On today’s BradCast, we’ve got quite a bit of hard news, though we have to start off with a brief personal note. [Audio link to today’s show follows below.]
Among the stories covered today…
- My much-beloved hometown hockey team, the St. Louis Blues, are now Stanley Cup Champions for the first time in the franchise’s storied if oft-frustrating 52-year history! After going from last place in the NHL in January to win the Cup in Game 7 in Boston, it seems only fair I’m allowed a short, if long-overdue, victory lap on today’s program — along with a bumper music tribute to the team I grew up with throughout today’s show. (And no, Blues fans, it’s probably not the music you expect!);
- In somewhat more substantive, if less pleasant, matters (kicked off by a Daily Kos BradCast commenter who deserves credit for an appropriate invocation of the word “paracosm” today), life in the Conway household must be getting more bizarre by the day. On Thursday, the Trump-appointed head of the federal government watchdog Office of Special Counsel (not to be confused with Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office) recommended that Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers and apologists, be fired for “repeated violations” of the Hatch Act. The federal law bars federal officials from using their official offices for political purposes, yet Kellyanne repeatedly used hers to bash Democrats running for office while promoting Donald Trump and other Republicans. Scoffing at the watchdog’s recommendation, of course, the corrupt White House is all but certain to ignore the multiple violations of federal law by one of its top officials;
- Meanwhile, at the other end of Chez Conway, Kellyanne’s husband, longtime Republican attorney and activist George took to the pages of Washington Post to file a scorching op-ed with Barack Obama’s former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, slamming Trump’s latest legal appeal in the President’s attempt to block Congressional subpoenas for financial documents from his accounting firm Mazars. Conway and Katyal deride the President’s claims that Congress is Constitutionally barred from investigating criminal matters, and that only the Executive Branch may do so. “The idea that only the president can investigate the president is an argument for autocrats, not Americans,” the pair write, arguing that Trump’s legal argument seems to invite an official impeachment proceeding by Congress. “Every principle behind the rule of law requires the commencement of a process now to make this president a former one,” they conclude, in what must make for some very chilly dinner conversation at the Conway household;
- In not-at-all unrelated news, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, the only sitting Republican member of Congress to call for impeachment proceedings against Trump, continues to maintain is not planning a run for President on the Libertarian ticket, though he said he has not “ruled anything out”. He also lobbed back a pretty impressive response to an attempted Twitter shot by Donald Trump, Jr. (Of course, given the information-starved Trump supporters, it may be one they don’t even understand.) Earlier this week, Amash officially resigned from the hard-right “House Freedom Caucus” (formerly known as the “Tea Party Caucus”) which he had co-founded, having split with the group whose members have now become amongst the most virulent defenders and apologists for Trump in Congress. He also voted yesterday with Democrats in the House Oversight Committee to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross in contempt for defying a subpoena to turn over documents related to false Administration claims regarding the addition of a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census;
- Of course, the reason Amash is currently the only sitting GOPer to call for Trump’s impeachment is because he may be the only Republican in the House who actually bothered to read the Mueller Report, which details multiple instances of criminal obstruction by the President for Congress to consider for impeachment proceedings. This past week has brought some remarkably original excuses from GOP House members as to why they are willing to overlook and excuse multiple, well-documented federal crimes by the President, who Mueller found to have committed some of the very same unlawful actions for which articles of impeachment were brought against both Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. For example, Ohio Rep. Steve Chabot, who as a member of the Judiciary Committee in 1998 voted for impeachment against Clinton, now says Donald Trump never swore on a bible, so there’s nothing to impeach him for. Georgia Rep. Rob Woodall fell all over himself with some remarkable, false and contradictory statements while trying to explain why he proudly refuses to even read Mueller’s report at all! But while Republican members of Congress might be excused — under the world’s most generous interpretation possible — for being clueless when it comes to the Rule of Law, no such generosity can possibly excuse the jaw-dropping response to the Mueller Report’s findings from the state of Louisiana’s chief law enforcement officer, Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry;
- Finally today, stunning news out of Michigan, where the state’s recently appointed Solicitor General, tapped earlier this year by newly-elected Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel, announced that state prosecutors were dropping all criminal charges against eight people indicted in the Flint lead poisoning water crisis and starting the probe over from scratch after an expansive new body of evidence was reviewed. Prosecutors say they may recharge some of the previously indicted individuals, but that new evidence reveals former Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette’s three-year investigation failed to properly examine large swaths of material evidence, some of which is said to be tied to former Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. We try to make some sense of that news as we close out today’s show…and musical tribute to my favorite underdog hometown team…
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[audio:http://BradBlog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_STLBlues_ConwayHatchActOpEd_GOPTrumpExcuses_FlintBombshell_061319.mp3]
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