Heather Cox Richardson

anon15383236 · February 11, 2022, 1:33pm

February 10, 2022 (Thursday)

This morning’s news that former president Trump apparently clogged a White House toilet repeatedly with discarded documents was overtaken this evening by the news that some of the records Trump took from the White House were clearly marked as classified, some of them “top secret.”

The news of the flushed documents came through Axios from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, whose book about Trump will be out in October. By law, the records of a presidential administration belong to the American people; there are strict laws about how they should be handled and preserved. That Trump ignored the Presidential Records Act was known because of stories of how he ripped up documents that others tried to tape back together, but the idea that he was flushing so many documents he periodically clogged the toilet seemed a commentary on his regard for the American people who owned those documents.

And yet, by the end of the day, the flushing was not the big story.

In the 15 boxes of material the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recovered from the former president’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, archivists discovered top secret documents. Top secret clearance is applied to documents whose disclosure “could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security” of the United States. They are supposed to be kept secure, and to be seen only by authorized individuals. NARA officials had been trying to retrieve missing documents since last summer (never, never, mess with archivists—they keep meticulous records), and Trump refused to hand them over. When they found the mishandled documents, they called the Justice Department.

Reid J. Epstein and Michael S. Schmidt in the New York Times recalled that Trump’s handling of sensitive national security documents was so lackadaisical that when he was White House chief of staff, General John F. Kelly tried to stop Trump from taking classified documents out of the Oval Office out of concern that he would jeopardize national security. Epstein and Schmidt recounted how Trump used to rip pictures out of the President’s Daily Brief, the daily bulletin of national security threats. Now, it appears he took secret material and did not keep it secure.

Certainly, Trump knew he was breaking the law. White House counsel Donald McGahn warned him about the Presidential Records Act. So did two chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and Kelly. In 2017, internal White House memos warned against destroying presidential records, noting that such destruction is a crime. The editorial board of the Washington Post called Trump’s mutilated records, “a wrenching testimony to his penchant for wanton destruction.”

This story is about the stealing of our records and the endangerment of our national security—and the heroism of archivists—but it is also a story about the media. The defining narrative of the 2016 election was about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails, allegedly mishandled. Again and again, the email story was front-page news. A 2017 study in the Columbia Journalism Review by Duncan J. Watts and David M. Rothschild found that the New York Times in six days published as many cover stories about Clinton’s emails as they did about “all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” The network news gave more time to Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.

Today, Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America noted that the Trump story should mean that finally “political journalists should stop pretending to believe Republicans when they pretend to be outraged about purportedly illegal or unethical behavior by Democrats.” He compiled a long list of all the Fox News Channel stories about Clinton’s emails and said, “Based on the 2015–16 baseline, Trump flagrantly violating the Presidential Records Act should be a massive story.” Aaron Rupar, author of the newsletter Public Notice, tweeted the obvious: “If two prominent reporters broke news that Joe Biden was flushing documents down White House toilets, [Fox News Channel personality Sean] Hannity would anchor special Fox News coverage that would last through 2024. Trump flushing documents down WH toilets has been mentioned twice on Fox News today, once in passing.”

The House Oversight Committee has announced it will investigate the “potential serious violations” of the Presidential Records Act. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo was more to the point, saying that Trump’s destruction of evidence amounted to “willful and deliberate destruction of government records for the purpose of concealment.”

That analysis agrees with the discovery by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol that the White House phone logs for the day of the insurrection have gaps in them: calls they know Trump made to lawmakers are missing. This may be in part because he used his own private cell phone or the phones of aides.

The destruction of documents in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s hamstrung the investigation, but it is not clear that, in this era, the concealment will be so effective. Yesterday, lawyers for the Department of Justice provided 19 pages of information to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, outlining how they are getting through the massive amounts of information they have, using cell phone records, internet records, geolocation, data aggregators, and so on. It doesn’t seem like much is slipping by.

While the investigation by the January 6 committee and the angry split in the Republican Party after the Republican National Committee excused the insurrection as “legitimate political discourse” have gotten all the headlines, the Biden administration has been working to rebuild and redefine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for a new era.

Dr. Mike Martin, a war studies visiting fellow at King’s College London, notes that it is hardly a secret that Russian president Vladimir Putin wants a buffer around Russia of states that are not allied with his enemies. If they cannot be allied with Russia, at least they will be chaotic and neutral, rather than pro-democracy and anti-corruption.

Martin notes it is not a coincidence that Putin decided to test NATO right as German leadership shifts from former German chancellor Angela Merkel to Olaf Scholz, as the U.K. is reeling from scandals surrounding Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and, I would add, as Biden is trying to rebuild the U.S. in the face of open hostility from Republicans after we have suffered far higher Covid death rates than other large, wealthy nations—63% higher since December 1, according to the New York Times.

But the allies surprised Putin by pulling together, in large part because of a sustained and thorough effort by the U.S. State Department, an effort that European diplomats told journalist and political scientist David Rothkopf was “unprecedented.” In a piece for the Daily Beast, Rothkopf notes that the dissolution of the USSR left NATO, along with other international institutions, adrift. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, fed the U.S. sense that it could and should act on its own, getting us into the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, which then shaped President Barack Obama’s caution as he tried simply not to screw up on the international stage. Then Trump actively worked to weaken international alliances.

Now, Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan are trying to rebuild NATO and international alliances, focusing on diplomacy. Recognizing that we cannot combat the crises of climate change, pandemics, and emerging technologies without cooperation, they are emphasizing a rules-based international order, and working with others, whose voices matter: “nothing about us without us.”

One diplomat for the European Union told Rothkopf these qualities are “refreshing and, in a way, revolutionary.” A scholar of diplomacy put it like this: “When there are lots of moving pieces in play, when there appears to be the chance for seismic shifts in power, these can call forth a golden age of diplomacy. And the coalition builders, the conceivers of grand alliances, the ones who work well with others, these almost always prevail in the face of a bullying despot.”

Still, no one knows what Russia will do, although as the ground softens, an invasion becomes more difficult. Yesterday, Russia expert and former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul added another piece: “Putin knows…NATO won’t accept new members who have Russian soldiers occupying parts of their countries, because NATO members don’t want a war with Russia. That’s why Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 & Ukraine 2014.” Russia currently has troops in Belarus that it says are only there temporarily.

PsiPhiGrrrl · February 11, 2022, 7:41pm

So we finally know the reason behind this story, which seemed so weird at the time…

anon15383236 · February 11, 2022, 8:08pm

Makes sense i suppose suppose that the shiittiest president ever, who spent his entire four years pissing on our collective leg, is so intrigued by plumbing.

gatto · February 11, 2022, 9:36pm

that is just weird, and ive got to wonder what the pictures were. unless they were of him i suppose in a certain russian hotel room

wait. how did donald win again? so depressing…

anon15383236 · February 12, 2022, 10:53am

February 11, 2022 (Friday)

Yesterday, the Treasury noted that the U.S. budget had a surplus of $119 billion in January. That’s the first budget surplus in more than two years. Tax receipts are up significantly: they grew 21% in January to $465 billion, as higher employment and earnings meant a big jump in payroll taxes and withholdings. At the same time, outlays fell 37%.

Today, the administration warned any American in Ukraine to get out as quickly as possible, leaving no later than 48 hours from midday today. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned that, “[i]f you stay, you are assuming risk with no guarantee that there will be any other opportunity to leave and no prospect of a U.S. military evacuation in the event of a Russian invasion.” He said the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv stands ready to help financially and logistically.

Sullivan told reporters that the administration believes that the world has entered the window of time in which if Russian president Vladimir Putin is going to attack Ukraine, he will do so. The U.S., he said, is “ready either way.” It will continue its hefty diplomatic push, or it and key allies will respond to an invasion with severe economic sanctions, reinforce the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and continue to support Ukraine and its well-trained and equipped army.

The U.S. has deployed service members to Poland, Romania, and Germany to defend NATO territory under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty that established NATO. Article 5 says that an attack against any NATO ally is considered an attack on all of them and that, in such an event, they will come to each other’s aid. To date, Article 5 has been invoked only once: on September 12, 2001, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Those personnel, Sullivan emphasized, “are not soldiers who are being sent to go fight Russia in Ukraine. They are not going to war in Ukraine. They are not going to war with Russia. They’re going to defend NATO territory, consistent with our Article 5 obligation. They are defensive deployments. They are non-escalatory. They are meant to reinforce, reassure, and deter aggression against NATO territory.”

“Whatever happens next,” Sullivan said, “the West is more united than it’s been in years. NATO has been strengthened. The Alliance is more cohesive, more purposeful, more dynamic than at…any time in recent memory.”

President Joe Biden spoke today with leaders from the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Poland, Romania, the Secretary General of NATO, and the presidents of the European Union to coordinate a response to Russian aggression.

Biden will speak again with Putin tomorrow.

The Fox News Channel is cheering on the so-called “Freedom Convoys” of disgruntled Canadians driving commercial trucks who have shut down Ottawa, Canada’s capital, as well as key border crossings between Canada and the U.S. They have created traffic jams that have made it impossible for auto plants on both sides of the border to get the parts they need, and the resulting production cuts, as well as the idling of hundreds of millions of dollars in trade, are hurting the economies of both countries.

According to Justin Ling in The Guardian, the convoys appear to have been organized by James Bauder, a conspiracy theorist who believes Covid-19 is a political scam and has endorsed the QAnon movement. Canada’s recent vaccine requirement to cross the Canadian border provided a catalyst to pull together a number of different groups opposed to public health measures with anti-government protesters. The protests were neither popular nor representative of truckers: there were never more than about 8000 protesters, 90% of truckers crossing the border are vaccinated, and the Canadian Trucking Alliance strongly opposes the protest.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Canadian Trucking Alliance told Rose White of MLive that many of the Freedom Convoy protesters “have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements.” Ling noted that the convoy participants flew neo-Nazi and Confederate flags and had QAnon logos on their trucks, but Bauder urged his supporters stick to the message of “freedom.”

The “Freedom Convoy” has been pushed by fake accounts on social media and has picked up supporters from the U.S. right wing, including leading lawmakers. Facebook officials told NBC News today that fake accounts tied to content mills in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania, and several other countries have been pushing the convoy. Their disinformation is working; donations from the U.S. have flooded into accounts supporting the convoy protesters.

Former president Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), and others have endorsed the convoy, and the Fox News Channel has talked about the convoy two and a half times as often as CNN and five times as often as MSNBC in the last month, according to Philip Bump of the Washington Post. Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America tweeted that the network has spent more than ten hours on the story since January 18, with the network personalities—especially Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity—explicitly calling for an American version of the protest.

The idea of shutting down supply chains does not interest the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which yesterday denounced the convoy. “The livelihood of working Americans and Canadians in the automotive, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors is threatened by this blockade,” Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa said in a statement. “Our economy is growing under the Biden Administration, and this disruption in international trade threatens to derail the gains we have made. Our members are some of the hardest workers in the country and are being prevented from doing their jobs.”

But that is almost certainly the point. Disrupting a nation’s supply chains destabilizes its economy and thereby weakens the government in power. Indeed, U.S. lawmakers know this quite well: in 1972, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded a 26-day truckers’ strike in Chile that helped to destabilize the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende, who would be overthrown the following year by right-wing dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

The economy under Biden shows that his traditional vision of a government that supports ordinary people rather than cutting taxes and funneling money to “makers” works; the extraordinary unity of NATO in the face of Putin’s determination to advance authoritarian goals shows that multilateral cooperation rather than unilateral military action works, too. For those determined to regain power, disruption and destabilization are the order of the day.

anon15383236 · February 13, 2022, 1:43pm

February 12, 2022 (Saturday)

On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born.

Lincoln was the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized, but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.

“Four score and seven years ago,” he told an audience at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Lincoln dated the founding of the nation from the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, the document enslavers preferred because of that document’s protection of property. In the Declaration, the Founders wrote that they held certain “truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”

But in Lincoln’s day, fabulously wealthy enslavers had gained control over the government and had begun to argue that the Founders had gotten their worldview terribly wrong. They insisted that their system of human enslavement, which had enabled them to amass fortunes previously unimaginable, was the right one. Most men were dull drudges who must be led by their betters for their own good, southern leaders said. As South Carolina senator and enslaver James Henry Hammond put it, “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’”

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”

Lincoln had thought deeply about the logic of equality. In his 1860 campaign biography, he permitted the biographer to identify six books that had influenced him. One was a book published in 1817 and wildly popular in the Midwest in the 1830s: Capt. Riley’s Narrative. The book was written by James Riley, and the full title of the book was An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, With the Sufferings of her Surviving Officers and Crew, Who Were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs on the Great African Desart [sic], or Zahahrah.” The story was exactly what the title indicated: the tale of white men enslaved in Africa.

In the 1850s, on a fragment of paper, Lincoln figured out the logic of a world that permitted the law to sort people into different places in a hierarchy, applying the reasoning he heard around him. “If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?” Lincoln wrote. “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”

Lincoln saw clearly that if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game. We have admitted the principle that people are unequal and that some people are better than others. Once we have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, we have granted approval to the idea of rulers and ruled. At that point, all any of us can do is to hope that no one in power decides that we belong in one of the lesser groups.

In 1863, Lincoln reminded his audience at Gettysburg that the Founders had created a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” but it was no longer clear whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” During the Civil War, the people of the United States were defending that principle against those who were trying to create a new nation based, as the Confederacy’s vice president Alexander Stephens said, “upon the great truth” that men were not, in fact, created equal, that the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth” was that there was a “superior race.”

In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln called for Americans to understand what was at stake, and to “highly resolve… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

[Photo of Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner, November 8, 1863]

anon15383236 · February 14, 2022, 4:59am

February 13, 2022 (Sunday)

Tonight, while those who observe watched the Los Angeles Rams win the Super Bowl, we are in a holding pattern waiting to see if Russian president Vladimir Putin launches a major European invasion, and supporters of the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, are insisting that Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, committed treason by spying on his campaign.

There’s a lot going on.

So I thought tonight I would take a little detour and share one of my favorite stories about Valentine’s Day, which is on the calendar tomorrow. It’s one of my favorite stories not because of the way it starts, but because of the way it ends…

On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Theodore Roosevelt lost both his wife and his mother.

Four years before, Roosevelt could not have imagined the tragedy that would stun him in 1884. February 14, 1880, marked one of the happiest days of his life. He and the woman he had courted for more than a year, Alice Hathaway Lee, had just announced their engagement. Roosevelt was over the moon: “I can scarcely realize that I can hold her in my arms and kiss her and caress her and love her as much as I choose,” he recorded in his diary. The next four years were, according to Roosevelt, “three years of happiness greater and more unalloyed than I have ever known fall to the lot of others.”

After they married in fall 1880, the Roosevelts moved into the home of Theodore’s mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, in New York City. There, they lived the life of wealthy young socialites, going to fancy parties and the opera, and traveling to Europe. When Roosevelt was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1881, they moved to the bustling town of Albany, where the state’s political wire-pullers worked their magic. Roosevelt’s machine politician colleagues derided the rich, Harvard-educated young man as a “dude,” and they tried to ignore his irritating interest in reforming society.

In the summer of 1883, Alice discovered that she was pregnant, and that fall she moved back to New York City to live with her mother-in-law. There she awaited the birth of the child who Theodore was certain would arrive on February 14.

As headstrong as her father, Roosevelt’s daughter beat her father’s prediction by two days. On February 12, Alice gave birth to the couple’s first child, who would be named after her. Roosevelt was at work in Albany and learned the happy news by telegram. But Alice was only “fairly well,” Roosevelt noted. She soon began sliding downhill. She did not recover from the birth; she was suffering from something at the time called “Bright’s Disease,” an unspecified kidney illness.

Roosevelt rushed back to New York City, but by the time he got there at midnight on February 13, Alice was slipping into a coma. Distraught, he held her until he received word that his mother was dangerously ill downstairs. For more than a week, “Mittie” Roosevelt had been sick with typhoid. Roosevelt ran down to her room, where she died shortly after her son got to her bedside. With his mother gone, Roosevelt hurried back to Alice. Only hours later she, too, died.

On February 14, 1884, Roosevelt etched a heavy black X in his diary and wrote “The light has gone out of my life.” He refused ever to mention Alice again.

Roosevelt’s profound personal tragedy turned out to have national significance. The diseases that killed his wife and mother were diseases of filth and crowding—the hallmarks of the growing Gilded Age American cities. Mittie contracted typhoid from either food or water that had been contaminated by sewage, since New York City did not yet treat or manage either sewage or drinking water. Alice’s disease was probably caused by a strep infection, which incubated in the teeming city’s tenements, where immigrants, whose wages barely kept food on the table, crowded together.

Roosevelt had been interested in urban reform because he worried that incessant work and unhealthy living conditions threatened the ability of young workers to become good citizens. Now, though, it was clear that he, and other rich New Yorkers, had a personal stake in cleaning up the cities and making sure employers paid workers a living wage.

The tragedy gave him a new political identity that enabled him to do just that. Ridiculed as a “dude” in his early career, Roosevelt changed his image in the wake of the events of February 1884. Desperate to bury his feelings for Alice along with her, Roosevelt escaped to Dakota Territory, to a ranch in which he had invested the previous year. There he rode horses, roped cattle, and toyed with the idea of spending the rest of his life as a western rancher. The brutal winter of 1886–1887 changed his mind. Months of blizzards and temperatures as low as –41 degrees killed off 80% of the Dakota cattle herds. More than half of Roosevelt’s cattle died.

Roosevelt decided to go back to eastern politics, but this time, no one would be able to make fun of him as a “dude.” In an era when the independent American cowboy dominated the popular imagination, Roosevelt now had credentials as a westerner. He ran for political office as a western cowboy taking on corruption in the East. And, with that cowboy image, he overtook his eastern rivals.

Eventually, Roosevelt’s successes made establishment politicians so nervous they tried to bury him in what was then seen as the graveyard of the vice presidency. Then, in 1901, an unemployed steelworker assassinated President William McKinley and put Roosevelt—“that damned cowboy,” as one of McKinley’s advisers called him—into the White House.

Once there, he worked to clean up the cities and stop the exploitation of workers, backing the urban reforms that were the hallmark of the Progressive Era.

anon15383236 · February 15, 2022, 10:24am

February 14, 2022 (Monday)

It appears there was a reason for the former president’s unhinged rant of yesterday suggesting that members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign had spied on him and that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”

Trump is likely unhappy because of a letter his accountants, the firm Mazars, sent to the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer on February 9. That letter came to light today when New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is investigating the finances of the Trump Organization, filed new court documents to explain why she wanted to question Trump and his adult children under oath.

The Mazars letter told the Trump organization that Trump’s financial statements from years ending June 2011 through June 2020 could not be relied upon to be accurate, and that it should tell anyone relying on those documents—banks, for example—that they were not reliable. It went on to say there was now a “non-waivable conflict of interest” with the Trump Organization that meant that Mazars was “not able to provide new work product” for the organization.

Lawyer George Conway interpreted the letter for non-lawyers. He tweeted:

“‘decision regarding the financial…statements’=they are false because you lied

‘totality of the circumstances’=the D.A. is serious

‘non-waivable conflict of interest’=we are now on team D.A.

‘not able to provide new work product’=sorry we’re not going to jail for you”

That is, it appears that Mazars is now working with James’s office. Last month, James’s office alleged that there is “significant” evidence that the Trump Organization manipulated asset valuations to obtain loans and avoid taxes. Now Trump’s accountants appear to be working with her office and have said that Trump’s past ten years of financial statements “should not be relied upon.”

This will probably be a problem for the banks that have loaned money to Trump. Their officers have likely relied on the accuracy of the information Trump provided, and according to lawyer Tristan Snell, the lenders could now call in loans early or otherwise change the terms of their agreements.

The Trump Organization jumped on the statements in the Mazars letter that “we have not concluded that the various financial statements, as a whole, contain material discrepancies,” and that “Mazars performed its work in accordance with professional standards” to claim that it is exonerated from any wrongdoing. “This confirmation,” it wrote, “effectively renders the investigations by the DA and AG moot.”

NBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tweeted: “Trump Org[anization] tries to spin it as a complete exoneration (& G[eorge] Orwell blushes).” Orwell was famous for identifying “doublespeak,” language that reverses the meaning of words.

But while the fear of what it means for him that his accountant has dropped him might have inspired Trump’s rants about executing Hillary, the same does not hold for Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who on Sunday’s Fox & Friends broadcast agreed with Trump that Clinton’s aides had spied on him, and implied the punishment for such alleged espionage should be death.

The normalization of violence as part of the mainstream Republican Party is cause for concern.

anon15383236 · February 16, 2022, 4:30am

February 15, 2022 (Tuesday)

In all the chaos surrounding the former president, the actions today of the current president, Democrat Joe Biden, seem to be getting short shrift. This is unfortunate because they say a lot about his reorientation of the U.S. government.

At 3:30 this afternoon, Biden addressed the nation to update us on the crisis in central Europe as Russia threatens to invade Ukraine again. He reiterated that the U.S. has engaged in “non-stop diplomacy” for weeks and is prepared to continue that approach, proposing new measures for arms control, transparency, and strategic stability.

If diplomacy fails, the U.S. and our allies and partners around the world will impose economic sanctions on Russia and exert “intense pressure on [Russia’s] largest and most significant financial institutions and key industries.” Nord Stream 2, the valuable natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, will halt. And while the U.S. will not send military personnel to fight Russia in Ukraine, it will support Ukraine with armaments and intelligence. The U.S. will also honor Article 5 of our “sacrosanct” North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) obligations, defending any NATO country Russia attacks.

The U.S., NATO, and Ukraine are not a threat to Russia, he said, and we have no beef with Russian citizens. But the U.S. insists on basic principles: “Nations have a right to sovereignty and territorial integrity. They have the freedom to set their own course and choose with whom they will associate.”

“This is about more than just Russia and Ukraine,” he said. “It’s about standing for what we believe in, for the future we want for our world, for liberty…the right of countless countries to choose their own destiny, and the right of people to determine their own futures, for the principle that a country can’t change its neighbor’s borders by force. That’s our vision. And toward that end, I’m confident that vision, that freedom will prevail.”

Biden ended his speech with a significant statement: “Thank you,” he said, “I’ll keep you informed.” With that, he echoed Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and reinforced democratic norms: the president answers to the American people.

Meanwhile, in Russia, opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who is serving two and a half years in prison for charges that the European Court of Human Rights called “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable, is again on trial, behind closed doors, for allegedly stealing $4.8 million from organizations he founded. If convicted, he could be sentenced to another ten years in prison.

There was another way in which Biden today reinforced the idea that the government answers to the people. It harked back to an executive order Biden signed on July 9 that sort of slipped under the radar. Designed “to promote the interests of American workers, businesses, and consumers,” the order addressed the consolidation of industries in the last several decades. It noted that mergers and the rise of megacorporations have stifled competition and increased racial, wealth, and income inequality as power is transferred to corporate employers, making it harder for workers to bargain for higher wages and better working conditions.

The order called for reversing these trends and established a White House Competition Council to figure out how best to restore competition, workers’ rights, and consumer protection. It charged the different government departments with reporting on the consolidation in their areas of concern.

Today the Department of Defense issued its report. It noted that since the 1990s, the defense sector has consolidated from 51 to 5 defense contractors. This is a national security issue, it said, since lack of competition means higher prices for the government, slows innovation, and risks supply chains. The report calls for encouraging new businesses, broadening the supply chain, and overseeing mergers more carefully. The Defense Department called for the government as a whole to increase domestic capacity, expand supply chains, and build the workforce to reduce the reliance of our national defense on a few contractors.

In another shift away from big business and toward the American people, today the gunmaker Remington settled a lawsuit with the nine of the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14, 2012, in Newton, Connecticut, when a gunman murdered 20 first graders and six educators and wounded 2 others. The killer used a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle manufactured by Remington.

A 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shields gun manufacturers from lawsuits when someone misuses their weapons, but in 2014, the families sued Remington on the grounds its marketing strategy, aimed at young, at-risk males through product placement in violent video games, made it partially at fault for the Sandy Hook massacre. The ads represented the gun as a combat weapon; Connecticut law prohibits deceptive ads.

The settlement was for $73 million, and it permits the families to release documents showing how Remington marketed the gun. Since Remington went bankrupt and its assets were sold off to other companies in 2020, four insurers will pay the settlement. A lawyer for the families said he hoped this settlement would change the ways gun manufacturers market their products.

Meanwhile, the former president today produced a four-page, somewhat nonsensical statement pushing back against the letter from his accountants, released yesterday, saying that no one should rely on the last ten years of Trump’s financial statements and that they were cutting ties with him. Trump began by saying that “We have a great company with fantastic assets that are unique, extremely valuable and, in many cases, far more valuable than what was listed in our Financial Statements,” then went on to provide cartoonish numbers purporting to prove he has a net worth of more than $6 billion. He said Mazars had withdrawn from his employment because of “vicious intimidation tactics,” and that “[t]his crime against me is a continuation of a Witch Hunt the likes of which has never been seen in this Country before.” He called for investigations of Hillary Clinton instead.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol today subpoenaed six more people: two members of the 2020 Trump campaign and four Republican officials from the battleground states that sent fake electors to Washington, D.C.

Michael A. Roman, who has made his career accusing Democrats of voter fraud, was director of Election Day operations for Trump’s campaign; Gary Michael Brown was his deputy. The committee told Roman it has communications showing he was involved “in a coordinated strategy” to get Republican members of state legislatures in contested states to elect false Trump electors, and then helped to direct Trump campaign staffers who were helping to organize the fraud. This puts the effort to overturn the election into Trump’s campaign staff explicitly.

Douglas V. Mastriano of Pennsylvania, Mark Finchem and Kelli Ward of Arizona, and Laura Cox, former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, were all key participants in the scheme to attack the validity of Biden’s election and to create fake alternative electors to enable Pence to overturn that election.

Lawyer John Eastman, who produced the infamous memo with a blueprint for Pence to overturn the election, has claimed that he cannot produce the documents the January 6th committee has subpoenaed because of attorney-client privilege. The judge overseeing the case has ordered him to document those attorney-client relationships by February 22.

anon15383236 · February 17, 2022, 11:36am

February 16, 2022 (Wednesday)

Today, the Washington Post ran a story by Claire Parker explaining that most Canadian truckers oppose the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests. Almost all Canadian truckers are vaccinated and resent the protesters, whose shutdown of international borders has “had a very significant negative impact upon our professional driving community,” according to Stephen Laskowski, the president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

Prominent leaders of the convoys, including conspiracy theorist James Bauder, are not truckers themselves. Instead, right-wing agitators appear to be the ones behind the Trump and Confederate flags at the protests. More than 55% of the donations to the Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo for the protesters came from the United States.

Truckers’ organizations say the protests undermine the real concerns of truck drivers—wage theft, bad roads, and a lack of bathrooms—and worry that the convoys will hurt the public image of truckers.

Parker’s Washington Post story showing the Freedom Convoys as the expression of a radical fringe was an important reality check to the breathless stories from the American right hailing the Freedom Convoys as a popular movement.

The story that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton allegedly spied on then-candidate Trump’s campaign in 2016 illustrates the importance of the sort of reality-based corrective the Washington Post published about the Canadian truckers.

The story at the root of the right’s accusations against Clinton is actually fascinating. After Russians hacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016, cybersecurity experts started to look to see what else hackers might have hit. In July 2016, four of them noticed that Russia’s Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank appeared to be pinging a server registered to Trump Tower. To a lesser extent, it communicated with Spectrum Health in Michigan, an organization associated with the DeVos family. The servers were configured in such a way that they appeared to be shutting out other communications.

One of the security specialists took the story to lawyer Michael Sussman, who took it to the general counsel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2016, alerting him that cybersecurity folks thought there might be secret communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank. Sussman worked for the same law firm that represented the Clinton presidential campaign.

In May 2019, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, appointed John Durham, former U.S. attorney for Connecticut, as special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI’s investigation into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In September 2021, Durham indicted Sussman for lying to the FBI by saying he was not working for a client when he alerted them to the issue. Sussman denies he said he did not have a client, and identified himself as working for the cybersecurity expert. While Durham’s witness has contradicted himself, emails support Sussman’s account. For his part, Sussman responded by denying the charges and saying that Durham’s 27-page indictment contained “prejudicial—and false—allegations that are irrelevant to his Motion and to the charged offense, and are plainly intended to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool."

In his indictment, Durham said the cybersecurity experts did not believe their own suggestion of connections between Alfa Bank and Trump Tower and were trying to hurt candidate Trump. They responded by accusing Durham of editing their emails misleadingly and stood behind their earlier conclusions.

The current furor is over a related issue. On Friday, in a court filing in the case against Sussman, Durham alleged that one of the cybersecurity experts, who was working for the White House as part of a cybersecurity contract, “exploited” his access there to find “derogatory information” about Trump. This charge stems from the fact that the researchers found odd data suggesting that a Russian-made smartphone, a YotaPhone, had communicated with the same networks—this we already knew—and that one of them told that information to the CIA in February 2017, about 20 days into the Trump administration. Durham did not indicate when he thought the experts had uncovered the issue—the timing suggests it was in 2016, before Trump took office—and the researcher’s lawyer has pointed out that the person had been hired to identify security breaches and threats.

The story is confusing, but it seems to show security experts who found anomalies and took them to the appropriate authorities (none of them has been charged with anything). The FBI dismissed the server issue, and it is not clear whether the phone issue was ever investigated. The launch of the FBI’s investigation of the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia had nothing to do with any of this, anyway. The investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, began in July 2016 after George Papadopoulos, a member of the Trump campaign, told an informant that the campaign had dirt on Hillary Clinton. An investigation by the inspector general of the Justice Department concluded that the FBI investigation was not politically motivated.

The current story appears to be a nothing burger, and yet, the former president, right-wing media, and Trump loyalists are flooding the news with accusations that the Clinton campaign paid operatives to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower and the White House to create the Russia scandal. They are calling for multiple indictments.

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) told the Fox News Channel on Sunday: “They were spying on the sitting president of the United States…. And it goes right to the Clinton campaign.” The former president claimed that “Robert” Durham—a name switch that might reflect his intense focus on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was in charge of the Russia investigation—had provided “indisputable evidence that my campaign and presidency were spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton Campaign in an effort to develop a completely fabricated connection to Russia.… In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.”

The right is complaining bitterly that the mainstream media has covered this story only briefly, insisting the lack of wall-to-wall coverage proves the media is biased against the right. But the exaggeration of this story seems a transparent attempt to revisit the 2016 attacks on Clinton in order to distract both from the revelations of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and from the eye-popping news that Trump’s accountants have said the last ten years of his financial statements cannot be relied upon.

Controlling the narrative has always been a key factor in the right’s ability to turn out voters. But that ability just might be slipping.

Today, former judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit J. Michael Luttig, a Republican, said: “For the past six years, I have watched and listened in disgust that not one single leader of ours with the moral authority, the courage, and the will to stand up and say: ‘No, this is not who we are, this is not what America is, and it’s not what we want to be,’ has done so.”

Also today, a report by the Interior Department’s Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump, offered a window into how one Trump loyalist looked at our government as a way to further his own interests. The report concluded that Trump’s secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, broke federal ethics rules, lying to officials that he had “purely social” contact with developers in Whitefish, Montana, when in fact he communicated with the developers 64 times to talk about the project, including a parking lot on his own land and his interest in having a brewery on the property.

Zinke is now running for Congress. His campaign called the investigation a “Biden Administration led report” (the investigation began in 2018, under Trump) that “published false information, and was shared with the press as a political hit job.”

Spreading false stories depends on making sure the truth is inaccessible. Today Biden rejected Trump’s attempt to hide the White House visitor logs for January 6, 2021, from the January 6th committee on the grounds of executive privilege. Biden said that keeping them hidden “is not in the best interest of the United States.” Unless a court steps in, the National Archives and Records Administration will deliver them to the committee on March 3.

anon15383236 · February 18, 2022, 11:32am

February 17, 2022 (Thursday)

Today, Judge Arthur F. Engoron of the Supreme Court of the State of New York ruled that former president Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and his daughter Ivanka Trump must produce documents and testify under oath in a civil investigation into their valuations of their business assets, complying with a subpoena New York attorney general Letitia James issued for their testimony in December.

The Trumps can invoke their rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution not to incriminate themselves. This is what Eric Trump did more than 500 times in October 2020, when he testified before members of the attorney general’s office. In a civil trial, however, invoking the Fifth can be interpreted negatively.

After the decision, James tweeted: “No one is above the law.”

The Trumps intend to appeal.

The arguments in today’s hearing raised a troubling point. Trump sued Attorney General James last December, alleging that “[h]er mission is guided solely by political animus and a desire to harass, intimidate, and retaliate against a private citizen who she views as a political opponent.” In today’s hearing, Trump’s lawyers continually portrayed James’s investigation not as a valid exercise in protecting the rule of law, but as a political attack on Trump. His lawyers argued that James’s investigation is “selective prosecution” and is “unconstitutional,” and that she is pursuing the case only to hurt the former president before the 2024 election.

The judge rejected these claims, pointing out, among other things, that none of the 600 or more documents in the case refer to Trump’s politics; they focus on his financial practices. “In the final analysis,” the judge wrote, “a State Attorney General commences investigating a business entity, uncovers copious evidence of possible financial fraud, and wants to question, under oath, several of the entities’ principals, including its namesake. She has the clear right to do so.”

Trump’s attempt to portray as political any legal reckoning for him for either potential wrongdoing with regard to his finances dovetails with the attempt of Trump and his loyalists to paint the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol as partisan.

Repeatedly, they have called the committee “illegitimate” because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did not put on it the members House minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) nominated. She had the right to review his nominations, and she rejected Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has now been implicated in the events of the day, and Representative Jim Banks (R-IN), who had attacked the committee as a partisan exercise “solely to malign conservatives and to justify the left’s authoritarian agenda.” He announced that he would use his place on the committee to investigate the protests of summer 2020 instead of the events of January 6.

After rejecting Jordan and Banks, Pelosi asked McCarthy to nominate others in their place, but instead he withdrew all the Republicans from the committee. At that point, she invited Representatives Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to join the committee. Although Trump Republicans are portraying Cheney as a turncoat, she voted with Trump’s agenda 92.9% of the time. Kinzinger voted with Trump 90.2% of the time.

Nonetheless, Trump loyalists dismiss the two Republicans on the committee and claim the committee is partisan. Some are talking about turning the committee against the Democrats as soon as the House is back in their hands. Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich told the Fox News Channel: “I think when you have a Republican Congress, this is all going to come crashing down, and the wolves are going to find out that they’re now sheep and they’re the ones who are in fact, I think, fac[ing] a real risk of jail for the kinds of laws they’re breaking.”

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional law professor and member of the January 6th committee, noted: “That’s the language of authoritarianism.”

Meanwhile, in an unusual move against an incumbent of his own party, House Minority Leader McCarthy has endorsed the Trump-backed primary opponent of Representative Liz Cheney, who is the vice chair of the January 6th committee. Trump and his allies are working this same game, pressing Wyoming’s Republican governor, Mark Gordon, to back a bill that would change state law to prevent Democrats from voting in the Republican primary, thus likely giving a primary victory to Cheney’s opponent. Although Cheney has said she will not encourage Democrats to support her in the primary, the Trump loyalists are prepared to change the law to put a Trump ally in her place.

Tonight, Trump lashed out about the legal developments of the past few days. He insisted that the suggestion by Special Counsel John Durham that operatives for Hillary Clinton spied on Trump as president—a suggestion Durham backed away from today—and Judge Engoron’s decision today were entirely partisan.

Trump claimed that Clinton, “one of the most corrupt politicians ever to run for President, can break into the White House, my apartment, buildings I own, and my campaign—in other words, she can spy on a Presidential candidate and ultimately the President of the United States—and the now totally discredited Fake News Media does everything they can not to talk about it.” (These allegations are false, of course.) On the other hand, he said, Attorney General James is selectively prosecuting him and his family.

“[T]he Radical Left Democrats don’t want [him] to run again,” he wrote, and their targeting of him “represents an unconstitutional attack on our Country… a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in history.” Finally, he said, “I can’t get a fair hearing in New York because of the hatred of me by Judges and the judiciary. It is not possible.”

There is a dangerous theme running through these stories, as well as Trump’s attack on Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, who is investigating Trump’s attempt to pressure Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and award that state’s electoral votes to him, rather than to the actual winner, Joe Biden. Earlier this month, Trump told attendees at a rally in Texas that he hoped they would take to the streets with “the biggest protest we have ever had,” if “these radical, vicious racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal.”

Trump and his loyalists are setting up the idea that any attempt to hold Trump and his allies accountable for illegal activities—including the attempt to overturn the 2020 election and thereby destroy our democracy—is a partisan attack. While that argument will undermine the rule of law, there is a twist to it: if Republicans can convince their voters that Democrats have engaged in partisan prosecutions of Trump and his allies, the Republicans can justify partisan prosecutions of Democrats as soon as they get the opportunity, just as Gingrich suggested. If this rhetoric works, Trump can undercut legitimate prosecutions, while Democrats will become fair game for partisan prosecutors.

This is indeed, as Representative Raskin said, the language of authoritarianism.

anon15383236 · February 19, 2022, 4:55am

February 18, 2022 (Friday)

There are four big stories today.

The first is that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has confirmed that it found classified documents among those its staff recovered from former president Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.

David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, wrote in a letter to Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, that NARA is in the process of inventorying the 15 boxes of material Trump took out of the White House and that it has found “items marked as classified national security information within the boxes.” Because Trump removed classified information from its required security protection, NARA staff have alerted the Department of Justice to that national security breach.

There is more. Ferriero said that NARA has identified social media records that the Trump administration neglected to preserve. NARA “has also learned that some White House staff conducted official business using non-official messaging accounts that were not copied or forwarded into their official electronic messaging accounts,” as the law required. In addition, even after news reports of Trump tearing up records led NARA to remind the White House that records must be preserved, it nonetheless received records that were torn into pieces.

But her emails.

(Sorry. Willfully destroyed records make historians a bit salty.)

Meanwhile, the second story is that John Durham, whose court filing in a case drove the story about Trump’s mishandling of presidential records out of the news this week, has responded to the accusation that he deliberately politicized and exaggerated a story to inflame Trump loyalists. Durham’s filing presented information in such a misleading way that right-wing media and lawmakers have howled incorrectly that it proved Hillary Clinton was spying on Trump both before and after he took office. The defendant in the case asked the court to strike from that filing the inflammatory paragraphs.

Today, Durham responded that “if third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.” In other words, the right-wing media frenzy misrepresents what happened, but that misinterpretation is not Durham’s problem.

The third story is that U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss three lawsuits that blame him for inciting the January 6 riot. Eleven members of the House of Representatives (in their personal capacities) and two Capitol Police officers have accused former president Trump, Donald J. Trump Jr., Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), and right-wing militia groups including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Warboys, and so on, of conspiring to prevent them from performing their official duties. This is a federal crime thanks to a law first passed in 1871 to stop Ku Klux Klan members from preventing Black legislators and their Republican allies from doing their jobs.

After reviewing the events of January 6 and the days leading up to it, the judge concluded that those launching the lawsuits “establish a plausible conspiracy involving President Trump.” He noted that the president and others worked together to disrupt Congress and stop the counting of the certified Electoral College ballots on January 6. The president undermined faith in the election, falsely claiming it was stolen, and urged supporters to go to Washington, D.C., on January 6, telling them it would be “wild.” He planned the rally, and at it he gave a barn-burning speech that concluded: ““We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump’s role in a potential conspiracy was “to encourage the use of force, intimidation, or threats to thwart the Certification from proceeding, and organized groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers would carry out the required acts.” The judge also noted a pattern of “call-and-response” between the president and his militia followers. When he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” for example, one of their leaders tweeted: “Standing by sir.”

The court concluded that it was plausible that Trump was part of a conspiracy to stop the performance of official duties.

The fourth story is that this evening, President Joe Biden addressed the nation to update us on the threat of Russia’s launching another invasion of Ukraine. He emphasized that we and our allies stand behind Ukraine and pledge to continue diplomatic efforts to prevent a war, and yet will deliver “massive costs on Russia should it choose further conflict.” He urged Russia “to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table.”

Political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf tweeted that Biden is speaking as the leader of the free world. “It has been a long time since a U.S. president filled that role. His remarks were concise and pointed…and underscored Western resolve. But the headline: He is convinced [that] Putin has decided… to invade.”

Indeed, that was the big takeaway from the speech: Biden said that intelligence sources think Putin has made his decision. Biden said: “we have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week—in the coming days. We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”

Former director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs pointed out that the advances the United States intelligence community has made in the last few years in counteractive measures have enabled the U.S. to head off plans “before they’re set in motion.” U.S. officials are alerting Putin to the fact there are leaks in his team, putting his plans at risk. This can cause strife and perhaps make leaders rethink their policies. As Krebs tweeted, it “[p]uts some sand in their gears, creates mistrust, and can slow down planning and operations…. The deliberate approach by western gov[ernmen]ts to anticipate Russian disinfo[rmation] & get in front of it is a positive evolution.”

We do not know where the next several days will lead, of course, but it is notable that the solidarity of the countries allied against authoritarianism, strengthened by U.S. diplomacy, is holding strong.

gatto · February 19, 2022, 9:21am

he must have been sleeping during obama’s tenure, or even shrub (when nato backed the afghanistan war. ) though i suppose donald’s four years of failed attempts to lead did feel like forever

( edit to make it clearer where that quote came from )

anon61221983 · February 19, 2022, 5:36pm

Black Ink Crew Laughing GIF by VH1

anon15383236 · February 21, 2022, 1:58pm

February 20, 2022 (Sunday)

This afternoon, after a rare four-hour-long meeting of the National Security Council, President Joe Biden canceled a planned trip home to Wilmington, Delaware, tonight. The U.S. intelligence community says with high confidence that Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered military units to proceed with an attack on Ukraine. The U.S. and the United Kingdom say that they expect Russia to create a “false-flag” attack on Russia, allegedly by Ukraine, that they will use as an excuse to invade.

Tonight, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Bathsheba Nell Crocker, told High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, that the United States has “credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation. We also have credible information that Russian forces will likely use lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests or otherwise counter peaceful exercises of perceived resistance from civilian populations.”

A hallmark of this crisis has been the degree to which the U.S. has anticipated events by announcing to the world it has intelligence information laying out Russia’s next moves. This both enables NATO to get out ahead of Russian propaganda and warns Putin that his communications might be compromised, an idea that might give him pause before committing to invasion.

CNN White House reporter D.J. Judd identified those at the NSC meeting as Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Vice President Kamala Harris joined the group from Air Force Two on her way back from Munich, where she was representing the U.S. at the 58th Munich Security Conference, an annual conference on international security.

Russia continues to insist it is not planning an attack on Ukraine, although it has placed 150,000 troops at the Ukraine border, the largest military buildup in Europe since World War II ended. But the warming weather in Ukraine with the mud that it will bring does not bode well for an invasion, and Putin agreed today “in principle” to a meeting with Biden, an offer available only if Russia does not launch a new war.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke yesterday in Munich, chastising Europe for being slow to recognize the danger of Russian expansionism, even as Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. He warned that such imperialist aims historically have led to world wars unless they are stopped.

Zelensky vowed that Ukraine will fight if Russia invades again—it is still in the country from the 2014 invasion— but hammered home that Ukraine should not be begging for help: Ukraine shields Europe from Russia. Helping Ukraine “is your contribution into the European and international security for which Ukraine has been serving as a reliable shield for eight years now, holding back one of the largest armies in the world,” he said. “This is not a war in Ukraine, but a war in Europe.”

Meanwhile, Russia is extending its military presence in Belarus, where 30,000 Russian troops, along with missiles and other military hardware, have been engaged in military exercises with troops from Belarus. The exercises were scheduled to end today, but the Belarusian Defense Ministry said the troops will stay because of the deteriorating situation in Ukraine.

As he has faced increasing protests from pro-democracy opponents, Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko has reacted with an increasingly heavy hand. In May 2021 he forced an airplane flying over Belarusian airspace to land in Minsk, where authorities took opposition journalist Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend into custody (Protasevich has disappeared in custody). Lukashenko has also cultivated ties with Putin. When he invited Russian troops to Belarus in early February, European officials warned they were unlikely to leave. Their presence in Belarus means they are 30 miles from the Ukrainian border and hundreds of miles closer to Poland and Lithuania, both countries that are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that "if Russia invades its neighbour,…we will open up the Matryoshka dolls of Russian-owned companies, and Russian-owned entities to find the ultimate beneficiaries within [and sanction them].”

Europe and the United States have vowed severe economic repercussions if Russia attacks Ukraine. But pro-democracy observers have called for the U.S. and the U.K. to crack down on the flow of Russian money into their countries regardless of what the next weeks bring.

Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia in the 1990s coincided with the deregulation of financial sectors in the U.S. and the U.K. and the resulting flow of illicit money into western democracies. A recent study of the U.K. by Chatham House explained that that money enabled oligarchs to corrupt western democracies as they used their ill-gotten wealth to elect politicians who would advance their interests. The U.K. has a “kleptocracy problem,” the authors said. Earlier this month, kleptocracy scholar Casey Michel and Harvard postdoctoral fellow Benjamin L. Schmitt published an article advocating an end to the practice of former politicians “becoming paid shills for autocrats.”

Indeed, while Biden has made ending that corruption and strengthening democracy a priority for his administration, not all Americans think allying with Putin, an authoritarian who poisons his opponents, siphons his country’s money into his own pockets, and has argued that liberal democracy is obsolete, is a bad idea. Led by Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, the Trump wing of the Republican Party appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin.

But will the Republican Party as a whole buck Trump over this and stand with the Democrats behind Ukraine and its democratic aspirations? There are signs that, in fact, it will. Tonight, Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who was on his way back from the Munich Security Conference, tweeted: “I’ve honestly never seen more unity among our allies, or our two parties in Congress, on any global issue.”

After all, it was not until Trump delegates made changes to the 2016 Republican political platform that the party weakened its support for Ukraine. And yet, in 2019, when Trump tried to skew the 2020 election by withholding congressionally appropriated funding for Ukraine to support its defense against Russia, Republican senators declined to convict him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. So, we shall see how the party responds to the Ukraine crisis.

And how will America as a whole respond?

On February 20, Ukraine celebrates the Memorial Day of the Heroes of the Heavenly Hundred, honoring the memory of 107 protesters who died in mass shootings during the 2013 Revolution of Dignity. From 2013 to 2014, Ukrainians rose up against the government of Viktor Yanukovych, an autocratic politician managed by Paul Manafort and backed by Russia, eventually ousting him.

On February 21, the U.S. celebrates Presidents Day, a somewhat vague holiday placed in 1968 near Washington’s birthday on February 22, but also traditionally including Abraham Lincoln, who was born on February 12, 1809. On November 19, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln reminded Americans what they were fighting for:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” There, where more than 3000 U.S. soldiers died and more than 14,000 were wounded over three days, Lincoln explained: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

[Image from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, Library of Congress]

anon15383236 · February 22, 2022, 8:58am

February 21, 2022 (Monday)

As I write tonight, the U.N. National Security Council is meeting to discuss Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states within the country of Ukraine. Russian-backed rebels have been fighting the Ukraine government in those regions since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Today the self-styled leaders of those regions asked Russia for recognition, and Putin granted it.

Upon his recognition of the states, Putin sent a limited number of troops into them, alleging that the invaders were a “peacekeeping” mission to support the Russian separatists, who do not control the regions. Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, formally requested the U.N. meeting, citing Russia’s “ongoing aggravation of the security situation around Ukraine” and threats to “international peace and security.”

The events of the day began with a dramatic televised meeting of Putin’s security council in the Kremlin, with Putin asking his ministers if they supported recognizing DPR and LPR. While the meeting was presented as a “live” event, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, one of the advisors, was wearing a watch showing that the event was recorded five hours before, thus placing it before the “governments” of the regions asked for recognition.

Then Putin gave a long, aggrieved speech presenting Russia as the victim of the West, which had turned Ukraine into a “puppet regime.” He claimed that Ukraine is not, and should not be, a separate country from Russia. Shortly after current Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky won election in 2019, Russia began to hand out Russian passports to people in the two regions at stake today, strengthening Putin’s argument that the region is actually Russian. And yet, a poll from earlier this month showed that less than 10% of Russians want to invade Ukraine, making it a risky move for Putin.

Putin’s method for control of other countries has been to work for the election of friendly leaders who will permit the expansion of his influence. It is this history that is behind today’s advance on Ukraine.

In 2010, a pro-Russian politician, Viktor Yanukovych, won the Ukraine presidential election with the help of American political consultant Paul Manafort. Pro-democracy protesters forced Yanukovych from his post on February 21 in 2014, a date whose significance Putin’s actions today reinforced. Since then, Ukraine has turned back toward Europe.

Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said, “we will give up nothing to no one” and that the borders of Ukraine “will stay that way, despite any statements or actions taken by the Russian Federation.”

Meanwhile, after the Belarus Defense Ministry said yesterday that Russian troops would stay in the country past yesterday, the originally scheduled date of their departure, it said today that Russian troops might stay in Belarus indefinitely.

It seems worth noting the similarities between the work Manafort did for Yanukovych’s campaign and his work for Donald Trump in 2016, right up to calls to imprison Yanukovych’s pro-NATO main opponent, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was imprisoned from 2011 until 2014, when she was released following Yanukovych’s ouster from power. And, once in office, Trump did, in fact, let Putin act much as he wished, especially with regard to Ukraine. According to Russia analyst Julia Davis, Russian state television last night said of the former president: “Trump gave us a 4-year reprieve.”

It is not clear if today’s developments are a precursor to a larger invasion, and that smaller incursion was likely an attempt to start a fight among Putin’s opponents over whether it is a big enough invasion to trigger the devastating sanctions the United States and European countries have prepared.

John McLaughlin, former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush and now of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, tweeted: “Putin has choreographed this with the hope that we and the Europeans will debate whether this is an “invasion” or not. And hoping that throws us enough off balance that he will pay a minimal price for this first slice of salami.”

Russia specialist Tom Nichols saw the same thing, tweeting: “Stop parsing ‘invasion.’ Putin just partitioned Ukraine by edict and is backing it up with force. That alone is reason to impose sanctions. Argue about which sanctions to impose, maybe, and leave some daylight for future moves, but this isn’t about ‘is it an invasion.’”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield answered such concerns: “Tomorrow, the U.S. will impose sanctions on Russia for its violation of international law and Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. We can, will, and must stand united in our calls for Russia to withdraw its forces, return to the diplomatic table & work toward peace.” Tonight, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba “to reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine.”

In response to Putin’s machinations today, the U.S. and U.K. immediately imposed limited sanctions. Biden signed an executive order economically isolating the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, banning all U.S. investment and business there, along with any imports from there, although it makes an exception for humanitarian aid. The executive order also allows the government to sanction individuals participating in the seizure of the region, as well.

In an address tonight, Zelensky told the Ukrainian people: “[Ukraine] is within its internationally recognized borders, and will remain so. Despite any statements and actions of the Russian Federation. We remain calm and confident.”

The price of oil rose more than 3% on the news, and stock markets around the world dropped.

Putin and his fellow oligarchs have amassed power thanks to the financial laxness of western democracies, which their money has helped to destabilize. With Putin’s attack on the international rule of law today, challenging western nations to stop him, Edward Luce of the Financial Times identified the larger picture: “Cannot be stated strongly enough,” he wrote. “If the west—chiefly America, but also Britain—doesn’t burn its financial ties to Russia’s oligarchy then Putin will prevail. This means taking on Wall Street, the City, law firms[,] realtors, the prep schools and western laundering outfits.”

LutherBlisset · February 22, 2022, 9:55pm

FTFY.

anon15383236 · February 23, 2022, 12:47pm

February 22, 2022 (Tuesday)

Today Russian president Vladimir Putin said he’s recognizing the full territories claimed by the upstart governments of Ukrainian eastern provinces Luhansk and Donetsk. Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo points out that since those governments only control about a third and a half of the territory, respectively, in those provinces, this recognition would mean that Ukraine is occupying land that belongs to those breakaway regions.

Today, the European Union led the way on announcing sanctions against members of Russia’s leadership, reinforcing the idea of international cooperation against Putin. The E.U.’s 27 member states unanimously agreed to freeze the assets and ban the visas of 351 members of the Duma, the Russian government’s lower house of parliament, who backed recognition of the rogue governments within Ukraine.

The U.K. followed suit, sanctioning three “high net worth individuals” in Russia and five major Russian banks.

Germany halted certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, a project worth up to $15 billion to Russia.

In a speech this afternoon, President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. has imposed sanctions on two Russian banks, one of which is associated with the Russian military, and five individuals, including one who is in charge of VK, Russia’s largest social media network, and one that is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It also sanctioned Russia’s debt, cutting off its access to western financing.

The U.S. has gone after Russia’s ability to fund military contracts and raise new money to attack Ukraine. It also is joining with other nations to put the squeeze on what the Treasury Department calls “influential Russians and their family members in Putin’s inner circle believed to be participating in the Russian regime’s kleptocracy.” The goal, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, is to “begin the process of dismantling the Kremlin’s financial network and its ability to fund destabilizing activity in Ukraine and around the world.”

This first group of sanctions seems carefully targeted to hit Putin’s inner circle without sweeping in the Russian people. By applying pressure gradually, it also maintains leverage to try to dissuade Putin from escalating, which would not be the case if the U.S. threw everything at Russia immediately, leaving Putin no reason to change course. And yet, those sanctions remain on the table. Yellen said, “We continue to monitor Russia’s actions and if it further invades Ukraine, the United States will swiftly impose expansive economic sanctions that will have a severe and lasting impact on Russia’s economy.”

As voting rights activist Rachel Vindman put it: “We’re officially in the ‘Finding Out’ phase and all I can say is FINALLY.”

But not all Americans are on board.

Biden’s strong defense of democracy and pulling together of such a strong international coalition has left Republicans unclear about how to respond. In an interview today with right-wing podcaster Buck Sexton, former president Trump expressed admiration for Putin, saying his move to take over parts of Ukraine was “genius.” “Putin declares a big portion of… Ukraine…as independent…. And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen…. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy.”

Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) responded: “Former President Trump’s adulation of Putin today—including calling him a ‘genius’—aids our enemies. Trump’s interests don’t seem to align with the interests of the United States.”

Trump is not the only one. There used to be a saying that politics stopped at the water’s edge, meaning that lawmakers presented a unified front to other countries, no matter their partisan differences. So far, Republicans appear to have thrown that idea overboard, trying to use the crisis to attack President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Those Republicans who believe in protecting an international order based on the rule of law are getting around Biden’s reinforcement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and sanctions by accusing him of being weak on Russia.

The House Republicans somewhat nonsensically tweeted a photograph of the president walking away from the podium after his speech with the caption: “This is what weakness on the world stage looks like” (prompting others to ask if he was supposed to turn cartwheels as he left). House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and the leadership of the House Republicans issued a statement claiming that “Biden consistently chose appeasement and his tough talk on Russia was never followed by strong action.”

Others allied with Trump are supporting Putin by suggesting that the U.S. has no business protecting its ally Ukraine from Russian aggression. This is pushing them into what sure looks like a stand against America.

The press secretary for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, for example, tweeted that “the sad fact is that the USA is in no position to ‘promote democracy’ abroad while our own country is falling apart.” She continued: “I can never trust the federal government in any way.” J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate for the Senate from Ohio, said, “[T]he Russia–Ukraine border dispute has nothing to do with our national security, no American interest is served by our intervention, and that the obsession with Ukraine from our idiot leaders serves no function except to distract us from our actual problems.” Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX) called for sanctions, not against Russia but against “senior officials in the Canadian government,” apparently because authorities there have arrested members of the truck convoy shutting down border crossings and cities to protest vaccine mandates for truckers.

Some have gone further, either defending Putin or attacking America outright. Candidate for New York Representative to Congress Andrew McCarthy tweeted: “Putin protects the church, tradition, and Russian culture to an extent that globalists cannot accept…. We deal with far worse governments regularly.” Right-wing commentator Candace Owens went further, actually blaming the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “WE are at fault,” she tweeted.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has strengthened the international coalition against authoritarianism, but it could enable the Republicans to succeed in undermining Biden at home, replacing him with a pro-Russian leader like Trump in 2024. In that case, Putin’s desperate gambit will have worked, strengthening authoritarians around the world.

Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny continues to stand for democracy against the authoritarianism that threatens his life. Putin tried to murder Navalny with the nerve agent Novichok and, when that failed, imprisoned him on trumped-up charges for 2.5 years. Now, Navalny is on trial again for fraud and contempt of court; one prosecution witness has refused to testify, saying he was pressured to testify and the charges are “absurd.” If convicted, the 45-year-old Navalny will face another 10 years in prison.

And yet, today Navalny released a 16-tweet thread calling Putin’s security council a bunch of “dotards and thieves” who are trying “to divert the attention of the people of Russia from real problems—the development of the economy, rising prices, reigning lawlessness.” “How long has it been since you last watched the news on federal channels?” he asked. “It’s the only thing I watch now, and I can assure you, there is NO news about Russia there AT ALL. Literally. From the first to the last piece, it’s Ukraine—USA—Europe.” “We have everything for powerful development in the 21st century, from oil to educated citizens, but we will lose money again and squander the historical chance for a normal rich life for the sake of war, dirt, lies and [corruption]. “The Kremlin is making you poorer,” he wrote, “not Washington.”

anon29537550 · February 23, 2022, 12:56pm

I guess this is where the Republicans are at this point. Sad!

anon15383236 · February 24, 2022, 1:32pm

February 23, 2022 (Wednesday)

Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky made a passionate plea to the people of Russia to avoid war. He gave the speech in Russian, his own primary language, and, reminding Russians of their shared border and history, told them to “listen to the voice of reason”: Ukrainians want peace.

“You’ve been told I’m going to bomb Donbass,” he said. “Bomb what? The Donetsk stadium where the locals and I cheered for our team at Euro 2012? The bar where we drank when they lost? Luhansk, where my best friend’s mom lives?” Zelensky tried to make the human cost of this conflict clear. Observers lauded the speech and contrasted its statesmanship with Putin’s recent ramblings.

And yet, it will stand only as a marker. Tonight in America, but early Thursday in Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation,” claiming, quite transparently falsely, that he needed to defend the people in the “new republics” within Ukraine that he recognized Monday from “persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.” He called for “demilitarization” of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands.

He also promised to provide for the ”denazification” of Ukraine, a harking back to the period after World War II when Nazis and those who had worked with them were purged from society. Putin has repeatedly referred to Ukrainian leaders as Nazis, a charge Zelensky, who is of Jewish heritage, has pleaded with Russians to reject, citing Ukraine’s losses in World War II and his own grandfather’s service in that war. Putin’s chilling word here suggests that he intends to purge from Ukraine all those who worked with the Zelensky government.

Putin warned: “Anyone who tries to interfere with us, or even more so, to create threats for our country and our people, must know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences as you have never before experienced in your history.” This sweeping and vague threat seems to encompass everything from massive cyber attacks through nuclear war, but at this point it seems mostly to be an effort to deter resistance. Russia’s economy is already taking hits from Putin’s decision to recognize the breakaway governments, and it likely cannot withstand a long war. Putin needs a quick win.

As he spoke in a video, wearing the same clothes he wore in the prerecorded meeting broadcast Monday, suggesting this message might have been recorded at the same time, the U.N. Security Council was holding an emergency meeting in New York City to implore him not to go forward with war. At the Security Council meeting, the Russian ambassador claimed his nation was not “being aggressive against the Ukrainian people, but against the junta in power in Kyiv.” Rather than a junta government that took power by force, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was popularly elected in April 2019 in a landslide of more than 73%.

At 10:58 tonight, Eastern time, Ukraine foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted: “Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend itself and will win. The world can and must stop Putin. The time to act is now.”

By midnight tonight, Ukraine’s state emergency service said that ten regions were under attack.

Countries around the world condemned the attack. Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeppe Sebastian Kofod said: “Denmark utterly condemns this horrific attack…. An abhorrent breach of international law. Russia bears full responsibility for this needless conflict[.] We will coordinate closely with allies, partners for strongest possible international reaction[.]”

In a statement, President Biden said, “The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.”

The administration increased sanctions today, adding the company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and its corporate officers. Tomorrow, Biden will meet in the morning with the other leaders of the G7: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the U.K.—the world’s wealthiest liberal democracies. He will speak to the American people afterward to announce further consequences for Russia’s aggression.

Tonight, Biden reported: “President Zelenskyy reached out to me tonight and we just finished speaking. I condemned this unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces. I briefed him on the steps we are taking to rally international condemnation, including tonight at the UN Security Council. He asked me to call on the leaders of the world to speak out clearly against President Putin’s flagrant aggression, and to stand with the people of Ukraine.”

Zelensky told his people: “A minute ago I spoke to President Biden. The USA has started to unite international support. Today we need each of you to stay calm. If you can, stay at home. We are working. The army is working. The whole security and defense sector of Ukraine is working.”

Richard Engel of NBC News reported on this speech by Zelensky and in the report he noted that much of the Russian news flying around Ukraine appears to be false, designed to get Ukrainians to panic and give up quickly.

I’m cutting the news in this letter off at midnight, Maine time, to keep the record clear. And, while we’re at it, a lot happened domestically today, but I am holding it for the future. Today’s invasion of democratic Ukraine by authoritarian Putin is important. It not only has broken a long period of peace in Europe, it has brought into the open that authoritarians are indeed trying to destroy democracy.

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