I’m not sure how much more this democracy can take
Ben Wittes doesn’t think it’s time to panic. At least not quite yet.
Threadbare is awesome:
Ok, this thread is a kind of data dump of thoughts on this letter, of which I am genuinely unsure what to make. The following is worth what you are paying for it, but it’s what I can do based on the text of letter alone—along with a certain institutional knowledge of the DOJ. https://t.co/6A3dyI2ODZ
First off, thanks to @PaulaReidCBS for actually posting the letter itself. The text matters a great deal.
Second, there is good reason to be concerned about the dangling of the possibility of a special counsel here. The reason, as @nytmike and @maggieNYT emphasize in their story, is that Sessions is under a lot of pressure from Trump himself to investigate Hillary Clinton…
…and specifically matters related to the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One. This sort of political pressure for criminal investigations is toxic stuff. It’s not the way the Justice Department is supposed to work. And any time in a context like this the DOJ issues a letter…
…dangling the possibility of a special prosecutor to investigate the President’s opponent, particularly when the attorney general’s job is on the line, you have to take seriously the possibility that an egregious abuse of power is either taking place or being contemplated.
That said, it is not clear to me that this is what is happening here. And we should be careful about jumping to conclusions. Let’s run through another possibility, one that is far more benign and may (we can hope) be more closer to the truth.
Both in July and in September, House Judiciary Committee Republicans wrote letters to the attorney general calling for a special counsel to investigate a raft of supposed Clinton wrongdoing. Here are the two letters.
https://t.co/nBLi7btkkv
https://t.co/OptT636XGB
And here is my coverage of the second letter, complete with links back to @qjurecic’s writing about the first go-around. https://t.co/1rHmCEQsAg
Sessions is testifying tomorrow. So it’s not a total surprise that he felt compelled to answer these letters from the Chairman and majority members of the committee before which he is testifying before he did so.
He can’t tell them he has investigated these matters and found them insubstantial, because he hasn’t investigated them. He can’t tell them he doesn’t take seriously concerns by the Chairman of his oversight committee, because, well, you don’t do that.
So what I think DOJ may be doing here is declaring a process in which senior career prosecutors will review the matter and make recommendations to the AG or the DAG (more on that formulation in a moment) as to how to proceed. Theoretically, this could lead to a special counsel.
In practice, however, it will not. The reason is that the allegations are not substantial and—at least insofar as I understand them—they will not serve as a proper predicate for a criminal investigation, let alone require a special counsel.
When the attorney general (or the DAG) then dismisses the matter, he will be acting on the presumably unanimous recommendation of his senior career prosecutors.
One piece of evidence that this may be the proper reading of the letter is the phrase in the third paragraph, “the Attorney General has directed…” If this letter were really announcing a review designed to allow Sessions to name a special counsel to appease Trump, his…
participation in the matter would be a grotesque violation of his recusal—which promised non-involvement in all matters in any way related to the 2016 campaign. Certainly, appointing a special counsel to investigate the President’s opponent—or contriving to do so—would be a…
grave breach of the recusal. On the other hand, it may not be a breach at all if Sessions is merely saying to career prosecutors: "I’ve got this letter from the Judiciary Committee. Please review the allegations and make appropriate recommendations to me or, if I’m recused…
from the specific matter, to the DAG." Not all of the matters in the letters are obviously covered by the recusal. One absurd example: Your esteemed Judiciary Committee called for an investigation of @Comey’s leaks to @nytmike dating back to 1993—which the latter was 10. https://t.co/3FD0rOzVaR
While Sessions would almost certainly be recused from reviewing the recommendations of this group, given the subject matter at issue, the text of the letter actually acknowledges this.
That’s why, I think, the letter says that “These senior prosecutors will report directly to the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, as appropriate.” This is an implicit acknowledgement that, in fact, Sessions will be recused.
In short, I think this letter is best understood not as a hint to Trump that Sessions will do as the President wants, but as a way of shunting the matter to a mechanism that will enable him not to act—or, to be more precise, that will enable Rod Rosenstein not to act.
At least, that’s what I hope it is.
Bottom line: Don’t panic—yet.
That’s all I got.
We are really pretty screwed.
This is ok, right? Nothing to see here? Totally normal?
I’ve been saying it since the campaign, when they win the nomination and immediately tripled the rent that the campaign was paying to Trump tower as soon as the RNC was footing the bill.
The guy is a cheap con man.
We great again yet?
Wish that had a happy ending…like every person on the car throwing him off the train.
That guy was looked bombed on something or plain crazy.
I can’t say I think much of the chubby guy who just stood up and walked off.
Considering the two passengers who were stabbed to death when they tried to intervene with a white supremacist in Portland, I’m not going to judge someone for choosing not to get involved.
Fair point.
There were a number of people who said here they would not get involved. The thing is, anyone who is not saying anything is confirming the aggressor and telling the victim they’re not supported… and a black lady gets between them. heh.
(Salon’s Brian Klaas.)
I had a similar encounter near Halloween. Dude was beating on his girl, I asked if she needed help and he came after me. I was able to sort of run him around long enough for the cops to arrive.
I need to learn Brazilian jujitsu
I dunno. As a small guy I would never think of stepping into an altercation; I’d probably trigger the emergency alarm instead. Here the nutjob didn’t step back because of the lady; he was cowed when the chinese guy stood up (and was bigger than expected?), and it was in that space that the lady was able to give them both an opportunity to avoid actual contact. She approached the victim, not the aggressor. Concerns about concealed weapons aside, I think you have to be physically intimidating to be an effective intercessor (or be backed up by numbers.)
That black woman who got between them doesn’t look like much of a fighter but she tried. Here’s the thing, this is right up there with the NPR Hate Speech debate, where a white woman tries to tell a black man why he’s supposed to endure and educate racists and violent people because she thinks silos make it worse. The thing is… she has a choice. You have a choice. Some of us, we don’t have a choice. We sit on a bus and get assaulted. We post a picture online or make a comment online, we’re always on. Always on. And then people around us try and tell us how the world should work and what we should do while they get to choose to be on or off.
Those two men in Portland, made a choice to be involved, and they paid an ultimate price for it. The woman he started with, never had a choice. She’s always on too.
The white man that got up and walked away… he had an off.
It get’s tiring but there is no off for us.
Preach!
Look, I understand. I think it is in most of our natures to not involve ourselves in violence if at all possible. Self preservation is a powerful instinct and rightfully so. But, as Nesrie says, some of us don’t have that choice when confronted. I’d love to live life with how things should be but I sometimes can’t. I can only live with how things are. And this is how things are right now.
That’s not to say that I go out looking for a fight. And neither should anyone. After the election I realized that my only chance is to help people understand that I am really not that much different than them. I may look different but, deep down, we share similar hopes and aspirations. I root for the same football team, I love the same kind of food and I want for us all to lead prosperous lives. But don’t ask me to turn the other cheek while the noose is put around my neck.
Anyway, I love y’all. Thanks for being wonderful people.
I get the sentiment, but stupid heroism doesn’t help anyone. If you are confident you can deescalate the situation, sure. Is there a moral obligation to do something? I think so. Record, get help, testify, etc. But getting in the face of some irrational actor? That’s a judgement call.
It’s like the usual advice about dealing with bullies. Punch back, put up a fight. Not surprisingly, studies show that it only works if you can win. If you lose, well, things get worse.