The New York Times (3/5) published a detailed account of what led two prosecutors involved with the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business practices to abruptly resign last month—a “seismic development” that some experts had called “troubling.”
The probe was launched under the former district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., who did not seek reelection. When prosecutors Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz resigned, the newspaper reported that it was because the new DA, Alvin Bragg, had concerns about moving forward with the case, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (3/6).
Following up on their initial reporting, a trio at the Times provided an “account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events,” which “pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in US history,” given that Trump would be the first president to be criminally charged.
Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum, and Jonah E. Bromwich laid out major developments in the probe from Vance’s final days to the resignations—including a Dec. 9 meeting of the former DA’s “brain trust,” the public relations “firestorm” Bragg faced over criminal justice reforms and high-profile shootings, and intense discussions between the new district attorney and the two prosecutors in January and February.
As Protess, Rashbaum, and Bromwich reported:
Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.
Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent—a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records—and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.
The prosecutors quit the day after the new district attorney told them that “he did not want to continue the grand jury presentation” and was not prepared to authorize charges against Trump, according to the report, which noted that “Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also bristled at how Mr. Bragg had handled the investigation at times.”
While Pomerantz and Dunne declined to comment, Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, said that “this is an active investigation and there is a strong team in place working on it.” She added that the probe is being led by Susan Hoffinger, the executive assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s Investigation Division.
Responding to the new report, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted that “this is a remarkable article that gives us an inside look into the Manhattan DA’s deliberations regarding whether to charge Trump. If you believe prosecutors should indict Trump, it’s worth reading. We rarely get a window into prosecution decisions.”
According to Mariotti, it is not possible to tell from the Times’ reporting “whether the current Manhattan DA is making the right call. We don’t know the evidence his team has, and ultimately they could develop evidence that convinces them to file charges.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if other prosecutors agonize over charging Trump. Not because they believe he’s above the law, but because of issues with the evidence they have,” he added. “If you’re convinced that other prosecutors are doing nothing, they might be doing what this one did.”
TRUMP LED CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY, JAN. 6 PROBE’S LAWYERS SAY IN COURT. Former President Donald Trump and longtime conservative attorney John Eastman were engaged in a criminal conspiracy of obstruction and subversion ultimately angling to overturn the results of the 2020 election, attorneys for the House committee investigating the US Capitol attack alleged in court, Brandi Buchman noted at DailyKos (3/3).
The allegations have emerged as the Jan. 6 panel continues its pursuit of Eastman’s records and emails in civil court. The attorney was revealed last year to be the author of a memo strategizing how then-Vice President Mike Pence could overstep his constitutional authority to stop or delay the certification of Electoral College votes.
For weeks Eastman has tried to keep the panel away from thousands of emails sent and received between himself, the ex-president, and others while he was employed by Chapman University and retained by Trump. He has claimed executive privilege and attorney-client privileges to bar review, but now, committee lawyers argue that confidentiality should not apply because communication between an attorney and their client can’t be kept private if the privilege is being used to help that client commit a crime.
Over a 61-page brief laying out their opposition to Eastman’s attempt to hide the records, panel attorneys asked US District Judge David Carter to conduct an “in camera,” or private review of evidence that the committee has so far amassed. Upon that assessment, they argue, Carter should be able to determine if Eastman is abusing the attorney-client privilege assertion.
“[The] evidence and information available to the committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and/or fraudulent acts, and that Plaintiff’s legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities,” wrote committee general counsel Douglas Letter.
Neither Trump nor Eastman has been accused of a crime just yet. The committee itself does not have the authority to bring criminal charges. It can make a referral to the Department of Justice if it comes across evidence of a crime, but as far as enforcing criminal laws, that is outside the panel’s wheelhouse.
This lack of authority has been a key talking point for Trump allies fighting scrutiny. They insist that congressional investigators are acting beyond their role as legislators and are effectively conducting a law enforcement investigation.
But the committee has refuted this talking point repeatedly—and judges have agreed.
After the court hearing, committee chairman Bennie Thompson took pains once again to assert this.
“The Select Committee’s brief refutes on numerous grounds the privilege claims Dr. Eastman has made to try to keep hidden records critical to our investigation. The Select Committee is not conducting a criminal investigation. But, as the judge noted at a previous hearing, Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation,” Thompson said.
”The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power,” he said.
STATE OF THE UNION PROVIDES BIDEN BOUNCE. A new poll from NPR/PBS/Marist conducted March 1-2 shows President Joe Biden’s approval rating climbing 8 points since February, landing at 47%. That includes an 18-point bump for his handling of the Ukraine crisis, and an 8-point increase for how he’s dealing with the pandemic.
The pivot comes in the wake of Biden’s State of the Union Address, but before news that the US economy added nearly 700,000 jobs last month, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.8%.
“This is an unusual bounce,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. “It gets him back to where he was pre-Afghanistan.”
Here’s a look at some of the numbers:
▪ Overall approval rating jumped to 47%, up 8 points from the NPR poll in February. Presidents don’t generally see much, if any bounce, out of a State of the Union address. Since 1978, there had only been six times when a president saw an approval rating improve 4 points or more following State of the Union addresses, according to the pollsters. Three of those bounces were for former President Bill Clinton.
▪ Ukraine handling is up 18 points to 52%.
▪ Coronavirus pandemic handling is now 55%, up 8 points.
▪ Economic handling up 8 points to 45%.
JOBS REPORT CONTINUES PICTURE OF FAST AND SUSTAINED GROWTH. February was another strong month for job creation in the United States, though that is likely to be overshadowed for understandable reasons this week. Nonfarm payrolls grew by 678,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, making for a second month in a row that exceeded expectations. Revisions for December and January added another 92,000 jobs. The unemployment rate edged down to 3.8%, Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (3/4).
“We added 678,000 jobs in February, for a total of 7.9 million jobs added since the end of 2020. It’s mindbogglingly fast and sustained growth—well over half a million jobs added per month on average for more than a year,” the Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) Heidi Shierholz tweeted. “At this point, more than 9 out of every 10 jobs lost during the recession have been regained.”
While Shierholz cautioned that “there is still a long way to go,” she highlighted the importance of policy in the fast recovery. “We are on pace to recover EIGHT YEARS faster than we recovered from the Great Recession. Why do we have such a fast recovery this time around when other recent recoveries have been so weak? That’s because of CARES and ARPA,” she wrote. “Totally unlike in the Great Recession and its aftermath, Congress did what was needed to spur a strong recovery this time around. We would have MILLIONS fewer jobs today if Congress had not enacted the Covid relief and recovery measures it did.”
All that said, there are still key areas of weakness in the economic recovery. One of the most troubling is the persistent high unemployment for Black workers, especially Black women. “Unemployment rates either remained the same (white women) or trended down (Asian men, Asian women, Black men, Latinos, Latinas, white men) for all groups 20 and over, with one notable exception: Black women,” the National Women’s Law Center pointed out in a release. “The unemployment rate for Black women aged 20 and over increased from 5.8% in January to 6.1% in February 2022.”
Additionally, while private sector employment has largely recovered, the jobs recovery is lagging in the public sector. There are still 681,000 fewer public sector jobs than there were before the pandemic.
Overall, though, the recovery is remarkably strong now considering the depths of the COVID-19 crash—again, thanks to Congress doing what needed to be done.
MARK MEADOWS: LIVING IN A MOBILE HOME OR VOTE FRAUDSTER? About three weeks before North Carolina’s voter-registration deadline for the general election, failed President Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, claimed to be living in a 14-by-62-foot mobile home in Scaly Mountain, N.C. “The trouble is, it doesn’t appear to be true. And that my friends, is voter fraud—a federal crime—something Meadows has been ranting and raving about since Trump lost the election bigly in 2020,” Rebekah Sager noted at DailyKos (3/7).
According to The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea, Meadows does not own the Scaly Mountain property, which sits in the southern Appalachian mountains, but his wife, Debbie, did rent the house out for a couple of months. As for Mark Meadows, the (unnamed) owner of the house told The New Yorker, “He did not come. He’s never spent a night in there.” Although, the Meadows family did stay the home in the fall of 2020 when they were in the area for a Trump rally as nearby hotels were mostly booked.
A neighbor of the house, Tammy Talley, told The New Yorker she was friends with Mark and Debbie Meadows, and that Debbie and their two adult children had visited. Talley did not mention Mark staying at the house.
One of the authors of North Carolina’s voter-challenge statute is Gerry Cohen, who tells The New Yorker that voter registration must be legally a “place of abode” where the registrant has spent at least one night and where the person intends to live indefinitely. If Meadows didn’t stay in the house for at least one night, then he committed fraud. Another way to prove residency is a driver’s license, cable bill, W-2, or car registration listing the address.
So, why would Meadows claim to be living in a mobile home in the middle of nowhere North Carolina? Perhaps because he was considering a run for the Senate seat opening when Republican Richard Burr vacates later this year. Meadows did not ultimately run for the seat.
Meadows isn’t new to obfuscating the truth. In 2016, when he was Rep. Meadows, he sold a 134-acre property in Dinosaur, Colo., for $200,000. The problem was, he was required by law to file for the sale, and he failed to do so.
The property was sold to a nonprofit that intended to use it to prove their cockamamie concept of creationism.
Most recently, Meadows took a job with Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit founded by the former South Carolina senator—and former president of the Heritage Foundation—Jim DeMint. In July 2021, a few months after taking the job and just weeks after the formation of the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, Donald Trump’s “Save America” PAC donated a whopping $1 million to the institute.
A few months later, Mark and Debbie Meadows purchased a $1.6-million-dollar lakefront estate in Sunset, S.C. According to The New Yorker, the Meadows’ voter registration remains linked to the Scaly Mountain mobile home.
REPUBLICANS ARE STILL COMING FOR YOUR HEALTH CARE, RON JOHNSON SAYS. If Republicans win control of Congress in 2022 and 2024, repealing the Affordable Care Act is on the agenda, said Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI).
Repeal would come after a 2024 presidential win, Johnson said in an interview with Breitbart News Radio. Then Republicans would “actually make good on what we established as our priorities,” Laura Clawson noted at DailyKos (3/7)
“For example,” Johnson continued, “if we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare — I still think we need to fix our health care system — we need to have the plan ahead of time so that once we get in office, we can implement it immediately, not knock around like we did last time and fail.”
When Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, Johnson objected that they weren’t going far enough. He pressed Republicans to strip preexisting conditions protection from their plan. Prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to people for preexisting conditions is one of the most popular parts of the health care law.
Also in 2017, Johnson told a group of students that health care, food, clothing, and shelter are privileges, not rights. So when he says “if we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare — I still think we need to fix our health care system — we need to have the plan ahead of time so that once we get in office, we can implement it immediately,” remember that he’s already told us that his health care plan is going to leave a lot of people out.
A 2019 internal poll for the health care advocacy group Protect Our Care found 58% of Wisconsin voters support for the Affordable Care Act. There are 2.4 million people in Wisconsin with preexisting conditions, and Johnson has worked to raise that number through his opposition to COVID-19 vaccines.
SENATE REPUBLICANS WOULD HIKE TAXES ON THE POOREST 40%. The policy agenda that Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) unveiled in February—and he has continued to promote despite mounting backlash—would hike annual taxes on the poorest 40% of people in the United States by $1,000 on average while not raising taxes on the richest 1% by a single penny, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (3/7).
So concluded a state-by-state analysis of Scott’s plan released by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which estimates that “the poorest fifth of Americans would pay 34% of the tax increase while the next fifth of Americans would pay 45% of the tax increase.”
According to a summary of Scott’s proposal—entitled “An 11-Point Plan to Rescue America”—every American who currently isn’t required to pay federal income taxes would “pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount.”
Tens of millions of US households don’t owe federal income taxes each year, either because their annual incomes are below a certain threshold or they qualify for programs that offset their tax burdens.
To analyze the potential impact of the plan outlined by Scott—the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee—ITEP assumes it would “require federal income tax liability of at least $1.”
“For some Americans, this would simply increase their tax liability from $0 to $1,” ITEP notes. “But many others currently have negative federal income tax liability because they receive refundable tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit, which can result in a household receiving a check from the IRS.”
The analysis continues:
“These refundable tax credits are one feature of the federal personal income tax that makes it progressive. But Americans, including those who benefit from these tax credits, pay many other taxes that are not progressive, such as the federal payroll tax and state and local taxes, particularly property taxes and sales taxes...
“The only possible interpretation of Sen. Scott’s proposal is that everyone who has negative federal income tax liability under current law would instead have federal income tax liability of at least $1. The EITC and Child Tax Credit would no longer provide households with negative income tax liability, meaning no one would receive money from the IRS after they file their tax return. The most significant effects would be felt by the poorest 40% of Americans.”
Overall, more than 35% of Americans would pay more in federal income taxes if Scott’s plan were to be adopted, according to ITEP.
But, the policy organization notes, the top 1% wouldn’t see their taxes rise at all under Scott’s plan, which would also sunset “all federal legislation” after five years—a policy that would eliminate Social Security, Medicare, civil rights laws, and other measures unless Congress actively votes to reauthorize them.
See more Dispatches at www.populist.com
UN SETS SIGHTS ON PLASTIC POLLUTION, VOWING TO ADOPT AGREEMENT BY 2024. The fifth United Nations Environment Assembly concluded (3/2) with adoption of 14 resolutions that align with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, one of which commits to putting an end to plastic pollution, April Siese noted at DailyKos (3/7).
The “end plastic pollution” resolution, unanimously approved by 175 member nations, lays the groundwork for a treaty “that addresses the full lifecycle of plastic from source to sea,” according to a fact sheet. There is much to consider when reducing and eliminating plastic waste, including plastic reusability, addressing microplastics that have wreaked havoc on ecosystems, and finding a way to sustainably produce and consume plastic goods. The agreement, which now must be created, will be adopted by 2024.
UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Inger Andersen pointed to just how invested so many countries are in combatting rampant plastic pollution. “Since September 2021, according to the WWF Global Plastic Navigator, 154 countries have expressed an interest in negotiating a new global agreement on marine plastic pollution,” Andersen said. “Even as we continue to flesh out a global agreement, it is clear that we cannot put the brakes on action to address plastic pollution. This is such a big challenge, we need to come at it, through different tracks, all converging on the same road – towards altering our relationship with plastics, therefore benefitting the natural world, in particular, our oceans and water bodies, and human health.”
Much can go into the “end plastic pollution” agreement, and already advocates are calling for stringent global standards that incentivize doing the right thing when it comes to plastic production and disposal, and levying penalties to member nations who ignore the agreement altogether. According to the UNEP, global plastic production stands at around 300 million tons annually, which is almost the equivalent of the weight of the entire human population. Eight million of those tons annually end up in the ocean, and plastic makes up about 80% of all marine debris. On land, plastic dumps like the unregulated Dandora landfill in Nairobi presents a danger to pickers who work at the waste facility as well as the community due to the rampant burning of plastic.
Among UNEP’s goals is the hope of limiting greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastics to just 15% of all allowed emissions by 2050. Member nations are also hoping to cut down on plastics polluting the ocean, reduce the amount of virgin plastics being made by 55% by 2040, and, through a “shift to the circular economy,” create 700,000 jobs that align with more eco-friendly plastics goals. In addition to the “end plastic pollution” resolution, UNEP adopted a variety of resolutions aimed at creating a more eco-friendly, just planet, including resolutions on “the sound management of chemicals and waste,” “sustainable lake management,” and “sustainable and resilient infrastructure.”
RUSSIAN INVASION THREATENS UKRAINE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. Russian troops in Ukraine seized Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant (3/4) after shelling set part of the complex on fire, ringing alarm bells around the world of a potential nuclear disaster.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of waging “nuclear terror” by attacking the plant deliberately and warned of the potential for another Chernobyl-like catastrophe, which took place in northern Ukraine in 1986 when the country was still part of the Soviet Union.
After the Russian takeover, plant personnel wre operating the 5,700-megawatt, six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant under “gunpoint,” according to Ukrainian nuclear officials, and local authorities confirmed that the fire was extinguished around 6:20 a.m. local time after burning for nearly five hours, Edwin Lyman wrote for the Union of Concerned Scientists (3/6).
Fortunately, the fire was confined to a training facility and apparently did not damage the plant’s safety systems, and there was no release of radioactive material, according to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). However, the threat posed by Russia’s occupation of the plant, located about 342 miles southeast of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, has not by any means dissipated.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is just one of four Ukrainian nuclear facilities whose 15 reactors provide more than half of the country’s electricity. None of the reactors were built to withstand a military assault. Although there is no way to know if Russia intentionally targeted Zaporizhzhia, all of the plants are also vulnerable to indirect fire that could damage critical support systems and surrounding infrastructure, potentially resulting in a fuel meltdown and a radiological release that could contaminate thousands of square miles of terrain.
Lyman noted that nuclear fuel requires constant cooling; Ukrainian plants are prepared for accidents, but not military attacks; plant operators’ health and safety is a major concern; and a Ukrainian meltdown would not be another Chernobyl.
A nuclear accident in Ukraine has the potential not only to contaminate Ukrainian territory, but also Belarus, Russia, and much of the rest of Europe. Although also Soviet-designed, the VVER-1000 light-water reactors in Ukraine, such as the six at Zaporizhzhia, are fundamentally different from the Chernobyl design. They are not as vulnerable to the particular sequence of events, including a massive steam explosion and long-duration fire, that made Chernobyl so severe and led to the wide dispersal of radioactivity over both Eastern and Western Europe, and even caused detectable levels in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
The consequences of a nuclear accident at one of the four operational Ukrainian nuclear plants could be similar to that of Fukushima, however. Multiple reactors could experience a loss of cooling and core damage without necessarily causing the major confinement breach that occurred at Chernobyl.
“What can be done? From a safety perspective, the best-case scenario would be for Russia and Ukraine to establish ‘safe zones’ around nuclear plants, modeled after the temporary ‘humanitarian corridors’ that the two sides have agreed to create. In addition, Ukraine and Russia should negotiate an agreement to protect plant personnel and allow safe shift changes as well as emergency preparedness and response activities,” Lyman wrote. “Let’s hope cooler heads prevail.”
From The Progressive Populist, April 1, 2022
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us