What A Day: A McGahn for all treasons

BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI

& CROOKED MEDIA

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

—Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, whose efforts to win his client leniency did not work out

CONTEMPTING FATE

President Trump continued to successfully stonewall congressional oversight on Tuesday by instructing former White House Counsel Don McGahn to defy a subpoena.

McGahn, who provided Mueller most of his evidence that Trump obstructed justice, agreed to withhold documents that prove obstruction from Congress, even though Trump has not asserted executive privilege over them, and McGahn no longer works in the administration.

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee will now decide whether or not to begin contempt of Congress proceedings against McGahn, alongside Attorney General William Barr, whom they intend to hold in contempt on Wednesday.

But a court decision over whether to enforce their subpoenas could be months or even years away. Trump knows this and wants to run out the clock, believing that he can resist oversight, at least until the 2020 election. The one thing he can’t stonewall is an impeachment inquiry, which would maximize the House’s legal and political claim to evidence and testimony.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sees it differently. “Trump is goading us to impeach him. That's what he's doing. Every single day, he's just like taunting,” she said, “because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country, but he doesn't really care. He just wants to solidify his base."

With 90 percent approval among Republicans, Trump’s base seems pretty solidified, and to suggest that Democrats won’t be goaded into impeachment is another way of saying Trump will be allowed to commit impeachable offenses for as long as he’s president.

Newly released footage from Sandra Bland’s cell phone shows a Texas state trooper angrily screaming and pointing a taser at her during the traffic stop that preceded her death in police custody, which was ruled a suicide, three days later. Bland’s family suspects that officials also withheld information about her arrest and death, and has demanded that the investigation into them be reopened.

A recently released report also reveals that a police officer also lied about the 2009 murder of Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man from Oakland, telling investigators that he was “fighting for [his] life.”

From Clint Smith: “The woman who said Emmett Till came onto her lied about what he said. The officer who killed Oscar Grant lied about what he did. The police withheld video of Sandra Bland that tells a different story. There’s a long history of black [people] being killed based on someone else’s lie.”

President Trump has pardoned Michael Behenna, a former Army lieutenant and war criminal convicted in 2009 of murdering an Iraqi prisoner. Behenna’s family has strong ties to law enforcement and Oklahoma’s state government, whose lawmakers pressured Trump to issue the pardon.

Eight students were injured and two are in custody following a shooting at a Denver-area K-12 school, STEM School Highlands Ranch. The school is seven miles away from Columbine High School, where 12 students and a teacher were killed in a mass shooting by two students in 1999.

The CIA has warned a pro-democracy Arab activist who lives under asylum protection in Norway that he faces a threat from Saudi Arabia. Iyad el-Baghdadi has been a prominent critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the man who ordered the assassination of Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Trump administration claims it sent Air Force bombers and an aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf because Iran and state-backed militias threatened American troops in Iraq and Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Sergei Glazyev claimed in an op-ed that the new Ukrainian president-elect could flood eastern Ukraine with Jews and “cleanse” the area of the Russian population.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the Russia investigation “closed,” prompting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to read aloud from the parts of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report where Trump committed all his crimes. “We took an oath to protect and serve the Constitution of the United States of America," she said, "and the way we do that is we begin impeachment proceedings now.”

Your timeline is flooded with pictures of celebrities in over-the-top outfits because of the Met Gala. The theme was camp, an unconventional, exaggerated aesthetic that started in black and queer communities.

Netflix’s former creative director raised $2.25 million to sell water in beer cans, calling it “Liquid Death” to “murder your thirst.” It sounds ridiculous, but OTOH it’s not plastic.