Andy Borowitz

Barr Denies Testifying Before 

Congress

By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Attorney General William Barr stirred controversy on Tuesday by categorically denying during his congressional testimony that he was testifying before Congress.
"I am not now nor have I ever testified before the House Judiciary Committee," Barr told the House Judiciary Committee. "Any suggestion to the contrary is a flat-out lie."
After the chairman of the committee, Representative Jerrold Nadler, claimed that he could see Barr sitting several feet away from him, Barr came out swinging.

"I am not going to respond to hypothetical questions about where I may or may not be sitting at any given moment," Barr retorted.

Barr's steadfast denial that he was testifying before Congress drew the ire of Nadler, who said that Barr's prevarication was unbecoming of the Attorney General of the United States.
Barr's response was swift and fierce. "I am not the Attorney General, and any assertion that I am is patently absurd," he said.
At the end of the hearing, one of Barr's fellow-Republicans on the committee, Representative Jim Jordan, apologized to Barr for the going-over he had received from Democrats.
"Given how badly you were treated today, I don't blame you one bit for not being here," Jordan said.

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Something to Know - 28 July

Lots of stuff going on right now.   I am listening/watching Bully Barr's appearance before the House of Representatives, and recording it for probabll viewing later.   I am reading HCR, and it captures the essence of what we should know.  The other interesting piece of sound byte was Trump being asked this morning (with the distant whine of chopper blades) if he was going to the Capitol building to pay his respects to John Lewis; "No",  And with that, he solidified his position that he is bound and determined to honor Confederate Generals and their blocks of rock, but not pay one whit of respect to a decent warrior of the Civil Rights of people of color.   The rest of my day is going with my wife out to home improvement sites (online and some real shops) to seek replacement outdoor light fixtures as we repaint our home and attend to upgrades and repairs - all of which takes my mind off of the disarray of governance in this country:

	July 27, 2020 Heather Cox Richardson Jul 28 Attorney General William Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow for the first time. Democrats tried to get him to appear to explain why he had misrepresented what was in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Report about Russia's interference in the 2016 election, but he refused to show up after learning that staff lawyers would be allowed to question him. Then coronavirus slowed down another meeting. Finally, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) threatened to subpoena him, and he agreed to come in voluntarily. But not happily. Tonight, he released a combative opening statement which begins by slamming "the grave abuses involved in the bogus 'Russiagate' scandal," despite the fact that, in December 2019, the Justice Department's own inspector general, Michael Horowitz, found that the investigation had been initiated properly and without political bias. The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has also unanimously supported the conclusion of the Intelligence Community that Russia attacked the 2016 election to benefit candidate Trump. The rest of Barr's opening statement similarly echoed Trump talking points. The Attorney General of the United States is, of course, not the president's lawyer. The AG is supposed to be the attorney for the United States, protecting the rule of law. (The office of the president has its own lawyer—the White House Counsel—and the president has his own bevy of personal lawyers.) Tomorrow, as Barr testifies, a new book about him by Norman Eisen, who served as special counsel to the Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings, will come out. It examines how Barr's misleading summary of Mueller's report derailed the public inquiry into the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, because no one wanted to believe the new Attorney General would "be willing to sacrifice his reputation for the sake of Trump. Now," Eisen said in an interview with Just Security, "over a year and many lies later, we know much better." Eisen says that Barr's summary made Americans think—incorrectly—that Mueller had exonerated Trump, when in fact, the opposite was the case. In a piece in Newsweek today, Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) expanded on this idea. He noted Barr's lies about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russia's interference in the 2016 election; his attempts to dismiss the charges against Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and lighten the sentence against Trump's friend Roger Stone; as well as his firing of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman… and concluded that Barr has simply taken the place of Michael Cohen as Trump's fixer. CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, who spent 8 years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote today that in Barr's 18 months as Attorney General, he "has done profound and pervasive damage to the Justice Department." He has undermined its credibility and independence. Honig outlined five issues where Barr has lied in public, including the quite transparent lie that Berman had resigned, which Berman himself promptly contradicted. Honig urges tomorrow's questioners to ask about them. It is unlikely that Barr will do more than obfuscate tomorrow. Because Senate Republicans will almost certainly never agree to convict Barr, impeaching him is a stretch, especially since Republicans will instantly insist that it is an election-year ploy. It could well backfire. But there is no doubt that Barr's behavior is problematic. Today conservative commentator Tom Nichols noted that Barr has emerged as the de facto leader of the Executive Branch, since Trump is "functionally incapacitated." It is, Nichols says "a total collapse of constitutional order within the Executive branch" as Barr is using federal law enforcement officers against U.S. citizens. Nichols urges courts, state attorneys general, and state authorities to step into Barr's way. Nichols is an advisor to The Lincoln Project, which is hammering on Trump's mental incapacity to perform the duties of the president. It must be acknowledged that Trump is giving them plenty to work with. Today the New York Times reported on Trump's announcement that he would be throwing out the first pitch to the New York Yankees on August 15 at Yankee Stadium, an announcement Trump made just an hour before Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been advising Trump on the pandemic, threw out the first pitch at the opening game between the Yankees and the Washington Nationals. Seone in the White House leaked that Trump had not been invited to do any such thing, but had made up the event because he was annoyed that Fauci was getting more attention than he was. Then, of course, Trump cancelled the made-up plan with a racist tweet. "Because of my strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else, I won't be able to be in New York to throw out the opening pitch for the [Yankees] on August 15. We will make it later in the season!" It is fair to say that this is not normal behavior for a president. In tweets today, a day in which coronavirus deaths passed the number of Union Army soldiers killed on battlefields during the Civil War, Trump outlined his plan for reelection. He will try to convince voters to forget about his botching of the pandemic response by insisting that Democrats will usher in an apocalypse. "The Fake News Media is trying to portray the Portland and Seattle "protesters" as wonderful, sweet and innocent people just out for a little stroll," he said. "Actually, they are sick and deranged Anarchists & Agitators who our great men & women of Law Enforcement easily control, but who... would destroy our American cities, and worse, if Sleepy Joe Biden, the puppet of the Left, ever won. Markets would crash and cities would burn. Our Country would suffer like never before. We will beat the Virus, soon, and go on to the Golden Age - better than ever before! It's an aggressive argument, since of course markets have actually crashed and cities "burned" on his watch, and our country is suffering as never before with an unaddressed pandemic. The argument that the best way to overcome our current trouble is to trust him with another four years is going to be a hard sell, especially since a report released today in The Guardian notes that a new database of 893 politically motivated terrorist incidents in America since 1994 shows that just one attack that led to a death came from an anti-fascist agitator. In that incident, the single person killed was the perpetrator. In the same period, white supremacists and rightwing extremists have killed at least 329 people. Once again, the Republican narrative is running into reality. But in this case, Trump has the advantage of having his man at the head of the Department of Justice. There was, in Barr's opening statement, a line that jumped out. He wrote that what is happening in Portland, Oregon, where protesters have vandalized a federal courthouse, "is, by any objective measure, an assault on the Government of the United States." No, it is not. The interference of a foreign country in our elections is an assault on the government of the United States. Undermining the rule of law is an assault on the government of the United States. Vandalizing a courthouse does not threaten our nation. It is vandalism that should result in arrests by local police officers, as it has. That the Attorney General is characterizing local vandalism as an assault on our national government is worrisome. It suggests that, less than four months before an election, he intends to keep sending into Democratic cities federal officers who are loyal to him and his president. And if it happens, that will be an assault on the government of the United States, for sure. —- Notes: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785213175/read-doj-inspector-generals-report-on-the-russia-investigation https://www.newsweek.com/bill-barr-michael-cohen-fixer-cronyism-1520607 https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/opinions/attorney-general-barr-crossexam-honig/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/27/politics/attorney-general-william-barr-opening-statement-for-house-hearing/index.html Nichols: Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom What's happening right now - Portland, outing of an FBI source, empowering of DHS as an Interior Ministry - are all the result of the United States operating without an actual president, and the emergence of Bill Barr as the de fact head of the Executive Branch. /1 July 27th 2020 9,084 Retweets28,093 Likes https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/27/barr-faces-democratic-barrage-382916 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/politics/trump-yankees-fauci.html https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-19-has-killed-more-americans-rebels-did-during-civil-n1234988 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jihadist-plots-used-be-u-s-europe-s-biggest-terrorist-n1234840 https://www.justsecurity.org/71714/hes-lying-new-book-reveals-havoc-bill-barr-wreaked-inside-congress/ Share

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Something to Know - 27 July

HCR traces the GOP, through the decades since WWII and how it has evolved into the mess that it is in now.   Trump has presented the final insult to the New Deal, and it wrapped up in in this package .   Then we pivot to the article below from Charles Blow, which may define his behavior as we round the club house turn to the election.

Trump's Nakedly Political Pandemic Pivot

This is how the president operates when he is desperate and in trouble.

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

After mocking people for wearing masks, refusing to publicly wear one himself and holding rallies and gatherings where social distancing was not required, President Trump has shifted his tone.
He has canceled his convention activities in Jacksonville, Fla., after moving the events from North Carolina when that state's governor raised public health concerns about such a large indoor gathering.
He has resumed briefings, ostensibly about the coronavirus, after canceling them and trying to move on to other matters, as if the virus would simply vanish if he sufficiently ignored it.
Trump is in real trouble. With the election passing the 100-day-away milestone, he is down in the polls, people don't trust or approve of his handling of the pandemic and he faces a real uphill battle to re-election.


Apparently, the reality of his dire straits has begun to pierce his inner circle of perpetual affirmation. There is a reality lurking that can't be lied away. If the election were held today, he wouldn't win.
But Trump is a political chameleon: He can alter himself to suit his environment, to reflect it. He may not be fond of apologies, but he is open to course reversal, for survival.
Indeed, that is the maleficent marvel of it all: He has changed his position to the opposite of what it once was and argued that the new direction is the one he's always embraced. Only a person with an utter contempt for the truth could repeatedly take this tact.
We need look no further than 2016 to see how Trump operates when he is desperate and in trouble, trying to woo the votes he needs, and how hollow and nakedly political his efforts can be.
In 2016, after calling Mexican immigrants drug dealers and rapists and promising to build a wall between the United States and Mexico — one that he would somehow force the Mexican government to finance — he posed with taco bowls on Cinco De Mayo and wrote on Twitter: "I love Hispanics!"


He got over a quarter of the Hispanic vote, yet once elected, he continued to demonize immigrants and tried to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants known as "Dreamers."
His administration's negligence and lack of preparedness in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria undoubtedly led to more deaths than there would have been under a competent president.
And the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, under which thousands of migrant children, sometimes infants, were taken from their parents, flourished.
In 2016, when the "Access Hollywood" tape on which Trump is heard bragging about sexually assaulting women was made public, he issued a rare half-apology, saying, "I've said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more than a decade-old video are one of them." He would later deem his assault claims "locker room talk."
But shortly after winning the election he started suggesting that the voice on the tape wasn't his, and after his inauguration, according to The New York Times, he told a Republican senator that "he wanted to investigate the recording that had him boasting about grabbing women's genitals."

In 2016, Trump finally admitted that Barack Obama was born in the United States. It is important to note that he didn't in fact apologize for years of racist birtherism during which he insisted otherwise. Instead, he once again attempted to shift blame, saying: "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean."
But after Trump was elected he revived his questioning of Obama's place of birth and the authenticity of his birth certificate.


Trump is an incendiary figure. He uses fear and division as his devices. He believes they work … until they don't. When forced — by shifts in sentiment by his core supporters, or those on the margins he needs, or in the face of possible loss and defeat — he will say and do whatever it takes to get back in the good.
But none of the change is ever real. This man doesn't evolve. He doesn't grow. He doesn't grow up.
He is stuck and stunted. He is a creature of instinct and that instinct is base and animalistic, survival-centered, without core conviction of a prevailing character.
The way Trump handled — and failed to handle —  the pandemic in its early months no doubt led to the deaths of people who should not have died. He was thinking of himself, his political prospects, and nothing else.
American lives were collateral damage.
Now, his calculus has finally shifted: It's hurting him more to ignore the virus than to engage it. So he has done a 180 and now wants to pretend to be in charge, mature and not completely dismissive of the science that could save us.
But even now, this is not about the American people but about politics. Should he prevail in November, the true Trump will no doubt re-emerge.

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Hurricane Hanna Toples Trump's Wall

More bad news for Cadet Bone Spurs; his wall is breaking down along the border:

https://popculture.com/trending/news/hurricane-hanna-reportedly-knocking-down-donald-trump-wall-praising-mother-nature/     (Check the enclosed video)

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Andy Borowitz

Obama Passes Cognitive Test by 

Reciting the First Fifty Digits of Pi

By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Barack Obama recently passed a cognitive test that required him to recite the first fifty digits of pi, the former President has disclosed.
Obama took the test voluntarily, he said, in order to reassure his employers at Netflix that he was "of sound mind."
"Netflix has made a big investment in me as a producer, and I thought it was important for them to know that I was all right upstairs," Obama said.

The former President said that he enjoyed taking the test, including a section that required him to memorize and then recite a hundred verses of the Iliad.

"That was actually a lot of fun," Obama said. "Greek is such a beautiful language."
Although he passed the test, Obama said that there were moments when he felt "rusty" and "not as sharp as I was back in the day."
"I definitely need to do some more mental exercises," he said. "One hour of three-dimensional chess with Bill Gates every morning isn't getting it done."

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Andy Borowitz

Trump to Throw Out First Amendment 

at Yankee Stadium

By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In an event that he described as "historic," Donald J. Trump announced that he will throw out the First Amendment at Yankee Stadium next month.
"It's going to be an amazing and fantastic thing I'll be doing," Trump said. "I've asked a lot of history experts, and they all say that no President has thrown out an amendment before."
"Obama was President for eight years and never threw out an amendment," he said. "What a loser."

Trump said that he had considered throwing out the First Amendment "many, many times before" but had ultimately decided to preserve freedom of the press for his friends at Fox News.

"But, thanks to that beauty Chris Wallace, now I know that Fox is just as nasty and fake as the rest," he said. "The only real journalist left is that nice lady at OAN."
When asked how he is preparing for his Yankee Stadium appearance, Trump said that he is consulting with other world leaders who are experienced in throwing out laws.
"I had a terrific conversation with Vladimir Putin," Trump said. "They don't have a First Amendment in Russia, but he said that, if they did, he would definitely throw it out. So that made me feel good."
Trump grew misty-eyed as he contemplated his upcoming visit to Yankee Stadium.
"I can't believe I'll be throwing out the First Amendment," he said. "Every little boy dreams of this."

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Something to Know - 26 July

A history lesson from a professor; one year's worth of events into one easy read.  Care enough about the health of everyone, and with perseverance and a lot of hard work, we will have better days.

	July 25, 2020 Heather Cox Richardson Jul 26 A year ago today, Trump had a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and promised to deliver the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine's protection against Russian military incursions. Then he added: "I would like you to do us a favor, though...." While Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was on the call, told his superiors what he had heard, someone else filed a whistleblower complaint. That complaint went to Trump's own appointee at the Intelligence Community's Inspector General's office, Michael Atkinson. Atkinson agreed that the matter was both "credible" and "urgent" and that House and Senate Intelligence Committees must be informed, as required by law. Atkinson followed the law, passing the information to the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on August 26. Maguire had only taken office ten days before, on August 16, after Trump's first DNI, Dan Coats, and Coates's second-in-command, Sue Gordon, both resigned. As an acting director, rather than a Senate-confirmed leader, Maguire served at the pleasure of the president. Maguire was supposed to scour the whistleblower complaint of all classified information before forwarding to Congress by September 2, as the law required. But, instead, Maguire took the complaint to the Department of Justice, headed by Trump loyalist Attorney General William Barr. On his advice, Maguire decided not to turn over the information to Congress. When that happened, Atkinson told the relevant congresspeople that the DNI was illegally withholding the complaint. On September 10, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded that acting DNI Maguire produce it. Maguire refused, saying that the complaint was about someone not in the Intelligence Community, and therefore not covered by the whistleblower law. (The law does not give him the authority to refuse to deliver a complaint his IG considers credible and urgent. It says he MUST deliver it.) On Friday, September 13, Schiff wrote a scathing letter to Maguire that brought this whole issue to public attention, noting that it sure seemed like Maguire might be protecting the president, and demanding Maguire follow the law and hand over the whistleblower complaint. I happened to be scrolling through Twitter when Schiff's letter dropped, and I recognized it for what it was: a powerful member of Congress accusing a specific member of the Executive Branch of breaking a specific law... the sort of moment on which American history turns. And that, my friends, is how these Letters began. Since then, the House impeached Trump but the Senate exonerated him; Vindman is gone; Atkinson is gone; Maguire is gone. But as Trump has increasingly consolidated his power, Americans have woken up and taken to heart that democracy is not a spectator sport. It has been a year by the calendar, but an eternity in the history of this nation. Still, for all that I yearn for a time when we can go for days without worrying about what's going on in the White House, I am profoundly grateful to have discovered so many other people who care as deeply as I do about this country. There is plenty of news today, but none of it breaking, so I am going to let it go for a night. See you all tomorrow. Thanks for subscribing to Letters from an American. This post is public, so feel free to share it. Share © 2020 Heather Cox Ri

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Something to Know - 25 July

HCR has both real news and real news about fake news.   The real news is that the Republicans in the Senate have not been able to agree amongst themselves on a giant stimulus bill to dovetail with the expiring stimulus bill.   Millions of people will stop receiving financial assistance that was designed to carry them through the economic effects of the Covid-19 lockdowns and business closures.   At the same time, the moratorium on evictions is expiring, and the Republicans cannot stomach providing assistance to people who are unemployed and are about to get kicked out of the house.   The Real News about the Fake News is that the trump administration has nothing left in their political tool bag with 100 days left to go before the election, and distracting and digging up conspiracies and allowing Russian operatives to alter the information that voters get to make informed decisions.  It's a mess, and the little green men in Bully Barr's Army keep at it.  Meanwhile, Covid-19 is spreading, and the failing leader is only offering hope that it will disappear some day.

July 24, 2020 Heather Cox Richardson Jul 25 There are two big stories today. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell admitted today that Senate Republicans and the White House will not come up with a plan to shore up the economy for "a few weeks." This is a huge problem, because enhanced unemployment benefits end in the next few days. At the same time, a four-month federal moratorium on rent collection and evictions is expiring. The coronavirus bill that Congress passed in March attached an extra $600 weekly federal payment to state unemployment benefits. Those state benefits usually cover only about 45% of a worker's wage. The extra federal money was designed to make up some of the difference between state unemployment benefits and people's actual needs in the short term (the money is taxable, so some of it will have to be given back next April). There are different plans for extending this boost, but some Republicans worry that the extra money is more than people can make working, and it will discourage them from seeking work, although the coronavirus is making work hard to find. With mounting closures after the new spike in coronavirus cases, there were 1.4 million new unemployment claims last week. Republicans in the Senate rejected the Democrats' stimulus bill, passed by the House of Representatives in May, but in two months have not been able to agree on a way forward. Now McConnell says he hopes they'll have a deal in a few weeks. This timing is strikingly poor. The end to federal unemployment support hits just as the moratorium on evictions, also passed in March, ends. That moratorium meant renters could not be evicted for inability to pay their rent, but the rent continued to accumulate. Now, the moratorium is ending. There are 110 million Americans living in rented apartments, and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project estimates that between 19 and 23 million of them risk eviction before September. The most vulnerable households are low-income and people of color, and eviction will, of course, cause extraordinary hardship. But there is another brutal calculation in this catastrophic timing: evicted adults will be far less likely to vote. The upcoming election—100 days away-- was in another story more directly today, too. William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, issued a statement warning that foreign countries are trying to hack U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets, as well as to "compromise our election infrastructure." Evanina also warned that "foreign nations continue to use influence measures in social and traditional media in an effort to sway U.S. voters' preferences and perspectives, to shift U.S. policies, to increase discord and to undermine confidence in our democratic process." He said that the DNI is "primarily concerned with China, Russia, and Iran." This prompted an outraged response from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA). These four are the Democrats on the Gang of Eight, the eight congressional leaders who must be briefed on classified intelligence. They claimed Evanina's statement falsely placed China, Iran, and Russia on the same level, while in fact Russia remains by far our biggest threat. There is a recent backstory to today's fight. On Monday, July 20, the four Democrats released a letter they had written to FBI Director Chris Wray on July 13, asking him to deliver a briefing to all of Congress, not just to the Gang of Eight, on "specific" intelligence about a foreign operation. "We are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November," the letter read. They were apparently referring to investigations led by Ron Johnson (R-WI) chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. One investigation is digging into Hunter Biden's connections to the Ukrainian company Burisma. (Ukrainian prosecutors have cleared Biden of any wrongdoing in his connections with the company.) The other is looking into how the Obama administration handled the investigation of Trump advisor Michael Flynn in 2016-2017. (Flynn twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about lifting sanctions during that time.) These, of course, are investigations Trump has desperately wanted. Indeed, he pressured Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Biden and Burisma by withholding money Ukraine badly needed to fight off Russian incursions. After the impeachment trial over that scandal, Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani traveled around Ukraine digging up "witnesses" willing to testify to Biden's alleged misdeeds, witnesses now informing the Senate committee. These investigations are not intended to uncover wrongdoing—the evidence is overwhelming there was none—they are about manipulating our political narrative. They are designed to plant the idea among voters that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is corrupt—a scheme that worked brilliantly in 2016, as repeated investigations of Hillary Clinton's emails undercut her campaign. But, as Russia expert Fiona Hill warned in her testimony before Congress this spring, the "evidence" in these investigations is disinformation coming directly from Russian intelligence agents who want to destabilize the U.S. The Gang of Eight is sworn to secrecy, so Pelosi, Schumer, Schiff, and Warner cannot say exactly what they have learned from intelligence reports. But they said enough: "Almost exactly four years ago, we first observed the Russians engaging in covert actions designed to influence the presidential race in favor of Donald Trump and to sow discord in the United States. Now, the Russians are once again trying to influence the election and divide Americans, and these efforts must be deterred, disrupted and exposed." "The statement just released by NCSC Director William Evanina does not go nearly far enough in arming the American people with the knowledge they need about how foreign powers are seeking to influence our political process. The statement gives a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation and capability together. The statement, moreover, fails to fully delineate the goal, nature, scope and capacity to influence our election, information the American people must have as we go into November." The Democrats want the full Congress briefed, they say, "But a far more concrete and specific statement needs to be made to the American people, consistent with the need to protect sources and methods. We can trust the American people with knowing what to do with the information they receive and making those decisions for themselves. But they cannot do so if they are kept in the dark about what our adversaries are doing, and how they are doing it." Amen. But I'm not holding my breath. The Director of National Intelligence overseeing all this is John Ratcliffe, a key Trump ally, formerly a congressman from Texas. He has been in the job only since May 26, and before he became DNI, he made it clear he does not believe that Russia is attacking our electoral system. Johnson is promising to release his reports at the end of the summer, just in time for the election. —- Notes: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/20-million-renters-are-at-risk-of-eviction/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/24/unemployment-benefits-congress-coronavirus/#comments-wrapper taxable: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/how-to-avoid-a-huge-tax-hit-from-your-coronavirus-unemployment-benefit.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/23/another-14-million-workers-filed-unemployment-benefits-last-week-pandemic-continues-weigh-labor-market/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/24/faq-federal-eviction-moratorium/ https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/2135-statement-by-ncsc-director-william-evanina-100-days-until-election-2020 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/20/democrats-fbi-briefing-foreign-interference-campaign-373134 https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/72420-1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/opinion/michael-flynn-charges-dropped.html https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/16/joe-biden-advisers-burisma-subpoenas-366358 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/24/counterintelligence-chief-foreign-threats-election-381214 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/20/democrats-fbi-briefing-foreign-interference-campaign-373134 Ryan Goodman @rgoodlaw <thread> Why this photo is such a big deal. Politico: Ukraine pol allegedly sent Kremlin-backed disinformation on Biden to Senators. Sen. Ron Johnson's spokesperson says Johnson "never received nor would we ever collect information from this individual or individuals like him." July 24th 2020 2,618 Retweets4,617 Likes Share

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Juan

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.