Summary
- The chair of the Iowa Democratic Party resigned, amind an ongoing delay in the reporting of caucus results.
- Former justice department officials, career prosecutors, and lawmakers have expressed alarm at the reversal of a sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case following a tweet from Donald Trump.
- Four career prosecutors stepped down following the reversal, and one of them left the justice department entirely.
- The attorney general Bill Barr has agreed to testify before the House judiciary committee.
- The US and Taliban are reportedly close to agreeing to a partial week-long ceasefire.
- Ahead of the Nevada caucuses, an influential union representing hotel and casino workers and has singled out Bernie Sanders for his health plan, which they worry would its end hard-won healthcare.
-
Deval Patrick ended his campaign.
- Amy Klobuchar saw a boost in funding after the New Hamshire primaries. Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are scrambling after disappointing performances in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Marie Yovanovitch, the US ambassador to Ukraine who provided key testimony in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump said the state department is in trouble.
“We need to re-empower our diplomats to do their job. We can’t be afraid to share our expertise or challenge false assumptions,” Yovanovitch said, speaking at Georgetown University, where she was being awarded by the School of Foreign Service. “Working off of facts is not the trademark of the deep state but of the deeply committed state ... Truth matters,” she added, echoing the words of National Security Council officer Alexander Vindman, who also testified about Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine.
Yovanovitch retired from the state department last month. In May, she was abruptly recalled from her post in Kyiv, after she was targeted by allies of the president, including his personal lawyer Rudy Guiliani and his associates.
The ambassador’s appearence at Georgetown was her first public appearance since she testified before Congress. The university invited her to a ceremony where she was honored for “Excellence in the Conduct of Diplomacy”. The award has been previously presented to secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Donald Trump has conditionally approved a peace deal with the Taliban, which would withdraw American troops from Afghanistan more than 18 years after the US invaded, according to reports.
From the New York Times:
The deal will only be signed if the Taliban prove their commitment to a durable reduction of violence over a test period of about seven days later this month. If the Taliban do end hostilities and a deal is signed, the United States would then begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops, and direct negotiations would start between the Taliban and Afghan leaders over the future of their country.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed Afghanistan’s top leaders in separate phone calls on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had given tentative approval to this approach, according to a senior Afghan official briefed on one of the calls.
The administration has said it was working on a deal for months. Talks with the Taliban were temporarily stalled in September. Plans to invite the militants to Camp David in Maryland fell apart after the death of the US soldier and once press and lawmakers realized the meeting would coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In November, Trump said talks were back on.
Updated
Iowa Democratic Party chair resigns
Following a chaotic Iowa caucus, the chair of the Iowa Democrats, Troy Price, has resigned. “While it is my desire to stay in this role and see this process through to completion, I do believe it is time for the Iowa Democratic Party to begin looking forward, and my presence in my current role makes that more difficult. Therefore, I will resign as chair of the Iowa Democratic Party effective upon the election of my replacement,” he said in a letter to the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee.
NEWS: @troymprice says he's resigning as chair of the @iowademocrats.
— Kate Payne (@hellokatepayne) February 12, 2020
From a letter sent to state central committee members today: #IACaucus pic.twitter.com/GOy9oEEq3v
More than a week after the caucuses on February 3, the final results from the causes are still not available. The Iowa Democrats declared Pete Buttigieg, the winner, with Bernie Sanders trailing closely behind. But candidates have called for a recanvass of 143 precincts, and the party reviewed results from 95 additional precincts.
Updated
Amy Klobuchar has raised $2.5m million after finishing third in New Hampshire. About 60% of donations were from first-time donors, according to her campaign. The Minnesota senator has promoted herself as the most promising centrist candidate, an antidote to the “extremes in our politics”.
Her centrist competitor Joe Biden had raised about $4m since the Iowa caucuses. After his lackluster performance in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden is betting on Nevada and South Carolina, where he’s running radio ads in a push to regain lost ground.
Influential Nevada union says Bernie Sanders would ‘end’ its hard-won healthcare
The Culinary Union, an influential force in Nevada politics, released a flier yesterday warning that Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for all plan would “End Culinary Healthcare” .
Ahead of the Nevada caucuses next week, the group, which has not endorsed a candidate in the primaries, singled out Sanders among the top six Democratic candidates running for president as the one who will end union healthcare. The Culinary Union represents 60,000 hotel and casino workers in Nevada and it provides health coverage for more than 130,000 people.
Although Elizabeth Warren’s healthcare plan is similar to Sanders’ plan, the union flier says that hers would “Replace Culinary Healthcare after 3-year transition or at end of collective bargaining agreements”.
The Nevada Independent first reported the news.
The union had previously cast both Sanders and Warren as candidates who want to take away hard-won union healthcare. In a statement issued today, the group’s secretary-treasurer Geoconda Argüello-Kline said, “It’s disappointing that Senator Sanders’ supporters have viciously attacked the Culinary Union and working families in Nevada simply because our union has provided facts on what certain healthcare proposals might do to take away the system of care we have built over 8 decades.”
It’s unclear what effect the union’s despite with Sanders’ will have on his chances in Nevada . The group is encouraging members to participate, and directing them to early voting sites.
Sanders’s Nevada state director responded: “We will guarantee that coverage is as comprehensive or more so than the health care benefits union workers currently receive, and union health clinics, including the Culinary’s health clinic, will remain open to serve their members.”
Updated
Summary
Here’s a summary of where things stand:
- Stunned reaction continued to unfold to a justice department reversal of a sentencing recommendation in the case of Roger Stone after Donald Trump complained on Twitter about the original recommendation.
- Four career prosecutors stood down from their posts in apparent protest following the reversal, and one of them left the justice department entirely.
- Trump said he did not want to comment on whether he was considering a pardon of Stone “yet”. “No one even knows what he did,” Trump said.
- Stone was convicted in October by a jury of his peers on seven felony charges including obstruction of justice and witness tampering for misinformation he gave to investigators examining Trump campaign ties to Russia.
- The House judiciary committee said attorney general William Barr, whom Trump congratulated for acting on his complaint about the Stone case, had agreed to testify on 31 March.
- Justice department veterans reacted to the Stone case news with distress, saying that Barr was enabling Trump’s efforts to use justice as a sword against his political enemies and as a shield for his friends.
- A week after voting to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, Republican senators dismissed concerns about the sudden twists in the justice department:
GOP senators downplay Barr move to lessen Stone sentence. Some critical of timing of Trump tweet, but say they believe DOJ that it made the decision on Stone before Trump tweeted his fury at the sentencing recommendation of 7-9 years. https://t.co/wFvAmBZau0 pic.twitter.com/hfboOxsO6k
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
- In the Democratic presidential race, Bernie Sanders declared victory in New Hampshire, with Pete Buttigieg coming in second.
- Senator Amy Klobuchar’s campaign showed new life after a strong third-place finish, underscoring that it could be awhile before Democrats arrive at a nominee.
And here’s video of Trump saying he’s not ready to say he’s considering a pardon for Stone “yet”:
President Trump: "The fact is Roger Stone was treated horribly…Roger Stone for doing – nobody even knows what he did."
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 12, 2020
Q:"Are you considering a pardon for Roger Stone?"
Trump: "I don't want to say that yet." pic.twitter.com/PCnqpyU8dg
Here’s video of Donald Trump talking about what he learned from impeachment:
Q: "Some Republicans have said they hoped you would learn a lesson from impeachment. What lesson did you learn from impeachment?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 12, 2020
President Trump: "That the democrats are crooked…that they shouldn't have brought impeachment and my poll numbers are 10 points higher." pic.twitter.com/N7ToHqdKfY
Many people noting how far off is Barr’s scheduled date for testimony, 31 March.
The three items of concerning Barr behavior listed by Nadler might need updating by then.
March 31 is multiple scandals & lifetimes away https://t.co/9Ith4awEZh
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) February 12, 2020
Trump on lessons of impeachment: Democrats 'crooked' and 'my poll numbers' are up
Here are a flurry of additional lines from Trump’s encounter with reporters in the Oval Office just then:
“That the Democrats are crooked ... that they are vicious ... and that my poll numbers are 10 points higher,” Trump in the Oval about the lessons he learned from being impeached
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
(If Trump’s poll numbers are up since impeachment the change is fractional.)
POTUS on the 4 federal prosecutors who resigned from the Roger Stone case (after DOJ undermined their sentencing recommendation after POTUS criticized it): they "ought to go back to school and learn because the way they treated people, nobody should be treated like that."
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 12, 2020
In letter confirming Barr to testify, House cites 'grave questions about your leadership'
Here’s the letter from the judiciary committee confirming Barr’s plan to testify next month. The letter cites “grave questions” about Barr’s leadership:
In your tenure as Attorney General, you have engaged in a pattern of conduct in legal matters relating to the President that raises significant concerns for this Committee. In the past week alone, you have taken steps that raise grave questions about your leadership of the Department of Justice.
The letter then lists three recent examples:
1 the withdrawal of the Liu nomination (see earlier)
2 the creation of a new “process” for Rudy Giuliani to feed information to the justice department
3 the “decision to overrule your career prosecutors and significantly reduce the recommended sentence for Roger Stone”
READ IT HERE: Letter from @HouseJudiciary confirming AG Barr will testify before the Committee on March 31st to address concerns regarding his leadership of the DOJ and the President's improper influence over the Department and our criminal justice system. pic.twitter.com/W5YHly85BL
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) February 12, 2020
Barr agrees to testify before Congress – report
Attorney general Bill Barr has accepted an invitation to testify before the House judiciary committee chaired by Jerry Nadler (not Adam Schiff) in March, Politico reports:
NEWS: Bill BARR has *accepted* a House Judiciary Committee request to testify on March 31.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 12, 2020
It's his first appearance before the panel since his confirmation and comes amid burning questions about his role in Ukraine matters and the Stone sentencing.
More details to come.
Updated
Trump says he will not pardon Stone 'yet'
In November, a jury found former Trump adviser Roger Stone guilty of obstructing a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Stone was convicted on all seven counts, including lying to lawmakers about WikiLeaks, tampering with witnesses and obstructing a House intelligence committee investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election.
Prosecutors at first recommended a 7-9 year sentence in the case, before Trump attacked that recommendation on Twitter, upon which the prosecutors resigned and the justice department issued a new recommendation calling for probation, and no time behind bars, for Stone.
Before a federal judge is scheduled to hand down a sentence for Stone next week, which is the culmination of every similar criminal proceeding for every defendant who is not a personal ally of the president, Trump has declined to knock down the idea that he might pardon Stone outright.
In the Oval, Trump just now:
— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) February 12, 2020
”They treated Roger Stone very badly...No one even knows what he did...It’s a disgrace...they ought to apologize to him,.”
Asked if he would pardon Stone:
“I don't want to say that yet...”
Update: “Nobody even knows what he did”
“Nobody even knows what he did,” Trump said of Roger Stone, who was convicted on seven counts, including lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House’s Russia probe. On whether he would pardon Stone, Trump says: “I don’t want to say that yet.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
Updated
Trump withdraws nomination of justice official who oversaw Stone case
As justice department veterans scrambled to make sense on Tuesday afternoon of the resignation en masse of four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case, Donald Trump made another significant – and potentially related – play, withdrawing a nomination of a former justice department lawyer to a top Treasury department post. Axios broke the news on Tuesday night.
The lawyer, Jessie Liu, was US Attorney for the District of Columbia starting in September 2017 – a role in which she oversaw prosecutions of Trump allies or former allies including Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
Late last year, Liu was tapped to become undersecretary for terrorism and financial crimes at the Treasury department, and she resigned her US attorney post in December.
Then, suddenly on Tuesday, Trump withdrew the nomination – for reasons that have not yet come to light. Liu herself found out about the decision on Tuesday, Axios reported. There’s speculation that the withdrawal could be tied to the Stone case before he is sentenced next week or could be tied to the Flynn case, for which sentencing has not yet been set.
Senate Banking Chairman Mike Crapo told me he and his staff were not told why the Jessie Liu nomination to a Treasury spot was suddenly pulled.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
Crapo would not comment on whether he believes it was tied to Liu's role overseeing the Roger Stone prosecution.
Updated
A protester has interrupted the Bloomberg event. She stormed the stage as a first speaker arrived to introduce the candidate. Most of what she said could not be heard. She said “This is not democracy this is plutocracy!”
She’s coaxed away from the microphone and off the stage.
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, he of the backloaded primary season strategy and preposterously huge campaign operation, is about to address a rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee. There’s a video player atop the blog and we’ll plant one here too for good measure:
Former US attorney Joyce White Vance lays out the dangers of the justice department’s conduct – and Trump’s conduct – in the Stone case: “The rule-of-law approach to government means not only that a President must himself be accountable,” she writes, “but also that he cannot be permitted to create special rules that he can use to benefit his friends or punish his enemies.”
Here’s a snippet of Vance’s analysis in Time:
But there is a sharp line dividing presidential leadership in setting policy, which is appropriate, from presidential interference in the conduct of a specific criminal case, which is not. Here’s why they’re different and why we should all be concerned about DOJ’s new sentencing recommendation in the Roger Stone case, which rejects its own initial proposal for one more in keeping with what the President called for on Twitter.
Among the Founding Fathers’ chief goals was to do away with a government where the king was above the law and had absolute power over the lives of his subjects. In our system, the President, like every other citizen, is meant to be subject to the law. The Founding Fathers were explicit about that intention when they debated the shape the new government they were creating would take. And that quintessentially American view that no man is above the law has been the case up until the presidency of Donald Trump.
Read the full piece here.
Reid: 'Iowa has forfeited its chance to be number one'
Former senate majority leader Harry Reid tells Vice it is time for the Iowa caucuses to go the way of the Dodo.
Note that Reid is from Nevada, the state that would be in line to take Iowa’s spot as the host of the first caucuses in the presidential nominating calendar. So his observations on the topic are not disinterested.
Vice reports:
“Iowa has forfeited its chance to be number one. I don’t think that’ll happen anymore,” Reid said, slamming the state and New Hampshire for their lack of diversity and pitching his home state of Nevada to replace them at the front of the pack.
“Since the debacle in Iowa, [pundits] have been talking about Nevada should be the first state. Why? Because we’re a state that’s heavily diverse,” he said. “It’s really a state that represents what the country is all about. So I think that Iowa really was an embarrassment to everybody.”
Some people agree strongly with Reid!
New Hampshire getting their vote counts in quickly and efficiently.
— Erin Gaetz (@ErinGaetz) February 12, 2020
I’m sorry, but fire the Iowa Caucuses into the sun.
Warren calls for Barr's resignation
Senator Elizabeth Warren becomes the first Democratic presidential candidate to weigh in on the justice department reversal in the Roger Stone case.
Warren says attorney general William Barr is corrupt and calls for his resignation. She includes a harsh appraisal of Senate Republicans. She says:
Donald Trump is shredding the rule of law in this country. His AG overruled career prosecutors to reduce the sentence for his buddy Roger Stone after Stone committed crimes to protect him. Every Republican who voted to acquit Trump for his corrupt actions enabled and owns this.
Donald Trump can continue his corrupt rampages and vendettas because elected Republicans do nothing. They lack the courage and backbone shown by four career prosecutors who stepped down rather than facilitate the Attorney General’s corrupt scheme. But we are not powerless.
Congress must act immediately to rein in our lawless Attorney General. Barr should resign or face impeachment. And Congress should use spending power to defund the AG’s authority to interfere with anything that affects Trump, his friends, or his elections.
I am the only candidate to propose an independent DOJ task force to investigate crimes by Trump administration officials. Every Democratic candidate must commit to it—so Trump officials know they will be held accountable by career prosecutors once he is out of office.
Abusing official power to protect political friends and attack opponents is common in authoritarian regimes like Putin’s Russia. Trump and Barr’s conduct has no place in our democracy. To end it, Congress must act—and the American people must hold them accountable in November.
Wall Street yawns about Bernie Sanders because they think Trump would demolish him in a general election, Ben White writes at Politico:
An avowed democratic socialist narrowly won the New Hampshire primary, propelled by promises to jack up taxes on the rich, nationalize health care and take a sledgehammer to the nation’s banking behemoths.
Wall Street has so far reacted to the rise of Sen. Bernie Sanders with a massive yawn — because few in the industry think the Vermont senator has a real shot at becoming president.
Stocks continue to pop to new highs even as Sanders climbs the Democratic field and pledges to come after the wealthy with a zealous passion.
That’s because the overwhelming consensus on Wall Street these days is that should Sanders wind up as the Democratic nominee — sliding past a handful of moderates also at the top of the field — he would get demolished by President Donald Trump in the general election.
Read the full piece here.
Advancing strict voter ID laws, gerrymandering, purging voter rolls, welcoming election tampering, pumping the federal bench full of young conservatives and sabotaging the Senate: critics of the shrinking Republican party say tactics like those are part of the conservative playbook for maintaining minority rule.
A potential add to the list: using the justice department to boost political friends and vanquish enemies.
Or actively embrace the idea of using state power to maintain political power in an electorate diversifying away from them https://t.co/ZcNMam9iTP
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) February 12, 2020
Deval Patrick ends campaign for Democratic nomination
Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick formally withdrew from the 2020 Democratic race moments ago. He was the last African American left in the contest, a shrinking of diversity in the field that he had lamented in recent weeks.
Deval Patrick is officially ending his campaign. Comes with a bit of a dig at the media and narratives around his very late-starting campaign, which he couldn’t overtake. pic.twitter.com/8HP7WVaQI6
— Matt Berman (@Mr_Berman) February 12, 2020
His campaign lasted less than three months.
Updated
Opinion: Bill Barr's efforts to protect Roger Stone are another blow to rule of law
No one has ever accused the US attorney general, Bill Barr, of being soft on crime. Just last year, he gave a speech in which he blasted progressive district attorneys who “style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers” and then “spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law”. When these prosecutors do bring charges, he complained, they seek “pathetically lenient sentences”. Barr’s message was clear: the integrity of the criminal justice system had to be protected at all costs.
Given Barr’s track record of fulmination against weak prosecutors, it came as something as a surprise yesterday when he intervened in the case of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone. Stone – an attention-seeking Republican bit-player whose crimes against fashion alone warrant a heavy sentence – committed a series of felonies including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress during the Mueller investigation. In turn, these crimes stemmed from Stone’s attempts to obfuscate his contact with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.
The crimes which Stone has committed are precisely the sort which threaten the ability of the criminal justice system to operate smoothly and fairly. No investigation can proceed effectively when a witness has to worry about a message he has received telling him to “prepare to die”, which is just one example of the missives which Stone dispatched to another Mueller witness, Randy Credico, in an attempt to force his silence. Precisely because they interfere with the operation of criminal justice system, federal sentencing guidelines deal with crimes like threatening witnesses particularly harshly.
Rather too harshly, it turns out, for Bill Barr.
Read the full piece here:
CNN’s Manu Raju gathers further non-reaction from Republican senators to the justice department reversal in the Stone case. Here’s John Cornyn of Texas declining to speculate on whether the attorney general ought to make a trip to Capitol Hill to tell Congress what happened here:
GOP senators downplay Roger Stone matter, arguing sentencing recommendation was stiff and contending they don’t see political inference by WH. Asked if he wants Barr to come testify: “That's up to the chairman,” Cornyn told me. “He typically does come testify from time to time”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
It might not take testimony by Barr – extremely difficult to imagine given Trump’s defiance of Congress – to unearth details of the Stone case. The judge in the case could do it next week, notes a former justice department inspector general:
I spoke with @ThePlumLineGS about the Stone case etc.
— Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich) February 12, 2020
One person can get to the bottom of this quickly: Judge Jackson at the sentencing next week.
She should order the 4 prosecutors, the DC US Attorney, and AG Barr to show up and explain. https://t.co/zLwtZDH3Dl
Graham: nothing to see here
Apparently rejecting Democratic calls for judiciary committee hearings into the justice department’s reversal in the Roger Stone case, Lindsey Graham, the committee chair, tells reporters that the justice department’s recent actions do not warrant scrutiny.
Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he doesn’t think the Justice Department’s recent actions need to be looked into but adds that Trump “shouldn't be tweeting about an ongoing case. I've told him that.”
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 12, 2020
This is the same senator who has been desperate to uncover more information about Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine.
Senator Kamala Harris has amplified Schumer’s call for Republicans to convene judiciary committee hearings into the justice department reversal on Stone:
Trump is applauding his Attorney General for intervening in his former advisor's sentencing. We cannot accept this.
— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) February 12, 2020
The Senate Judiciary Committee must call Barr to testify immediately. Doing nothing would completely betray our duty to hold the president accountable. pic.twitter.com/u2jrG19jtz
It’s time to rename Barr the Attorney Specific, because he seems to have only one client.
— Rob Kutner (@ApocalypseHow) February 12, 2020
The vote to acquit Trump is not quite one week old.
Murkowski asked by reporters if Trump learned a lesson from impeachment: “There haven’t been very strong indicators this week that he has.”
— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) February 12, 2020
For politics junkies thrilled at the prospect of historic twists in the winding road to the White House, nothing more than the wisp of a hint of a close primary race is required to elicit whispers of that magical phrase: “contested convention.”
Talk of a possible contested convention usually happens in early February, when a little bit of voting has happened but enough voting remains to tease the active political imagination. They said it in 2016, they said it in 2012, and they said it in 2008.
But the prospects for a contested convention in 2020 are – unusually strong?
Anyone wanna tell me how this thing *doesn't* end in a contested convention (or a highly controversial deal cut right before it)?
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) February 12, 2020
Keep in mind: 38% of delegates will have been awarded by Super Tuesday, and the only casualties of NH were...Andrew Yang and Michael Bennet.
Yep. Here’s a longtime DNC member on the record to me at last summer’s DNC meeting: "Unless something cataclysmic happens, I think we're looking at a contested convention.” https://t.co/YCBlym9eOG https://t.co/hPWwxq2GfJ
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) February 12, 2020
Trump: congratulations William Barr on following the order I tweeted to 72m people.
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020
Republican senator: we have no way of knowing what happened here
GOP Sen. John Kennedy said Trump’s tweets about Stone were “problematic” but he also told us he’s seen “no evidence” that Trump improperly interfered and thought it was simply lack of coordination on sentencing. He wouldn’t comment directly when I asked if Barr should testify
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 12, 2020
Schumer calls on Graham to hold hearings on Stone reversal
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday asked the inspector general of the justice department to investigate the Stone sentencing recommendation reversal.
This morning on the Senate floor, Schumer called on the chair of the judiciary committee, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to convene hearings on the matter. Graham, a staunch ally of the president who has lately been focused on the need to investigate Hunter Biden’s conduct in Ukraine, is not likely to do that.
Schumer:
The president ran against the swamp in Washington, a place that is rigged by the powerful to benefit them personally. I ask my fellow Americans, what is more swampy, what is more fetid, what is more stinking than the most powerful person in the country literally changing the rules to benefit a crony guilty of breaking the law?”
NEW: Chuck Schumer calls on Lindsey Graham "to convene an emergency hearing...to conduct oversight and hold hearings" following DOJ reversal on Stone sentencing recommendation.
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) February 12, 2020
"That's the the job of the Judiciary Committee, no matter who's president." https://t.co/xDonmgJTd0 pic.twitter.com/Bwx57FoFez
Stone case fallout: reaction
The resignation of four federal prosecutors after the intervention by Donald Trump in the sentencing phase of a felony criminal case involving his friend Roger Stone has drawn expressions of extreme alarm from former justice department officials, career prosecutors and others.
The warning is stark: attorney general William Barr’s intervention in the case at Trump’s behest crosses a historic line, beyond which the health of justice department independence and the integrity of the rule of law dwell under ominous skies.
Trump has a long history of attacks on norms of justice department independence, stoking conspiracy theories about a deep state at work wherever the cogs of justice have ground too closely to him or his friends through investigations advanced by agencies ranging from the FBI to the special counsel’s office to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Trump has snubbed justice to do favors for allies in the past with casual pardons of figures such as the race-baiting conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to campaign finance charges, and former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt of court in 2017 for defying a judge’s order to stop racially profiling Latinos.
But the willingness of Barr to intervene in specific cases to protect Trump allies while separately constructing special channels to investigate and potentially prosecute Trump’s perceived political enemies constitutes a major erosion in the basic structures of independent justice still in place, the president’s critics from both parties say.
The conduct also appears to be part of a pattern. Last month, the justice department softened its sentencing recommendations in a case involving Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser.
The alarm sounded by four prosecutors who removed themselves en masse from the Stone case has been heard throughout the network of career justice deparment officials, including a former attorney general:
Jonathan Kravis, Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed and Michael Marando — Department of Justice heroes. I support them and all of the men and women of goodwill at DOJ. Be tough. Do not compromise your values; there can be no compromise with those who act corruptly.
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) February 12, 2020
A former justice department inspector general:
Memo to all career DOJ employees
— Michael R. Bromwich (@mrbromwich) February 12, 2020
This is not what you signed up for. The four prosecutors who bailed on the Stone case have shown the way. Report all instances of improper political influence and other misdeeds to the DOJ IG, who is required to protect your identity.
A former deputy attorney general:
To the career men and women of DOJ, you are both the backbone and the heart of the Department. Your noble dedication to the rule of law is the foundation of our republic. https://t.co/GDW3IFBr1x
— Sally Yates (@SallyQYates) February 11, 2020
Former federal prosecutors:
It’s 100% true. Really extreme consternation from all former DOJ’ers of every era and every party. The intensity and unanimity of the dismay is remarkable https://t.co/1zPN3rby1l
— Harry Litman (@harrylitman) February 12, 2020
Government watchdog groups:
If you were occupied watching primary returns last night, then you are waking up to a five-alarm fire in our democracy.https://t.co/qhdVw5DXNr pic.twitter.com/m2hUauqax8
— Tamara Cofman Wittes (@tcwittes) February 12, 2020
A former director of the government ethics office:
A corrupt authoritarian and his henchmen are wielding the Justice Department as a shield for friends and a sword for political rivals. It is impossible to overstate the danger.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) February 12, 2020
But one potential voice of concern is silent: elected Republicans.
I remember basically every conservative either losing their mind or pretending to lose their mind because Bill Clinton was briefly on a plane with the Attorney General.
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 12, 2020
Updated
Bernie won, but what now? Our panelists' verdict on the New Hampshire results
Here is just a sampler of what our panelists had to say in reaction to the New Hampshire results. Click through to read the full piece.
Jill Filipovic: ‘Don’t count Biden or Warren out just yet’
Here is the story you’re going to hear about the New Hampshire primary: that it was Klobuchar’s night, and that her campaign has new momentum. And indeed, after a strong debate showing, she has seen a notable spike, going from being one of the many at the bottom to one of the few toward the top.
But pundits like a horserace and, to mix metaphors, there’s an advantage to being the underdog. Elizabeth Warren has hovered around third in the polls for months; she was third in Iowa. And yet her showing was met with a shrug. This is affecting the coverage of Sanders, too. Even though he won New Hampshire, the narrative is that he did worse than last time. Of course he did! There are a ton of candidates in the race – it follows that votes will be divided more broadly. Novelty isn’t always the most accurate way to cover a race.
[...]
Art Cullen: ‘Klobuchar is the new credible centrist candidate’
It’s no surprise that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg came out on top in New Hampshire as they bounced out of muddled Iowa. I was so bleary-eyed from watching a year’s worth of TV debates that I couldn’t see how Amy Klobuchar’s performance last weekend would vault her into the game. But it did. She parlayed a strong effort in Iowa into a finish just behind Buttigieg. Each of them heads to South Carolina with many questions in the African American community. Buttigieg had problems with his police department as South Bend mayor and Klobuchar was a prosecutor from Minneapolis who carries the same baggage Kamala Harris did.
[...]
Trump’s approval rating remains underwater with American voters, and his long inability to lift his average approval rating out of a band in the low-40s constitutes a major liability for him in 2020.
But Trump has a major wind at his back in the form of a feeling among an unusually large number of Americans that they are better off than they were the proverbial four years ago, according to surveys including a new poll released Wednesday morning by Gallup.
Gallup: 60% of Americans say they are better off now than when Trump took office compared to just 36% who say they are not.
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) February 12, 2020
That is higher than during the reelection campaigns of Obama, W, Clinton, or HW Bush.
60% of independents say they're better off than three years ago. pic.twitter.com/d3SBMf0cx0
Sixty-one percent of Americans say they are better off than they were three years ago, a higher percentage than in prior election years when an incumbent president was running. In the 1992, 1996 and 2004 election cycles, exactly half said they were better off. In three separate measures during the 2012 election cycle, an average of 45% said they were better off.
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Donald Trump also won New Hampshire primary
No surprise there, he declared victory in the Republican race for the nomination for 2020 after only a small amount of the vote had been tallied, swamping (pun intended) Bill Weld, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts.
Interesting note: Republican Bill Weld received about 9.1% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary — getting at least 12,747 votes.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 12, 2020
More than 12,000 New Hampshire Republicans went to the polls to vote against Trump. https://t.co/IYgRuv3gmX
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Former FBI lawyer warns Stone case prosecutors
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who has found herself firmly in Donald Trump’s sights in recent months, on Wednesday morning tweeted a warning and also some encouragement to the four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case who quit yesterday after the justice department leadership inserted itself into the case, with White House encouragement, in a series of astonishing and alarming developments.
To Aaron and Adam, Jonathan and Michael: I am sorry for the agony you are about to endure, and for the pain & betrayal you will feel at the hands of your beloved Dept. Know that you are on the right side of history & that we are so very proud of you for defending the rule of law.
— Lisa Page (@NatSecLisa) February 12, 2020
Her Twitter bio begins: “Yes, that Lisa Page.”
Page left the FBI in May 2018 amid controversy, driven by the president, over her role in the Russia investigation and an extramarital relationship she had with bureau agent Peter Strzok, who went on to work for special counsel Robert Mueller. Strzok was fired in August 2018.
At a rally in Minnesota in October, Trump read from messages between Page and Strzok, from August 2016, three months before the election.
Apparently pretending to have an orgasm, the president said: “I love you, Peter! I love you too Lisa! Lisa, I love you. Lisa, Lisa, Oh God, I love you, Lisa.
“And if [Hillary Clinton] doesn’t win, Lisa, we’ve got an insurance policy, Lisa! We’ll get that son of a bitch out.”
The messages between Strzok and Page were made public during Mueller’s Russia investigation.
In one famous exchange, Page asked: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Strzok replied: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
in July 2018. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters
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Unbowed by the resignation of four prosecutors yesterday, Donald Trump continued to interfere in the sentencing of his friend Roger Stone this morning, tweeting congratulations to his attorney general for “taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought” (see earlier).
He also tweeted that Stone’s proposed sentence compared unfavorably to a shorter sentence handed down in 2018 to an unnamed “Swamp Creature”, thought to be a reference to James Wolfe, a former Senate staffer convicted of lying to the FBI.
Stone was found guilty last November of seven crimes including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering. He was the sixth former Trump aide to be convicted in cases triggered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Edward Helmore has the latest here:
Meanwhile, Politico writes here about how powerless Democrats feel to curb Trump’s excesses after his impeachment acquittal. “Coupled with the president’s blatant retaliation against those who helped expose his wrongdoing, the Trump administration poses the gravest threat to the rule of law in America in a generation,” said Adam Schiff, who was the lead prosecutor in Trump’s impeachment trial.
The Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal said Trump’s actions since the acquittal – including his firing of impeachment witness Lt Col Alexander Vindman and Vindman’s twin brother – have seemed “almost delightedly vengeful” and are cause for “very deep and profound concern and alarm”. Trump has also suggested the military take disciplinary action against Alexander Vindman.
Even some Republicans are worried – for their control of the Senate.
Trump “is always going to do a little crazy every week because a little crazy is what motivates his base”, one unnamed strategist told the Washington Post. “But this is a team sport, and he does not want to lose the Senate. You saw what happened when he misjudged 2018 and lost the House. He got himself impeached. The Senate is the backstop.”
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Entrepreneur Andrew Yang dropped out of the Democratic race last night after a quixotic campaign that drew a small but devoted following (“the Yang Gang”) but failed to make significant progress. His signature policy was a promise to provide every American with a universal basic income of $1,000 a month. Here Daniel Strauss profiles the man who described himself as the “polar opposite of Donald Trump – an Asian man who likes to do math”.
Could Sanders win on Super Tuesday?
Could Bernie Sanders potentially wrap up the nomination on Super Tuesday – the 3 March primary date when numerous states including behemoths California, Texas and Massachusetts all vote, and a third of all delegates are awarded?
With the moderate vote split, it’s possible, Democrats have been telling Axios:
Scenario #1: Bernie’s Super Tuesday vote share is five points ahead of the second candidate (say, 30% to 25%). Bernie would net 96 delegates more than the next-highest-performing candidate. At that point, it would be possible but difficult to overtake Sanders: To become the nominee, that survivor would need to beat Bernie by an average of 53% to 47% in in remaining contests.
Scenario #2: Bernie’s Super Tuesday vote share is 10 points ahead of the second candidate (say, 30% to 20%). Bernie would net 198 delegates more than the next-highest-performing candidate. Overtaking Sanders would be unlikely: The field would need to clear, the and survivor would need to win each remaining contest on average 55% to 45% over Bernie.
Scenario #3: Bernie’s Super Tuesday vote share is by 15 points ahead of the second candidate (say, 35% to 20%). Bernie would net 328 delegates more than the next-highest-performing candidate. The race would be all but over.
Here’s a link to the current delegate count, but obviously with only two small states having voted so far it’s not terribly illuminating. The current numbers are:
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Buttigieg: 22
- Sanders: 21
- Warren: 8
- Klobuchar: 7
- Biden: 6
The winner needs 1,990 delegates.
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Who is Amy Klobuchar?
When the results came in from the three tiny towns that traditionally vote first in New Hampshire, Amy Klobuchar posted them straight to Instagram.
“We’re off to a great start in New Hampshire today!” the Minnesota senator wrote about the midnight vote tallies from Dixville Notch, Millsfield and Hart’s Location that showed her ahead of the Democratic pack with a total of eight votes.
But her joke presaged a successful night which has saved her campaign – for now at least. Klobuchar came in a strong third in New Hampshire with nearly 20% of the vote, behind her fellow moderate Pete Buttigieg on 24.4% and the Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders with 25.7%.
Some of the credit can go to her punchy performance in Friday’s debate, in which she attacked Buttigieg for his youth and inexperience, telling him that “59 – my age –is the new 38 up here”. The jab also drew attention to the fact that the other top contenders Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden are all in their 70s.
But Klobuchar kept the focus on the former South Bend mayor, slamming him for saying he would rather watch cartoons than Trump’s “exhausting” impeachment trial.
“It is easy to go after Washington, ’cause that’s a popular thing to do,” said Klobuchar. “It is much harder ... to lead, and much harder to take those difficult positions.” While Buttigieg presented himself as a “cool newcomer”, she said, “I don’t think that’s what people want right now.
“We have a newcomer in the White House, and look where it got us. I think having some experience is a good thing.”
Klobuchar was born in Plymouth, Minnesota in 1960, and practiced as a lawyer after studying at Yale and the University of Chicago Law School and then moving into politics.
She joined the Senate in 2006, and gained a reputation for working across the aisle, taking a trip to the Baltic states and Ukraine with Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham in 2016.
She played a memorable role in the heated confirmation hearings for supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, asking the judge if he had ever been blackout drunk. “I don’t know. Have you?” he asked, repeating the question aggressively. “I have no drinking problem,” she replied calmly. She had talked about her father’s struggles with alcoholism minutes before, and Kavanaugh later apologised.
Kavanaugh asks Sen Klobuchar multiple times if she's had alcoholic blackouts. pic.twitter.com/3huBRb2JEo
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 27, 2018
But Klobuchar has also been accused of bullying former staff members, with one aide allegedly being hit by a flying binder. One bizarre story recounted by the New York Times claimed she used a comb to eat a salad in the absence of a fork and then gave it a staff member, telling them to clean it. “Am I a tough boss sometimes? Yes,” she has said when asked about the allegations. “Have I pushed people too hard? Yes.”
Her policies as a presidential candidate are probably best described in relation to her more leftwing rivals. She thinks the Green New Deal – a proposed programme to tackle climate change and create jobs – is too ambitious and expensive, and makes the same argument about Medicare for All, the policy backed by Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that would replace the health insurance industry with a publically-run scheme.
Aware that she needed to seize her moment in the national spotlight, Klobuchar used her speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday night to look past her party and address the nation. “Hello America, my name is Amy Klobuchar and I will beat Donald Trump,” she vowed.
But she faces an uphill struggle to unite the Democratic centrist vote – which is now split between Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg, who plans to join the race on 3 March for Super Tuesday. “There is no evidence that she can get non-white voters,” one Democratic source told Politico. She is polling in low single digits in Nevada and South Carolina – the next states to vote – and is doing only marginally better nationally.
But as Sanders surges forward on the left and Biden fades, the Democratic establishment will eventually need to settle on a candidate. Klobuchar has a small window now to make the case that it should be her.
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Bernie Sanders got the clean victory he was denied in Iowa last night in New Hampshire, with a win over rival Pete Buttigieg that was closer than expected but avoided the chaos of last week’s Iowa caucuses.
With 87% of precincts reporting in the second race of the 2020 Democratic primary, the socialist Vermont senator had won 25.7% of the vote to 24.4% for the young former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Amy Klobuchar, meanwhile, a moderate senator from Minnesota, will be pleased with her strong third place finish and 19.8% of the vote.
It was another lacklustre night, though, for Elizabeth Warren, Sanders’ rival on the Democrats’ liberal wing, and Joe Biden, the former vice-president who had entered primary season the favourite and his seen his star dramatically wane.
Sanders’ share of the vote was way down on the 60% he received in this state in 2016, although that was pretty much a two-horse race with Hillary Clinton, in contrast to 2020’s panoply of candidates.
With around 26% in both Iowa and New Hampshire, it is clear he has a strong and loyal base of support, particularly among the young and those on the left, and he may now be the frontrunner. But he has not yet proved he can win over centrist votes within the party, some of whom are bitterly opposed to him for both policy and personality reasons.
Rather than consolidating its strength, however, the centrist wing of the Democratic party seems only to be fracturing further.
Biden is in serious trouble, and rushed on yesterday to South Carolina, which votes on 29 February and is a must-win for him with its large African American population, seen as a key part of his voting coalition. But in between is Nevada, which is likely to be a very tight race between the centrist former VP and a buoyant Sanders.
Buttigieg placed strongly in New Hampshire, but is unlikely to make much headway among the diverse electorates of Nevada and South Carolina, and it’s notable that his national polling has not (yet?) seen a dramatic rise.
Klobuchar’s third-place finish last night gives her a chance to make the case that she should be the standard-bearer for the moderate wing. “Hello America, my name is Amy Klobuchar and I will beat Donald Trump,” she told a crowd last night, seizing her chance to address not just the Democratic party but the nation.
And Mike Bloomberg remains a great unknown, planning to join the race on 3 March for Super Tuesday after spending hundreds of millions of dollars advertising in large states.
This continued division in the centre only benefits Sanders, who seems to have seen off Warren, his key competitor on the left. Warren’s candidacy hit the rocks when her policies – particularly her expensive comprehensive healthcare plan – came under a severe spotlight. The same may now happen to Sanders as he takes on the role of frontrunner.
The Republicans also held a primary race, as Trump was quick to point out. Trump got 85.5% of the vote, while the former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld got 9.2% – a much stronger showing than his result in Iowa last week, 1.3%.
You can see all the New Hampshire results here:
We’ll have live coverage of all the fallout here today.
Roger Stone case
We’ll also cover the continuing controversy over the sentencing of Trump’s longtime friend and unofficial adviser Roger Stone.
Yesterday four lawyers who prosecuted Stone resigned in protest after their sentencing recommendation was overruled and slashed by Donald Trump’s justice department. The department’s move came after Trump tweeted of Stone’s original sentence recommendation: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation ... Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!”
Stone was found guilty last November of seven crimes including obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering. He was the sixth former Trump aide to be convicted in cases triggered by the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The justice department is supposed to operate independently of the White House in criminal investigations and prosecutions. The final decision on Stone’s fate will rest with US district judge Amy Berman Jackson, who repeatedly took a harsh tone with Stone during the trial in Washington. Stone’s sentencing is expected on 20 February.
Further reading:
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