Stone Free

Roger Stone got his prison sentence commuted just before the crooked political consultant was scheduled to begin it.  Democrats have complained, of course, and so far Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Pat Toomey of Pennsylcania are the only Republicans to denounce the move.  Well, except for Robert Mueller, who wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that it doesn't change the fact that Stone is still a convicted felon for making false statements in the Russia investigation, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

It's no accident that Trump did this the day after the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that he could not block Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. from acquiring Trump's tax returns and also ruled, again 7-2, to send a congressional request for his financial documents back to the lower courts, possibly allowing that to go forward later. After the Supreme Court - including Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - told Trump that their interpretation of the law was that he must comply with the law, Trump commuted Stone's sentence to demonstrate that he is the law.

Even Nixon - whom Stone worked for - wouldn't have done this.  Trump's brazenness and his insistence that Stone was the victim of a witch hunt only serve to demonstrate how important it is that he be voted our of office in November.

Trump Unbound, Justice Undone

Trump is feeling emboldened after being acquitted of crimes and misdemeanors by the Senate, which is why he tweeted his desire to have the Justice Department intervene in trying to get a lesser sentence for crony Roger Stone rather than seven to nine years that staffers at the Justice Department recommended.  Three of the four lawyers handling the Stone case quit it, and the fourth quit the Justice Department entirely.

Doing Trump's bidding has been the modus operandi of Attorney General William Barr (above), who has been shielding Trump from numerous threats to his power, going as far as to deliberately take the Mueller report out of context and misrepresenting the facts in it.  His politicization of his office and the department he administers has had a chilling effect on career prosecutors in the government, now suddenly reluctant to conduct any investigation that Trump may not like.

Barr did speak out against Trump this past week, urging him not to tweet any input into the Stone case or any other, saying that it makes him hard to run the Justice Department with any impartiality.  Don't be fooled.  Barr is happy to do with Trump wants.  He's opposed to Trump's tweeting on Stone and other matters not out of the need to preserve the good standing of the Justice Department but because Trump's openness in demonstrating his manipulation of justice has gotten so obvious it's become a public relations problem.

With the Republican Senate staying silent and House Democrats having few options in trying to stop him, Trump will continue to wreck havoc on the justice system unabated until and unless he's voted out of office.   Will that happen in November?  Well, it depends on the intelligence and the voters and the integrity of the electoral process.

Sorry to disappoint you. :-( 

In Mammon We Trust

Marie Yovanovitch presented herself as a heroine in defending her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine in her testimony to the House Intelligence Committee about how she saw that Trump's attempts to have Ukrainian corruption investigated was more about damaging Joe Biden (which some say he's succeeded in doing) than bringing good governance to the former Soviet republic.  Trump's efforts to discredit her on Twitter in real time while she was testifying - he bad-mouthed her entire career despite her impeccable credentials - opened him up to charges of witness tampering during a hearing on his own impeachment.  Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were left dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, Trump operative Roger Stone was convicted yesterday of trying to stop the House probe into charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election, having been convicted on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one count of obstructing a congressional probe, and one count of witness tampering.

But, if not for the third event that took place yesterday, the first two would actually matter.  The third event was this: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 28,000 points for the first time ever.

The Dow - and the Nasdaq and the S&P as well - all closed at record highs yesterday thanks to news of an impending trade deal with China.  And, the Dow had set a record earlier in the week thanks to the launch of Disney's Disney Plus subscription video on-demand streaming service.  As long as the economy goes well enough for many people - especially regular voters, who are better off than people who don't vote regularly or don't vote at all - Trump is still a favorite for re-election, and if a progressive Democrat (or, in the case of Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent) is his opponent in the presidential election next November, hell, he could be the first President unanimously re-elected by the Electoral College since George Washington on 1792.  He might even carry the District of Columbia, thanks to all of the gentrification hat Washington, D.C. has undergone in recent years.  At the least, Trump could repeat in 2020 James Monroe's success of two hundred years earlier - only losing four electors, three of whom didn't vote and one of whom wrote in John Quincy Adams.   

Because, boys and girls, Americans don't really care about constitutional crises or the rule of law.   They only care about their own economic well-being.   One could argue - I'm surprised more people don't - that Nixon might have survived Watergate if the economy had been a whole lot better, without stagflation or an oil crisis going on.  Donald Trump, who boasts about the Dow ad infinitum, is counting on a booming stock market and admittedly misleading employment statistics to carry him to victory in 2020 by assuming that Americans are just as venal as he is.

And he's probably right.  As the British noted several years ago, we Americans have an uncanny knack for worshiping God and Mammon at the same time.  How else do you explain the motto "In God We Trust" on our currency?

Money . . . it's a hit . . . don't give me that do-goody-good bullsh-- . . .

Stonefaced Shutdown

On the same day that Trump confidante and Nixon apologist Roger Stone was arrested and charged by Robert Mueller's investigation with lying about the nature of his involvement in the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, Trump himself was forced to end the government shutdown after five weeks and agree to the same deal he rejected at the last minute back in December to keep the government open.  This happened as FBI Director Christopher Wray was expressing outright anger over the shutdown and the impact it was having on his agency even as FBI agents were . . . arresting Roger Stone in Florida.

Stone apparently was more active than he has been willing to admit in exposing e-mails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) regarding Hillary Clinton's campaign after WikiLeaks found that the DNC had a cut-rate firewall and hacked some very damaging attitudes from Hillary and her campaign toward Catholic voters, Wall Street, her wimp-out on single-payer health care,  and just about everything else.  Stone was apparently vigorous in pursuing of Russian-hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election bid.  He was allegedly very active in talking with Julian Assange, the director of WikiLeaks - which may or may not be a Russian front - in getting the material released in a timely  matter so it could be leveraged against the Clinton campaign.  Then he tried to tamper with a witness, a talk-radio host, to keep him from telling the truth to Mueller about the nature of the conversations that had over WikiLeaks.

Does your head hurt yet?

While there is no accusation toward Trump of colluding with the Russians, it's clear that Stone was deeply involved in manipulating sensitive information to ensure a Trump victory (although the Democrats helped by nominating Hillary).  It won't be long before Trump is implicated. 

Oh yeah, the 2020 presidential election.  Bernie Sanders is running, and Beto O'Rourke won't decide for several months.  Never mind, Beto.  I'm taking a serious look at Colorado senator and rumored presidential candidate Michael Bennet . . .