Barr attempts to rewrite impeachment proceedings

William Barr is racing to deliver a report that blows up the impeachment inquiry—and everything else

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday November 06, 2019 · 1:21 PM CST

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Attorney General William Barr is racing to complete a new “report” before Thanksgiving. And if Barr’s very poor summary of the Mueller report threw Trump a lifeline by distorting the real findings of the special counsel investigation, this new report looks to be more like an atom bomb, designed to incinerate Washington by putting the whole Justice Department behind a conspiracy theory that rewrites history and declares open warfare on political opponents. And Republicans are already meeting with Barr to plan a “roll out” for this supposedly classified report in order to maximize its impact.

Barr appears to have taken the results of an inspector general report that was expected to end weeks ago, rolled it together with the investigation-into-the-investigation that he launched under the nominal control of prosecutor John Durham, and capped it all with the “findings” of a world tour that included attempts to get the Australian government, the Italian government, and the U.K. government to participate in attacks on U.S. intelligence agencies. What’s going to come out the other end could be a dud, but it could launch an effort to derail the impeachment process—and more.

Barr’s effort to create a comprehensive, all-conspiracy-theories-combined report seems to have delayed delivery of the long-expected findings from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Republicans were generally thrilled by Horowitz’s earlier report in which he was critical of former FBI director James Comey for his handling of some classified materials. That report had right-wing news outlets clamoring over potential charges against Comey. But despite claims that the findings justified Republican attacks on the entire Russia investigation, the actual complaints were minor and led to nothing.

That seems unlikely to be the case this time. As The Washington Post reports, Barr has subsumed Horowitz’s work because “the inspector general does not have the authority to declassify information” and Barr apparently intends to release information that dips into classified documents at both the FBI and CIA to tell his story of how the Russia investigation was unjustified from the start.

Barr is having advance meetings (including one on Wednesday with Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham) so that talking points and presentations can be ready in advance of an official release.

Interestingly enough, Michael Horowitz does not appear to be attending the meetings on how to release information supposedly based on the material he assembled. But then, the investigation Barr is conducting has moved far beyond the sort of internal chastisement that might be delivered by Horowitz. The investigation he and Durham are conducting is now a criminal investigation, and is “pursuing potential crimes.”

But not crimes in the sense of the hundreds of connections between the Trump White House and Russia. Or crimes in the sense of Trump’s obstruction of the Russia investigation. Certainly not crimes in the sense of Trump directly lying to investigators in the written answers he provided to the special counsel’s office.

Instead, Barr is directly attempting to put some proof behind the claims that Donald Trump was trying to extort out of Ukraine: That there was never any real contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, that the DNC servers were not in fact hacked by Russia, that Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud was a CIA plant put in place to lure George Papadopoulos, that Australian official Andrew Downer was an instrument of U.S. intelligence, and that Ukrainian hackers conspired with Hillary Clinton to make it seem as if Russia stole data from the DNC and presented it to WikiLeaks, when all the while it was a scheme to justify launching an investigation into the Trump campaign.

Barr and his associates have been racing to complete this report so that it can be dropped on the impeachment inquiry before the holidays. Major parts of the report apparently remain unwritten, but the fact that the publicity campaign is getting underway in advance of the report’s completion is not exactly a sign that this is going to be a contrite “nothing major found” report. And Barr has been at the center of forwarding Trump’s conspiracy theories and supporting attacks on the intelligence community. He’s already said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.”

The report coming back could declare no evidence to support Trump’s conspiracy theories and say that Barr found that “spying” to be “adequately predicated.” Don’t count on it. And don’t count on there not being indictments.

Barr did not shift to a criminal investigation because he doesn’t intend to arrest someone. There are going to be claims of serious wrongdoing. They are going to be aimed at not just creating a distraction to derail the impeachment hearings, but to provide “evidence” that Trump’s requests for investigations by Ukraine were justified. The question is going to be whether they are merely awful and damaging to the nation, or absolutely incinerate the rule of law.

Next week, open hearings are set to begin in the House impeachment inquiry, and it seems very likely that actual articles of impeachment will be getting a vote before the end of the year. So far, the best defense that Republicans have dreamed up is claiming ignorance—not attending meetings, not reading transcripts, and openly declaring that they’re not about to start.

But when Barr speaks, they’re all going to be listening.

Above is from:  https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/11/6/1897632/-William-Barr-is-racing-to-deliver-a-report-that-blows-up-the-impeachment-inquiry-and-everything-else

Trump immigration actions increased migrant problems?

Report: WH ignored warnings from State Department officials about ending immigrant protections

Caitlin Dickson

Reporter

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Yahoo News•November 7, 2019

386 Comments

Sen. Robert Menendez. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

In late October of 2017, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson received a memo from Trump appointees on his staff regarding the administration’s intention to terminate Temporary Protected Status to immigrants from Honduras, El Savador and Haiti, among other countries.

The memo acknowledged that career State Department diplomats, including then-Under Secretary for Political Affairs Thomas Shannon Jr., had issued explicit warnings that ending TPS for those three countries would pose serious risks to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. It also noted concerns that ending designation could also endanger the safety of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who would be forced to return to those countries, not to mention their U.S. citizen children.

Despite those concerns, the political appointees in the State Department urged Tillerson to accelerate the termination of protections afforded immigrants with TPS status. Although senior officials at State had already concluded that TPS status should not be ended quickly, those officials handpicked by Trump believed that the suggested 36-month timeline was too slow because it “would put the wind-down of the program directly in the middle of the 2020 election cycle.”

That memo is among dozens of internal State Department documents included in a new report published Thursday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The report is the product of an investigation commissioned by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the ranking Democrat on the committee, into the State Department’s role in the Trump administration’s decision to end TPS for Honduras, El Savador and Haiti. It concludes that the White House not only disregarded repeated and explicit warnings against ending TPS from career diplomats, but suggests that the decision to do so may have been influenced by what the report calls “electoral calculations.”

“Today’s report documents something we’ve become all too familiar with: the administration seeking to use foreign policy not to further U.S. interests but the president’s political aims,” Menendez said at a Thursday press briefing. “Political appointees literally advocated for the accelerated termination of TPS … so it wouldn't be an electoral liability,”

Immigration advocates and allies gathered in New York City last month to launch an 18-day march to Washington. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In November 2017, President Trump first announced plans to end Temporary Protected Status — a designation allowing citizens of certain countries destabilized by armed conflict or natural disasters to live and work in the U.S. — for a number of countries, including El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti. The move, which is the subject of multiple legal challenges and has so far been blocked by courts from taking effect, would have an impact on approximately 400,000 TPS recipients living in the United States as well as their estimated 273,000 American-born children who would either have to return with their parents or remain in the U.S. alone. 

Among the dozens of State Department documents obtained through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s investigation are diplomatic cables sent by U.S. embassies in those three countries to senior officials at the National Security Council, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security during the summer of 2017. The cables urge that the TPS designations should be renewed, and warn that a failure to do so could destabilize the region and result in a new wave of illegal migration to the U.S. 

One cable, for example, sent by the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador on July 7, 2017, warned that “the lack of legitimate employment opportunities” in El Salvador would make repatriated TPS recipients, or their children, subject to recruitment by gangs like MS-13, which would likely be emboldened as a result.

“Make no mistake, the administration knew exactly what it was doing, consequences be damned,” said Menendez.

News reports about the cables — and the Trump administration’s decision to disregard them — first came to light last year. But the newly released documents show how then-Under Secretary Shannon, the State Department’s highest-ranking career diplomat, made a private appeal to Tillerson, in which he emphasized that the governments of Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti could not handle the quick return of the hundreds of thousands of nationals currently covered by TPS.

“It is our purpose to provide the best possible foreign policy and diplomatic advice,” Shannon wrote. “From my point of view that advice is obvious: extend TPS for the countries indicated.”

Shannon’s guidance echoed that of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, as well as the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and the secretary’s own Office of Policy Planning, all of which recommended that TPS should be terminated only for those countries after a period of 36 months.

The copy of the memo included in the report from political appointees at the State Department shows that Tillerson crossed out a reference to the department’s recommended 36 month extension for those three countries, and wrote by hand that the TPS designations should end in 18 months — which is what he ultimately wrote in his final recommendation to the Department of Homeland Security secretary. 

This memo offers “strong evidence that the decision was influenced by personal and political considerations of the Trump campaign,” said Tom Jawetz, Vice President for Immigration Policy at Center for American Progress. Jawetz was among those on a panel of experts who spoke about the implications of the report at Thursday’s press conference. He emphasized that the law requires that once a country has been designated for TPS, it must be extended until DHS has made a fact-based determination that the country no longer meets the conditions necessary to warrant that designation. 

He argued that the apparent political factors behind Tillerson’s final recommendation should be particularly relevant to the ongoing litigation over the legality of the administration’s decision to end TPS currently being considered by federal courts.

Menendez said he planned to share the report with his Republican colleagues on the committee, who have the power to convene hearings, as well as with the State Department inspector general.

“We do not comment on internal deliberations. We are aware that a report was released, but have nothing to add at this time,” a State Department spokesperson told Yahoo News via email.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-trump-administration-ignored-warnings-from-state-department-officials-about-ending-immigrant-protections-003021237.html

Bush’s Iraq War

The Wisdom Segment

• I  Wikileaks released close to 400,000 files of information about the Iraq War.
• II  The Center of Public Integrity discloses that the Bush Administration made up to 935 false claims about alleged threats from Iraq in the 2 year period following 9/11.
• III  Regrets have been expressed by a number of news organizations who helped provide validation for the Bush administration's false statements before the Iraq War. They accepted criticisms that their pre-war reportings were too biased and unprofessional.
• IV  An investigation made by the BBC revealed how large amounts of financial profit were made by private contractors off the war. They stated that it was probably the most profitable war in history. However, a U.S. gag order has been put in place to prevent any discussion of the accusations.
• V  The Iraq War led to about 2.3 million people being driven out of their homes. As of 2008, 2 million Iraqis left the country. The neighboring countries had to deal with a massive wave of immigration and refugee camps.
• VI  Many Iraqi women had to recur to prostitution to fend for themselves and their family, due to the widespread poverty caused by the Iraqi war. Prostitution was not frowned upon by religion at this point, because it was a means of survival.
• Above is from:  https://www.heraldweekly.com/judge-judy-the-truth-behind-the-hot-bench/?utm_medium=yahoo&utm_source=368&utm_campaign=381767329&utm_term=FINANCE_US-c

Rockford’s population loss near the top but Chicago tops them all

People Are Leaving These Major U.S. Cities In Droves, And We Can Relate To The Reasons Why

Updated 1 day ago on October 29, 2019

IMPACT |MICHAEL ROQUE

11. Rockford, Illinois – 18,789 Migrations

Rockford, Illinois has definitely seen better days. The city first came to light in the 1830s and was built at the end of the Rock River. This position gave it a lot of success in terms of industrial development. They produced a ton of heavy machinery all the way until the latter half of the 20th century. That’s when Rockford’s struggle began.

kippy007 / Instagram

According to local newspaper the Rockford Register Star, Rockford currently holds the highest unemployment rate in the state of Illinois. With that in mind, it is no surprise that the state’s third biggest city is steadily shrinking. According to census data, Rockford has seen 18,789 residents leave in the past decade and a population dive of 3.2%.

1. Chicago, Illinois – 296,320 Migrations

While people from Indianapolis are reported to flock to Chicago, Windy City natives have respectively been packing up and leaving. According to census surveys, 296,320 people have fled the nation’s third-biggest city. Redfin has determined that most migrating population are leaving in favor of sunny Phoenix. We’re guessing that the warmer weather plays a huge part in that decision.

whoakimosabe / Instagram

Reportedly, complaints amid Chicago residents span issues like the city’s high cost of living (with a median home value at $229,00), the education system, amenities and property tax. One can’t forget to mention that Chicago has its fair share of crime. Still, for the nearly three million people in Chicago, it seems it’d take a lot more than that to phase them.

Above is from:  https://www.icepop.com/us-cities-migrating-populations/15/

How may this affect Belvidere Assembly Plant?

Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot reach deal to merge

PUBLISHED WED, OCT 30 201912:24 PM EDTUPDATED 2 HOURS AGO

Michael Wayland@MIKEWAYLAND

Phil LeBeau@LEBEAUCARNEWS

KEY POINTS

• Peugeot maker PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler confirmed they are in talks to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker.
• The confirmation of the talks comes about five months after Fiat Chrysler ended merger discussions with PSA’s French rival, Renault.
• Fiat Chrysler, the world’s seventh-largest automaker, has been on a quest for a tie-up to grow scale and consolidate costs for several years.

Jens Schlueter | Getty Images

DETROIT – From Daimler-Chrysler to Fiat Chrysler, the former American automaker Chrysler Corp. has gallivanted around the world to find partners to assist in its growth or help keep it afloat.

It now has its sights set on Peugeot maker PSA Group. Both the French carmaker and Fiat Chrysler on Wednesday confirmed they are in talks to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker with a roughly $50 billion valuation.

The PSA board approved the merger and the Fiat Chrysler board is set to meet Wednesday, a person familiar with the deal told CNBC. Executives have briefed regulators in the U.S. and France, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Peugeot CEO Carlos Tavares is expected to lead the combined automaker as its CEO, while John Elkann, Fiat Chrysler chairman and heir of the Agnelli family dynasty that founded Fiat, would continue his role with the combined company, the WSJ reported.

Fiat and Peugeot owner PSA in talks to merge: Dow Jones

The deal gives Peugeot six board seats and Fiat Chrysler five, according to the WSJ.

“We will not comment beyond the press release issued this morning,” PSA Spokesman Pierre-Olivier Salmon said in an email, citing a press release issued earlier in the day that confirmed the two companies were holding “ongoing discussions aiming at creating one of the world’s leading automotive groups.”

Fiat Chrysler spokesman Niel Golightly said he had “nothing to add at this time.”

Reports of the talks, including a potential “all-share merger of equals,” as the Wall Street Journal first reported, sent shares of Fiat Chrysler surging as much as 8% on Tuesday. The stock rose by less than 2% in midday trading Wednesday.

The confirmation of the talks comes about five months after Fiat Chrysler ended merger discussions with PSA’s French rival, Renault. Fiat Chrysler, the world’s seventh-largest automaker, has been on a quest for a tie-up to grow scale and consolidate costs for several years.

‘Litany of obstacles’

Even if the deal wins approval from both boards, it faces a lot of obstacles. Challenges include consolidation, clashing corporate cultures and government and regulatory approval, among other issues.

Talks of a potential tie-up between Fiat Chrysler and Renault ended earlier this year largely due to the French government, which owns a roughly 12.2% stake in Renault. The French government currently owns a 13.7% stake in PSA.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy cited the French government’s ownership as one of a “litany of obstacles” facing such a deal. Murphy said similar to Fiat Chrysler’s potential tie-up with Renault, the “industrial logic” is “unclear unless there is massive headcount reduction.”

Such a deal, according to Murphy, also could alienate U.S. buyers, lowering the potential benefit of the two automakers combining.

Even if the merger is approved by shareholders and regulators, “there is a material risk American consumers may shift to Ford and GM products due to FCA possibly no longer being perceived as an ‘American’ identity, not to mention the potential political implications of this potential deal.”

Bernstein analyst Max Warburton said a merger between Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot “has more logic” than one with Renault. He specifically cites the potential for Tavares to create “long-term value.”

“We ultimately think a deal could be made to work — this would be as much about raising performance as it would be about synergies,” he wrote in a Tuesday note to investors.

However, Warburton noted a deal between the two does little to increase business in China, the world’s largest auto market, and the timing is “sub-optimal” given FCA’s earnings are at all-time high.

Rewards

Analysts see the merger as a quick way for Peugeot to re-enter the U.S. market after a decades-long hiatus, while continuing to grow its European operations following the company’s acquisition of GM’s European business in 2017.

“This news is not unexpected, given that both companies have been actively exploring tie-ups with others to yield cost savings and other synergistic benefits,” said David Leggett, automotive editor at data analytics firm GlobalData.

For Fiat Chrysler, it would finally cement former CEO Sergio Marchionne’s vision of creating a global automaker with the resources to successfully compete in the ever-changing auto industry.

In 2015, Marchionne, who unexpectedly died in July 2018, called for industry consolidation in a presentation called “Confessions of a Capital Junkie.” Consolidation would save capital that was being wasted by automakers developing redundant technologies, he said.

“These were not hallucinations of somebody looking to grandstand in the industry,” Marchionne said at the time. “We have spent a lot of time trying to understand what makes this machine tick. And the machine can tick a lot better if certain things happened.”

Marchionne believed only a handful of the world’s largest automakers would survive and have the capital to compete as automakers push for autonomous and all-electric vehicles.

The deal with PSA would give Fiat Chrysler access to PSA’s newer vehicle platforms in Europe as well as emerging technologies.

Marchionne’s methodical combination of Fiat and Chrysler a decade ago is considered one of the more successful tie-ups for the auto industry in the recent years.

Chrysler’s previous “merger of equals” with German automaker Daimler-Benz in 1998 was a culture clash and failure that led to a divorce less than a decade later, followed by Chrysler spiraling into bankruptcy in 2009.

CNBC’s Michael Bloom and Meghan Reeder contributed to this article.

Above is from:  https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/another-merger-of-equals-fiat-chrysler-peugeot-tie-up-comes-with-risks-rewards.html

Foxconn—Gov Walker’s disaster?

Foxconn finally admits its empty Wisconsin ‘innovation centers’ aren’t being developed

56

Took long enough

By Nick Statt@nickstatt Oct 23, 2019, 6:33pm EDT

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Photo by Joshua Lott for The Verge

Electronics manufacturer Foxconn’s promised Wisconsin “innovation centers,” which are to employ hundreds of people in the state if they ever get built, are officially on hold after spending months empty and unused, as the company focuses on meeting revised deadlines on the LCD factory it promised would now open by next year. The news, reported earlier today by Wisconsin Public Radio, is another inexplicable twist in the nearly two-year train wreck that is Foxconn’s US manufacturing plans.

The company originally promised five so-called innovation centers throughout the state would that employ as many as 100 to 200 people each in high-skilled jobs, with the Milwaukee center promising as many as 500. Those jobs were to complement the more than 13,000 jobs Foxconn said its initial Wisconsin electronics manufacturing factory would bring to the US, in exchange for billions in tax breaks and incentives that Governor Scott Walker granted the company back in 2017.

THE INNOVATION CENTERS ARE NOT ONLY EMPTY, BUT NOW ON HOLD TOO

Yet after purchasing a building in Milwaukee and announcing plans to build the centers in other Wisconsin cities, Foxconn has done virtually nothing with the plans. In April, The Verge reported that the buildings Foxconn had purchased were empty, a report that the company disputed without providing any specific corrections or evidence to the contrary — and the company still hasn’t provided any 194 days later.

According to WPR, Foxconn has installed an HVAC system in one of two buildings it said it would purchase in Eau Claire, but no additional work has been completed. “That’s been about the extent of it, it’s pretty minimal,” Aaron White, Eau Claire’s economic development manager, told WPR. “We did get a visit from four Foxconn staffers and they reinforced their intent to move forward, but they gave no indication of a timeline.”

In Racine, another planned innovation center destination, there does not appear to have been any work done whatsoever. “Foxconn is focusing on the (Mount) Pleasant campus,” Shannon Powell, a spokesman for Racine Mayor Cory Mason, told WPR. “Should an innovation center in the city get up and running there would certainly be a grand opening event.”

Beyond the halted innovation centers, Foxconn’s general Wisconsin plans are similarly in flux. The company announced a partnership in September with an automated coffee kiosk company to help manufacture its product domestically, with plans to add the coffee kiosk to its manufacturing contracts for the planned Mount Pleasant factory.

But the factory doesn’t exist yet. The company is now aiming to open it in 2020 after repeatedly shifting its deadlines. It’s also reduced the planned number of jobs and the size of the factory from the original 13,000 jobs and 20 million square feet to a 1,500-employee, 1-million-square foot facility that will no longer produce the promised big-screen LCD TVs that were part of the initial contract. Earlier this month, the company announced, scrapped, and then re-announced plans to build a giant, nine-story glass orb that would serve as a data center.

Above is from:  https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929453/foxconn-innovation-centers-on-hold-wisconsin-mount-pleasant-trump-deal

Rep Kinzinger slighted by Re-elect Trump Committee

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U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, speaks to the media in March 2019 at the White House in Washington.

AP photo/Jacquelyn Martin

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The Republican congressman whose district includes Iroquois County still says he supports President Donald Trump, but the Trump campaign is giving him the cold shoulder.

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Channahon, was the only one of the five Republican congressmen from Illinois who was not named this week as an honorary co-chairman of the Trump re-election effort in 2020.

Kinzinger, who was born in Kankakee, has maintained a careful balancing act between backing the president and distancing himself from the president’s rhetoric.

A few days ago, he leveled some of his strongest criticism of the president after Trump quoted a pastor who suggested Trump’s removal from office could result in a civil war.

“I have visited nations ravaged by civil war,” Kinzinger tweeted. “I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”

In a story Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times said it learned Kinzinger’s “beyond repugnant” comment prompted the campaign’s decision.

According to the Sun-Times, Kinzinger shrugged off the campaign’s move, saying, “It’s fine.”

“I just don’t think it’s a decision probably the president made — probably his political operatives,” he said.

Kinzinger also is incurring the wrath of right-wing groups such as the Oath Keepers, a militia organization accused of supporting white supremacy.

Earlier this week, the Oath Keepers linked to a story about Kinzinger’s “beyond repugnant” quote.

“Trump’s real crime was winning the election. Period. All the rest is smoke and mirrors to justify reversing the election. And some in the GOP are in on it,” the group tweeted.

After the 2016 election, Kinzinger said he did not vote for Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton but would not say who received his support. Before the election, Kinzinger accused Trump of childish tweets and rhetoric.

Earlier this year, when Trump said four congresswomen of color should “go back” where they came from, Kinzinger took to social media to blast the president.

“What the President tweeted this weekend was wrong and does nothing but further divide us,” Kinzinger said.

In 2017, he condemned Trump for saying that “both sides” were to blame at a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Va., where a woman protesting white supremacy was killed by supremacists.

“In this moment, we need bravery, we need leadership, and we need a president who unites the people of this country,” Kinzinger said in a statement at the time. “Instead, with his remarks this week, President Donald Trump has furthered the divide and downplayed the morally repugnant hate on display this past weekend.”

A version of this story appeared in the Friday digital edition of the Daily Journal.

Above is from:  https://www.daily-journal.com/news/local/president-slights-kinzinger/article_60c73d72-e61a-11e9-91d7-83d1c94262a6.html