"You shall do my bidding catching flies as a go-fer conspiracy toad until I say no more!"
"I think this is the most concerning development out of the Justice Department we've seen since Donald Trump became president. Look, obviously if there was a crime committed it ought to be investigated. But we know more about the Russia probe than probably any investigation in the Justice Department's history. Bob Mueller wrote a 450 page report that became public, the DOJ released a FISA application which it's never done before in its history...and through all of that we've never seen a single evidence of a crime, or an allegation of a crime that would give a single predicate for an investigation.
I think it's notable in this story it doesn't say what the allegation of a crime is that the Department is now investigating. I don't think it's a coincidence that the day after an ambassador goes up to the hill and gives incredibly damning evidence about the president extorting a foreign government that we see this leak from the Department of Justice. And I think it's incredibly concerning about the administration of justice and the rule of law in this country." - Matt Miller, former Director of Public Affairs, Justice Department, on 'Last Word' Thursday night.
"What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?" - Jennifer Senior, NY Times Friday,
Assume for the sake of argument there is a parallel reality in which one nation's political party believes it can control that nation's governance in perpetuity. Impose an indefinite rule of autocratic, one party fascism if you will. That nation has a constitution which decrees a separation of powers and the existence of a co-equal branch of government to the executive. However, this political party fancies it can rig the system - with the right president- to remain in power as long as it wants. Also to render the co-equal branch a neutered nonentity. How to do it?
First define a 'unitary executive' doctrine giving an authoritarian president not only total power over the executive branch but also transcendent power over all branches.
Second, enable this power to be tested with the election of the "right" candidate. Preferably a flouter of norms who also believes the constitution is just a piece of paper and that he can bully or intimidate any group in the nation: intelligence agencies, media, any other political parties, or other voters, i.e. who never voted for him.
Get this character to then commit impeachable offenses, say collaborating or conspiring with a foreign power to steal an election to shoehorn him into office. Then challenge any supposed co-equal branch to hold him in check or administer constitutional justice. Such that even if he shot someone on the parallel reality's 5th avenue there'd be no crime, and he'd get away with it.
Then third, to escape any predicament of accountability (by media and the co-equal branch), recruit an attorney general who will not be independent but do this odious autocrat's bidding and investigate the investigators of the original debacle and conspiracy, i.e. that got him into office. This will come in especially handy when he's later caught shaking down the head of another foreign power to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
Far fetched nonsense? Nope, it's already unfolding even as we've seen William Barr now commence a criminal inquiry into the alleged "Russiagate" conspiracy despite Mueller's judicious probe (involving dozens of FBI agents and others) that led to the Mueller report, e.g.
www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
In other words, Barr and his Justice Department is in the process of opening a criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation. See e. g. NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html
No surprise then that Barr has mutated into an officious, hop scotching human toad - hopping all over the world trying to dig up dirt on his own agency, the intelligence agencies under its roof (the FBI) and ancillary investigators who probed the Russian infiltration into the 2016 election. Except in this case it isn't to go after the Russkies (and Trumpies who collaborated with them), but those who investigated the conspiracy to steal the election for Donald Trump. In other words Barr has debased the DOJ by converting it into an expeditious vehicle for Trump's political revenge.
Of course, by shamelessly acting on Trump's behalf, Barr has now put himself into impeachment jeopardy. . He's also created enormous embarrassment for the nation in his desperate antics, even as everyone with a brain knows exactly what he's up to: providing an alternative "criminal inquiry" to counter and offset the Democrats justifiable impeachment inquiry. One, I might ad, that now has even more ballast after a federal court judge deemed it legitimate and that the DOJ and Barr now must turn over all previously concealed (e.g. grand jury) materials from the Mueller probe. See:
Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/us/politics/house-impeachment-subpoenas.html
As for embarrassing the nation, Giuseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister was asked by Italian lawmakers to explain what in the world the U.S. attorney general wanted. The New York Times published this striking account yesterday:
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said his country’s intelligence services had informed the American attorney general, William P. Barr, that they played no role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, taking the air out of an unsubstantiated theory promoted by President Trump and his allies in recent weeks.
“Our intelligence is completely unrelated to the so-called Russiagate and that has been made clear,” Mr. Conte said in a news conference in Rome on Wednesday evening after spending hours describing Italy’s discussions with Mr. Barr to the parliamentary committee on intelligence.
Mr. Conte publicly acknowledged for the first time that Mr. Barr had twice met with the leaders of Italy’s intelligence agencies after asking them to clarify their role in a 2016 meeting between a Maltese professor and a Trump campaign adviser on a small college campus in Rome, Link Campus University.As bizarre as this may seem, Barr appears to have also gone to other allied nations in his Quixote- like tilting at fantasy conspiracy windmills. The toad was driven by the need to find something, anything to save Trump's butt, looking for damaging information about American officials involved in "Russiagate" , which he thought might help Donald Trump.
Italy, not surprisingly, had no such information, and seemed baffled as to what the United States’ top law-enforcement official was looking for.
The precise details of the relevant conspiracy idiocy - I can't dignify it with "theory" - are mind-numbing in themselves. They apparently involve George Papadopoulos, who served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, a London-based Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud, and assorted characters. The sum of the accusations, speculations and misinformation are enough to blow a hole into the sanity and mind of a normal person, but would do a QAnon zombie proud. To be sure they are absolutely ridiculous, almost on the level of the "Pizzagate" rubbish that pushed the hare -brained malarkey that Hillary was operating a child sex slave ring in the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor.
You laugh, but one Trumpie imbecile actually took a rifle to the suspected establishment to mete out justice and a tragedy was only averted by quick thinking - and reaction. Needless to say I am not going to waste time (or blog space) regurgitating this latest horse shit. Anyone who really wants
more information can obtain it from Thursday night’s A block and this Vox piece from last month. Be sure you ration your neural exposure time!
In the end, sadly, the Trumpies and their cabal have succeeded in literally reducing our country to a laughing stock. If my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh was alive to day to see this, he'd puke. The United States – the world’s preeminent superpower, ostensibly the global leader on matters of international affairs – has an attorney general who has gone to foreign countries, cap in hand, looking for dirt on his own country’s officials, begging for help with a ridiculous conspiracy, only to be told by our allies, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If that doesn't embarrass any red-blooded American I don't know what would.
See also:
https://www.salon.com/2019/10/25/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule/
And:
And:
