Barr is continuing to reveal what a wholly owned subsidiary he is.

Attorney General William Barr told senators today that he is not in the business of determining when lies are told to the American people.

The remark came after Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, cited evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report about President Trump’s interactions with White House Counsel Don McGahn and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Here’s that exchange:

Blumenthal: “The Mueller report establishes that quote substantial evidence supports the conclusion that the President, in fact, directed McGahn to call Rosenstein to have the special counsel removed. That’s in volume 2, page 88. In your view, did President Trump on those occasions and others recited in the report lie to the American people?”

Barr: “I’m not in the business of determining when lies are told to the American people. I’m in the business of determining whether a crime has been committed.”

Then he pretended he’d forgotten.

Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers he does not recall discussing any investigations that stemmed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe with the White House.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, pressed Barr about his discussions with the White House.

…

Barr: “By the way I’m not sure, you know, the laundry list of investigations, but I certainly haven’t talked the substance or been directed to do anything on any of the cases.”

Blumenthal: “Well let me give you an opportunity to clarify. Have you had any conversations with anyone in the White House about those ongoing investigations that were spawned or spun off by–“

Barr: “I don’t recall having any substantive discussion on the investigations– “

Then Kamala Harris asked him some questions.

Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential candidate, accused Attorney General William Barr of failing to look at evidence before making a decision on obstruction of justice.

Harris grilled Barr on statements he made in his March 24 summary, saying he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had looked at the evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report before reaching their decision on obstruction of justice. In his letter, Barr said he found the evidence was not sufficient to establish that the President committed obstruction of justice.

But Harris questioned whether Barr had personally reviewed the special counsel’s “great deal of evidence.”

She then asked, “My question is in reaching your conclusion, did you personally review all of the underlying evidence?”

Barr responded, “No,” adding that he “accepted the statements in the report as the factual record.”

Here’s a portion of Harris’ questioning:

Harris: “As the attorney general of the United States, you run the United States Department of Justice. If in any US attorney’s office around the country, the head of that office, when being asked to make a critical decision about, in this case, the person who holds the highest office in the land, and whether or not that person committed a crime, would you accept them recommending a charging decision to you if they had not reviewed the evidence?”

Barr: “Well, that’s a question for Bob Mueller. He’s the US attorney. He’s the one who presents the report.”

Harris: “But it was you who made the charging decision, sir.”

He dodged some more and she pressed some more.

Harris: “I think you’ve made it clear that you have not looked at the evidence. We can move on. I think you’ve made it clear sir that you’ve not looked at the evidence, and we can move on.”

He’s made it clear that the fix is in.

Originally a comment by latsot in the Miscellany Room.

UK police forces are increasingly demanding that victims of rape and sexual assault hand over their phones and account details under the threat of their cases being dropped if they don’t.

Let’s be entirely clear about this. Someone making an accusation of rape (or any other crime) has a certain burden of evidence. For example, she might have to produce evidence that she was in the same place as the alleged rapist at the same time. In this case, she might choose to allow police to access the location data from her phone service or the police might obtain a warrant to perform a time/location limited search regardless of permission. Even I – a known privacy tinhat – wouldn’t object to that if I were seeking to prosecute and I doubt I’d consider it a violation if it were a known and routine part of any investigation of that sort.

But there might be other sources of the same evidence such as CCTV or witness accounts. Surely the intent is to establish opportunity. If phone location is needed for that, then it ought to be provided at the victim’s discretion, not demanded in advance alongside everything else that’s on her phone before an investigation can even begin.

An accused rapist might claim texts or social media exchanges as exonerating or mitigating circumstances. In that case, it would surely be his responsibility to produce the relevant material and not the victim’s responsibility to hand over her phone. Confronted with these claims, she might or might not agree to disclose some data knowing that it might hurt her case if she doesn’t. But in that case, the police could specify exactly what data was required. For example, social media posts within a timeframe or involving a particular third party. There would be no need for her to hand over her phone for this purpose.

There have been many, many cases of police the world over stealing intimate photographs from people’s phones and sharing them with colleagues, friends and the internet at large. There have also been many cases of police unearthing something dodgy about a victim unrelated to the case at hand and that case disappearing because of it. There are also many, many, many, many cases of women being judged because of the things they say, the things they wear, the photographs they have on their phone and – let’s face it – literally everything else. There’s an equal if not greater number of cases where women have been humiliated in court because of the judgements prosecutors believe (presumably rightly in enough cases to make it worthwhile) that juries will make about them.

This is, of course, another tactic to deter women from reporting rape. It’s also a tactic by police to collect as much information about everyone on the planet as possible without any guarantees that the data will be safeguarded, deleted when no longer required and not shared at large on the internet.

As Privacy International has reported, the UK police don’t even have the proper guidelines to deal with the contents of anyone’s phone, let alone actual rules or procedures or any departments equipped to enforce them.

This could not be more obviously calculated to persuade women to drop charges of rape and sexual assault.

And the wider implication is that in time anyone who makes any kind of complaint against anybody at all must have led a blameless life or be afraid to seek justice of any kind.

We British are so easily whipped up into fascist sentiment. What in screaming fuck is wrong with us? That is not a rhetorical question.

What we’re watching right now is the top legal official in the US bending all his expertise and establishment cred (which he has a lot more of than Jeff Sessions ever did) to protect a malevolent unhinged criminal and make sure he (said criminal) gets to stay in the job where he can kill us all and destroy most of the planet.

Chris Cillizza notes that Barr lied to Congress about Mueller’s view of Barr’s summary:

Mueller sent a letter to Barr on March 27 expressing concern about the ways in which Barr’s summary document described the evidence surrounding obstructive behavior. Mueller did not make issue with any of the factual statements in Barr’s four-page letter but rather the lack of nuance on obstruction — and the resultant media coverage, according to CNN’s Laura Jarrett’s reporting.

That revelation creates a series of problems for Barr — most notably that he appeared to be, at best, misleading in his answers about Mueller’s feelings about his summary of the report.

On April 9, in a House hearing, Barr seemed entirely unaware of Mueller’s issues with his summary report. Here’s the key exchange between Barr and Florida Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist:

CRIST: Reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24 letter, that it does not adequately or accurately portray the report’s findings. Do you know what they are referencing with that?

BARR: No, I don’t.

He did though.

Cillizza goes on to say that Barr gave himself room to say he wasn’t technically lying – but who cares? He shouldn’t be playing games like that to shore up this criminal lunatic we’re dealing with. No one should.

From the Barr hearing:

Lindsey Graham is reading quotes from FBI officials saying anti-Trump things in 2016 … much like the anti-Trump things Graham was saying in 2016. "I think Donald Trump is a con man,” he said then.

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 1, 2019

Brian Williams just broke into @MSNBC's coverage of the Barr hearing to correct Lindsey Graham: "The chairman of the Judiciary Committee just said that Mueller found there is no collusion. That is not correct."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 1, 2019

There may not be a member of this Administration with more to answer for than the Attorney General.

His confirmation occurred only a few months ago. Yet in that short time, Barr’s conduct has raised damning questions about his impartiality and fitness. https://t.co/TzjWCEFt2d

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) May 1, 2019

Barr says that the reason Mueller was unhappy with his memo was due to the way it was being covered in the media and in public, not because of the contents of the memo itself. Mueller's letter just released completely contradicts this assessment by Barr. #BarrHearing pic.twitter.com/9FTX4yTRI9

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) May 1, 2019

Yes, that’s not what the letter says.

According to Barr, presidents can now order WH lawyers to change their testimony to federal investigators in order to state things that are factually false and its not obstruction or suborning perjury. Future WH staffers, please take note. #BarrHearing

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) May 1, 2019

Mueller’s letter to Barr:

I previously sent you a letter dated March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel’s report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. We also had marked an additional two sentences for review and have now confirmed that these sentences can be released publicly.

Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and Department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time.

As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions.

See what happened there? It’s subtle, at least to non-lawyers. Mueller’s team sent Barr executive summaries, and Barr put those aside and instead gave his own summary to Congress and to us. Not Mueller’s, his. His summary was a bad summary, Mueller tells him.

In short he did what it always seemed apparent he would do: he inserted himself between the Mueller team and 1. Congress 2. us. He inserted himself to block information in order to protect Trump, which is not surprising in the guy who sent Trump an unsolicited memo explaining how he could get away with all his crimes and obstructions.

We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is new public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. See Department of Justice, Press Release (May 17, 2017).

I can confirm! My confidence in the outcome of the investigations is not full at all! It’s pretty close to empty.

It’s a fucking cover up and it’s happening right in front of us.

I hope they’re nailing him right now.

Oh yes?

As many of us suspected & have been saying – but still WOW. https://t.co/jhUPFuFTvd

— Mimi Rocah (@Mimirocah1) April 30, 2019

Reading.

At the time the letter was sent on March 27, Barr had announced that Mueller had not found a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote a previously unknown private letter to the Justice Department, which revealed a degree of dissatisfaction with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Oh really. Funny that Barr didn’t mention it to us.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

The letter asked Barr to release the report and gave suggestions on the redacting.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page letter to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

So…Barr has been bullshitting us and DoJ officials. Scummier and scummier.

Erm…forget something?

This looks like it's going to be a great panel on Thursday at the BBC, with @meghamohan, @UglaStefania, @Mazharul82 & @PeterTatchell, moderated by @hugo_greenhalgh https://t.co/TjEqPEnDyI

— Rachel Savage (@rachelmsavage) April 29, 2019

Just one small problem – no L.

https://twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1123272445216141314

I now make it a practice, if ever asked into a panel on LGBT questions, to say “Who are the lesbian participants?” It shouldn’t be necessary. This is SHAMEFUL.

— Philip Hensher (@PhilipHensher) April 30, 2019

Oops, embarrassing.

Hi, I’m one of the organisers of Thursday’s InterMedia UK event. As organisers, we’re taking on board all points raised re: host / panel line-up, & acting accordingly to ensure the best possible representation of voices. More info will be communicated out in due course. Thank you

— Jon Holmes (@jonboy79) April 30, 2019

He found one! Whew!

Thanks again for feedback received tonight about our @Inter_MediaUK @BBCPride event. We’re really looking forward to being joined by writer and journalist @sophwilkinson on our panel on Thursday evening. 🙏https://t.co/M7CzgFeeic

— Jon Holmes (@jonboy79) April 30, 2019

Well it is very easy to forget lesbians. The L is alllllllll the way at the beginning of LGBT so by the time you’ve gotten to the T, you’ve simply forgotten all about the L.

Rebecca Solnit is seeing a lot of unconscious bias going on:

I’ve just spent a month watching white male people in particular arguing about who has charisma or relatability or electability. They speak as if these were objective qualities, and as if their own particular take on them was truth or fact rather than taste, and as if what white men like is what everyone likes or white men are who matters, which is maybe a hangover from the long ugly era when only white men voted. It’s a form of self-confidence that verges on lunacy, because one of the definitions of that condition is the inability to distinguish between subjective feelings and objective realities.

She points out that a lot of male pundits “whose misogyny helped shape the race” in 2016 were later accused of sexual harassment.

Meanwhile, the New York Times in all its august unbearability just published this prize sentence in a piece about Joe Biden’s failure to offer Anita Hill an apology she found adequate: “Many former Judiciary Committee aides and other people who participated did not want to talk on the record because they feared that scrutiny of Mr. Biden’s past conduct would undermine the campaign of the candidate some think could be best positioned to defeat President Trump, whose treatment of women is a huge issue for Democrats.” That translates as, let’s run a guy whose treatment of women is an issue, and let’s ignore that treatment because even so we think that he’s best positioned to defeat the guy whose treatment of women is an issue, and also fuck treatment of women, especially this black woman, as an issue, really.

The trouble is, you see, that women lack charisma. Sad but true. Men have explained that to Solnit.

A friend of mine posted some praise of Elizabeth Warren, and a man jumped in to say, “It’s a moot point because she’s not going to get into office. With any luck Bernie Sanders is going to do that.” I’ve heard a lot of white men explain that Warren can’t win because she’s wonky, and then when I mention that our last two Democratic presidents were famously wonky, I get to hear why they had charisma and Warren doesn’t.

It’s almost as if, to a lot of men, unless a female person is 19 or under and smokin’ hot, she’s repellent. Too wonky, not charismatic enough, too smart, not relatable enough…just wrong, somehow. Them’s the rules.

What makes a candidate electable is in part how much positive coverage they get, and how much positive coverage they get is tied to how the media powers decide who is electable, and so goes the double bind.

The media powers aren’t always the right people to be deciding who is electable. (That’s deliberate understatement, of an extreme kind.)

Meanwhile…

A Virginia judge has ruled that statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson in Charlottesville are war monuments that the city cannot remove without permission from the state.

In a nine-page ruling obtained from the University of Virginia School of Law website, Circuit Court Judge Richard E. Moore said neither the intentions of the people who erected the statues nor how they make people feel change the fact that the statues pay homage to the Civil War. Moore cited state code in his ruling that says it is illegal for municipalities to remove such monuments to war.

Gotta keep those monuments to war, because war is such a great thing.

The ruling comes nearly two years after the Unite the Right rally, a white nationalist gathering, left counterprotester Heather Heyer dead. The Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the statues in response to the rally, CNN affiliate WVIR-TV reported.

The city also covered the statues with black tarp while it mourned the deaths of Heyer and two troopers who died during the rally. However Judge Moore ruled the tarps had to be removed because the city never defined what a “temporary” shrouding meant. Moore also said the tarps have interfered with the public’s right to see the monuments and enjoy the parks.

In your face, people of Charlottesville and Richmond and other Virginia municipalities.

For my Freethinker column this month I wrote about Trump’s idiotic claim that Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest generals ever and is universally revered by all the many generals Trump talks to in the White House. Eric Foner wrote about the legend of Lee in August 2017, after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville:

[O]f course, what interests people who debate Lee today is his connection with slavery and his views about race. During his lifetime, Lee owned a small number of slaves. He considered himself a paternalistic master but could also impose severe punishments, especially on those who attempted to run away. Lee said almost nothing in public about the institution. His most extended comment, quoted by all biographers, came in a letter to his wife in 1856. Here he described slavery as an evil, but one that had more deleterious effects on whites than blacks. He felt that the “painful discipline” to which they were subjected benefited blacks by elevating them from barbarism to civilization and introducing them to Christianity.

It’s interesting that he saw slaveowning as part of “civilization” as opposed to “barbarism.”

The end of slavery would come in God’s good time, but this might take quite a while, since to God a thousand years was just a moment. Meanwhile, the greatest danger to the “liberty” of white Southerners was the “evil course” pursued by the abolitionists, who stirred up sectional hatred.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. The real injustice isn’t injustice but the people who try to end injustice.

Lee’s code of gentlemanly conduct did not seem to apply to blacks. During the Gettysburg campaign, he did nothing to stop soldiers in his army from kidnapping free black farmers for sale into slavery. In Reconstruction, Lee made it clear that he opposed political rights for the former slaves. Referring to blacks (30 percent of Virginia’s population), he told a Congressional committee that he hoped the state could be “rid of them.” Urged to condemn the Ku Klux Klan’s terrorist violence, Lee remained silent.

But he was magicked into a hero all the same.

The 1890s and early 20th century witnessed the consolidation of white supremacy in the post-Reconstruction South and widespread acceptance in the North of Southern racial attitudes. A revised view of history accompanied these developments, including the triumph of what David Blight, in his influential book “Race and Reunion” (2001), calls a “reconciliationist” memory of the Civil War. The war came to be seen as a conflict in which both sides consisted of brave men fighting for noble principles — union in the case of the North, self-determination on the part of the South. This vision was reinforced by the “cult of Lincoln and Lee,” each representing the noblest features of his society, each a figure Americans of all regions could look back on with pride…

Reconciliation excised slavery from a central role in the story, and the struggle for emancipation was now seen as a minor feature of the war. The Lost Cause, a romanticized vision of the Old South and Confederacy, gained adherents throughout the country. And who symbolized the Lost Cause more fully than Lee?

So when you hear Trump burbling about Lee, that’s the well he’s drawing from. He probably has no clue that it is, because he doesn’t read a whole lot of Eric Foner, but it remains the well whether Trump knows it or not.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a group of mostly Southern historians known as the revisionists went further, insisting that slavery was a benign institution that would have died out peacefully. A “blundering generation” of politicians had stumbled into a needless war. But the true villains, as in Lee’s 1856 letter, were the abolitionists, whose reckless agitation poisoned sectional relations. This interpretation dominated teaching throughout the country, and reached a mass audience through films like “The Birth of a Nation,” which glorified the Klan, and “Gone With the Wind,” with its romantic depiction of slavery.

Trump has probably seen “Gone With the Wind.” He probably thinks it’s a documentary.

How the rules change when it’s Our Crook in the chair.

There is a world of difference between how Republicans viewed oversight when Barack Obama was president and their support of Trump’s obstruction. I know, because for five years I worked for Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

In a 1957 Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “The power of Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process. That power is broad … It comprehends probes into departments of the federal government to expose corruption, inefficiency, or waste.”

During my time on Oversight, the chief justice’s words were often cited as justification for our vigorous supervision of the Obama administration. Led by Representative Darrell Issa, my former boss, Republicans issued more than 100 subpoenas, held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, created a select committee to investigate Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi crisis, and filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging President Obama’s use of executive privilege.

How the rules do change when it’s Our Guy.

The committee sent Clinton a letter saying it could investigate anything at any time, and the chair sent  a letter warning the Obama administration not to try to intimidate a witness.

But now? Now the rules have changed. Or not so much “changed” as reversed.

The entire point of having separate but equal branches of government was to create protections against the kind of tyranny and absolute rule that was common in Europe. If Trump can simply ignore Congress and act unilaterally without consequence, then he is America’s first dictator.

And he is ignoring Congress and acting unilaterally without consequence, so currently he is America’s first dictator. That’s the state of play right now.

Top argument skills.

The difference is between women who are transgender and those who are not, what we call cisgender women.
There is no difference between women and transgender women or betwern women and cisgender women.

— Morgane Oger (@MorganeOgerBC) April 27, 2019

“This is the difference.

There is no difference.”

Got that?

Street harassment in France:

French courts have handed down 447 fines in the past eight months under new laws to tackle street harassment of women.

The “outrages sexistes” law was passed in August 2018, and allows for on-the-spot fines of up to €750 (£650).

The first fine was handed down a month later to a man who slapped a woman’s bottom on a bus and made lewd remarks.

I can’t help wondering (not for the first time) what the point is. Did he think that would prompt her to have sex with him right there on the bus? Surely not. So, what, then? Just expressing a little casual hatred and contempt, because he couldn’t have sex with her right there on the bus? I guess so.

Rod Rosenstein has sent his resignation letter, complete with a lot of flattery of the Mob Boss-in-chief.

The deputy attorney general, who has run the Justice Department’s day-to-day operations for most of the Trump presidency, submitted his resignation to the White House on Monday. The letter said he will stay on until May 11.

In the letter, Rosenstein thanked President Donald Trump—who once retweeted a picture of him behind bars—for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations.”

Ahem.

https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1122974576932196354

Rosenstein also made what appears to be a vague allusion to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “Our nation is safer, our elections are more secure, and our citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence efforts and schemes to commit fraud, steal intellectual property, and launch cyberattacks,” he wrote.

Safer and more secure than what? Than they were before Trump parked his ass in the White House? Don’t be ridiculous.

Remember when Teen Vogue published a how-to piece on anal sex? That was interesting. This time it’s “sex work” – just what teenage girls need to read up on.

"Continued criminalization of sex work and sex workers is a form of violence by governments and contributes to the high level of stigma and discrimination." https://t.co/Wf4rgUdb13

— Teen Vogue (@TeenVogue) April 26, 2019

https://twitter.com/ICT456/status/1122732758319730688

Is there any other 'real work' where the 'workforce' is almost entirely female, people are literally trafficked into your 'profession' and, as you get older and more experienced, your earning potential goes down? https://t.co/CNK24CviOb

— Ben (@BenWlv) April 28, 2019

Continued promotion of prostitution as sex work is a form of grooming by @TeenVogue and contributes to normalising sexual exploitation of women and girls https://t.co/FvUnXQ4syX

— FiLiA (@FiLiA_charity) April 27, 2019

https://twitter.com/LailaMickelwait/status/1122240534842621955

Soraya points out yet another “women don’t count.”

"Swarthmore Students Stage Sit-in, Demand Closure of 2 Frats After Leak of Racist, Homophobic Documents." Why drop the foundational misogyny in the headline? Racist, sexist and homophobic comments about sexual assault captured all of this. https://t.co/yTKixANXU7

— Soraya Chemaly (@schemaly) April 29, 2019

In the actual story, misogyny is cited in the first paragraph:

Student activists at Swarthmore College are demanding the school permanently shut down campus fraternities in the aftermath of leaked documents showing racist, misogynist and homophobic comments as well as jokes about sexual assault allegedly from fraternity members.

Misogyny and sexual assault – you’d think that would put misogyny first in the headline, but instead it’s dropped altogether, as if it just doesn’t count quite as much, even with the violence. Women…you know…they’re probably just privileged white sorority girls, or rich lawyers, or boring mommies, or hags, or [shudder] feminists. They don’t belong in the headline. They just don’t matter that much. Sorry.