, Holder, in contempt for failing to comply with investigations into the Obama administration's failed gun-running sting operation, "Fast and Furious." Holder became the first-ever sitting Cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress in that manner.
The resolution scheduled for a June 11 floor vote would allow the Judiciary Committee to pursue civil action to seek enforcement of its subpoenas in federal court.
Such an approach would rule out so-called "inherent contempt," a process in which Congress technically can enforce contempt citations on its own -- whether by arrest or fine. In May, Barr reportedly joked about that possibility with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, asking, "Did you bring your handcuffs?"
Fox News' Jake Gibson contributed to this report.

Hannity unloads on Democrats, Nadler, Schiff, Maddow and CNN

Fox News' Sean Hannity didn't hold back Tuesday, going after Democrats for their latest anti-Trump comments and for inviting Watergate figure John Dean to speak on Capitol Hill, while also bashing the "mainstream media" for continuing to "smear" the president.
"Dean only now works for 'fake news' CNN as a professional Trump hater. 24/7 hate, rage psychosis. So, now Jerry Nadler figures 'oh nobody more perfect let's roll him out for yet another... round of Trump bashing even though he has no relevance to the case," Hannity said on his television show.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee announced Monday that they would convene a hearing with Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon and a key figure in the Watergate scandal, in an effort to keep the public focused on the Mueller report. Nadler, D-N.Y., is the committee's chairman.
Hannity also directed his ire at Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who Tuesday called Attorney General William Barr the "second most dangerous man in the country."
"The most dangerous place in the country is being between the cowardly Schiff and either a microphone or a camera because he's obsessed with seeing himself and hearing himself," Hannity charged.
Hannity added, "He has lied more than any other single member of congress which says a lot about him."
The Fox News host didn't stop there, calling out MSNBC host Rachel Maddow calling her a "conspiracy theorist" and a "liar."
"Sadly, Rachel Maddow's delusion is not uncommon in the so-called mainstream media. In other words 99% of the media that spent two years lying again and again to the American people," Hannity said.
Hannity also took a shot at Maddow and CNN's ratings saying, "Maddow could use the publicity because her ratings as well CNN ratings have taken a dive" due to their coverage of the Russia investigation.
Fox News' Samuel Chamberlain contributed to this report.

Kirsten Gillibrand Cartoons

Russia investigation 'case closed,' move on to probe Comey, Strzok: Graham

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation should be considered "case closed" and concentration should be put on the origins of the probe, Lindsey Graham said.
Sen. Graham, R-S.C., said on "Hannity," he believed that with Mueller deciding President Trump did not collude with Russia and not to bring an obstruction of justice case against him, the investigation is over.
"When [Mueller] met with Barr personally... weeks before the report was given out, he told Barr, I can't decide about obstruction... but I did not make my decision based on DOJ policy that you can't indict a sitting president," Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed.
Graham said Mueller did not find proof there was, "no collusion with the Russians. He decided not to bring a case against the president based on obstruction."
"To me, case closed. Let's look at Comey and McCabe, [former FBI Agent Peter] Strzok, [former FBI lawyer Lisa] Page [and] all these other people, and see how we got into this mess to begin with," he added.
The senator noted Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham is examining the origins of the Russia investigation.
"Durham is going to look at all of these cast of characters to see if they broke the law. And, Barr is going to make sure that the DOJ is reformed so it's never abused in this way in the future," the South Carolina lawmaker added.
Graham said he is also awaiting a report on from Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz on potential surveillance abuses at the FBI.
"So, Horowitz will issue his report about the FISA warrant process. I will take that report and see if we need to change our laws to make sure it never happens again," he said.
"At the end of the day, you can't have people enforcing the law taking it into their own hands for political purposes."

Ex-Trump lawyer slams Mueller report as a ‘fraud,’ cites misleading quote

Ex Trump lawyer John Dowd on Monday slammed the Mueller report as a "fraud," for allegedly mispresenting a quote he had said in a voicemail.
Dowd said there will likely be more discrepancies in the future stemming from the report.
“Isn’t it ironic that this man [Mueller], who kept indicting and prosecuting people for process crimes, committed a false statement in his own report,” Dowd said.
U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes called for the release of “all backup and source information” for the Mueller report on Friday after a newly released transcript of a former Trump lawyer's 2017 voicemail message included content that did not appear in a version that was part of the special counsel's Russia investigation findings.
Nunes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, was reacting to the release of a voicemail message that John Dowd, a former lawyer for President Trump, had left for a lawyer representing former national security adviser Michael Flynn, in which Dowd asks for a “heads up” if Flynn planned to say anything damaging about Trump to Mueller’s team.
Nunes retweeted a side-by-side comparison of the Dowd transcript text and the Mueller report text, suggesting that the Mueller report did not disclose the full Dowd message. The Mueller report had redacted the part of the voicemail where Dowd said he wanted the heads up “not only for the president but for the country” and that he wasn’t asking for “any confidential information.”
Alan Dershowitz claimed on "Hannity" Monday night that the quotation was "distorted."
"This is a very, very serious issue," he said. "The distortion of the Dowd quote is very serious. Especially since, remember, that a report by a special counsel is always going to be one-sided. Therefore, you have to trust it."
Dowd said, according to the transcript: “I understand that you can’t join the joint defense; so that’s one thing. If, on the other hand, we have, there’s information that... implicates the president, then we’ve got a national security issue, or maybe a national security issue, I don’t know... some issue, we got to — we got to deal with, not only for the president, but for the country. So... uh... you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads-up.”
Federal prosecutors released the transcript in a court filing. Flynn, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal investigators about contacts with Russians and is awaiting sentencing, said the call was an effort to obstruct his cooperation with Mueller’s probe.
Fox News' Greg Wilson and Brie Stimson contributed to this report.

Judge tosses House Dems' lawsuit over Trump's use of emergency military funds for border wall

Washington, D.C., district court Judge Trevor McFadden threw out House Democrats' lawsuit seeking an injunction against President Trump's emergency border wall funding reallocation, saying that the matter is fundamentally a political dispute and that the politicians lack standing to make a legal case.
Trump had declared a national emergency this past February over the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, following Congress' failure to fund his border wall legislatively. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Democrats then filed suit in April, charging that Trump was "stealing from appropriated funds” by moving $6.7 billion from other projects toward border wall construction.
Democrats argued that the White House had "flouted the fundamental separation-of-powers principles and usurped for itself legislative power specifically vested by the Constitution in Congress."
But, in his ruling, McFadden, a Trump appointee, suggested Democrats were trying to circumvent the political process.
"This case presents a close question about the appropriate role of the Judiciary in resolving disputes between the other two branches of the Federal Government. To be clear, the court does not imply that Congress may never sue the Executive to protect its powers," McFadden wrote in his opinion. "The Court declines to take sides in this fight between the House and the President."
McFadden's ruling contrasted with U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam’s injunction last week, which blocked the administration from using the reallocated funds for projects in specific areas in Texas and Arizona. Gilliam had been appointed by then-President Barack Obama.
McFadden began by focusing on two guiding Supreme Court cases he called "lodestars"-- the 2015 case Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, and the 1997 case Raines v. Byrd.
"Read together, Raines and Arizona State Legislature create a spectrum of sorts," McFadden wrote. "On one end, individual legislators lack standing to allege a generalized harm to Congress’s Article I power. On the other end, both chambers of a state legislature do have standing to challenge a nullification of their legislative authority brought about through a referendum."
But, McFadden quickly distinguished the Arizona State Legislature case, which found institutional standing for legislators only in a limited instance. The Arizona case, the judge noted, "does not touch or concern the question whether Congress has standing to bring a suit against the President," and the Supreme Court has found there was "no federal analogue to Arizona’s initiative power."
Democrats' dispute was more similar to the one in the Raines case, McFadden wrote. Under the framework and factors considered in Raines -- including how similar matters have been handled historically, and the availability of other remedies besides litigation -- McFadden ruled that House Democrats lacked standing.
Concerning past historical practice, the Trump administration argued in its brief that when Congress was concerned about "unauthorized Executive Branch spending in the aftermath of World War I, it responded not by threatening litigation, but by creating the General Accounting Office." The judge cited that argument approvingly in his opinion, calling it "persuasive."
Examples of hotly debated political questions being resolved without involving the courts, McFadden continued, "abound" throughout history.
For example, McFadden wrote, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt "fired an official from his Senate-confirmed position at the Federal Trade Commission. ...The President removed the official without providing a reason. ... The Senate likely had a 'strong[] claim of diminution of' its Advice and Consent power. ... Yet the Senate made no effort to challenge this action in court."
Additionally, McFadden said Democrats retained constitutional legislative options with which to remedy their objections about the president's purported misuse of the Appropriations Clause. Under Supreme Court precedent in the Raines case, McFadden asserted, the existence of those additional options suggested Democrats lacked standing.
McFadden noted in particular that Democrats retained the power to modify or even repeal the appropriations law if they wanted to "exempt future appropriations" from the Trump administration's reach.

This May 29 photo released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed some of 1,036 migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, the largest that the Border Patrol says it has ever encountered. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection via AP)

Because the White House had not "nullified" that legislative power, McFadden wrote, there was no urgent need for judicial intervention sufficient to override the considerations of the political question doctrine, which holds that courts generally stay out of politically sensitive matters best left to voters.
"Congress has several political arrows in its quiver to counter perceived threats to its sphere of power," McFadden wrote. "These tools show that this lawsuit is not a last resort for the House. And this fact is also exemplified by the many other cases across the country challenging the administration's planned construction of the border wall."
McFadden continued: "The House retains the institutional tools necessary to remedy any harm caused to this power by the Administration’s actions. Its Members can, with a two-thirds majority, override the President’s veto of the resolution voiding the National Emergency Declaration. They did not. It can amend appropriations laws to expressly restrict the transfer or spending of funds for a border wall under Sections 284 and 2808. Indeed, it appears to be doing so."
The judge added that House Democrats had the burden of demonstrating that they had standing -- a difficult hurdle for any plaintiff to clear, which involves showing a particularized injury that the court can address.
To that end, McFadden quoted former Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in the seminal 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, in which Marshall wrote, the "province of the [C[ourt is, solely, to decide on the rights of individuals, not to enquire how the executive, or executive officers, perform duties in which they have a discretion."
McFadden also wrote, quoting from another Supreme Court case, "Intervening in a contest between the House and President over the border wall would entangle the Court 'in a power contest nearly at the height of its political tension' and would 'risk damaging the public confidence that is vital to the functioning of the Judicial Branch.'"
Lawmakers expressly approved only $1.375 billion in the weeks after the shutdown, to go toward funding to 55 miles of wall along the southern border. But, Trump said that was inadequate, and he pushed ahead by moving funds from other Homeland Security projects previously approved by legislators. In his budget request earlier this year, Trump formally requested another $8.6 billion from Congress, saying that would be sufficient to build more than 700 miles of wall.
The emergency-appropriated funding alone could be used to build more than 230 miles of barriers.
At a hearing in May, McFadden hinted that courts should stay out of the matter -- and suggested an appeal was imminent regardless.
"I’m not sure how much necessarily our views will carry the day for the courts above us," McFadden said at the hearing.
Disagreement already has been brewing in the lower courts, setting the stage for appellate panels to step in. Gillam, the Northern District of California judge who ruled last month that Trump was likely breaking the law by reallocating the wall funds, blocked some projects slated for immediate construction in Yuma and El Paso.
"In short, the position that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds without Congress does not square with fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic," Gilliam wrote.

Judge orders Paul Manafort to be transferred to New York City’s notorious Rikers Island

Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was sentenced earlier this year to four years in prison for tax and bank fraud related to his work advising Ukrainian politicians, will be transferred later this week from a minimum security facility in Pennsylvania to New York City’s Rikers Island, a source close to Manafort told Fox News.
Rikers Island is the famous jail in the shadow of LaGuardia Airport. It has been the temporary home of some of the most high-profile violent criminals in the city, including  David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam; and Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon.
"He’s not a mob boss," the source close to Manafort said.
A New York State judge ordered the transfer at the request of New York City District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. He will be held in solitary confinement for his own protection, the source said. The move is expected to happen as early as Thursday.
Vance, a Democrat, said in March that a New York grand jury charged Manafort with 16 counts including residential mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and other charges. He said at the time that “no one is beyond the law in New York.” Manafort cannot be pardoned by President Trump for state crimes.
Vance’s office did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News late Monday. Manafort’s defense team is planning an appeal, according to the source.
Manafort’s conviction in August made him the first campaign associate of President Trump found guilty by a jury as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis emphasized ahead of sentencing that the Manafort case was not about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Ellis said that the guidelines of sentencing Manafort to between 19 and 24 years in prison were "excessive for this case." Manafort will receive credit for the nine months he's already served. Manafort was also hit with a $50,000 fine.
Prosecutors said Manafort, 69, hid income earned from political work overseas from the IRS while fraudulently obtaining millions in bank loans. Manafort had pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts in the case.
He is still facing additional years in prison from another case: After his conviction in Virginia, Manafort pleaded guilty in Washington to foreign lobbying violations and witness tampering as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He has not yet been sentenced in that case, and Mueller’s team recently asked a federal judge to sentence him to 24 years in prison and order him to pay as much as a $24 million fine.
Fox News' Alex Pappas and Danielle Wallace contributed to this report