"Raising prospect of impeaching Trump, House seeks Mueller’s grand jury secrets" by Nicholas Fandos and Charlie Savage New York Times, July 26, 2019
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee on Friday said it would ask a federal judge to unseal grand jury secrets related to Robert Mueller’s investigation and use the court filing to make the most explicit declaration yet that lawmakers are weighing whether to impeach President Trump.
In a significant escalation, Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, the chairman of the committee, said at a news conference that the application to the court would declare that the panel needs access to Mueller’s grand-jury evidence — such as witness testimony — to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment against the president.
“Because Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a sitting president, the United States House of Representatives is the only institution of the federal government that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions,” Nadler quoted the legal filing as telling the judge, Beryl A. Howell, who supervised Mueller’s grand jury.
For what actions?
I'm not defending the guy. He's just saying the president has to be held accountable for their actions (oh, how I yearned to hear those words for some 16-odd years now).
Referring to the part in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to impeach and remove a president, the application continues, he said: “To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise all its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity — recommendation of articles of impeachment.”
I don't know what he is talking about and don't want to short-shrift whatever corruption of which Trump is guilty, but we had a guy lie us into a war, sign off on torture, and had subordinates out a CIA agent, and he is still walking around and this successor droning people down while regime changing Libya, trying it in Syria, assisting the slaughter in Yemen, and sponsoring a putsch in the Ukraine. Then there were the impeachable offenses of using the IRS against political opponents and the spying on the Trump campaign (worse than Nixon), the Fast and Furious debacle, Gulf Gusher negligence, and the assorted alphabet agency scandals.
Now they want to impeach over a staged and scripted set-up by the very people in law enforcement and intelligence that were placed on the special counsel's committee, when the Clinton campaign actually engaged Russian assets through a British intermediary for bogus information (Bushes actually sold it to 'em after Jeb heard about the research but shit-canned it soon before his campaign ended that way). The product was then funneled up through political and law enforcement channels to allow the Obama administration to begin monitoring and infiltrating the campaign. Talk about turning the tables in this topsy-turvy political shit show!
By styling the committee as already engaged in impeachment considerations as it carries out its investigations, Nadler was attempting to sidestep a debate raging inside his party over whether the House should hold a vote to formally declare that it is opening an impeachment inquiry.
“Too much has been made of the phrase ‘an impeachment inquiry,’ ” Nadler said. “We are doing what our court filing says we are doing, what I said we are doing, and that is we are using our full Article I powers to investigate the conduct of the president and to consider what remedies there are. Among other things we will consider obviously is whether to recommend articles of impeachment.”
Other members of the committee were more blunt.
“I would say we are in an impeachment investigation, and as to the results of the investigation, it could lead to articles of impeachment or something else,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat.
It's almost as if they are obsessed with the word, and if I were of a certain per$ua$ion, I would find the Time's words so very comforting.
Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, declared, “We’re now crossing a threshold with this filing, and we are now officially entering into an examination of whether or not to recommend articles of impeachment.”
Still, the move was as much about legal substance as it was about political optics. Democrats are hoping that Howell will agree that their request for the grand jury material falls into the same legal category as Nixon-era requests, even though the Watergate-era access to grand jury material was granted to a formally declared impeachment inquiry.
At this point in the article, it equates to the word no as far as going to far with the flirting.
The filing comes two days after Mueller testified before Congress for the first time about the findings of his 22-month investigation into Russian election interference and possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Republicans — and some Democrats — said Mueller’s lackluster appearance had all but ended the impeachment threat, and they were not convinced the committee’s actions Friday had changed that.
Related: Mueller's Dementia
The Democrats have it, too, and even Mueller admits there was no obstruction. They got every single document they asked for and the office was allowed to talk to anybody they wanted.
“Democrats want to convince their base they’re still wedded to impeachment even after this week’s hearing, but a baseless legal claim is an odd way to show that,” said Representative Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the committee, who predicted the legal maneuver would fail, but Democrats who control the panel are pushing forward and are seeking to add more evidence to the trove of information they are collecting about the case.
The chairman said the committee would keep up the pace of its investigation during the House’s six-week summer recess, calling additional witnesses and filing a lawsuit as soon as early next week to force Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, to testify unless he agrees to come voluntarily first. McGahn’s account of presidential behavior sits at the center of the Mueller report.
The Judiciary Committee has been flirting with the topic of impeachment for months, subpoenaing witnesses and holding hearings designed to potentially develop charges against Trump.
The article continues in the web version:
In a hearing focused on Mueller’s report earlier this month, Nadler said that “articles of impeachment are under consideration as part of the committee’s investigation, although no final determination has been made.”
By formally declaring that the panel is doing that in a court filing, Democrats are trying to get past the internal debate without forcing members from moderate districts to vote on whether to do so. Pelosi approved the language in the lawsuit, according to a person familiar with its drafting.
Yeah, it's time to downplay tensions.
The specific information at issue in the court filing are the portions in the Mueller report that were redacted because the information fell under a rule in the federal criminal code that makes information presented to a grand jury secret. That rule has only limited exceptions to share it with outsiders. Democrats want the House to gain access to the redacted portions of the report, as well as the underlying transcripts and documents that Mueller used a grand jury to gather.
So we don't even know if the information is another dud, but what this would allow is for Democrats to selectively leak things and have the pre$$ and ma$$ media distort out of proportion and context. Keeps the ball rolling, so to speak.
Mueller’s report showed the Trump campaign welcomed illegal assistance from the Russians in 2016 and expected to benefit from it, but investigators did not establish that he had conspired with them in the illegal hacking and dumping of Democratic emails. It also explored several episodes in which Trump tried to impede the investigation, but the special counsel decided not to render judgment about whether Trump should be charged with obstruction of justice, citing a Justice Department view that sitting presidents are temporarily immune from indictment while they are in office.
It wasn't a hack. It was a whistle-blowing thumb drive by a party apparatchik who was disgusted at the Clinton campaign corruption and theft of the nomination from Sanders, and if he could have rendered an obstruction of justice charge he would have!
Democrats have been divided about whether the House should formally declare that the committee is conducting an impeachment inquiry — a step that launched the proceedings against both presidents subjected to such proceedings in the modern era, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
More than 90 House Democrats have said they support opening such proceedings, including Representative Ann McLane Kuster of New Hampshire on Friday, and some Democrats see such a step as a moral imperative to leave a black mark on Trump’s historical record, even if Senate Republicans are unlikely to remove him. Others fear it could provoke a backlash, firing up Trump’s supporters and endangering newly elected Democrats who won moderate districts in the 2018 midterm.
It's a real fine line, the flirting, and they didn't impeach Bush when they had the chance, either.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pressed caution. “We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed,” the speaker told reporters Friday, when asked if she was trying to run out the clock on impeachment. “Not one day sooner.”
Against that backdrop, some Democratic staff members and lawmakers have been arguing that it is unnecessary to gain the full chamber’s approval to launch an inquiry, in part because the Judiciary Committee chairman has already gained the power to issue subpoenas and take depositions — authorities that earlier impeachment inquiry resolutions had granted.
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Time to head for the border, and you can go one way or the other:
"Three students at the University of Mississippi were suspended by their fraternity on Wednesday after an Instagram photo surfaced of them brandishing guns in front of a bullet-riddled memorial sign for Emmett Till, whose brutal murder in 1955 served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement. The photo of the smiling Kappa Alpha members was the subject of a bias complaint filed with the university in March, according to Rod Guajardo, a spokesman for the university. Guajardo said in an email on Thursday that the photo was referred to campus police and the FBI, which declined to investigate the matter further because it did not pose a specific threat. The university said it took no disciplinary action because the students did not violate the school’s code of conduct, but the school’s chapter of Kappa Alpha, which the three students are members of, said in a statement on Thursday that it took swift action after it learned of the photo....."
Damn Southern Democrats!
"In a federal court filing, lawyers for election integrity advocates accuse Georgia election officials of intentionally destroying evidence that could show unauthorized access to the state election system and potential manipulation of election results. Election integrity advocates and individual Georgia voters sued election officials in 2017 alleging that the touchscreen voting machines Georgia has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. ‘‘The evidence strongly suggests that the State’s amateurish protection of critical election infrastructure placed Georgia’s election system at risk, and the State Defendants now appear to be desperate to cover up the effects of their misfeasance — to the point of destroying evidence,’’ Thursday’s filing says. A spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, which oversees elections, denied the allegations. In court Thursday, lawyers for the plaintiffs highlighted weaknesses identified in risk assessment reports by Fortalice Solutions, a cybersecurity firm hired by the secretary of state’s office. Fortalice CEO Theresa Payton testified that her team did find serious risks in their initial 2017 assessment but also said the secretary of state’s office had made progress toward fixing the problems by the time of a subsequent review last November."
They are sore losers, too, who just want to get back to Woodstock:
"Less than 24 hours after news broke that Woodstock 50 organizers had decided to move their troubled festival to Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md., things have taken another turn for the worse. Both Jay-Z and John Fogerty have reportedly pulled out of the commemorative event — just three weeks before it is scheduled to take place. The artists were two of the biggest names on the eclectic lineup announced in March, which organizer Michael Lang, who co-founded the 1969 festival, hoped would have multigenerational appeal. Because their contracts are bound to the original location, other artists in the lineup — which includes Dead and Company, Santana, Miley Cyrus, and Janelle Monáe — could back out of performing at the new venue as well. Seth Hurwitz, chairman of I.M.P., which operates Merriweather, said in a statement Thursday that Woodstock 50 organizers were still working to secure artists, but will a crowd turn out? Woodstock 50 tickets, which were supposed to go on sale in April, have yet to do so....."
That's because the threat of nuclear war is no longer near.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"State Senate votes to ban child marriage" by Colin A. Young State House News Service, July 26, 2019
The state Senate has unanimously passed a bill outlawing all child marriage in Massachusetts, an occurrence that lawmakers and advocates have been drawing attention to for years on Beacon Hill.
Senator Harriette Chandler, chief sponsor of the bill that the Senate passed Thursday, said 1,231 underage youth were married in Massachusetts between the years 2000 and 2016. “While, fortunately, the number of child marriages approved in Massachusetts has decreased in recent years, any child marriage that is approved in our Commonwealth is, frankly, one too many,” the Worcester Democrat said.
There is an institutional sex abuse crisis riddling religion and education and these guys are busy with the rare instance of child marriage.
Chandler told the Senate about Tammy Monteiro, a victim of a coerced child marriage who earlier this year told the Committee on Children and Families about how a judge allowed her at age 16 to marry a 25-year-old man.
“Tammy lent her voice to tell all of us how the current laws allowed her husband to gain legal custody of her, which led to years of abuse, with no avenues for escape,” Chandler said. “Let me be clear: Minors who marry an adult are victims of an inappropriate balance of power. But today, we have the power to stop child marriage in this state.”
This is the same chamber that doesn't sanction Israel.
Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz said she heard some people questioning whether child marriage actually happens in Massachusetts and if a prohibition on child marriage is really necessary. She said that even in cases when the involved parents agree that marriage for a minor is acceptable, “there is no upside that anyone has been able to articulate to me.”
You are better off being aborted.
Also Thursday, the Senate passed a bill intended to increase consumer transparency by improving insurance provider network directories and unanimously passed a bill that would allow optometrists to diagnose and treat glaucoma and other ocular abnormalities and prescribe necessary eye-related medications with proper training.
Senator Michael Moore, the sponsor of the optometrist bill, said the other 49 states and Puerto Rico already allow optometrists to diagnose for glaucoma, but Massachusetts does not because of “outdated statutes.”
Bring your medical ID card with you.
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"SJC overturns murder conviction in Brockton slaying because state trooper gave ‘false testimony’" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, July 26, 2019
A State Police trooper gave “false testimony” during a 2012 first-degree murder trial, creating a “miscarriage of justice” so severe that the state’s highest court on Friday ordered a new trial for the Brockton man now serving life without parole in a maximum security prison.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Plymouth Superior Court jury that convicted Darryene Ware for a 2009 fatal shooting of a teenager at a Brockton baby shower could have been misled by the testimony of State Police Trooper Robert F. Clements Jr.
Happens more often than you think.
Ware’s appellate attorney, Robert F. Shaw Jr., applauded the SJC for recognizing that Ware’s trial was unfair to him, and as a result, to the criminal justice system as a whole. “That’s really what this [ruling] was about,’’ Shaw said. “His trial was manifestly not fair.”
Shaw said that Clements has to be held accountable for testifying falsely, but he stopped short of saying the State Police trooper should be charged with perjury. He said that decision should be made by a judge or an investigator independent of Cruz’s office.
“There should be accountability and for good reason,’’ Shaw said. “Prosecuting people where their liberty for life is at stake and doing so based upon false testimony is repugnant to our system of justice.”
According to the SJC and prior Globe coverage, the victim was 16-year-old Chantel Matiyosus, who was struck in the head and abdomen as she and others were leaving a baby shower on April 25, 2009.
Matiyosus was a quiet, intelligent girl who went by the nickname ShyShy. She died at Brockton Hospital about an hour after two men opened fire, allegedly in an attempt to shoot her boyfriend, the Globe reported.
Ware, who wasn’t charged until 2011, was convicted of murder and other major felonies in November 2012, records show. On Friday, he was being held at the maximum security MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, state records show.
State Police were reviewing the SJC ruling and had no immediate comment. Clements remains on active duty, but is not currently assigned to Cruz’s office, according to State Police.....
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The decision comes too late for Aaron Hernandez, but they could retry him like in the Boston Calling case.
Too bad he didn't commit the crime in Suffolk County:
"Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins admits she used ‘not accurate’ information to defend her record" by Andrea Estes Globe Staff, July 26, 2019
Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins acknowledged on Friday that she used inaccurate information to publicly criticize a Globe story about her office’s handling of a brutal assault case.
Rollins accused the Globe of using the case — in which a woman walking her dog in the Charlestown Navy Yard was attacked and suffered a fractured skull — to try to make the new district attorney appear lenient toward violent criminals.
Rollins said in media appearances that her office had been just as tough on the defendant as her predecessor, Daniel Conley. In fact, she said, her office had secured greater accountability, including $5,000 in restitution for the victim, but, in fact, Conley’s office sought stiffer penalties than Rollins’s office. Conley’s prosecutors convinced the defendant, Rusbel Ruiz-Santana, to plead guilty last September to two felonies and recommended he be jailed for six months. Two months later, Ruiz-Santana withdrew his guilty pleas even when Boston Municipal Court Judge Tracy-Lee Lyons offered to reduce the penalty to a one-year suspended sentence.
When Rollins became district attorney in 2019, her prosecutors made a deal that allowed the defendant to avoid jail time as long as he got mental health counseling and met other conditions.
“I have previously stated that the plea offered under my administration was the same requested by a past administration. That was not accurate,” Rollins said in a statement late on Friday.
Rollins said the case “reflects the complex nature of each and every one of the approximately 35,000 cases my office handles annually.” She has said the assault was “egregious,” but the plea agreement was appropriate because Ruiz-Santana had a mental health disorder and no prior criminal record.
She said that the final outcome of the case, under which Ruiz-Santana pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, included protections for the public; however, court records show that key conditions placed on Ruiz-Santana at a plea hearing in April — including the requirement for $5,000 restitution and GPS monitoring — were imposed by the judge, Boston Municipal Court Judge Eleanor Sinnott, and not requested by the assistant district attorney.
Before Rollins acknowledged that she relied on inaccurate information about the case, former district attorney Conley also made clear that his office did not offer leniency to the defendant. “Any suggestion by anyone in the current administration that this defendant was offered the same disposition as my office offered is inaccurate and incorrect and I would hope on further reflection they would correct the record,” he told the Globe on Thursday, stressing that he was not trying to second guess his successor.
The Globe reported earlier this month that Rollins is shaking up the district attorney’s office, vowing to dismiss low-level nonviolent offenses that clog up the courts and do little to make the city safer. She said her office plans to help stop a “freight train moving toward mass incarceration of poor people and black and brown people.”
The Globe review of her first few months in office showed that she is making good on that promise, but also found that some of the cases that were being dismissed or had charges reduced weren’t low level at all, including the 2017 assault by Ruiz-Santana.
Ruiz-Santana, who thought the victim was recording him smoking marijuana, knocked her to the ground and allegedly flung her dog into the air. She hit the pavement hard, suffering devastating injuries, from which she is still recovering today.
He's going to ruin it for everybody.
After the Globe story about the case was published, Rollins admonished the Globe for inaccurate reporting.
“Words matter, right?” said Rollins in a July 16 interview on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, referring to the Globe story. “Here’s my point — don’t be sloppy and make it fall on my lap. If you’re going to do your job, make sure you’re right.”
She should have let it fizzle out.
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Maybe it will get her fired:
"This was no happy homecoming for Faye Dunaway. Instead, it was a demolition" by Don Aucoin Globe Staff, July 26, 2019
It was a weekend night two weeks ago, and movie legend Faye Dunaway had just taken several bows after her next-to-last solo performance in “Tea at Five’’ at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Theatre, when something odd happened.
As the curtain began to close, Dunaway suddenly reached out and touched it in a gesture that was half-grab, half-push. Was she trying to keep the curtain open so she could take one more bow? Or was she simply startled? Either way, the gesture by the 78-year-old actress drew snickers from the audience.
Now the curtain has come crashing down on Dunaway’s much-anticipated theater comeback, and in the most ignominious fashion imaginable. This week the Oscar-winning star of films like “Network,’’ “Chinatown,’’ and “Bonnie and Clyde’’ was summarily fired by the producers of “Tea at Five.’’ The announcement of her firing in a terse two-sentence press release was quickly followed by a story in the New York Post that Dunaway “slapped and threw things’’ at crew members who were attempting to put on her wig, forcing the cancellation of the July 10 performance moments before it was scheduled to begin. According to the story, that was part of a pattern of erratic behavior during the run. Matthew Lombardo, the playwright who rewrote “Tea at Five’’ specifically for Dunaway, posted a link to the story on his Facebook page, writing two words above that spoke volumes: “Ummm. Yup.’’
Perhaps it is senile dementia.
It’s probably premature to say we’re witnessing the downfall of a great star, but at a minimum, this episode represents a very dark chapter late in Dunaway’s storied career. One of the most-anticipated productions of the year in Boston theater circles, “Tea at Five’’ gave her the chance to portray a figure who looms even larger in film history than Dunaway does, and whom she greatly admires: Katharine Hepburn. It was designed to pave the way for Dunaway’s triumphant return to Broadway after a 37-year absence — and, more broadly, her journey back to the place she considers home: the stage, but it’s very hard to picture another theater producer taking a chance on hiring Dunaway anytime soon.
The Dunaway debacle could also deliver a sidelong blow to Boston’s fitful attempt to regain its status as a pre-Broadway tryout town, coming as it does on the heels of the cancellation of this fall’s tryout of “Magic Mike the Musical’’ at the Emerson Colonial Theatre. Boston was supposed to be the site of the sole pre-Broadway engagement for “Tea at Five,’’ but in announcing Dunaway’s firing, producers said that the play is going to be recast with a different actress for a run in London’s West End early next year. They said nothing about whether it will then go to Broadway. (As of Friday evening, the producers had not responded to Globe requests for elaboration on the circumstances of Dunaway’s dismissal and to questions about the possible Broadway prospects for “Tea at Five.’’)
And after we threw all that tax money at them!
Is the episode a cautionary tale about the kind of pressure cooker that an actor enters when performing live, especially in a solo show? Actors have to wage a constant battle against ageism, but Dunaway’s reported struggles with her lines at some performances are bound to raise the age issue in some circles. She reportedly had some lines fed to her through an earpiece — a tactic that Al Pacino also resorted to during the 2015 Broadway run of “China Doll,’’ according to New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel, who was also the writer who reported this week on Dunaway’s alleged behavior in Boston.
It's time to retire, or is she flat out broke?
Her firing can be seen as a signal that theater producers are willing to play hardball, even with the biggest names. It’s worth remembering, too, the behind-the-scenes challenges that lower-ranking theater staffers can face when dealing with celebrities. Sometimes those staffers find themselves on the receiving end of a star’s whims or outbursts.
Or getting groped in a bar.
Staging “Tea at Five’’ in Boston was supposed to represent a happy homecoming for Dunaway. She went to Boston University in the early 1960s, got her professional training here before heading off to Broadway and film stardom, and then became visible in Boston again in the 1970s during her marriage to J. Geils Band singer Peter Wolf. “I have a great history with Boston,’’ Dunaway told me. “I love this city,’’ but this city did not appear to love her back, not this time. When I attended that July 13 performance of “Tea at Five,’’ the house was one-third empty, even though it was a Saturday night, prime time for theatergoers. Now, she might well have additional chapters to write in her amazing career. She recovered from the Academy Awards “La La Land’’-“Moonlight’’ fiasco, after all. At least for now, though, Boston is where it all began and where it fell apart for Faye Dunaway.....
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She once received top billing before falling down on the long path of $how bu$ine$$.
Where do you want to go eat after the show?
"Batali’s restaurant Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca to close by September" by Kara Baskin Globe correspondent, July 26, 2019
According to an e-mail obtained by the Globe from B&B Hospitality, Babbo Pizzeria e Enoteca will close, laying off 62 employees by Sept. 15. The message from B&B Hospitality director Missy Andriazola notes that the closure of the Fan Pier restaurant is “expected to be permanent.” Boston manager Jeronimo Ramales confirmed the closure, noting that doors could shut slightly earlier than the September date.
Babbo opened to much fanfare in the spring of 2015, helmed by Mario Batali. Batali’s fortunes have changed in the wake of sexual assault allegations. In December 2017, three of Batali’s former employees and a chef who did not work for him accused him of inappropriately touching them, according to an article on food publication Eater. More accusations followed, including a 2017 incident at Towne Stove and Spirits on Boylston Street.
Four years ago, Batali was riding high at an opening party, spinning pizzas and sampling charcuterie. He toasted the crowd, shouting, “I’m bullish on Boston! I love this town!” He later told the Globe, “Boston is a sporting, artistic, energetic, wild place. Our challenge is to make sure Bostonians understand we want to be in their family. We’re not here to show them the Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich way. We’re here to share with them the experience and be a part of their lives.”
Batali has since stepped away from his restaurant and business ventures, which also include Eataly Boston.....
I'm finished with my plate.
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Excuse me, where is the bathroom?
