AG Jeff Sessions Will Appear Before the Senate Intelligence Committee

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has agreed to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. He will be attempting to clear his name, after former FBI Director James Comey's explosive testimony last week, in which he spoke about the pressure he felt coming from the President to drop the investigation into Mike Flynn. Comey specifically called the President a liar, and also had something to say about Jeff Sessions' possible involvement in the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

“Our judgment, as I recall, was that [Jeff Sessions] was very close and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons. We were also aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic.”

In his confirmation hearing, Sessions said he had not met with Russian officials during the Trump campaign, when in fact he had met with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. There was enormous Democratic resistance to Sessions' nomination before the truth was revealed, but Democrats were over-ridden. In the hearing, Elizabeth Warren tried to read out part of a letter written thirty years ago by Coretta King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr. It related to Sessions' failed judicial nomination in 1980 because of his racism.

Mitch McConnell shut Elizabeth Warren down, on the grounds that Senate rules prohibit one Senator from bad-mouthing another on the floor, and Republicans voted to support his move. It backfired spectacularly. Firstly it was pointed out that the rule could not apply during a confirmation hearing, and secondly McConnell had said nothing when Ted Cruz had accused him of being a liar. But worse, Elizabeth Warren ended up being heard by a much wider audience. She first tweeted about the incident, triggering off a viral hashtag #LetLizSpeak.

I will not be silent while the Republicans rubber stamp an AG who will never stand up to the @POTUS when he breaks the law.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 8, 2017

Then she read the letter outside the Senate, on camera, and posted the video on her Facebook page. To date, the video has had 12 million views.

“During the debate on whether to make Jeff Sessions the next Attorney General, I tried to read a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the Senate. The letter, from 30 years ago, urged the Senate to reject the nomination of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. The Republicans took away my right to read this letter on the floor – so I’m right outside, reading it now.”

In Sessions' confirmation hearings, on the 10th of January, Senator Al Franken asked (at 3:18 in the video), "If there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government during the course of this campaign, what would you do?" Sessions replied, "Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign, but I did not have communications with the Russians."

On the 17th, Senator Leahy asked him; " Several of the President-Elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?" Sessions said, "No".

Also on the 17th, Senator Feinstein asked if he would recuse himself "from any FBI or Justice Department investigation into whether Flynn’s communications were permissible under the law, including the Logan Act." Sessions replied "I am not aware of a basis to recuse myself from such matters. "

On the 1st of March, the Washington Post, which had exposed Mike Flynn's dissemination, leading to Trump being forced to fire him, reported that Sessions had spoke twice with Kislyak. At first Sessions dug his heels in, but later, amid Democratic calls to resign, was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Trump was enraged, and called it all a witch hunt of an 'honest man'. But then he thought Mike Flynn was a 'good guy', even after his lies were exposed.

Since his inauguration Trump has been dogged the Russia investigation which, in spite of all his efforts to distract from it, continues to gather momentum. Having gotten his way his whole life, Trump took on the presidency believing it would be business as usual. He took a page from Putin's playbook, attempting to control the narrative and create an alternative to the truth.

But Putin, frightening as he is, is a clever man. Trump is not. So where Putin has succeeded, Trump's considerable efforts are failing miserably. Out of control, he is his own worst enemy. He continues to paint himself into an ever-diminishing corner.

Republicans and Trump supporters consistently insist that there's no there, there. No evidence of collusion. The process of unearthing it is moving along swiftly, the overriding response to Trump supporters being that this president has attacked every person under the sun, practically every world leader. Except Putin. And one after another of his staff, including his own son-in-law, have been exposed as having communications or suspected deals of some sort with Russians, including officials and/or people very close to Putin.

So Sessions' insistence that he didn't know of any activity between Trump campaign officials and Russians, apart from being a blatant lie on his own account, is unlikely to be true with regards to those who have now been exposed. And his recusal from the Russia investigation wasn't water-tight. Subsequently, he did get involved again, potentially violating his recusal pledge. On the 9th of May, Sessions wrote a letter to the president, recommending that Comey be fired.

Trump has admitted—and subsequently tried to deny—that he fired Comey because the Russia investigation was causing a cloud; it was irritating him.

In his testimony, Comey expressed said the president lied. Trump's response was to double down and accuse Comey of perjury. The problem for Trump is that he is, by his own hand, an established liar, and Comey, in his long career at the FBI, is a known truth-teller. Sessions has also been exposed as a liar. It looks like the chickens have come home to roost for him. It is unknown yet whether he will testify openly or in a closed hearing. 

Will Donald Trump Quit Before The Inauguration? Can Republicans Hold Onto Their Power?

Participants in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. 

From Library of Congress. Photo by Peter Pettus

25 March 1965. The day Martin Luther King led thousands to the capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama, after marching for five days from Selma, Alabama, to support African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership had campaigned for voting rights. King told the assembled crowd:

 "There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes." 

African Americans had endured generations of violence and assault to every part of their being, but they endured and their spirit of resistance slowly gained momentum until it peaked under the leadership of Martin Luther King. The world lost one of its greatest men, and thousands endured further assaults and violence for the Civil Rights Movement to succeed, but it prevailed in the end.

Fast forward to Nov 9 2016. The day the world got pretty damn dark again for millions. The day the quintessential banana republic bigot was elected as president of the most powerful country in the world—the country thought of as the most advanced democracy—with the help of a rogue FBI Director and the Russian government and now America is on the brink of being rolled backwards at the speed of light, to pre Civil Rights Movement days.

We share joy and triumph and hope, but grief is the most isolating experience. A predominant fear among many has been that with time grief will heal and the outrage will fade. Don't let this be the new normal has been a common theme.

This being Donald Trump's ignorance, stupidity, racism, bigotry and sexism, and culture of covert and overt white supremacy, promotion of inequality, discrimination against women, minorities and Muslims, exploitation of people and the earth's resources, the many being sacrificed to the few, rolling back clean energy, embracing policies that will enrich the few, destroy the poor, erode the middle class again and accelerate climate change.

How could what Trump personifies, and has exposed as the underbelly of our lovely Western culture, ever become a new standard for what's acceptable, the new normal? Because we do become inured unless we make a conscious choice not to be. But a huge body of people have already made that choice to fight for and preserve a coherent world for everybody. Including some powerful legislators and media organisations who aren't allowing Trump to become the new normal. As an example, the New York Times, which made a decisive switch from sitting on the fence to condemning Trump and endorsing Hillary Clinton during the primaries, actually increased its digital readership by 21% in the third quarter of 2016.

The investigation into Trump's charity foundation continues and he's powerless to stop it. Democrats in the Senate are delaying their acceptance of eight of Trump's cabinet picks while they call for more information, tax returns, and ethics investigations. They can't block the posts because they don't have the votes but they can delay and jam up the process. And that's what they're doing.

In North Carolina, a judge delayed the law overhauling the elections panel, a law that would severely restrict the powers of the soon-to-be Democrat Governor.

It's obvious from Trump's body language and his utter inarticulacy when questioned on matters of state that he's totally out of his depth and very uncomfortable with the heavy investigative spotlight on him and his family. Whatever he's hiding by not releasing his tax returns will come out in the wash somewhere.

He's been horribly—or wonderfully—humiliated by so many celebrities refusing to perform for his inauguration, and by the recent defection of performers in two of the groups that he did manage to secure, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Rockettes. Trump's response was to say that he'll have a protracted inauguration day parade and he'll only attend three balls (Obama attended eleven), because he wants to get to work immediately. The notion of Trump working is ludicrous; all he's doing is showing his vulnerability.

His transition team is a shambles, his tweeting is still out of control and now he's intimating that the Intelligence report on Russia's hacking prior to the election was inadequate. Even GOP politicians who have weak-mindedly endorsed him are putting boundaries down. So he'll be up against his own team as president.

Trump never wanted this job, but when he 'won' the election he obviously thought he could carry on lying, cheating and exploiting. Now that he and his posse of children are waking up to reality they're scrabbling around like crazy.

Trouble is, he's made a lot of very smart, very informed people very angry. And they have the law on their side. It's ironic. Trump craves constant approbation and to be able to do whatever he wants, and he only ran for president to pump up his profile so he could expand his businesses. Now he is being excoriated every day by the press, he's despised by millions in America and around the world; he's in a job that's virtual straitjacket for somebody like him; his charity foundation is under investigation; and he's having to divest!

Poetic justice. Speaking to Seth Meyers, Michael Moore predicted Trump will find a way to quit the presidency before the inauguration. I'm half inclined to agree with him but even if that happens, the battle has just begun. 

"Collectively we come together and we say, you know, we're going to preserve some things that last beyond our individual lives, that we're going to pass that on. And we have to do it together. You know, that is hopefully part of what is best about our government. And so every once in a while we need the ability to step back from our personal wants and project something finer and better for future generations." 

Barack Obama said this in 2010. He was in Yellowstone talking about the preservation of State Parks, but his words apply to preserving anything important. Throughout history, when decency and democratic legitimacy have been under threat, people with integrity have instinctively come together and fight, and it's happening now. A force like this might isn't bully-driven so it might not seem powerful at first, but it gathers momentum that's unassailable and it sustains itself until it succeeds, no matter how long that takes.

Liberals and Democrats are already looking to 2018. If they can reach Democrat voters for those mid-terms, they could regain control of Congress because all 435 House seats, and 33 out of 100 Senate seats are up for grabs. And to illustrate the interest, if you Google "what congressional…" the sentence completes as "seats are up for reelection in 2018". With 27 million search results.

Enjoy your power while you have it, Republicans. It's not going to last very long.

Goodbye to Dignity in the White House

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President Obama & the First Lady at the 2016 CBC Foundation Awards Dinner

President Obama & First Lady Michelle Obama at CBC Foundation Awards Dinner

It's a daunting prospect, four long years without an American president and first lady who have been a joy in every way and a constant reminder of the true nature of integrity, dignity, compassion, understanding, courage, sanity, coherence, brilliance of mind.

First Lady Michelle Obama spoke to OprahWinfrey in June this year about the next generation of women. When Oprah asked what single piece of advice she could give to young women, Michelle Obama's response, and she included young men, was that "We can never be complacent... The work always continues…We have seen in recent times how quickly things get taken away from us if we aren't vigilant."

Indeed. And that was in June. From then on the nightmare has just gotten darker and darker, as every decent human value has been assaulted by Trump and his cohorts.

Do we even know how to be vigilant enough anymore? Did we ever? Conservatives are very good at vigilance because they're often driven by anger and fear, which are the most powerful motivators to action. Liberals aren't so good at the kind of vigilance that's necessary to stop sociopaths from getting into power. Too often they try to see the best in everybody, which is good as an overarching philosophy, but not if it blinds you to the reality of what people's anger and fear will drive them to. And it's not much of a motivator. Let's all try to get along. If somebody is abusing your child, do you try to get along with them?

Don't sweat the small stuff. People say it a lot, but the small stuff is the early warning signal, it's the hairline crack. Small cracks never go away, they always widen, and if you catch them early, not much damage is done. The more you ignore them, the less sensitive you become to them until you only wake up when your house has collapsed.

Throughout the lead-up to the election, every intelligent person and journalist with a conscience and the capacity to separate media-driven hysteria and fake news from reality was shouting warnings about Trump. But it was too little too late.

Where has everybody been during Obama's terms, where the GOP has done everything it could to obstruct him and not do its job? Where was the liberal media outrage at Obama's unpopularity when he was doing a sterling job despite the obstructions? Where was our outrage at the vicious racism that was directed at him and the First Lady and at the up-swelling of racism and white fear of losing status quo that led to a burgeoning of white supremacist groups?

That's not where it all started, but it's where it could have been stopped. The GOP got away with not doing its job. It got away with the gerrymandering, with targeting minority voters, making it harder for them to vote. Those were some pretty sizable cracks.

It was small step from there to a candidate who would campaign on enabling hatred and assault on human decency in every aspect and encourage Russian interference in a presidential election and was too stupid to understand how that would imperil American democracy. A small step to millions believing fake news and to the main social media platform through which it was disseminated not identifying it until it was too late. The mainstream media didn't identify it either. From there it was easy for an FBI director to 'innocently' release a statement that would sway the election and hand it to a sociopath.  

Yesterday, apropos apparently of Putin's speech to his military leadership that Russia needed to upgrade its nuclear capacity allegedly so that it could penetrate sophisticated defense systems, Trump tweeted that the US needs to increase its nuclear capacity until people come to their senses about nukes. When I saw the news last night my blood ran cold. So best buddies Putin and Trump are in stand-off already.

Two out-of-control narcissists, hungry for control and desperate for affirmation, and both with the power to set off another world war. The alarming thing is that Putin is a terrible man but he's intelligent. The same can't be said of Trump, who is frighteningly gullible and manipulable. 

This is what happens when an over-enabled cheat, obsessive liar, a racist, a sexist and a bigot with an over-sized ego is elected with the help of a partisan FBI director and Russian intervention.

From the Obama Administration to this. Pave paradise and put up a parking lot. Vigilance; we need to upgrade our idea of what it entails. I've seen a huge outpouring of frustration on Twitter and Facebook from people who were vigilant, and who did speak their mind, over and over. Who turned out for the vote. But it was too little too late. Even as a non US citizen, I could have done more. A whole lot more.

Because this isn't just America's problem. It affects all of us. The racist bigot who is about to take over the White House has enabled white supremacy in the US, which has a ripple effect around the world. He will happily screw up international trade agreements and relationships and create massive uncertainty in the global economy. It would thrill him to increase nuclear capacity and give the order to bomb the shit out of a country at three in the morning because somebody in that country told the truth about him, or because he read something on a fake news site, or because he realized that the hair he has left is thin and straggly.

Before the election, I went to a lecture given in Cape Town by a visiting US professor, a passionate Democrat, unequivocally damning of the GOP and Trump. He said that up until recently his only involvement in politics has been to vote, but it's not enough anymore. It's not enough for any of us.

How did America go from the best to the worst? While we were sleeping. We thought we were awake but we were dreaming. Now we've woken up to a nightmare. What's left to do?

#goodtrouble

— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) November 11, 2016

#HistoryMade? Will Electoral College Electors Tell Trump "You're Fired"?

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“Everyone during the election perceived accurately—that in fact what the Russian hack had done was create more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign. There’s no doubt that it contributed to an atmosphere in which the only focus for weeks at a time, months at a time were Hillary's emails, the Clinton Foundation, political gossip surrounding the DNC...  

I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections … we need to take action, and we will—at a time and place of our own choosing. Some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.” - President Barack Obama

The Electoral College votes on America's next president on Monday. Anti-Trump voters have been at work since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the election in circumstances that are highly suspect. Apart from the country-wide protests, a petition was started by Daniel Brezenoff, asking the electors to elect Hillary Clinton. It now has close to 5 million signatures. People in every state have signed it.

There has also been a storm of protest from President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and other Democrat and Republican senators and representatives, and some electors, triggered by 17 intelligence agencies unanimously reporting that Russians intervened in the election through hacking and that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities”  

Vladimir Putin, of course, laughed the Intelligence report off. But he did that when the scandal first broke of Russian State sponsored Olympic doping. And now it's undeniable fact. Trump also laughed it off, as did his vacuous mouthpiece Rep Chris Collins. Speaking to CNN's Wolf Blitzer he said it was time to "put this nonsense aside." Blitzer shot him down, as he did when Collins said that President Obama had never acknowledged Trump's win.

A bipartisan group of electors, calling themselves the Hamilton Electors, published an open letter to the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, requesting that he release all the facts on Russian interference before they vote.

“...We intend to discharge our duties as Electors by ensuring that we select a candidate for president who, as our Founding Fathers envisioned, would be “endowed with the requisite qualifications.” As Electors, we also believe that deliberation is at the heart of democracy itself, not an empty or formalistic task…

The Constitution envisions the Electoral College as a deliberative body that plays a critical role in our system of government — ensuring that the American people elect a president who is constitutionally qualified and fit to serve. Accordingly, to fulfill our role as Electors, we seek an informed and unrestrained opportunity to fulfill our constitutional role leading up to December 19th — that is, the ability to investigate, discuss, and deliberate with our colleagues about whom to vote for in the Electoral College.

We further emphasize Alexander Hamilton’s assertion in Federalist Paper #68 that a core purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.”

To date eighty Presidential electors have signed the letter. Those wishing to add their names can contact ElectoralCollege16@gmail.com

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told Buzzfeed News that he supports that call for an Intelligence briefing on the Russian interference before they vote. Reid said he believed this was as "big a deal as Watergate, as 9/11 and he believes, along with US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Ben Cardin, that a 9/11 type commission should be set up to investigate.

Reid also blamed FBI Director James Comey for his role in Hillary Clinton's surprise loss. A view shared by many, including Hillary Clinton and her supporters. The FBI agents received Weiner's computer from the NYPD and held onto it for two weeks before sending it up the chain of command to Comey. Their later excuse was that they needed time to better assess the emails. But they were prohibited by law from reading any of them without a warrant, for which they needed Comey's OK. 

If they had sent it immediately, Comey's 2nd letter acknowledging that there was nothing to investigate, would have been released before early voting began, instead of 48 hours before the election, and probably wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.

On Thursday, Hillary Clinton spoke to donors about how Comey's letter to Congress swung the election in Trump's favor, and added that Putin had a longstanding grudge against her for her 2011 accusation that Russian parliamentary elections had been rigged.

But, she said, “Make no mistake as the press is finally catching up to the facts, which we desperately tried to present to them during the last months of the campaign. This is not just an attack on me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it. This is an attack against our country. We are well beyond normal political concerns here. This is about the integrity of our democracy and the security of our nation.”

California attorney Michael Hawley said to The Hollywood Reporter that electors have received thousands of emails, and some have received death threats. Hawley, Mark Lemley and Larry Lessig co-founded the Electors Trust, an organization that provides free and confidential legal counsel and defence to electors who "wish to vote their conscience." 

An Elector, speaking to Salon on condition of anonymity, said “We have gotten reports from multiple people that the Donald Trump campaign is putting [career] pressure on Republican electors to vote for him based on…future political outcomes based on whether they vote for Donald Trump or not.”

Legally and constitutionally Trump isn't president yet. The number of electors who have voted their conscience is rare throughout American history, but as everybody has been pointing out for a year, this is no ordinary American election. Never has there been a candidate who has:

And that's the short list.

This degree of protest from electors, politicians and the general public is unprecedented, and the highest number of electors to ever break from a presidential candidate was in 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors voted against James Madison. But, as everybody keeps reiterating, it's been an unusual American presidential election, so one final unusual event will fit right in.

History has already been made, for better or for worse. Why not go for broke and eliminate the worse? All it needs is for 37 electors to vote their conscience and Donald Trump is history. I'm going to let myself hope for two more days that Hillary Clinton can still be America's next president.

She won the popular vote by 2.8 million, which means a clear majority of Americans want her. The world wants her. #ImStillWithHer.