OPINION - Shields and Brooks 8/17/2018

"Shields and Brooks on ‘reality show’ rules and midterm prospects" PBS NewsHour 8/17/2018

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SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including how President Trump has "politicized" security clearances, the rules of a reality TV White House and why diversity and loyalty to the administration will be two top issues in November’s elections.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  And now to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Hello, gentlemen.

Mark Shields, syndicated columnist:  Judy.

Judy Woodruff:  It’s good to see you both.

So, let’s start with the President and security clearances.

He is moving, David, this week to take away the security clearance — he did — of former CIA Director John Brennan, says he doesn’t like what he’s been saying and doing.  He’s threatening to take away another one from a sitting, a current Justice Department official.

And he says this has been well-received, but what we’re seeing is, frankly, a flood of criticism, disagreement from the intelligence community, and including a letter from 15 top-ranking officials yesterday, 60 more tonight.

The Navy admiral, retired, who ran the Osama bin Laden raid, put out his own statement, call — defending John Brennan, whose clearance was taken away, and offering to have his own security clearance, give that up for the President.

What has Donald Trump accomplished by doing this?

David Brooks, New York Times:  Well, I mean, he’s politicized something that probably shouldn’t be politicized.

But I confess I have trouble getting my knickers in a twist about this one.  A lot of us don’t have security clearances.  It doesn’t seem to be a problem in life.  The reason they keep people on security clearance after their time in office is so they can offer advice.

And I think, frankly, it’s a little of a vanity thing, that people get to say, I still have my security clearance.  And so, when it’s taken away — but John Brennan wasn’t giving the Trump administration advice anyway.

And so the idea they have to live without security clearance after they have been out of office doesn’t strike me as one of Donald Trump’s most massive transgressions in office.  It doesn’t strike me particularly as a free speech issue.

John Brennan, the rest of us without security clearance are perfectly free to have our speech.  And I guess there is some disadvantage, career disadvantage, to people who may be younger, but of the top 5,000 Trump transgressions, I wouldn’t put this high on the charts.

Judy Woodruff:  Not a massive transgression, Mark?

Mark Shields:  I disagree with David.

I begin with William McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Command, who did lead the raid that took out Osama bin Laden in 2011, who is a retired admiral, who is not, let it be noted, talking head on television, never has been.  He’s not somebody who comments.

He has been the chancellor of the University of Texas.  He was known as Bull Frog, because that’s the senior member of the Navy SEALs, and he was the senior member of the Navy SEALs.  He was a thoroughgoing professional.

And he emerged.  And HE not only defended John Brennan, whom Donald Trump made it quite clear he’s attacking, he’s attacking because of the Russian investigation.  He blames him, just as he got rid of James Comey, which he admitted, simply because he wanted to get rid of him and because he feared him, not because of the Rod Rosenstein memo on Comey’s dispassionate — less-than-dispassionate activity in the Hillary Clinton matter.

So what you have is somebody, McRaven, saying the following, “Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children.  You have humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, you have divided us as a country.”

Nobody has a right to a security clearance, but what Donald Trump has done is, he’s politicized it.  And he has — this has never been done before.  Security clearances are lost because of alcoholism, because of drug use, because of behavior that compromises your position with that kind of information.

There was no leaking of confidential information.  If there had been, Donald Trump, who’s not very careful about his charges — remember the birther dispute — certainly would have raised that.

Judy Woodruff:  So, David, what about Mark’s point, politicization, a chilling effect, which is a point that others have made?

David Brooks:  Yes.  No, I agree.  I said it right at the beginning, that I think he’s politicizing something.

And the whole ethos of the whole Trump administration has been, it’s like a family business, and the norms and standards of our government are things they walk all over in pursuit of their own, Donald Trump’s own perpetual feuding, whoever he happens to be feuding with.

So I don’t want to emerge as the great defender of Donald Trump on this.  I agree with the statements that have been made against him, but it just strikes me as — you know, it’s — will it have a chilling effect?  I can’t imagine anybody of conscience, which I take Brennan to be, would inhibit his own statement of the truth because he’s going to — as a retiree, he’s getting his security clearance taken away.

And so I just — again, I don’t want to seem like I’m defending Trump.  I just don’t think — it doesn’t rise to me to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Judy Woodruff:  Mark, the other person the President is attacking this week, on a different — from a different direction, is a woman who was very close to him, worked for him as an associate going back to the days of “The Apprentice,” the reality TV show he did for many years, goes back, I guess, 15 years, Omarosa Manigault-Newman.

She’s written a book.  It’s very — it’s harshly critical of the President.  A lot of people have questioned her credibility, but now she’s produced audio recordings to back up what is in the book.  And we have learned now that there are video recordings as well.

She — when I interviewed her this week, she talked about it being a multimedia show.

Does either side of this story come out?  Do we learn something, I guess, is the question, from this new exchange between the President and somebody who until just, what, earlier this year was a good friend of his?

Mark Shields:  Yes.

I mean, in a White House where most of the people are recent acquaintances of the President, she goes back longer than anybody, except the President’s daughter.  She goes back 15 years.  She is a Donald Trump protege and product.

Her record for integrity is spotty at best.  When Donald Trump made his famous announcement, the race-baiting announcement for President, she said, this will go down in history as the greatest announcement for President in the history of American politics.

And when asked about Donald Trump’s baiting of Mexican Americans, she said, that’s just Donald being Donald.

But what she does, obviously, like Elizabeth Warren, she gets under Donald Trump’s skin.  And she has said things that, you know, may be subject to fact-check, but the reality is, she has tape.  She has tape of Donald Trump groveling before her, pretending that he didn’t know that John Kelly had the day before brought her to the Situation Room, and say, this isn’t — I can’t — I’m just surprised, which therefore confirms the suspicion widely held that Donald Trump doesn’t have the stomach for confronting people who work for him, that he lies.

And you can see that he obviously is absolutely upset by her, and she’s got everybody in the White House, every male, quaking in his Guccis about those tapes.  I can tell you that.

Judy Woodruff:  So she’s gotten under his skin, David.  And where do we go from here with this?  We’re waiting to see what else she has.

David Brooks:  Well, what’s interesting about her is, she plays by reality show rules.  She plays by Trump rules.

And most people who go against Trump don’t quite play by his rules.  And she plays by his rules, which is no rules, that do whatever you can, it doesn’t matter what the norms and standards are.

And taping somebody in the Situation Room is a rather serious offense and, to me, a pretty great betrayal of any — how any White House should work.


Judy Woodruff:  The room where she was fired.

David Brooks:  Right.

I mean, if we’re walking around each other in the hallway taping each other, just think about doing that.  That’s just a betrayal of how normal life should happen.

Mark Shields:  Is this being taped?

David Brooks:  Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

David Brooks:  This actually is being taped.

(LAUGHTER)

And so she said, they’re going to lie about me, they’re going to screw me, so I’m ready.

Mark Shields:  She did.

David Brooks:  And she played by their rules.

And so we’re getting a lesson in what reality TV morality looks like.  And it is turning into just a reality TV show.  The serious part — so I think they all look bad, frankly.

The serious part is that it’s — and especially the allegation, which she says with great conviction, that he used the N-word on a videotape back in “Apprentice” days — and if, as she says, is going to be used as an October surprise, then that puts race at the center of our electoral politics.

And all sorts of signs are pointing in this direction, that we’re going to wind up with an election where our political divides completely overlap — well, not completely, but largely overlap about racial divides.

And that’s just a ruinous prospect, that people are basically going to be voting, when race is a hot button issue, with a man who has a history of bigoted comments, and then voting along those lines.

TRUMP - The Poisoning of America by Putin

TRUMP AGENDA - Betraying America

TRUMP DIPLOMACY - Putin, 'Got Him'

"How Trump’s turbulent Europe trip affects his Putin meeting" PBS NewsHour 7/13/2018

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SUMMARY:  What does President Trump's visit to the United Kingdom mean for the transatlantic relationship and his meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin?  Former ambassador to NATO Nick Burns tells John Yang that if the president is going to retain political support, the respect of our allies, and even the respect of Putin, Trump will have to be tougher on the Russian leader.

TRUMP DIPLOMACY - Undermining Prime Minister May

Picture worth 1000 words

"How will Trump’s undermining of May play out in British politics?" PBS NewsHour 7/13/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Trump lobbed a volley of verbal grenades at British Prime Minister Theresa May in a tabloid interview before he arrived in the UK, saying May had botched Brexit and praising the former foreign secretary as a potential Prime Minister.  Special correspondent Ryan Chilcote joins Judy Woodruff from London to discuss the fallout from the visit.

TRUMP AGENDA - Disrespect American Allies and Kiss Our Enemies

"Trump sets combative tone at NATO with attacks on allies" PBS NewsHour 7/11/2018

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SUMMARY:  It's supposed to be a gathering of friends, but at certain moments, today's NATO summit sounded anything but friendly.  President Trump's rhetoric on German energy sources and allied military spending set a combative tone.  Still, NATO officials insist Trump's criticisms won't impact NATO's day-to-day operations.  Judy Woodruff talks with Yamiche Alcindor and special correspondent Ryan Chilcote.

"How Trump’s ‘bullying’ approach might affect NATO" PBS NewsHour 7/11/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Trump kicked off the NATO summit with fierce criticism of Germany and other top American allies.  Will his aggressive approach yield his policy objectives, including increased spending on defense?  Judy Woodruff talks with former State Department official Victoria Nuland and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago for analysis of Trump's tactics and the state of the NATO alliance.

"Kasich: Trump’s ‘wrecking ball diplomacy’ causing deep resentment among vital allies" PBS NewsHour 7/12/2018

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SUMMARY:  Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio criticized President Donald Trump on Thursday for engaging in “wrecking ball diplomacy” at the NATO Summit in Brussels.  “We go in, we stir everything up,” said Kasich.

Trump set a combative tone at the summit, slamming United States ally Germany as being “totally controlled” by Russia and admonishing world leaders to increase their military spending.

In an interview with the PBS NewsHour’s anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff, Kasich — who ran against Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries — slammed the President’s performance at the summit, joining a chorus of critics who raised questions about Trump’s commitment to U.S. allies and NATO overall.

Trump is “not using the diplomacy that I think strengthens us,” Kasich said, adding: “The resentment is growing, and there is a question of trust.  And that is a problem.”

TRUMP AGENDA - Make Toddlers Cry

DIVIDED AMERICA - Shaming of a 'Dictator's' Troops

Go GET 'em!

"Public shaming of Trump officials sparks debate over protest and civility" PBS NewsHour 6/26/2018

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SUMMARY:  President Trump's policies, remarks and tweets have sparked new protests and roiling anger.  After some high-profile public incidents targeting members of the Trump administration, it's also caused some to wonder how far is too far in political discourse.  William Brangham talks to former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, Quentin James of The Collective PAC, and Chris Buskirk of American Greatness.

TRUMP AGENDA - At the Border

"Border security and legal asylum process not mutually inconsistent, Rep. Lance says" PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

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SUMMARY:  Outrage over separated immigrant families boiled over into a new week, while President Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. should immediately deport immigrants who cross the border illegally without legal proceedings.  Yamiche Alcindor reports, then Judy Woodruff talks with Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) about the prospect of immigration legislation to address the separations, DACA and border security.

Again, Trump wants to ignore law and our Constitution.  Hale the King.....NOT!





"Running for their lives was the only option for these migrants" PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

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SUMMARY:  For many of the immigrant families now separated in the U.S. by Trump administration policy, their stories began with terror and persecution in their home countries.  In Mexico City, Nick Schifrin meets two Central American families making the arduous journey north.

"What constitutional rights do undocumented immigrants have?" by Gretchen Frazee, PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

On Sunday, President Donald Trump tweeted that undocumented immigrants should be immediately returned “from where they came” with “no Judges or Court Cases.”

This, along with the administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and the recent spike in family separations at the border — a practice President Donald Trump ended through executive order — has called attention to the legal rights of immigrants under U.S. law.

What rights do undocumented immigrants have to a court hearing, to an attorney or to free speech?  What rights do their children have to education?

How those rights play out in practice is more complex.

To answer those questions, we must start with a more basic question–does the U.S. Constitution apply to undocumented immigrants?

“Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School.  “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”

Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.”  Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.

As a result, many of the basic rights, such as the freedom of religion and speech, the right to due process and equal protection under the law apply to citizens and noncitizens.  How those rights play out in practice is more complex.

Right to due process

What the law says: The Fifth Amendment states that “no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The issue of due process is at the heart of many immigration cases, including Reno v.  Flores, the 1993 Supreme Court case that has returned to the spotlight with the surge in family separations.  The case led to an agreement requiring the government to release children to their parents, a relative or a licensed program within 20 days.

In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

How it works in practice:  Immigrants have the right to due process.  But in reality, says, Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, “courts of law run the gamut.”

In some cases, immigrants are not granted a hearing at all.  When asked about the president’s tweet, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders pointed to the process of “expedited removal,” which was created by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

“Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process,” Sanders said.

Under the expedited removal process, immigrants who have been in the country illegally for less than two years and are apprehended within 100 miles of the border can be deported almost immediately without going through a court hearing.

The exception is asylum seekers, who must be granted a hearing.

Those who are not processed through expedited removal have the right to due process in an immigration court, where the main goal is to decide whether a person has a legal claim to remain in the U.S.

“In immigration court, you have very few rights,” said John Gihon, an immigration attorney who spent six years as a prosecutor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before moving into private practice.

Gihon says the bar for what constitutes evidence is lax in immigration court.  Documents do not have to be authenticated, and hearsay, a statement made by someone outside of the court, as opposed to on the witness stand, counts as admissible evidence.  Hearsay is not allowed in most U.S. courts.

“In the majority of cases, it’s a lock solid 100 percent guaranteed conviction because there is little defense, and most would confess they crossed the border illegally,” Gihon said.

The right to legal counsel

What the law says:  The Sixth Amendment states that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall…have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1963 case Gideon v Wainwright that if a person is too poor to hire an attorney, the government must appoint one.

How it works in practice:  Because most deportation proceedings are civil rather than criminal cases, the right to legal counsel often doesn’t apply.

The Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy now requires most illegal border crossings to be tried as criminal cases, the exception being parents who cross the border illegally with children.  After public outcry about separating families, the head of Customs and Border Protection said Monday the agency has stopped referring parents for prosecution.  Other immigrants will still be charged with a crime.

Under the law, anyone facing a criminal charge has the right to counsel.  However, the government is only required to provide counsel if the person is accused of a felony.  Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor.

In recent weeks, people have donated millions of dollars to nonprofit groups to pay for immigrants’ legal fees.

The Trump administration’s decision to criminally charge immigrants has overwhelmed the courts, as demonstrated last month by a leaked photo of a trial in Pecos, Texas.

The image shows dozens of men in orange jumpsuits being tried en masse.  In such proceedings, reports the Intercept, which originally published the photo, trials can last only minutes per defendant.

The right to be with your family

What the law says:  Critics of family separation have pointed to the legal right to “family integrity.”  This right is not spelled out in the Constitution but was established through court rulings in the early 20th century, Rodriguez said.

“People have a right to be with and commune with their family.  It’s a very basic principle,” she said.

The government can split up families in extraordinary circumstances, such as in the case of child abuse, but it cannot do so without going through a legal process.

How it works in practice:  Before Trump signed the executive order Wednesday, the administration had divided families as a matter of course, without considering the individual cases.  The ACLU sued, arguing the policy was unconstitutional.

The court has not issued a final ruling, and the President’s executive order could change the case.  But a judge did rule earlier this month that the case could proceed, saying immigrants have a right to “familial association” under the Constitution.

Right to vote or hold office

What the law says:  The Constitution does not prohibit anyone from voting.  Instead, it spells out who cannot be denied the right to vote.  The 14th Amendment says men who are U.S. citizens and over the age of 21 must be allowed to vote, unless they have committed a crime.  The 15th Amendment prohibits anyone from denying the right to vote based on skin color and the 19th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex (aka being a woman).

It wasn’t until 1926 that all states passed laws barring noncitizens from voting.  Congress passed a law 70 years later prohibiting illegal immigrants from voting “for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner.”

How it works in practice:  If you are not a U.S. citizen, voting in a federal election could land you in prison for up to three years or lead to deportation.  States can impose their own, sometimes harsher, penalties for breaking the law.

However, because elections are largely a local affair, some states allow local governments to decide whether noncitizens can vote in local elections.

In fact, noncitizens in Chicago have been allowed to vote for school board since 1989.  New Yorkers who were not citizens were given the same right from 1969 until 2003, when local school boards were abolished there.  Now San Francisco and Maryland are also giving noncitizens the right to vote in some local elections.

The right to education

What the law says:  There is no “right to education” in the Constitution but two other sections do come into play when considering whether undocumented migrant children should have access to education.

First, in the case Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that if children who are citizens have access to a free, public education, so should undocumented immigrant children.  That is because the 14th Amendment says the government cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

What it means in practice:  The court case means undocumented children cannot be prohibited from enrolling in a public school.

But what if a child is being detained and, therefore, does not have access to a public school.  That is where, once again, the Flores settlement comes into play.

The settlement requires that facilities where children are kept must meet minimum requirements for providing health care, education, recreation and other child care services.

Right against unreasonable search and seizure

What the law says:  The Fourth Amendment establishes the right “against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

What it means in practice:  While this law would generally apply to both citizens and noncitizens, there is a key caveat known as the “border search exception.”

This exception dates back to the very first Congress, which passed a law allowing searchers at the border as a means to collecting duties.

As a result, courts have long upheld that searches at the border are not considered “unreasonable” for the very fact that they occur at the border.

The question courts have grappled with since is what constitutes the border.  Searches at airports and other ports of entry for example are often considered legal.  The Justice Department has also established a 100-mile wide “extended border” where Border Patrol agents can conduct searches if they meet certain criteria.

REAL TIME - Monologue, President Hold My Beer

Monologue: President Hold My Beer
Real Time with Bill Maher 6/22/3018

AMERICA - What Other Countries See

G7 2018 SUMMIT - Trump Continues to Make America Irrelevant

"Expect a contentious G7 amid Trump’s escalating trade battle" PBS NewsHour 6/7/2018

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SUMMARY:  Diplomatic pleasantries on Thursday didn’t mask the widening rift between the U.S. and its closest allies over new tariffs that threaten to spark a trade war.  Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff to offer a preview of the G7 Summit in Canada.

"Trump keeps G7 attendance short at tense summit" PBS NewsHour 6/8/2018

Where Trump attempts to pay back his debt to Putin by saying Russia should be reinstated as a member.  After all, Putin got Trump elected.

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SUMMARY:  The Group of Seven convened their Canadian summit in an atmosphere of argument over President Trump's trade demands.  Before arriving, Trump had argued that Russia should return to the G7.  At the summit, a suddenly canceled meeting with the French President Emmanuel Macron reflected the wider tensions between the allies.  Yamiche Alcindor joins Judy Woodruff from Quebec.

PROTEST - Constitutional Right to Protest vs NFL & Trump

"The NFL thought it had a protest compromise.  Then Trump restarted a culture war" PBS NewsHour 6/5/2018

"WAAAA....they don't want to play with me.  WAAAA."  Trump the cry-baby.

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SUMMARY:  President Trump disinvited the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles from a White House visit after many players decided not to go.  The President’s move again stokes a bitter cultural battle over the national anthem and the right of NFL players to protest, despite the fact that none of the Eagles took a knee during the last season.  Amna Nawaz talks with Howard Bryant, author of “The Heritage.”

TRUMP AGENDA - Corporations Profiting From Immigrant Detainees’ Labor

"Investigation: Corporations Are Profiting From Immigrant Detainees’ Labor.  Some Say It’s Slavery." by Victoria Law, In These Times 5/29/2018

IMHO:  It IS slavery!

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At privately run detention centers, immigrants say they're forced to work for $1 a day.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP VOWED IN MARCH, “My administration will focus on ending the absolutely horrific practice of human trafficking.  And I am prepared to bring the full force and weight of our government, whatever we can do, in order to solve this horrific problem.”

Trump is using this specter of human trafficking to justify beefed-up border walls and a vicious crackdown on immigrants.  Experts say his cure has nothing to do with the disease.

“It’s a fantasy, what the President is promising,” says Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at George Mason University who studies trafficking in Mexico and Central America.  “People will still come, escaping poverty and violence.  Trafficking happens when they are forced to work along the route—drug smuggling, sex work.  By increasing border enforcement, you’re just making the journey more expensive and longer, and making people more vulnerable to traffickers.”

But some people caught in this sweep say that the federal crackdown itself subjects them to another, pernicious form of trafficking.  They say the corporations that operate immigrant detention facilities illegally force detainees to work.  There’s reason to believe thousands of the roughly 35,000 people in immigrant detention are currently being coerced into labor.

Under federal law, human trafficking is defined as subjection to involuntary labor through “force, fraud or coercion.”  Within the past year, four lawsuits have been filed by seven people who say they were victims of trafficking at the hands of the nation’s two largest private detention center operators: CoreCivic and GEO Group.  The suits charge that at five CoreCivic facilities and one GEO Group facility, the corporations violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act by threatening solitary confinement or withholding basic necessities, such as food, toilet paper and soap, if detainees refused to work.  According to the lawsuits, the companies did so to reduce labor costs and maximize profits.

The four new suits join one already wending its way through the court system.  Filed in 2014 against GEO Group, the suit was certified as a class action this February.  Approximately 62,000 people currently or previously detained in a GEO Group facility in Colorado might have been affected.

Each of these five lawsuits concerns the Voluntary Work Program, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program that puts detainees to work for $1 a day.

“The name ‘Voluntary Work Program’ is misleading since, in most cases, it actually means forced labor,” says Liz Martinez, director of advocacy and strategic communications at Freedom for Immigrants, a nonprofit working to abolish immigrant detention.  Noting that detained people are wholly dependent upon detention staff for basics such as food, toilet paper and even time outside, “the detention facilities create an inhospitable atmosphere that incentivizes people to join these Voluntary Work Programs,” she explains.

Asked about the size of the Voluntary Work Program, ICE spokesperson Danielle Bennett wrote, “Voluntary Work Programs currently exist at the five government-owned Service Processing Centers (SPCs) and at over 25 privately run facilities.”  Bennett would not clarify what “over 25” meant.  A 2014 New York Times investigation by Ian Urbina found that 55 U.S. detention centers had Voluntary Work Programs, 34 of which were run by private corporations.

Though only privately run detention centers have been named in the lawsuits, advocates don’t rule out the existence of forced labor in government-run facilities.  “In county jails and other public facilities, they’re also put to work,” says Martinez.  Not all of that labor falls under the Voluntary Work Program.  Urbina found that Butler County Jail in Ohio, for instance, is not a formal participant, but approximately 50 of the 300 immigrants detained under the jail’s contract with ICE clean and perform maintenance.  A county representative told Urbina that utilizing unpaid immigrant labor means the jail does not need to hire outside janitorial workers, saving the county hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

However, lawsuits have targeted privately run detention centers because of the number of reported violations, as well as the outrage surrounding the fact that corporations and shareholders are profiting from this labor.

WORKING FOR $1 A DAY AND SANITARY NAPKINS

Martha Gonzalez was already a trafficking survivor.  Fleeing an abusive relationship in Mexico, she hired coyotes to bring her and her daughter across the border, and was forced into sex work after the coyotes threatened them with violence.

In October 2017, after 14 months in ICE custody, Gonzalez was released and issued a T-1 visa, reserved for trafficking victims.  Now, she is demanding restitution from CoreCivic.  In February, she sued the company for labor trafficking.

Gonzalez spent those 14 months being shuttled through three of CoreCivic's Texas detention centers, in La Salle County, Hutto and Laredo.  At both Hutto and Laredo, she says, prison officials verbally abused detainees, threatened them with solitary confinement and deprived them of basic necessities in order to coerce them into working seven days a week.  For instance, Gonzalez tells In These Times, if she tried to take a day off, detention center staff refused her toothpaste and other essentials.  When she was menstruating, they limited her sanitary napkins to two per day unless she worked.

5,532:
DAILY POPULATION IN U.S. IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTERS IN 1994
39,322:
DAILY POPULATION IN U.S. IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTERS IN 2017
Though the suit doesn’t specify how many others were allegedly threatened into working, Gonzalez says she wasn’t the only one who suffered retaliation for refusing to work.  She also alleges that the paltry wages sometimes went unpaid, thus depriving her of the means to stay in touch with her family.  In 2016, she filed a formal complaint about not being paid for some of the days she had worked.  In retaliation, she says, staff didn’t allow her to work at all.  Without that $1 a day, Gonzalez could not afford phone cards to call her daughter and mother.  Calls from CoreCivic’s Texas detention centers typically cost 50 cents per minute.

Gonzalez and her attorney are seeking class-action status on behalf of every detainee who worked for no pay or $1 or $2 per day at any CoreCivic detention facility from February 2007 onward.  It’s not yet known how many people could become part of this lawsuit if the court agrees, but her complaint estimates the number to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.  Gonzalez wants the court to force CoreCivic to stop the practice.  She and her attorney are also seeking minimum wage payments for labor performed while detained.

POLITICS IN AMERICA - Three-Way War

"How a Typical Government Leak Turned Into a Three-Way War Between Comey, McCabe and Trump" by Peter Elkind, ProPublica 5/18/2018

Two former allies, James Comey and Andrew McCabe, have offered contradictory accounts of the orchestrated FBI leak that spawned a critical investigation.  That means one of them has to be lying — as President Trump is happy to tweet to the world.

One of them has to be lying.

That conclusion is inescapable if you closely examine the sworn testimony of two erstwhile FBI allies, James Comey and Andrew McCabe, about the leaking episode that led to McCabe’s firing in March.  After all, two diametrically opposed accounts can’t both be correct.

President Donald Trump has seized upon the situation — laid bare in a report from the Justice Department’s inspector general — to assail both men, long among his favored targets for reasons having nothing to do with their veracity.  “He LIED! LIED! LIED!”  Trump wrote, in a veritable Presidential tweet-gasm, hours after the McCabe report’s release.  “McCabe was totally controlled by Comey - McCabe is Comey!!  No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”

This is much more than a venomous 21st century personal duel — tweet versus tweet at 10 paces.  The credibility of Comey and McCabe is crucial, giving Trump every incentive to tar them.  The former has offered withering accounts of his interactions with the President.  And given what the two men observed both before and after Trump sacked Comey, both could be called on for key testimony in a potential obstruction of justice charge against the President.

The truth is that, in this case, Trump is partially right: One or both of the FBI’s former top officials is almost certainly lying.  The irony is that the entire episode is at complete odds with Trump’s long-running claim about a “Deep State” FBI cabal that’s out to get him.  The leak at issue, in fact, brought election-eve attention to a second investigation of the Clintons, news that helped Trump’s campaign.

It’s yet another improbable turn of events.

Comey and McCabe were both long thought to embody the square-jawed, gray-suited ideal of the honest G-man.  And by all accounts, they were close colleagues.  Comey elevated McCabe, over more traditional candidates, to be his deputy; McCabe then served as acting FBI director for three months after Comey’s dismissal.

But they diverged dramatically in their testimony for the IG's investigation, which focused on a leak that McCabe orchestrated to the The Wall Street Journal about an FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation.  In his damning 35-page report, the IG concluded that McCabe made an “improper media disclosure” and demonstrated “lack of candor,” repeatedly lying about it under oath.

McCabe’s punishment was swift: He was fired on March 16, just two days before he would have qualified for retirement, after 21 years at the FBI.

Comey’s testimony, which the IG concluded was backed by the “overwhelming weight” of circumstantial evidence, was instrumental to the report’s conclusions.  In Comey’s telling, he was ignorant of the original leak, and then misled about it.  When he and McCabe discussed The Wall Street Journal article shortly after its publication nine days before the election, according to Comey’s sworn testimony to the IG, McCabe professed bewilderment about the leak’s source.  Testified Comey: “I have a strong impression he conveyed to me, ‘It wasn’t me, boss.’  And I don’t think that was by saying those words.  I think it was most likely by saying, ‘I don’t know how this shit gets in the media, or why would people talk about this kind of thing?’ — words that I would fairly take as: ‘I, Andy, didn’t do it.’”

Comey has always portrayed himself as a model of probity.  In public appearances and in his recent memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” he stresses the importance of “a fundamental commitment to the truth — especially in our public institutions and those who lead them.”  In his book’s 312 pages, the word “truth” appears 73 times in various forms.  There are 98 references to “lying” or “lies.”

In interviews during the recent media blitz for his book, Comey cast the McCabe episode as reinforcing the importance of truth-telling and accountability.  “Sometimes even good people do things they shouldn’t do,” Comey told CNN.  “It’s not acceptable in the FBI or the Justice Department for people to lack candor.”  (Comey declined a ProPublica request to discuss McCabe, emailing back that the matter is “painful and complicated, and I don’t want to step into it.” McCabe also declined to be interviewed.)

For his part, McCabe testified that he told Comey about the leak at the time, insisting that it’s his old boss who has it wrong.  McCabe’s account is presented in detail in the IG’s report, as well as in a series of press statements from McCabe and his lawyer, former DOJ inspector general Michael Bromwich.

Bromwich asserts the IG report falsely “paints Director Comey as a white knight carefully guarding FBI information.”  In Bromwich’s view, Comey had “every incentive to distance himself” from the controversial leak.  After all, he noted, Comey himself was being investigated by the IG for allegedly improper media disclosures.  That report, focused on Comey’s handling of the Clinton email case, is expected in a few weeks.  It will likely spark a whole new round of scrutiny about leaking.

Meanwhile the President has reveled in the spectacle of two favorite targets turning on one another.  Six days after the McCabe report came out, he tweeted: “James Comey just threw Andrew McCabe ‘under the bus.’ Inspector General’s report on McCabe is a disaster for both of them!  Getting a little (lot) of their own medicine?”

The easy part is concluding that someone was untruthful in this instance.  The much harder point is trying to determine which person it was — and what to make of it.

Last year, I spent five months on assignment for ProPublica examining the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation — an exquisitely fraught case with career implications for all involved.  The assignment offered some perspective into the trafficking of sensitive information in Washington, D.C. — and how the curious facts of the McCabe affair are distorting a series of events that in other, less politically raucous, times might have been unremarkable.  And it’s all been intensified by a drastic change in the political environment.

If you want to see the embodiment of the popular view of a government leak, Steven Spielberg’s movie “The Post” provides a good example.  It depicts The Washington Post’s Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee (played by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks) as they wrestle with whether to publish secret documents known as the Pentagon Papers.  Those papers were furtively photocopied and then handed over to journalists by civilian military contractor Daniel Ellsberg.  Depending on your political perspective, Ellsberg was either a conscience-driven whistleblower exposing government deceit about the Vietnam War, or a traitor harming the interests of the U.S. government.  But either way, the portrayal embodies the most traditional definition of leaking: an individual bringing to light information that those in power don’t want revealed.

But there’s a whole second category of leaks — that get less attention but are surely far more prevalent.  (Nobody keeps statistics on these things.)  These leaks occur when public officials disclose something, often with official approval, to advance the interests of their institutions and themselves.

The FBI is no exception to this practice.  Outside of congressional hearings or public appearances, officials there are loath to be quoted in the press by name.  “Background” briefings — where officials express opinions or describe events while shielded by agreements that they will be identified obliquely as, say, “sources familiar with the matter” — have long been common.

There are undoubtedly semantics involved.  A government official trying, in his view, to inform the public, likely doesn’t view himself as “leaking.” Sure enough, in his book, Comey wrote that he told Trump that he “didn’t do sneaky things” and he didn’t leak.  Similarly, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last May, six days before Comey’s firing, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley asked him if he’d “ever been an anonymous source” or, in a separate question, if he had “ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source” for news reports about the investigations into Clinton’s emails or Trump’s Russia ties.

“Never,” Comey replied to the first question.  “No,” was his response to the second.

My reporting about the FBI doesn’t tie Comey to any disclosures directly provided or overtly “authorized.”  But it’s fair to say there was a great deal written about the agency and its work — by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the [Wall Street] Journal, as well as ProPublica — that accurately recounted specific actions, meetings and thinking at the highest levels within the FBI.  Many of those articles quoted “sources familiar with the matter.”  Comey’s book confirmed many of these events in strikingly similar detail.

Comey has long been one of the most media-savvy officials in Washington.  Days after his firing, as he later acknowledged in congressional testimony and in his book, Comey provided a close friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, with one of the memos he prepared memorializing his meetings with the President, and arranged for Richman to anonymously share its “substance” with a New York Times reporter, in hope of forcing the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.  As a New York developer, he was widely reported to be an inveterate leaker, shamelessly inflating his reputation (as a businessman and lady’s man) with a multi-decade stream of anonymously sourced tidbits planted in Gotham’s tabloids.  As a Presidential candidate, he reveled in the hacked Clinton email revelations served up on Wikileaks.

In his actions as President, Trump has been less than consistent on the issue of leaking.  For example, he revealed highly classified intelligence to Russia’s ambassador and foreign minister during a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.  And last month, Trump pardoned one time vice Presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for concealing the fact that he had leaked the identity of a CIA officer.

That hasn’t stopped Trump (like many a President before him) from expressing outrage about leaking.  In his case, he has conflated it with lying and threatening the nation’s security.  He has labored mightily to brand some of his critics with a scarlet L, as disseminators of America’s secrets to “the enemy of the people” — the news media.

Trump called California Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democrat bird-dogging the Russia investigation, “the leakin’ monster of no control.”  Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former CIA Director John Brennan; Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee — all were “liars and leakers.”  Comey, Trump declared over and over, was “a proven LEAKER & LIAR,” who “gave up Classified Information (jail).”  More recently, he reacted to embarrassing disclosures emanating from his own White House by calling the offenders “traitors and cowards.”

Trump began targeting Comey and McCabe while a candidate in 2016, for reasons that had everything to do with politics — and nothing to do with leaks or lies.

Candidate Trump’s opinion of the FBI director was transactional, ping-ponging with his view of whether Comey’s latest action benefited him.  He bashed Comey for his July 2016 announcement that there was no basis for charging Hillary Clinton in the FBI’s investigation of her private email server; praised Comey in late October for announcing that he was reopening the case, after agents discovered new Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop; and attacked Comey again, days later, when he announced that examination of the new messages hadn’t changed anything.

Trump then fired Comey less than four months after taking office, explaining in an NBC interview at the time that he’d been frustrated by the director’s refusal to shut down the Russia investigation.

Trump’s enmity toward McCabe has a partisan origin, stemming from reporting in an Oct. 23, 2016, Wall Street Journal story: During a failed bid for a Virginia state senate seat the year before, McCabe’s wife Jill, running as a Democrat, had taken $467,500 in contributions from the political action committee of Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally.

According to an FBI statement provided to the Journal, McCabe, who was a Republican, had played “no role” in the Virginia campaign, conferred with FBI ethics overseers about the matter, and had no responsibility for the Clinton email investigation until February 2016 — months after his wife’s defeat — when Comey promoted him to deputy director.

No matter.  Then-candidate Trump immediately tweeted out the story, telling campaign rallies that the situation was “absolutely disgraceful,” sure proof that the FBI’s email probe was “rigged.”

Thus was the stage set for the “improper media disclosure” that led to McCabe’s sacking.

As leaks go, what McCabe would provide was underwhelming.  It didn’t involve classified information.  It didn’t reveal much of a secret.  And it was overshadowed by much bigger news.

This was a classic Washington leak: a calculated act of reputational enhancement (one that, not incidentally, also took a potshot at another agency).  And how it occurred was telling.  This was no secret conversation in a garage at midnight.

Instead, as laid out in the inspector general’s report, it originated with a request by a reporter to the person officially designated by the FBI to handle such queries.  Three senior officials then conferred before any information was released.

On Oct. 24, 2016, just two weeks before the Presidential election, Devlin Barrett, who covered law enforcement for the Wall Street Journal, emailed FBI public affairs chief Michael Kortan, the agency’s longtime official spokesman.  Barrett had written the article that explored whether Jill McCabe’s political ties had influenced the email probe — the article that Trump had seized upon.

Now, Barrett was pursuing a related story: He’d been told the FBI’s deputy director had sought to chill a second Clinton probe, this one involving donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Kortan conferred with McCabe, who authorized the public affairs chief and Lisa Page, a key FBI attorney assigned to McCabe’s office, to speak with Barrett on condition that they not be identified as the source of the information.  (Page, then in the midst of an extra-marital affair with Pete Strzok, the FBI agent who had led the Clinton email probe, would later become a target of criticism after investigators discovered their text exchanges, which included remarks critical of Trump.)

During an initial call on Oct. 27, Barrett told the FBI’s Kortan and Page that his sources were adamant that McCabe had issued orders to “stand down” on the Clinton Foundation investigation.  Page quickly briefed McCabe, who later told investigators he considered this narrative “incredibly damaging.”  McCabe instructed Page to provide the reporter an anecdote designed to counter the “stand down” claim.

At the time, the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton charity had been lingering for more than a year.  Its existence was widely known in Washington, in part, top FBI officials suspected, because of whispers from Clinton-hating agents in the bureau’s New York field office.  It had been written about widely in the press.

But it was still officially secret, even as the rules for confirming investigations suddenly seemed less certain.  A year earlier, Comey had publicly confirmed that the FBI was investigating Clinton’s use of a private email server.  In his book, Comey explains that the email probe was something “the whole world knew anyway”; making “no comment” about it seemed “increasingly silly.”  He cites DOJ policies allowing such disclosure regarding matters of “extraordinary public interest” or where investigative activity had already made it obvious.  (In that case, Comey wrote, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had agreed with his decision.)

But when, at a hearing in July 2016, a Republican congressman asked Comey if the FBI was looking into the Clinton Foundation, he refused to confirm the probe.  Comey testified that it was standard FBI practice to decline comment on “the existence or non-existence” of ongoing investigations.

Nonetheless, on Oct. 27, 2016, McCabe authorized Page and Kortan to furtively confirm to a reporter what Comey publicly would not.

Late that afternoon, speaking from Kortan’s office at FBI headquarters, they told the Wall Street Journal’s Barrett about a phone conversation McCabe had with Matt Axelrod, a top lieutenant to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, two months earlier.  As the FBI officials related it, Axelrod was “very pissed off” that New York agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe.  (Justice Department policy strongly discourages taking any overt investigative steps involving a political candidate close to an election.)

Page and Kortan told the Wall Street Journal reporter that McCabe had defended the investigation into the Clinton Foundation, saying: “Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?”  That prompted Axelrod, “after a pause,” to say, “Of course not,” according to this account.  (Axelrod, now in private practice, declined to discuss the matter.)

After the conversation, Page reported back to McCabe (who was out of town), texting: “We’re done.  He’s going to look at his story again and will circle back with him in the morning.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department appeared to be deploying its own leaks to jab at the FBI.  On Oct. 29, The Washington Post published an anonymously sourced story, headlined: “Justice Officials Warned FBI That Comey’s Decision to Update Congress Was Not Consistent with Department Policy.”

Strzok texted Page about the Post article the next day, concluding that Axelrod was the source.  “Yeah.  I saw it,” Page replied.  “Makes me feel WAY less bad about throwing him under the bus in the forthcoming CF [Clinton Foundation] article.”

The Journal story was posted a short time later.  The entire exchange that McCabe had leaked — including the dramatic “pause” in the conversation — appeared, attributed to “a person familiar with the probes,” “one person close to Mr. McCabe,” and “people familiar with the conversation.”

But the material was buried inside a story that focused on new details about a far bigger revelation two days earlier: Comey’s election-jarring announcement that he was reopening the email probe.  McCabe’s leak seemed trivial at the time.

A lot of things changed over the ensuing six months.  Trump was elected President, for starters, and his campaign was under investigation.  Trump began castigating the FBI on a regular basis.  An agency that had historically been subject to less criticism and scrutiny than other agencies was suddenly being bashed by the President, its motivations and actions questioned.

So when Trump fired Comey, on May 9, 2017, McCabe found himself acting director of the FBI — facing the same kind of Presidential pressure and attention that Comey had endured.  Although McCabe didn’t know it, a conversation he’d had earlier that day would light a fuse on his own FBI career.

Two agents from the FBI’s inspection division, expanding an existing investigation of media leaks, had decided to interview the deputy director about the Oct. 30 Wall Street Journal story because it appeared to show someone had improperly revealed McCabe’s private conversation with a Justice Department official.

This would be the first in a series of interviews with investigators in which McCabe, according to the inspector general, repeatedly lied and changed his story.

According to the IG report, McCabe told the agents on May 9 that he had “no idea” how the account of his conversation with the DOJ official got out.  Three days later, they emailed him a draft statement of what he’d told them, asking him to sign and return it.  The statement read in part: “I do not know the identity of the source of the information contained in the article.  ...  I gave no one authority to share any information relative to my interaction with the DOJ executive with any member of the media.”

McCabe never signed the statement.

On July 28, investigators from the Inspector General’s office, in the midst of their separate inquiry into the Clinton email case, decided to interview McCabe after reviewing Page’s text messages and discovering references to her meeting with the Journal reporter.

At this point, McCabe had roughly seven weeks to refresh his recollection.  But he stuck to his initial position.  Asked on tape and under oath if Page had been authorized to talk to a reporter, McCabe replied, according to the IG report: “Not that I’m aware of.”  Questioned about texts that suggested otherwise, McCabe said: “I was not even in town during those days.  So I can’t tell you where she was or what she was doing.”

Four days later, on Aug. 1, McCabe changed his stance.  He called an assistant inspector general and said he “may” have authorized Page to speak to Barrett, after all.

On Aug. 18, in yet another conversation with investigators, McCabe admitted he’d “misspoke.”  He now “took ownership” of the leak.

That admission led the investigators to refer the matter to Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department, who launched his own probe on Aug. 31, 2017.  (As it happens, McCabe’s lawyer, Bromwich, had previously praised Horowitz, calling him “an experienced and highly regarded law enforcement professional” in an op-ed for The Washington Post in early 2017.)

By Nov. 29, when he was questioned again by investigators for the IG, McCabe seemed to be trying to offload some blame on his former boss.  McCabe, now accompanied by a lawyer, detailed his claim that he’d told Comey he had disclosed the Axelrod conversation when they spoke on the day after the Journal story appeared.  The director “did not react negatively,” McCabe testified — instead telling his deputy it was “good” that he had made clear the FBI wouldn’t buckle to political pressure.

McCabe also told the IG he didn’t view what he’d done as revealing the existence of an investigation, explaining, “There really wasn’t any discussion of the case, of the merits of the case, the targets and subjects of the case, so I did not see it as a disclosure about the Clinton Foundation case.”

The Inspector General’s report served up a heap of evidence against McCabe from multiple sources.  But it was Comey who served as perhaps the most damning witness.  The report detailed his starkly conflicting account of their conversation about the Journal story.

In his testimony to the IG, Comey said McCabe had “definitely” not told him he was behind the leak.  “…[J]ust to make sure there’s no fuzz on it,” he testified, “I did not authorize this.  I would not have authorized it.”  The IG spelled out multiple reasons why Comey would not have viewed his deputy’s disclosure with equanimity.

The first was a meeting with his executive team on Oct. 31, 2016, convened shortly before he discussed the Journal story with McCabe.  There, Comey expressed dismay about all the leaks emanating from the bureau.  According to notes Page took at the meeting, later cited in the IG report, Comey cited a “need to figure out how to get our folks to understand why leaks hurt our organization.”

At the time, Comey was already being skewered for having revealed his decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation.  He said he would never support confirming any investigation through a leak and noted his earlier refusal to disclose the Clinton Foundation probe.  Discussing the conversation with Axelrod, he noted, was also sure to harm the FBI’s already troubled relations with the Justice Department.

As one of the FBI’s two top officials, McCabe had authority to share information with the media, a point he offered in his defense — but only after denying, then admitting, responsibility for the leak.  The Inspector General rejected his claim that this disclosure met the Justice Department’s “public interest” standard.  Instead, the report found, it was “an attempt to make himself look good by making senior [DOJ] leadership … look bad.”  McCabe, the report concluded, was primarily motivated by his desire to avoid “another personally damaging story.”

To put it another way: It was a typical government leak.  But with the FBI under critical examination in Trump-era Washington, it looked much more suspicious than it might have in the past, especially given McCabe’s shifting story.

In late February, the IG privately sent his report to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which recommended McCabe’s dismissal.  Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him on March 16.

Trump quickly tweeted: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.  Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy.  He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”

In a series of media statements after his dismissal, McCabe, whose case has now been referred for possible criminal prosecution, blamed political pressure from Trump for his firing and made clear his determination to fight.  He contended he answered investigators’ questions “as completely and accurately as I could” during a chaotic time, and made efforts to correct his answers when he realized they were “not fully accurate or may have been misunderstood.”

McCabe presented a detailed rebuttal that was included and discussed — but ultimately found unpersuasive — in the report.  And his defense team told ProPublica they also have reviewed previously undisclosed emails proving that McCabe informed Comey that he was in contact with the Journal, which the IG chose to leave out of the report.  They also assert that transcripts of Comey’s interviews show he was uncertain in his recollections of what really happened.  They say they are barred from providing details of these purportedly exonerating documents because they remain subject to a government non-disclosure agreement.

McCabe’s team provided ProPublica with a copy of the NDA, which granted his lawyers access to “certain FBI-related information” on the condition that they not release anything “derived from or relating to FBI files” without “prior written authorization of the FBI.”  McCabe spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said Bromwich has sought, but not received, release from the non-disclosure agreement.  (A representative of the IG’s office declined comment on the issue.)

It’s certainly plausible to imagine that in an organization as hierarchical as the FBI — with its chief press officer coordinating the interaction with a major publication — Comey would normally have been made aware of McCabe’s actions.  (Kortan, who retired in February as assistant director for public affairs after surviving as the FBI’s media chief for 18 years, declined to discuss the matter; the IG’s report makes no mention of any testimony from him on the matter.)

The inspector general’s report makes clear that he considered Comey’s testimony more credible than McCabe’s.  But the same inspector general is about to release a second report, this one focused, among other matters, on Comey’s actions and public disclosures in the Clinton email case.  For all of Comey’s professions to Trump that he wouldn’t do anything “sneaky,” the episode where he leaked one of his memos through a surrogate — while not involving any classified information (contrary to what Trump claims) — appears to fit that definition.  And, as noted, descriptions in his book conspicuously match the views of “sources familiar with the matter” who were cited in past news articles.

Many legal experts — and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein — have already concluded that Comey’s actions during the email investigation violated longstanding Justice Department policy.  In the McCabe report, the IG embraced his view of events.  In the report that is forthcoming, he may not fare as well.

FOLLOW THE MONEY - "Don" Trump's Corrupt White House MOB

"Why did major companies pay Trump’s personal lawyer through a shell company?" PBS NewsHour 5/9/2018

Answer?  Hoping to hide the bribes and pay-backs.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Payments tolling more than $4 million were made to a shell company set up by Michael Cohen, President Trump's personal attorney, and included about $500,000 from a U.S. company with ties to a Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin.  That shell company was also used to pay hush money to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford.  John Yang talks to Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post.

TRUMP WHITE HOUSE - Child On Board

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Modeled After "The Godfather"

The Trump White House is the headquarters for the Mob headed by "Don" Trump.



The Godfather

AT THE BORDER - Asylum Seekers

"‘I didn’t come here to cross illegally.  I came here for help’" PBS NewsHour 4/27/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  More than 300 Central Americans have arrived in Tijuana, Mexico, in recent days, and plan on Sunday to ask for asylum at the San Ysidro Port of Entry [San Diego].  But President Trump has tweeted that Homeland Security is instructed to turn them away.  Special correspondent Jean Guerrero of KPBS reports.

TRUMP - "A Higher Loyalty"

"James Comey memoir paints scathing portrait of Trump, rousing GOP furor" PBS NewsHour 4/13/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  James Comey's new book offers unsparing views of President Trump.  In "A Higher Loyalty," Comey shares new details about his interactions with Trump, whom he compares to a mafia boss and whose behavior he says is "untethered to the truth."  John Yang talks with Yamiche Alcindor and Philip Rucker of The Washington Post about the White House reaction and more.