90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Impressive! Trump judicial confirmation bonanza in full swing

The Senate is processing President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees at an impressive clip.

This week is perhaps the high-water mark of the GOP’s judicial confirmation operation, an aggressive effort to pack the federal bench with young conservative jurists. Four confirmations to federal appeals courts are expected by Friday, while the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes to clear or vet yet more appointees.

The confirmation bonanza resulted from a concerted push from conservative groups, including The Heritage Foundation and the Judicial Confirmation Network, to quicken the pace of confirmations, fearing Senate Republicans would squander the opportunity to confirm federal judges as the GOP struggles to navigate the mire of its own internal divisions.

Among this week’s confirmations was Michigan Supreme Court Justice Joan Larsen, confirmed Wednesday afternoon to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Cincinnati-based federal appeals court. Like many other Trump nominees, Larsen is a well-credentialed, Federalist Society-aligned jurist who is likely to serve for decades on the federal bench.

Larsen’s confirmation was the second of the week. Notre Dame Law School Professor Amy Coney Barrett, who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, was confirmed Tuesday to the 7th Circuit, the Chicago-based federal appeals court. Few Democrats backed her confirmation, which devolved into an ugly fight over the Constitution’s ban on religious tests, after members of the Judiciary Committee aggressively questioned Barrett about how her Catholicism would bear on the discharge of her judicial duties. Barrett has produced scholarship concerning the ethical obligations of Catholic practitioners, and spoken about practicing her faith in a professional context in related public statements.

Two more confirmations are expected to follow by week’s end. The Senate closed debate Wednesday on Colorado Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid’s nomination to the 10th Circuit, the Denver-based appeals court. A vote on her nomination is expected Thursday, while University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Stephanos Bibas’s nomination to the 3rd Circuit, the Philadelphia-based appeals court, will likely come late Friday.

Larsen and Eid appeared on President Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees during the 2016 presidential election. Court-watchers regard both as...

Dear GOP...

Implement President Trumps Agenda.
Approve His Judicial Appointments.
Approve His Cabinet Picks.
Do This Or We Will Make Sure You Retire.

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WATCH: Hannity Breaks Down Why Mueller's Investigation Is Compromised And Must End

On Wednesday, Fox News host Sean Hannity broke down why special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian officials is compromised and must end immediately.

Among the reasons he said the investigation has been compromised, Hannity cited Mueller's role in the the Uranium One deal, which Mueller allowed to go through despite allegedly having evidence that corruption was taking place from Russian nuclear officials involved in a bribery scheme.

"You can't ignore the fact that Mueller is best buddies with the disgraced former FBI director James Comey, who by the way, in the end, could end up being a key witness in this investigation," Hannity said. "That could be a violation of two federal laws and it's also a massive conflict of interest."

Hannity listed donations that Mueller’s team has given to Democrats as another reason the investigation is compromised.

The host also argued that because Mueller was interviewed for the FBI director job by President Trump right before he was named special counsel he should never have been appointed because he didn't get the job.

WATCH:

Authored by Donna Brazille, former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, originally published in Politico.

* * *

"When I was asked to run the Democratic Party after the Russians hacked our emails, I stumbled onto a shocking truth about the Clinton campaign."

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC

Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.

So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.

Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.

By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.

***

The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.

“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”

That wasn’t true, he said. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post broke the news.

On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.

“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”

“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearing house. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the thirty-two states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”

“What’s the burn rate, Gary?” I asked. “How much money do we need every month to fund the party?”

The burn rate was $3.5 million to $4 million a month, he said.

I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of...