Georgia Governor Kemp says, "Special session to impeach Willis is 'not feasible and may be unconstitutional'.”

Echo report published in the Georgia Recorder by Stanley Dunlap and Ross Williams: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp chastised a state lawmaker for demanding a special legislative session in order to impeach the Fulton County Georgia prosecutor leading a sweeping election collusion case against the former guy Donald Trump and his inner circle.

Kemp joined state House Speaker Jon Burns on the list of Georgia GOP elected officials who have rejected Trenton Republican Sen. Colton Moore’s calls for a special session to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for prosecuting the former president and 18 co-defendants on allegations that they illegally conspired to overturn the 2020, presidential election results in Georgia and several other states.

Holding a special session by the end of the year has always been a long shot that not only would require the governor’s support but it would have required three-fifths of both the House and Senate to sign on. Some of Georgia’s Democratic state lawmakers would have to go along with a proposed special session, making it a political non-starter.

Former buy US President Donald Trump and all 18 of his co-defendants in Georgia’s election interference case have turned themselves in to face charges, meeting a deadline for their surrender.

Kemp cast Moore’s effort as misguided, comparing it to calls in 2020, to call a special session to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss to Democratic President Joe Biden, which Kemp also rejected.

“Fast forward to today, nearly three years later, memories are fading fast. There have been calls by one individual in the General Assembly and echoed outside of these walls by the former president for a special session that would ignore current Georgia law and directly interfere with the proceedings of a separate but equal branch of government.”

Moore is taking criticism for using dangerous language colleagues have characterized as inciting violence and posting contact information for Republicans who have spoken against his plan to call for a special session.

The former mayor of New York City, (aka, the drunkard friend of "the former guy" Trump) who also previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer, Giuliani faces the same number of charges as Trump – more than any other co-defendant. Prosecutors have accused Giuliani of spearheading the effort in Georgia by making false statements and soliciting false testimony, conspiring to create phoney paperwork, and asking state lawmakers to violate their oath of office.

He has denied any wrongdoing. He surrendered on Wednesday and was released on $150,000 bond.

Brietbart "Barfcart!"

(😏Ugh!- Paleeze!) "We need to be taking action right now, because if we don’t, our constituents are going to be fighting in the streets,” he said Tuesday, on an episode of Steve Bannon’s (barf-cart!) War Room. “Do you want a civil war?"- "OMG"  "I don’t want a civil war. I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so, and the first step to getting that done is defunding Fani Willis.”

On Tuesday, Burns called for a lowering of the political temperature, writing in a letter to the Republican caucus that attempts to punish Willis “flaunts the idea of separation of powers, if not outright violates it.”

Other Republican senators have floated the idea of using the state’s new prosecutor oversight commission to investigate Willis, including Sen. Clint Dixon, who said he would submit a formal complaint on October 1, the first day the oversight group will be accepting complaints.

“Once the Prosecutorial Oversight Committee is appointed in October, we can call on them to investigate and take action against Fani Willis and her efforts that weaponize the justice system against political opponents,” the Gwinnett Republican wrote in a social media post. “This is our best measure, and I will be ready to call for that investigation.”

But Governor Kemp also casted doubt on a plan that has also been promoted by Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, the chamber’s third ranking member behind Butts County Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a potential defendant in the election case.

Governor Kemp said the new oversight board gives the public some legal recourse against local prosecutors who they believe are acting unethically.

“Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that D.A. Willis’ actions or lack thereof warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission, but that will ultimately be a decision that the commission will make,” Kemp said. “Regardless, in my mind, a special session of the General Assembly to end run around this law is not feasible and may ultimately prove to be unconstitutional.”

A special prosecutor is supposed to be appointed to decide whether or not to prosecute Jones, who as a state senator in 2020, served as a false GOP elector and also urged lawmakers to hold a special session in order to contest Biden’s nearly 12,000 vote victory over Trump. Earlier this year, a judge disqualified Willis from pursuing any charges against Jones since she raised money for the eventual Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2022.

In an interview published Tuesday in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Gooch said he is open to holding legislative hearings to consider punishing Willis after the regular session resumes in January. The prosecutor’s oversight process is another option, he said.

In August, Jones appointed three prosecutors to serve on the oversight commission that could be asked to investigate Willis.

“She’s politicizing this and we want to make sure these people get a fair trial and a fair shake,” Gooch told the AJC (Atlanta Journal Constitution).

Willis defended her decisions in the case as being an unbiased prosecution of concerted efforts to disrupt the election processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states. On August 14, she unveiled a 51-count indictment accusing Trump and his co-defendants of racketeering.❗

Also, Trump asked a judge to waive his upcoming arraignment as he entered a not guilty plea on 13 charges that allege he was a key ringleader in an election collusion criminal enterprise.

On August 14, Fulton grand jury indictments resulted in multiple felony counts against 19 defendants, including Trump and his former personal attorneys Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several false Electoral College voters, including freshman Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, a Norcross Republican, and David Shafer, a former Georgia Republican Party chairman and state legislator.

Read the 98-page indictment here.

Gordon Sondland impeachment testimony- zero interest in taking a fall for a crime boss

Echo opinion syndicated column by Dick Polman*. 

Do you remember the climax in the Agatha Christie novel, "Murder On The Orient Express?". 

 It turned out, all the murder suspects were guilty.

And, as Donald Trump's hand picked ambassador, Gordon Sondland, publicly declared during the House impeachment hearing, that all the suspects in the illegal scheme to squeeze Ukraine for fake Biden dirt are guilty. Starting at the very top, with Trump. (IMO, evidence to support this illegal scheme is evident.)

And, Sondland is certainly a credible guy, right? After all, Trump recently praised him as, "a really good man and great American."

https://www.thenation.com/article/gordon-sondland-dean-impeachment/
Gordon Sondland

Here's what the good man and great American Sondland told Congerss: "Everyone was in the loop." In fact, the whole mission was about how to "make the boss happy." And, if it made the boss happy to hold back taxpayer-financed military aid from an ally fighting Russian aggression, until the ally agreed to launch bogus investigations of the Bidens, then fine. In Sondland's explosive words, "Was there a quid pro pro? The answer is yes....We followed the president's orders."

Translation: I paid a million bucks to get myself an abassadorship, and never imagined I'd get sucked into something like this. There's no way I'm gonna take the fall. If that happens, I'm gonna take everyone down with me- starting with Trump.

Sondland's sworn testimony is more delicious than a chocolate sundae. Historians will look back on the day when Sondland testified as being conclusive proof that Donald Trump blatantly abused his office, pursuing his own personal inerests and solicited collusions with a foreign government, all at the expense of our national security. And, as Sondland testified, "everyone was in the loop" on the impeachable act.

Moreover, Sondland fingured Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ex-national security advisor John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and of course he fingered Rudy Giuliani. In short, "everyone knew what we were doing and why."
Am I overracting? I'll yield the floor to Ken Starr, the conservative Clinton-hunting special prosecutor. On Fox News, Wednesday, he said, "Articles of impeachment are being drawn up if they haven't alreay been drawn up....This obvioiusly has been one of those bombshell days."

Sondland also blew up two desperate Republican defenses. The mantra of "no quid prop quo" is dead. The notion that Rudy and a handful of confederates, "went rogue," and that Trump had no role in the scheme for fake Biden dirt, is buried.

Now, here is the fun part. Sonland was quizzed about his cellphone conversation with Trump on July 26. Sondland was at a Kiev eatery when a foreigh service official, David Holmes, has already sated in a sworn deposition that he was with Sondland at the time, that he overherard Trump's end of the conversation (because Trump was speaking so loudly), and that Trump specifically asked Sondland for an assurance that Ukraine would indeed launch a Biden dirt investigation.

Sondland today: "I have no reason to doubt that the conversation included the subject of investigation." And, "I have no reason to doubt" Holmes' recollection about the cellphone call.

As a matter of fact, Holmes, in his deposition, said that Sondland assured Trump that Ukraine's president was ready to play ball- and, that, in fact, "he loves your ass".

Sondland was asked whether he really said that. His response: "It sounds like something I would say." He and Trump talked frequently, and liked to engage "in Trumpspeak," which featured "a lot of four-letter words"- or, in the cse of ass, "a three letter word."

(So, they spoke a lot? But, didn't Trump say that "I hardly know the gentleman"?)

Looking back, Sondland now laments: "I really regret that the Ukrainians were placed in that predicament."  It's nice that he feels compelled to voice remores. And, it's amazing how his memory keeps getting better as the noose keeps tightening.  Luckily for us, Sondland as zero interest in taking the fall for a crime boss.

Indeed, Trump knows how that game works.  Last year he told Fox News: I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years, I've been watching flippers."  

In Trumpspeak, Wednesday's flipper is beautiful.  

*Dick Polman, is a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania. 

Ukraine and Turkey - Trump's failed foreign policy in stereo

Maine Writer - Where is the Secretary of State Pompeo, who is a West Point Army graduate, when the US Military is now sickened by Trump's failed foreign policy?  

Echo opinion column published in The New York Times, by Michelle Goldberg

‘The Beacon Has Gone Out’: What Trump and Giuliani Have Wrought:  Once upon a time, we spread ideals of democracy and rule of law. Now? We send (crazy!) Rudy.

KIEV, Ukraine — In 2014, Ukraine’s wildly corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia after mass protests on the Maidan, Kiev’s central square. During what Ukrainians call the Revolution of Dignity, police snipers killed dozens of demonstrators. 

In the revolution’s aftermath, a number of young idealists decided to plunge into politics, hoping to reform their troubled country from the inside. One of them was Serhiy Leshchenko, at the time perhaps the country’s most famous investigative journalist.

The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama had encouraged Leshchenko and some of his friends to run for Parliament. He’d met Leshchenko in 2013, when the journalist took part in a three-week summer course run by Fukuyama at Stanford that aims to teach activists from around the world about building democratic institutions. “After the Maidan revolution, I thought that it was particularly important that all these people in civil society actually go into the government,” Fukuyama said.

Many of them did. That October, Leshchenko, a lanky, bearded hipster with a passion for rave culture, became part of a cadre of Western-oriented newcomers elected to Parliament, even as he continued to work as a journalist exposing corruption. This year, after Volodymyr Zelensky won the presidential election, Leshchenko advised him during the transition.

Then Rudy Giuliani began attacking Leshchenko as a conspirator against America.

In 2016, Leshchenko had helped expose the “black ledger,” an accounting book of hundreds of pages found in Yanukovych’s former party headquarters. Among its many entries, it showed $12.7 million in secret payments to Paul Manafort. At the time, Manafort was running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but before that, he was one of Yanukovych’s most important advisers.

One of the reasons Manafort is in federal prison is that he failed to disclose or pay taxes on millions of dollars from Ukraine. But if you believe Giuliani, the black ledger was part of a plot to damage Trump.

Paul Manafort was Donald Trump's campaign manager.

During a Fox News appearance on May 10, Giuliani described the ledger as a “falsely created book” and Leshchenko as part of a group of “enemies of the president, in some cases enemies of the United States.” Last month, in an epic, ranting interview on CNN, he accused Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption organization, the Anti-Corruption Action Center, or AntAC, of developing “all of the dirty information that ended up being a false document that was created in order to incriminate Manafort.”

A tour guide at the opulent former home of Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president who fled to Russia after the Maidan protests. CreditLena Mucha for The New York Times

In Giuliani’s fevered alternative reality, Ukraine’s most stalwart foes of corruption are actually corruption’s embodiment. Deeply compromised figures with vendettas against the activists — particularly the ex-prosecutors Viktor Shokin and Yuriy Lutsenko

This addled, through-the-looking glass fantasy came to drive American foreign policy in Ukraine. Trump withdrew the American ambassador to the country, Marie Yovanovitch, whom reformers saw as their champion. He withheld military aid that Ukraine desperately needed, while asking Zelensky to do him a “favor” and investigate deranged fictions about Ukrainian interference in American elections, as well as Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Given how much Ukraine depends on American support, Giuliani’s smears made it politically impossible for Leshchenko, who left Parliament in August, to continue advising Zelensky. 

Now, with Ukraine at the center of a world-historical international scandal, he is stupefied to find himself defamed by powerful forces in the United States, once the world’s strongest backer of those fighting for democracy in his country.

“I could imagine that maybe some Ukrainian prosecutors will create a fake case against me, or some criminals will attack me, or I could be attacked by trolls on social media,” Leshchenko told me when I met him in a Kiev cafe. “But I never imagined before that my real problems will appear because of the statement of the personal attorney of the American president.”

If America can be said to have a foreign policy at this debased stage of the Trump administration, it mostly consists of sucking up to strongmen while betraying everyone who ever believed in America’s putative ideals. Trump has given Turkey his blessing to assault the Syrian Kurds, America’s crucial allies against ISIS. In June, he reportedly promised China that he wouldn’t speak out in favor of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, some of whom have been carrying American flags, as long as trade talks progressed.

Here in Ukraine, a country locked in a proxy war with Russia, coping with a deluge of disinformation and propaganda and struggling to transcend a history of corruption, reformers are trying to figure out what it means when the American president sides against them.

Pro-Western reformers, the Ukrainian philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko told me, had seen the United States as a “a perfect democracy functioning very well,” with an admirable system of checks and balances. “And now this image is crumbling and that’s very dangerous.”

Ukrainians understand that America, like any other country, generally acts from self-interest rather than high principle. They are not naive. But, there was a time when America at least viewed the projection of democratic values as being in its self-interest. That gave liberals in countries like Ukraine leverage against recalcitrant officials.

“The majority of the reforms, especially on anti-corruption, were passed because there was a very strong demand from civil society, and there was the I.M.F. and the U.S. Embassy pushing it hard,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, a former board member of AntAC who was elected to Parliament this year.

The U.S. also provided a degree of protection to local activists and journalists. When Lutsenko was prosecutor general in Ukraine — a position roughly equivalent to our attorney general — he would, said Ustinova, harass anti-corruption campaigners with spurious criminal investigations. “The U.S. ambassador and the E.U. ambassador were going out publicly saying you cannot do this,” Ustinova said.

Now, that’s all changed. As The New York Times reported, after Trump recalled the U.S. ambassador, Lutsenko gloated to the head of AntAC that he had “eliminated your roof,” using Russian mafia slang for guardian.

“We’ve been exporting our corruption to them, rather than trying to export good governance,” said Fukuyama.

When he said that, Fukuyama may not have known how right he was. A few hours after I met Leshchenko, news broke that two Ukrainian-born clients of Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had been arrested on charges of campaign finance crimes as they were preparing to leave the United States with one-way tickets.

According to an indictment, the two “sought to advance their personal financial interests and the political interests of at least one Ukrainian government official with whom they were working.” (In one of those preposterously on-the-nose details that make the Trump era feel like a computer simulation on the fritz, Parnas had a company called Fraud Guarantee.)

As soon as news of the indictment broke, I messaged Leshchenko, who guessed that the unnamed Ukrainian official was Lutsenko. It was a natural assumption; it had already been reported that Parnas and Fruman connected Giuliani with Lutsenko, who had been feeding Trump’s lawyer conspiracy theories about the journalist, the former American ambassador and Joe Biden.

Sure enough, on Saturday NBC News reported that Lutsenko was the official in the indictment. Yovanovitch might have been referring to Lutsenko when she said, in her Friday congressional testimony, that “individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”

Thanks to Giuliani’s escapades, the domestic grudges of a crooked Ukrainian prosecutor have blossomed into a scandal that’s likely to lead to the impeachment of an American president. Federal prosecutors are now investigating whether Giuliani himself broke the law.

Lutsenko has since left Ukraine for London, and Ukrainian authorities have opened a criminal case against him for allegedly abusing his authority in an unrelated matter. In a recent interview, he told reporters for The Times that in speaking to Giuliani, he sought to tell Trump’s lawyer what he wanted to hear. “I understood very well what would interest them,” Lutsenko said, adding, “I have 23 years in politics.”

He should be seen as wholly discredited, but in our polarized, frenzied media environment, lies never really go away. Trump’s defenders will continue to take Lutsenko’s stories at face value. Worse, long after America has forgotten them, these slanders, which Trump and Giuliani magnified to gargantuan scale, will linger in Ukraine, undermining the people our country once sought to help.

“This smear campaign circulates everywhere: in American media, then in Ukrainian media,” said Leshchenko. Those in Ukraine who want impunity for corruption, he said, can now say, “Look at these anti-corruption activists and journalists and members of Parliament. They are not welcome in the U.S., so don’t listen to them. So it suppresses our reputation here in Ukraine as well.”

Ukrainians are no strangers to post-truth politics. The first time I ever heard the term “fake news” was in 2015, when I learned about the Ukrainian fact-checking organization StopFake. It was created by a group of journalists to push back against the torrents of Russian disinformation sowing chaos in the country’s politics. At the time, it would have been hard to imagine that the United States would soon join Russia as a source of weaponized untruth in Ukraine.
“This is very new, because now it seems it’s not only Russia influencing Ukrainian politics, but Ukraine is also influencing the U.S., and things happening in the U.S. are greatly influencing Ukraine,” Yevhen Fedchenko, one of StopFake’s founders, told me. “So it becomes much more complicated.”

Here’s what’s not complicated. Throughout our history, America has committed many sins against democracy around the world, but we used to be on the right side in Ukraine. Not anymore. As one former U.S. diplomat said to me recently, “The beacon has gone out.” We’re with the oligarchs now.

Donald Trump is badly in need of someone to tell him "No!"

Echo opinion published in the Mississippi newspaper, The Meridian Star by columnist Rich Lowry

Rudy Giuliani's harebrained scheme

Where's John Kelly or anybody with an entire human brain, when you need somebody to give advice to stupid Donald Trump?

John Kelly, Donald Trump's chief of staff, was cast aside, like so many of Trump's advisers. For reasons not well understood, he irked Trump with his efforts to bring some discipline to him and his operation. But, if there's one thing that's obvious from the Ukraine controversy, it's that the president could use more "no-men."

During Roman triumphs celebrating military victories, a slave was supposedly given the task of riding behind the conquering general and constantly whispering in his ear, "Remember, you are mortal." The White House needs someone constantly whispering in the president's ear, "There's no freaking way we're doing that."

Anyone who had taken Government 101 would have told the president that going down the path of asking for investigations from the Ukraine president in the context of a discussion of military aid would certainly bring more headaches than upside.

At seventy-four, Giuliani often seems weary. He limps. He has surrendered his comb-over to full-on baldness, and, as his torso has thickened, his neck has disappeared- reported by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker

If press reports are to be believed, plenty of people in the White House realized this. They tried to keep Trump from doing it, but were outmaneuvered by (dumb and bumbler!) Rudy Giuliani, who volunteered for double duty as an amateur sleuth and diplomat and has "honchoed", arguably, the most harebrained foreign policy scheme since Ollie North delivered a cake to the Iranians.

Donald Trump's Ukraine Call was Incredibly Stupid!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/opinions/trump-ukraine-call-incredibly-stupid-dantonio/index.html

It's not that there aren't legitimate questions about Ukraine and the role of various players there in the 2016 election and aftermath. But they are appropriately handled by the Justice Department, which is currently looking into the sources of the Russia investigation.

As for Hunter Biden, he, too, is a fit subject for investigation and an apt symbol of one of the worst aspects of American life, namely, how easy it is for people with proximity to power to get rich. Hunter had no evident talent worthy of a $50,000-a-month gig with a Ukrainian energy company, except for being the vice president's son. But, that's no reason to create a brouhaha about Biden's cash cow gig, especially when Donald Trump breaks the law by violating the Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution, on a daily basis.

There's a reason, though, that oppo research firms exist. No one could claim an abuse of power if the Trump campaign hired such an operation to thoroughly vet Hunter Biden's various ventures and spread damaging material to media outlets. If the campaign wanted to be just a little clever, it could take a page from Hillary Clinton 2016, and use a law firm as a cutout.

Did no one think of that? Trump is, obviously, responsible for his own decisions and conduct, but it's truly bizarre that it was the president's counsel, of all people, who has his fingerprints all over this.

Giuliani was a great mayor of New York City and an accomplished prosecutor, but somewhere along the line he lost sight of such basic axioms as a lawyer should keep his client from needless risk, not expose him to it; a lawyer should tap the brakes on, not jam the accelerator for, dodgy plans; a lawyer should calmly explain issues, rather than blow them up in extravagant media appearances.

It's hard to think of another president who has so desperately needed good lawyering, and who has been so flagrantly failed by someone who is supposed to be his attorney.

One of the themes of the Mueller report was Trump's advisers ignoring him when he asked for foolhardy things or dissuading him from risky schemes. This, in itself, was discomfiting, but it kept Trump on the right side of the line. For all that the president scorns, say, Don McGahn, the former White House counsel's prudence and professionalism kept Trump from unnecessary peril.

Trump finds his current crew more congenial. That doesn't mean it's better for him. Let the record show that the same people who are most enthusiastic about "letting Trump be Trump" also may be about to let Trump be impeached.

Trump disdains stories in the media about his being minded by "adults," but that should be less annoying than the fallout from a plan that any serious lawyer or competent foreign policy professional would have warned had a good chance of ending in tears.

Follow Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry.

Whistleblower Strong! What we know

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be involved in the democratic elections of U.S.A.," Zelensky said to reporters at the U.N. General Assembly. - Reported in Newsweek

Two White House officials named in the whistle blower complaint are Rudy Giuliani (Trump stool pigeon) and Attorney General (Trumpzi!) William Barr.

Here's a brief summary of what the whistle blower complaint asserts:
A dozen White House officials were on the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and several later intervened to "lock down" records of the call, according to the whistleblower.
After pleasantries were exchanged, the president "used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests," said the whistleblower, citing White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.

The document describes the whistleblower's concerns that these actions constitute a "serious or flagrant" problem, abuse, or violation of the law.

The whistleblower said these actions pose risks to U.S. national security and undermine the U.S. Government's efforts to deter and counter foreign interference in elections.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-26/whistle-blower-complaint-about-trump-released-to-public

Multiple White House officials were “deeply disturbed” by President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president and the administration attempted to “lock down” records of the interaction, according to a whistle-blower’s complaint made public Thursday.

The complaint from the whistle-blower, who hasn’t been publicly identified, “appears credible,” the intelligence community’s inspector general said in a separate letter released Thursday, by House Intelligence Committee.

“The White House officials are deeply disturbed by what had transpired in the phone call. They said that there was already a ‘discussion ongoing’ with White House lawyers about how to treat the call because of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” the complaint says.

The whistle-blower said that senior White House officials used unusual procedures when handling the records of Trump’s July 25, conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They said it wasn’t the first time that a presidential transcript was put into a “code word-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive -- rather than national security sensitive -- information.”

Trumpzi cultism explained - how Trump co-opts people like William Barr - opinion echo

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr
Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.

By James Comey the former F.B.I. director.

Obviously William Barr is now submerged in Trumpziism.

MaineWriter- When I studied sociology in college, I was just one credit class from claiming the subject as a "minor" to my nursing degree; but I did not leap into the last class needed to qualify for graduating with a "minor".  One of the sociology subjects I was most intrigued about involved how people become subject to "cults". Therefore, I was keenly interested in James Comey's opinion published in The New York Times, because the subject is essentially about "cults"- or how the charisma of flawed leadership warps minds. What happens to seemingly accomplished people, those that we would believe should know better, succumb and fall subject to the lure of "cultism"?  How does Donald Trump recruit these people?  All of them who continue to surround Trump, to a person, are liars. Moreover, they don't seem to care that they lie! In fact, people like Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, Rudy Giuliani and now William Barr, seem to be immune to reality checks when the lies they project are called to their attention! 

Here is the echo opinion published in The New York Times written by James Comey.  

People have been asking me hard questions. 

What happened to the leaders in the Trump administration, especially the attorney general, Bill Barr, who I have said was due the benefit of the doubt?

How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like “no collusion” and F.B.I. “spying”? And downplaying acts of obstruction of justice as products of the president’s being “frustrated and angry,” something he would never say to justify the thousands of crimes prosecuted every day that are the product of frustration and anger?

How could he write and say things about the report by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, that were apparently so misleading that they prompted written protest from the special counsel himself?

How could Mr. Barr go before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and downplay Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Mr. Mueller before he completed his work?

And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law? Or on resigning, thank a president who relentlessly attacked both him and the Department of Justice he led for “the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations”?

What happened to these people?

I don’t know for sure. People are complicated, so the answer is most likely complicated. But I have some idea from four months of working close to Mr. Trump and many more months of watching him shape others.

Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. 

For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.

It starts with your sitting silent while he lies, both in public and private, making you complicit by your silence. In meetings with him, his assertions about what “everyone thinks” and what is “obviously true” wash over you, unchallenged, as they did at our private dinner on Jan. 27, 2017, because he’s the president and he rarely stops talking. As a result, Mr. Trump pulls all of those present into a silent circle of assent.

Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions. I have felt it — this president building with his words a web of alternative reality and busily wrapping it around all of us in the room.

I must have agreed that he had the largest inauguration crowd in history because I didn’t challenge that. Everyone must agree that he has been treated very unfairly. The web building never stops.

From the private circle of assent, it moves to public displays of personal fealty at places like cabinet meetings. While the entire world is watching, you do what everyone else around the table does — you talk about how amazing the leader is and what an honor it is to be associated with him.

Sure, you notice that Mr. Mattis never actually praises the president, always speaking instead of the honor of representing the men and women of our military. But he’s a special case, right? Former Marine general and all. No way the rest of us could get away with that. So you praise, while the world watches, and the web gets tighter.

Next comes Mr. Trump attacking institutions and values you hold dear — things you have always said must be protected and which you criticized past leaders for not supporting strongly enough. Yet you are silent. Because, after all, what are you supposed to say? He’s the president of the United States.

You feel this happening. It bothers you, at least to some extent. But his outrageous conduct convinces you that you simply must stay, to preserve and protect the people and institutions and values you hold dear. Along with Republican members of Congress, you tell yourself you are too important for this nation to lose, especially now.

You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. (In other words - you become the Trump monkey.)
And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

James Comey is the former F.B.I. director and author of “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”

A bad day in Trumpzi world - Associated Press echo essay

A bad day in court for former associates of Donald Trump could foreshadow hard days ahead. An echo published by the Associated Press and published in NJ.com

George Stephanapolos: Is Michael Cohen prepared to tell everything he knows about President Trump to special counsel Robert Mueller and other prosecutors?

In a New York courtroom, Trump's former personal lawyer and "fixer," Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations. 

Cohen said Trump directed him to arrange the payment of hush money to two women who claimed they had affairs with Trump, porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, acknowledging the payments were made to influence the election.

In Virginia, a jury found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty of eight financial crimes unrelated to the campaign. It was the first trial victory for prosecutors in the office of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose investigation Trump has derided as a witch hunt.

What do the developments Tuesday mean for the president? Some questions and answers:

Does Cohen's guilty plea mean Trump violated the law?

Cohen said in court that he made one payment "in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office" and the other "under direction of the same candidate." The amounts and dates all line up with the payments made to Daniels and McDougal.

Prosecutors did not go as far as Cohen did in open court in pointing the finger at the president, saying Cohen acted "in coordination with a candidate or campaign for federal office for purposes of influencing the election." Legal experts said there could be multiple reasons for government lawyers' more cautious statements.

Daniel Petalas, former prosecutor in the Justice Department's public integrity section, said the issue of whether Trump violated the law comes down to whether Trump "tried to influence an election, whether he knew and directed it and whether he knew it was improper."

But Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said in a statement: "There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the President in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen."

Trump denied to reporters in April that he knew anything about Cohen's payments to Daniels, though the explanations from the president and Giuliani have shifted multiples times since.

Does Cohen's plea mean Trump could be forced to submit to questions?

Trump's lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller about whether the president would submit to an interview as part of Mueller's Russia investigation. Now Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti says he'll renew efforts to get Trump to submit to a deposition in a lawsuit Daniels filed to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed ahead of the 2016 election.

Avenatti tweeted that the Cohen pleas should "permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it."

Daniels' case is currently on hold, but Avenatti said he'll be looking to get that hold lifted.

In a 1997 Supreme Court ruling, in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton, the court held that a sitting president could be made to answer questions as part of a lawsuit. But that ruling did not directly address whether a president could be subpoenaed to testify in a criminal investigation, a question the Supreme Court may have to confront if Mueller tries to compel Trump's testimony in his probe.

If there is evidence of wrongdoing, can Trump be indicted?

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to executive branch agencies, has held that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Trump's lawyers have said that Mueller plans to adhere to that guidance, though Mueller's office has never independently confirmed that. There would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he or she leaves the White House.

Sol Wisenberg, who conducted grand jury questioning of Clinton as deputy independent counsel during the Whitewater investigation, said he still wanted to see more details of Cohen's plea deal. But he said: "Obviously it's not good for Trump. The stuff on Stormy Daniels is not good for Trump."

"I'm assuming he's not going to be indicted because he's a sitting president," Wisenberg said. "But it leads him closer to ultimate impeachment proceedings, particularly if the Democrats take back the House."

Trump on March 18, 2018, intensified his attacks on Mueller's Russia investigation as biased against him, but stopped short of targeting the special counsel -- whose ouster lawmakers warned would cross a "massive red line." 

In early-morning Twitter flurries, Trump insisted that Mueller's team of investigators is staffed with "hardened" Democrats biased against him.

Does Cohen's plea mean Trump could be forced to submit to questions?

Trump's lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller about whether the president would submit to an interview as part of Mueller's Russia investigation. Now Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti says he'll renew efforts to get Trump to submit to a deposition in a lawsuit Daniels filed to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed ahead of the 2016 election.

Avenatti tweeted that the Cohen pleas should "permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it."

Daniels' case is currently on hold, but Avenatti said he'll be looking to get that hold lifted.

The Supreme Court in 1997, ruling in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton, held that a sitting president could be made to answer questions as part of a lawsuit. But that ruling did not directly address whether a president could be subpoenaed to testify in a criminal investigation, a question the Supreme Court may have to confront if Mueller tries to compel Trump's testimony in his probe.

How does Cohen's plea relate to the Mueller investigation?

While the Manafort case was part of Mueller's investigation, the Cohen case was not. It was handled by prosecutors in New York. Still, it could give Mueller a boost.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, argued that Cohen's plea knocks back the argument that the investigations swirling around Trump are a "witch hunt," as the president has called Mueller's Russia investigation.

"No longer can you say Mueller is on a witch hunt when you have his own lawyer pleading guilty to things that were designed to impact the election," she said.

If there is evidence of wrongdoing, can Trump be indicted?

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice and guidance to executive branch agencies, has held that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Trump's lawyers have said that Mueller plans to adhere to that guidance, though Mueller's office has never independently confirmed that. There would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he or she leaves the White House.

Sol Wisenberg, who conducted grand jury questioning of Clinton as deputy independent counsel during the Whitewater investigation, said he still wanted to see more details of Cohen's plea deal. But he said: "Obviously it's not good for Trump. The stuff on Stormy Daniels is not good for Trump."

"I'm assuming he's not going to be indicted because he's a sitting president," Wisenberg said. "But it leads him closer to ultimate impeachment proceedings, particularly if the Democrats take back the House."

Trump on March 18, 2018, intensified his attacks on Mueller's Russia investigation as biased against him, but stopped short of targeting the special counsel -- whose ouster lawmakers warned would cross a "massive red line." In an early-morning flurry on Twitter, Trump insisted that Mueller's team of investigators is staffed with "hardened" Democrats biased against him.

How does Cohen's plea relate to the Mueller investigation?
While the Manafort case was part of Mueller's investigation, the Cohen case was not. It was handled by prosecutors in New York. Still, it could give Mueller a boost.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, argued that Cohen's plea knocks back the argument that the investigations swirling around Trump are a "witch hunt," as the president has called Mueller's Russia investigation.

"No longer can you say Mueller is on a witch hunt when you have his own lawyer pleading guilty to things that were designed to impact the election," she said.

Could Trump pardon himself?

Trump has already shown he's not afraid to use his pardon power, particularly for those he has viewed as unfair victims of partisanship. He pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who clashed with a judge on immigration, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Bush administration official convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a leak case.

As for whether a president can pardon himself, not surprisingly, courts have never had to answer that question. Giuliani, Trump's lawyer, has said it won't come to that anyway.

"Pardoning himself would be unthinkable and probably lead to immediate impeachment," Giuliani told NBC's "Meet the Press" in June. "And he has no need to do it, he's done nothing wrong."

Still, Giuliani argued that Trump "probably does" have the power to pardon himself.

Trump denied to reporters in April that he knew anything about Cohen's payments to Daniels, though the explanations from the president and Giuliani have shifted multiples times since.