Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III didn’t just disclaim any meeting with Russia once while delivering testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he did it twice. First there was the direct question by Senator Al Franken (D-MN):
Franken: "If there was any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what would you do?”
Sessions: "I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians. Uh. And I’m unable to comment."
Note that Franken doesn’t ask if Sessions himself had been in contact. Sessions volunteers this information. Almost as if he’s … nervous. Also note that Sessions never really answers the question which Franken asks.
Then there was also a written question from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
Leahy: Several of the President-elect's nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?"
SESSIONS: No.
That’s an extremely unequivocal answer, especially considering that Jefferson Sessions was not just a Trump surrogate he was “chairman of the campaign's National Security Advisory Committee” at the time he met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
In the short month-plus that Donald Trump has been president, he has consistently proven to be one of the least prepared, least knowledgable, least responsible presidents we’ve ever seen. But nowhere has his lack of fitness for office been more glaring than in his unconscionable effort to shirk responsibility for the Yemen raid that, among other failures, left Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens dead. On Monday, press secretary Sean Spicer breathlessly assured reporters the operation was a “huge success” followed by Trump’s Tuesday morning declaration that his generals “lost Ryan.”
But after pinning Owens’ death on his generals earlier in the day, Trump proceeded to lavish the Navy SEAL with praise as his widow looked on during Trump’s address to Congress that evening. It was easily the rawest moment of Trump’s hour-long speech. Carryn Owens literally broke down in tears after Trump declared, “Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero—battling against terrorism and securing our nation. [...] Ryan's legacy is etched into eternity.”
But when the sun rose on a new day, it became clear that our supposed “commander in chief” still doesn’t want to take responsibility for the raid that proceeded on his watch—the first major military operation of his pr*sidency. Spicer, who tagged President Obama with the failure last month, did so once again during Wednesday’s off-camera briefing.
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Spicer stressed today that Yemen raid was signed off by the previous administration -- green-lighted "in writing, with a signature." https://t.co/6dzbJRz5TR
Trump wants all the glory, with none of the accountability. He gets to roll out the wife of a fallen soldier one night then have his press secretary deny his culpability for her loss the next day. What kind of a human being would do something so brazen, so callous, so completely lacking in integrity? Cowardice doesn’t quite capture the sheer depravity of it all.
This is our supposed “commander” in chief—one who refuses to take responsibility for his commands.
Paul Ryan, taking a page from Trump on authoritarian rule.
Paul Ryan, taking a page from Trump on authoritarian rule.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has another Obamacare repeal proposal up his sleeve that he's going to try to ram through the House in the next three weeks. That's despite the fact that right now he's keeping it a big secret from Democrats—and his fellow Republican maniacs—and that there isn't legislative language yet to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office. For the moment, he's keeping it all under wraps.
The document is being treated a bit like a top-secret surveillance intercept. It is expected to be available to members and staffers on the House Energy and Commerce panel starting Thursday, but only in a dedicated reading room, one Republican lawmaker and a committee aide said. Nobody will be given copies to take with them. […]
Republican leaders are trying to avoid a repeat of what happened last time. When an outdated draft leaked last week, it was quickly panned by conservatives. [NB: it wasn't declared an outdated draft until after conservatives panned it.]
"The draft of it is going to be available tomorrow for those of us on the health subcommittee to start poring through," said Representative Chris Collins of New York, a Trump ally and member of the health subcommittee of Energy and Commerce. "Unfortunately for you, we're making sure it won't be leaked."
"We're not having a hearing or anything," added Gus Bilirakis of Florida, another panel member. "But there'll be a place for us to view it, the draft."
On Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said the bill is being handled under normal legislative procedures.
"We're not hatching some bill in a backroom and plopping it on the American people's front door," he said on NBC's "Today" show.
But hatching it in a back room and then plopping it out is exactly what leadership is doing. They're keeping it under lock and key, and they're not having hearings on it, and apparently it's just available to the health subcommittee members right now? Sorry, Mr. Ryan, that is far from normal legislative procedure.
Under oath, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Sen. Al Franken had this remarkable exchange:
At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committeeconfirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.
“I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded. He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”
You can watch a video of the exchange below.
Sen. Franken didn’t even ask if Sessions himself had contact with the Russians, but Sessions appeared to stumble and offer up that information. All under oath. He also lied to Sen. Patrick Leahy:
In January, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Sessions for answers to written questions. “Several of the President-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties. Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?” Leahy wrote.
Sessions responded with one word: “No.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this ends in resignation. There is no other reasonable outcome. Sessions will be lucky if it doesn’t result in jail time too. And it is time to once again start asking: what did Donald Trump know and when did he know it? It’s so curious that all these people around him have had so many contacts with Russian officials.
Democrats are calling for Jeff Sessions to resign as attorney general after learning that he lied, during his confirmation hearing, about contact with Russian officials during the campaign. But while Republicans are predictably too partisan to go that far, some Republicans are beginning to call for the weak tea half-measure of Sessions recusing himself into investigations of contact between the Trump campaign and Russia. For his part, Sessions is dodging: he told NBC News exactly what he’d said earlier in the week. “I have said whenever it's appropriate, I will recuse myself. There's no doubt about that.” But no word from Sessions on whether he considers himself having lied about whether he met with the Russian ambassador as making it “appropriate” to recuse himself.
Sen. Lindsey Graham has been pressing for more serious investigation into Trump-Russia ties, so it’s not a huge surprise that he’s one of the first Republicans to suggest that there might be an issue with Sessions being in charge of such an investigation—and that a special prosecutor might be needed. Other Republicans are starting to join Graham on recusal, if not a special prosecutor:
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AG Sessions should clarify his testimony and recuse himself
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy also said Sessions should recuse himself, because “I just think for any investigation going forward, it would be easier.”
It’s progress to hear this from Republicans, but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. This situation demands a special prosecutor—the step Lindsey Graham suggested—but it also demands Jeff Sessions’ resignation.
McCarthy is walking it back: he now says “I’m not calling on him to recuse himself,” shortly after saying “I think, the trust of the American people, you recuse yourself in these situations.”
The immediate go-to excuse for why Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was getting chummy with Russian ambassador and frequent texting-pal of Michael Flynn, Sergey Kislyak, is that Sessions was just doing his job.
This is the latest attack against the Trump administration by partisan Democrats. General Sessions met the ambassador in an official capacity as a member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, which is entirely consistent with his testimony.
Breaking: NBC can't find even one other Senate Armed Services Committee member who spoke w/ Russian Ambassador even once; 20 of 20 say no.
Out of all the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sessions is the only one who met with the Russian ambassador “in an official capacity.” So … why? What could Sessions have to say to Russia as a member of the committee that he didn’t feel compelled to share with any other member of the committee? What made him so special?
Sessions wasn’t just a senator, he and Bannon were principal architects of the Trump campaign, and his encounter with the Russian ambassador wasn’t business as usual.
One of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that took place in September in the senator’s office, at the height of what U.S. intelligence officials say was a Russian cyber campaign to upend the U.S. presidential race.
Sessions is now reduced to making weasel-worded statements about the nature of his definitely not typical conversation.
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●VA Redistricting, VA State House: On Wednesday, the United States Supreme Court ruled for plaintiffs who had argued that 12 of Virginia's Republican-drawn state House of Delegates districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. The high court overturned a previous district court ruling that had found Virginia did not impermissibly use race. They remanded the case back to the district court for reconsideration using a different legal standard that makes it much more likely that many of these challenged districts could ultimately be invalidated.
Republican legislators admitted to using a hard population threshold of 55 percent African American when they redrew state House districts that already had a black majority. This was done without consideration as to whether that proportion was actually necessary to elect black voters' representatives of choice under the Voting Rights Act. In most cases, the needed proportion was likely below that number. By packing black voters into a few heavily black districts, legislators made it harder for black voters to elect their preferred candidates in neighboring seats.
However, the district court ruled that because legislators' map didn't flagrantly override other traditional redistricting criteria like compactness, it wasn't immediately obvious that race "predominated" the decision-making process. Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling faulted the district court for using the wrong legal standard, holding that plaintiffs in racial gerrymandering cases like this one did not need to prove that the state had violated traditional redistricting criteria for the use of race to be impermissible.
This distinction is important because not all gerrymanders have odd shapes, and it's often far easier for plaintiffs to prove that a map has a racially discriminatory impact than to show that those drawing it acted with discriminatory intent. The case will now go back to the district court, where plaintiffs won't have to meet the much higher burden of proving that legislators subordinated other criteria to race.
This get out of jail free card will protect us. Right, Jeff?
This get out of jail free card will protect us. Right, Jeff?
Donald Trump must have thought he was home free. He had his people in control of the Justice Department, Republicans in House and Senate were content to make a token “investigation” of Trump’s Russia connections for appearances sake, and the media could be instantly distracted with the tiniest crumb. Look! A speech!
In the Obama administration’s last days, some White House officials scrambled to spread information about Russian efforts to undermine the presidential election — and about possible contacts between associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Russians — across the government. Former American officials say they had two aims: to ensure that such meddling isn’t duplicated in future American or European elections, and to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators.
The last days of the Obama administration resemble the final moments of Pompeii. Throughout the executive branch, officials hurried to gather up information and store it away against the towering threat of deliberate ignorance glowering on the horizon. Scientists frantically copied climate data while other officials worked to save democracy itself. The information they smuggled out before the ash rained down shows that the connections between the Trump team and Russia were even more numerous than expected.
American allies, including the British and the Dutch, had provided information describing meetings in European cities between Russian officials — and others close to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — and associates of President-elect Trump, according to three former American officials who requested anonymity in discussing classified intelligence.
In addition to the statements of allies, American intelligence assets caught conversations of Russian officials bragging about their connections with Trump.
That information is closing in around Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
The Kagro in the Morning show is growing by leaps & bounds! Probably because more and more of you are finding that some morning political chatter among friends is the only way to face the day.
Give it a try and see if it doesn’t make your day a little easier to take. And if you’re already sold on it, well, our Patreon account is a great way to let us know! (And let us eat!)
Say, how about a free listen to our most recent show, just to seal the deal?
Just a quick reminder that the doors to the Netroots Nationconvention open in 161 days. This year---hallelujah---we're headin' to the deep south August 10-13 to plan, regroup, network and party in Atlanta. In fact, an independent estimate by the Independent Estimate Institute confirms that 90 percent of the nation's problems will be solved by the crazy lefty attendees. Nate Silver pegs it at 89.9 percent but WTF does he know?
Gonna be a great convention this year.
In the meantime, the only thing standing in the path of liberal world domination is an agenda, and that's where you come in. NN17 is now soliciting ideas for panels, speakers, training sessions and film screenings. The goddess Mary Rickles has the details...
As always, our goal is to highlight the great work being done by activists and organizations around the country, from national campaigns to local grassroots organizing, as well as to shine a light on what’s happening locally in Atlanta and the surrounding areas.
You can submit on any topic, but here are a few things we’re looking to emphasize this year:
Panels highlighting resistance efforts both nationally and locally
Discussions that challenge us to think long-term about the movement and building grassroots power
Trainings that help new activists grow into successful organizers
Advanced trainings that focus on cutting-edge tools and techniques
We ask you to consider inclusivity as well as how your panel will empower others to take what they've heard and use it in their own work. Intersectionality is key. By submitting a proposal, you're taking responsibility as the organizer of the session. We’ll help you along the way, but ultimately it’ll be your baby.
Submissions first go through selection committees, which include peers from around the movement. Once the submission period is closed, we all get to vote on the sessions we like best.
And to answer your next question, YES! There will be a Daily Kos kickoff party on Wednesday, August 9th. Navajo is still workin' on the details, but if you want to be added to the attendee list, send her a kosmail at this link.
Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
The self-contradicting shopping list of a speech that The Donald delivered to Congress Tuesday would normally be the subject of media analysis for weeks at least. But this one only deserves smackdowns and move-ons. You can’t trust the man’s “facts” and you can’t trust his promises. It’s not that Trump won’t do some of what he says he’ll do (or try to at least). It’s just that, given his penchant for shameless lying, no way can we know for sure which things he has vowed to do he really plans to carry out and which things are just crowd-distracting bullshit, bluster and misdirection, the tossing of verbal chaff to shine on both his base and substantial hunks of the media.
Under the circumstances, a veteran Congresswoman has a good reminder:
In accepting his party’s nomination to seek the vice presidency, Ryan delivered a speechriddled with easily checked falsehoods and exaggerations. At a moment when reporters were scrutinizing him more closely than ever before, finding questionable assertions and padded resume lines, Ryan needed to play his convention speech unusually straight. Instead, among other things, he blamed President Barack Obama for the shuttering of a GM plant in his district that shut down before Obama took office, and for the failure of a fiscal policy commission that Ryan personally sabotaged.
Obviously the damage Ryan did to himself with his most powerful fanbase wasn’t permanent. It didn’t even last very long. But at least the political press corps took notice, and said something.
President Donald Trump has discovered, perhaps unwittingly, how to hack the Ryan problem. Where Ryan has built himself up as an honest, poised man of substance, Trump not only has never pretended to these particular virtues, he has delighted in demonstrating their political uselessness.
