Executive Departments 3

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump proposal would evict undocumented immigrants from public housing"

Spoiler

The Trump administration is proposing to tighten regulations to prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing federally subsidized housing, a move that low-income housing advocates fear will keep immigrants who are legally entitled to such benefits from receiving housing help.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday that it plans to strengthen the verification process for public housing beneficiaries.

“We need to make certain our scarce public resources help those who are legally entitled to it,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. “Given the overwhelming demand for our programs, fairness requires that we devote ourselves to legal residents who have been waiting, some for many years, for access to affordable housing.”

Current law already bars undocumented immigrants from receiving federal housing subsidies, but allows families of mixed-immigration status to live in public housing as long as one person is eligible. The eligible person could be a child born in the U.S. In addition to citizens, lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees are also eligible for housing assistance.

HUD estimates that approximately 32,000 households receiving federal housing assistance are headed by individuals who are not legal U.S. residents.

Under current regulations, residents in subsidized housing can declare themselves “ineligible” and avoid revealing their immigration status. The Trump administration said it wants to close that “loophole” and eventually evict from public housing anyone who is not a lawful resident.

The proposal is reminiscent of Trump’s “public charge” crackdown that would make it more difficult for immigrants accessing food stamps, Medicaid and other federal assistance from receiving permanent legal status.

“This is going to make people much more afraid because they are going to think they will not be able to get a green card or citizenship if they access benefits," said Susan Popkin, a fellow and housing expert at the Urban Institute. "It’s really going to affect people who are legally eligible for housing but who are now afraid to ask for help.

HUD plans to require housing authorities to expand their use of the Department of Homeland Security’s entitlement verification program to ensure that federal housing assistance is awarded to eligible U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Under the proposal, all residents under the age of 62 will be screened through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. Residents will not be given the option of not participating in the checks.

Families with members who are not lawful U.S. residents may lose their housing assistance after 18 months, according to information provided by HUD.

The proposal came as a surprise to many within the agency, including career staff who work directly in public housing policy. The Daily Caller first reported on the change Wednesday night.

Carson, in a Tweet Thursday, credited President Trump’s leadership in “putting America’s most vulnerable first” and linked to the Daily Caller piece.

The push came from Stephen Miller, senior policy advisor responsible for crafting much of Trump’s hardline immigration policy. Miller led a White House working group charged with introducing new regulations to strip away benefits from undocumented immigrants, according to a person with direct knowledge who is not authorized to speak on the record.

HUD said it has provided its proposed changes to Congress, which has 15 days to review them before the agency will publish the potential amendments.

“Secretary Carson’s cruel proposal would break up families and destabilize communities, while doing nothing to shorten waiting lists,” said Diane Yentel, president and chief executive of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “HUD falsely claims the change is proposed out of concern for long waiting lists, when they know well that it would do nothing to free up new units. The true purpose may be part of this administration’s effort to instill fear in immigrants throughout the country.”

 

[Howl]

On 4/18/2019 at 7:56 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

Carson, in a Tweet Thursday, credited President Trump’s leadership in “putting America’s most vulnerable first” and linked to the Daily Caller piece.

The push came from Stephen Miller, senior policy advisor responsible for crafting much of Trump’s hardline immigration policy. Miller led a White House working group charged with introducing new regulations to strip away benefits from undocumented immigrants,

April 2019 and this is where we're at.  The Daily Caller (Tucker Carlson's rag) reporting on immigration issues put into place by Stephen Miller. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Herman Cain withdraws from consideration for the Federal Reserve"

Quote

President Trump said on Twitter that former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain would not be a candidate for the Fed seat.

The decision comes after four GOP senators refused to back Cain, all but dooming his confirmation and pausing Trump’s effort to add political allies to the independent central bank.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

JFC. You couldn't make this up: "Trump Fed Board pick under fire for writing that women should not be allowed to be men’s sports referees — unless they’re good-looking"

Spoiler

Stephen Moore, one of President Trump's planned nominees for the Federal Reserve Board, wrote columns decrying the “feminization of basketball,” denouncing coed sports and arguing that women should be barred from refereeing or covering men’s basketball games — unless they are good-looking.

Moore also wrote that female athletes were seeking “equal pay for inferior work” and lamented, “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?”

The statements by Moore, made in columns he wrote for the conservative magazine National Review in the 2000s and resurfaced Monday by CNN, prompted a wave of criticism from women’s rights advocates.

“Donald Trump thinks he can populate the U.S. government the way he picks golf partners at Mar-a-Lago,” National Organization for Women President Toni Van Pelt said in a statement. “He surrounds himself with sycophants and ideologues who similarly embrace his sexism, misogyny and anger. Trump’s nominees do not need to be qualified — so long as they praise him, pledge slavish loyalty, and share his attitudes towards women.”

Also criticizing Moore on Monday was sportscaster Bonnie Bernstein, who Moore had once written “knows nothing about basketball” but “should wear a halter top.”

Trump announced last month that he was selecting Moore, his close ally, to fill an open seat on the Fed’s seven-person board. Another Trump nominee for the panel, Herman Cain, withdrew from consideration Monday. Cain, a former restaurant industry executive, had faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment as well as skepticism from some lawmakers regarding his qualifications to sit on the board of the central bank.

In an email Monday afternoon, Moore dismissed his previous statements about women in sports as having been made in jest.

“This was not a serious article,” Moore said. “It was a spoof piece — and it’s almost 20 years old. I don’t stand by any of those comments today.”

But Moore’s questionable remarks were made in several columns dating from 1998 to 2003. Moore did not respond when asked to which column he was referring and whether he could explain the fact that he made disparaging comments about women in more than one article.

The resurfacing of the columns is the latest debacle for Moore. Court documents show that Moore was also found in contempt of court in 2013 for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $330,000 in alimony and child support.

In one of his columns for National Review, Moore decried “the feminization of basketball generally” and wrote that it was an “obscenity” that a woman was allowed to referee a men’s NCAA game.

“Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?” Moore wrote in the March 2002 piece. “What’s next? Women invited to bachelor parties? Women in combat? (Oh yeah, they’ve done that already.) Why can’t women ref [the] women’s games and men the men’s games.”

He went on to propose a “no women” rule for men’s college basketball games.

“No more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer venders, no women anything,” Moore wrote. “There is, of course, an exception to this rule. Women are permitted to participate, if and only if, they look like Bonnie Bernstein. The fact that Bonnie knows nothing about basketball is entirely irrelevant.”

He added that Bernstein “should wear a halter top. This is a no-brainer, CBS.”

Bernstein, who left CBS in 2006, tweeted a response to Moore on Monday afternoon: “You want halter tops? Hit the club scene. You want hoops knowledge? Try actually listening.”

CNN noted that Moore responded to criticism of his column at the time, writing, “Look, for all I care the women can use chimpanzees to ref their games. I hate women’s basketball.”

In another piece published in June 2000, Moore wrote that male athletes should get paid more than female athletes because men are more skilled than women at sports.

“The women tennis pros don’t really want equal pay for equal work,” he wrote. “They want equal pay for inferior work . . . Venus Williams is a multi-millionaire not in spite of the fact that she is a women, but precisely because she’s a woman. She receives much higher pay than an equally skilled man.”

Moore had previously argued that peewee soccer was “particularly insidious” because “boys and girls play together.”

“No one seems to care much that co-ed sports is doing irreparable harm to the psyche of America’s little boys. At this pre-puberty state of life girls tower over the boys and typically have greater coordination,” Moore wrote in the 1998 National Review column, titled “Soccer-Mom Hell.”

He also described a female kindergartner who “stampeded over” his son as “Secretariat in pigtails,” a reference to the Triple Crown-winning horse.

Several Democrats renewed their calls Monday for Trump not to nominate Moore in the wake of the CNN report and the withdrawal of Cain’s nomination.

“Mr. Moore, like Mr. Cain, poses a danger to the economic stability of our country,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “Mr. Cain clearly saw the writing on the wall and withdrew his name from consideration; hopefully Senate Republicans will again voice their deep concerns and force Mr. Moore to do the same.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Gotta love having a crook as the Treasury Secretary: "Sears sues Mnuchin alongside former CEO for alleged multibillion-dollar theft"

Spoiler

Sears on Thursday named Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a lawsuit against the company’s former CEO, Edward Lampert, alleging that Mnuchin was part of a group of board members who assisted Lampert and his hedge fund in stripping the bankrupted retailer of more than $2 billion in assets.

Lampert and his hedge fund, ESL Investments, were the largest shareholders in Sears, holding between 47.8 percent and 62 percent of its stock during the time of the alleged violations, from 2011 to 2015, according to the lawsuit. They, along with two other major shareholders named in the suit, received the vast majority of the benefit of spinning off five different company assets, according to the complaint.

Prior to becoming Treasury secretary, Mnuchin was an investor in ESL and “a member of ESL’s board of directors at all relevant times,” the filing says.

“By far the largest share of the value siphoned from the Company went to Lampert himself, ESL … and other insider Defendants,” the lawsuit says. “These transfers were unmistakably intended to hinder, delay, and defraud creditors and/or occurred when the Company was insolvent and had insufficient capital to continue its operations and to repay its billions of dollars in debt.”

The suit, brought on behalf of Sears debt holders, also argues that Sears “repeatedly produced financial plans reflecting fanciful, bad-faith predictions that the Company would experience an immediate and dramatic turnaround from deep and mounting losses to sudden profitability.”

Mnuchin, who was Lampert’s roommate at Yale University and worked with him at Goldman Sachs, is named as one of four Sears board members who “aided and abetted” the shareholders by voting to approve the spinoffs.

Sears declared bankruptcy last October and was acquired by an affiliate of ESL, Transform Holdco, in February.

A spokesperson for ESL Investments said the fund “vigorously disputes the claims” against ESL, Lampert, and ESL President Kunal Kamlani, another Sears board member.

“The debtors’ allegations are misleading or just flat wrong,” he said, arguing that the company was solvent when the spinoff transactions took place and that ESL was a “constant source of financing” for Sears for many years.

“In addition, the company received proceeds in excess of $3.0 billion from these transactions, all of which were applied to reduce debt and fund operations, and all of the referenced transactions treated every shareholder equally from an economic standpoint,” the spokesperson said.

“All transactions were done in good faith, on fair terms, beneficial to all Sears stakeholders and approved by the Sears Board of Directors, made up of a majority of independent directors, as well as the company’s Related Party Transactions Committee, which was itself comprised of independent directors and advised by separate independent financial and legal advisers,” he added.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Good grief. Could they lay it on any thicker that Barr is there to protect Trump at all costs?

Barr gets waiver on case linked to inquiry into Trump's re-election effort

Quote

Attorney General William Barr has received a waiver to participate in the investigation of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a Malaysian development company that has come under investigation by the FBI and DOJ for alleged money laundering.

The waiver, dated April 16, allows Barr to participate in “the investigation and litigation of the 1MDB matter in which his former law firm represents an entity involved in the matter.”

Barr was previously a lawyer for the firm Kirkland & Ellis, whose senior partner Mark Filip now represents Goldman Sachs in the 1MDB investigation.

The head of DOJ’s criminal division, Brian Benczkowski, is also a Kirkland & Ellis alum. But White House lawyer Emmet Flood issued an ethics waiver to Benczkowski in November that allowed him to participate in the 1MDB investigation.

The waiver could also give Barr a window into an investigation in the Eastern District of New York that involves the Trump Victory committee, a political action committee dedicated to re-electing Trump in 2020.

Barr has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for his handling of the rollout of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which the attorney general characterized prior to its release with a 4-page memo and press conference that critics panned as public relations stunts for the president.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in the Securities and Commodities Fraud Section of the United States Attorney's Office in Northern Illinois, told POLITICO he thought Barr should recuse himself from the 1MDB investigation. “Given Barr’s highly questionable handling of the Mueller report rollout, there are appearance issues raised whenever he supervises an investigation involving Trump,” Mariotti said. “He should recuse himself for the good of the Department.”

New York prosecutors are investigating whether Jho Low, a Malaysian fugitive accused of helping to steal around $4.5 billion from 1MDB, illegally donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory committee in December 2017. The prosecutors are also examining potentially illegal donations made by foreign nationals to Trump’s inaugural committee in 2017.

Low was indicted in the Eastern District of New York in October 2018 on money laundering and bribery charges.

The donation itself was made by U.S. citizen Larry Davis, the co-owner of Hawaii investment company LNS Capital, but investigators are scrutinizing whether transfers totaling $1.5 million that originated with Low earlier that year were funneled to the Trump Victory committee, according to the Wall Street Journal. Low has denied the allegations.

“Trump Victory does not accept contributions from corporations or foreign nationals in accordance with the law. We vehemently deny any wrongdoing on the part of the RNC or Trump Campaign," Republican National Committee spokeswoman Cassie Smedile told the Journal.

Low is not the first to come under scrutiny for a potentially illicit donation to Trump. Sam Patten, a Washington operative with ties to Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, has acknowledged that he illegally steered a foreign donation to Trump’s inaugural committee. He pleaded guilty to foreign agent registration violations last year and was sentenced to probation.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Wah, mean people are using my own words against me: "Trump Fed Board pick says opponents are ‘pulling a Kavanaugh against me’ as more of his controversial writings surface"

Spoiler

Stephen Moore, President Trump’s planned nominee for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, on Tuesday said his opponents are “pulling a Kavanaugh against me” amid new revelations about columns in the 2000s in which he made derogatory statements about women, called for former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue (R) to be impeached and made a joking reference to AIDS.

Moore is also coming under scrutiny for saying in 2016 that it would be a “betrayal” for Trump to pick former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) to be secretary of state. Romney now represents Utah in the Senate, which would have to approve Moore’s nomination if he is to be confirmed to the position.

And a 2014 comment by Moore that Cincinnati and Cleveland are “armpits of America” drew a rebuke from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who wrote a letter to Moore on Tuesday calling the remarks “disqualifying” and demanding that he provide a list of other towns that he would describe as “armpits.”

Ohio is a swing state that was central to Trump’s win in 2016 and will be a key part of his 2020 reelection efforts.

“I was so honored when I got the call from Donald Trump. But all it’s been since then has been one personal assault after another and a kind of character assassination having nothing to do with economics. . . . They’re pulling a Kavanaugh against me,” Moore told a conservative talk radio show Tuesday morning on North Dakota-based WZFG.

“I’m taking a 60 percent pay cut to do this job,” he added. “So, you know, I mean, it’s true public service.”

Moore’s statement was a reference to Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who faced allegations last summer of sexual misconduct during his college and high school years — accusations he denied. Conservatives rallied to Kavanaugh’s defense, and he was narrowly confirmed by the Senate.

Trump announced last month that he was choosing Moore, his close ally, to fill an open seat on the Fed’s seven-person board. But in recent weeks, the Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and former president of the Club for Growth has faced questions about columns he wrote in the 2000s for the conservative magazine National Review.

On Monday, CNN resurfaced several columns in which Moore decried the “feminization of basketball,” denounced coed sports and argued that women should not be allowed to be men’s sports referees — unless they are good-looking.

Moore also wrote that female athletes were seeking “equal pay for inferior work” and lamented, “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?”

Moore told The Washington Post in an email Monday that he does not stand by any of the comments and that the article was a “spoof,” although he did not cite a particular column or explain a later piece in which he defended his remarks.

In a recent article, CNBC also unearthed some of Moore’s past writings, including one in 2004 in which Moore wrote about being told by a doctor that his young son had “low-muscle tone.”

“He might as well have told us that [the child] has AIDS,” Moore wrote.

Moore also repeatedly made mocking references to his wife at the time, a stay-at-home mother, as a “loss leader” who “doesn’t have a job.” And in a 2001 column — one of several that are apparent parodies of a family Christmas letter — Moore described a scene in which he is “cruising around town with the top down and a gorgeous 20-something blond has pulled up beside him.”

The “mood is spoiled” when the woman spots Moore’s children “making weird faces at her,” he wrote.

“She sticks her finger in her mouth and zooms off and Steve is left screaming at the kids: ‘How many times do I have to tell you tyrants to stay out of sight when I’m hitting on girls?’” Moore wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “And then Will, with a puzzled look on his face says, ‘But Daddy, we already have a mommy.’ And then Steve says, ‘Yes, but imagine, just for a moment, how nice it would be if you had a much younger mommy.’ ”

Stephen and Allison Moore, who have three children together, were married for two decades before divorcing in 2011. Allison Moore began divorce proceedings in 2010, and her divorce complaint said her then-husband opened a Match.com account and had a mistress.

Stephen Moore was found in contempt of court in 2013 for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $330,000 in alimony and child support, court documents show.

On Tuesday, the New York Times pointed to several more of Moore’s columns. In one, written in 2000 for the Washington Times, Moore described colleges as “places for rabble-rousing” and “for men to lose their boyhood innocence” and “do stupid things.”

“It’s all a time-tested rite of passage into adulthood,” Moore wrote. “And the women seemed to survive just fine. If they were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties?”

Moore did not respond to an email Tuesday requesting comment on his remarks about women in the newly resurfaced columns.

Two of Moore’s other past statements could cause him political headaches if he is formally nominated and faces a Senate confirmation battle.

In a 2003 National Review column titled “Impeach Governor Sonny Perdue,” Moore blasted Georgia’s then-governor — and Trump’s current agriculture secretary — over tax policy.

“Voters thought they were electing a Ronald Reagan, not a Michael Dukakis,” Moore wrote in the piece, describing Perdue and other Georgia Republicans as “fiscal frauds.”

Perdue’s cousin, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, which would hold a hearing on Moore’s nomination as part of the confirmation process.

In an email, Moore told The Post that he and Sonny Perdue had reconciled “many years ago.”

“I had a great meeting with him several months after our policy disagreement and have had a friendship with him ever since,” Moore said. A spokeswoman for Perdue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Moore also said in a 2016 radio interview that a potential nomination of Romney by Trump to be secretary of state “makes me so angry,” according to a CNN report at the time.

“If Mitt Romney is nominated for secretary of state, I feel this will be a betrayal of those who worked for Donald Trump, like myself, for the last four or five months,” Moore said.

A spokeswoman for Romney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The press offices of several other Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee said Tuesday that the senators were reserving comment until Moore is officially nominated to the Fed post.

Asked whether Trump remains confident in Moore, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley declined to answer. He told reporters Tuesday morning that he was uncertain whether the two had been in touch since the new reports came out.

“I don’t know that he’s spoken with him, but we don’t have any announcements,” Gidley said.

What a tool.

[Cartmann99]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Wah, mean people are using my own words against me: "Trump Fed Board pick says opponents are ‘pulling a Kavanaugh against me’ as more of his controversial writings surface"

Dear Rufus, his ex-wife must be a damn saint. I'd be in prison after the authorities figured out how the poison wound up in his dinner.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Six Trump Interior appointees are being investigated for possible ethical misconduct"

Spoiler

The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General has opened an investigation into whether six of President Trump’s appointees have violated federal ethics rules by engaging with their former employers or clients on department-related business.

The new inquiry, which the office confirmed in an April 18 letter to the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, is looking into senior Interior officials, including Assistant Secretary for Insular and International Affairs Doug Domenech, White House liaison Lori Mashburn, three top staffers at the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, and the department’s former energy policy adviser. The Campaign Legal Center detailed the officials’ actions in a Feb. 20 letter to the inspector general’s office, suggesting a probe is warranted.

To avoid conflicts of interest, Trump signed an executive order days after taking office that requires appointees to recuse themselves from specific matters involving their former employers and clients for two years. The complaint, which cites reports in HuffPost and the Guardian as well as extensive public records, outlines how a half-dozen political appointees at Interior continued to discuss policy matters with organizations that had employed them in the past.

Delaney Marsco, ethics counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said in a phone interview Tuesday that the inquiry shows that the president and his top deputies have failed allegedly to deliver on Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington.

“This is demonstrative of the failures at the very top of this administration to set an ethical tone,” Marsco said. “When people come to work for government, they’re supposed to work on behalf of the public. It’s a betrayal of the public trust when senior political appointees seem to give privileged access to their former employers or former clients.

“We hope this investigation will answer whether these officials are working on behalf of the American people or on behalf of the interests that used to pay their salary,” she added.

The Guardian reported in May 2018 that Domenech, the highest-ranking official named in the complaint, continued to interact with the conservative think tank that used to employ him before he joined Interior.

Domenech’s calendars indicated that he twice met with representatives from the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation on an endangered species listing and a property dispute. The group had lawsuits pending with Interior over both issues and resolved the fight over private property near Texas’s Red River six months after the meeting with Domenech.

In a news release, the foundation described the November 2017 settlement with Interior as “a major win."

Benjamin Cassidy, a former lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, also has attracted significant attention for his past work on gun-related issues since joining the department as senior deputy director at its Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs.

Calendars released by Interior show Cassidy participating in a December 2017 meeting regarding Trump’s decision to scale back two national monuments in Utah, even though Cassidy had lobbied Congress on a bill addressing the president’s ability to establish national monuments just months earlier. This activity, first reported by HuffPost, could violate the federal ethics pledge because Cassidy was prohibited from engaging in particular matters on which he had lobbied during the two years before joining the department.

Cassidy had also been in contact with a current NRA lobbyist, Susan Recce, about opening up Bureau of Land Management lands in Arizona and Utah to recreational shooting. Interior ultimately decided to allow recreational shooting in the Sonoran Desert National Monument, the option endorsed by the NRA.

After the decision was announced, the NRA published a post on its website quoting Recce as saying that “the BLM backed down from the closure alternative” as “a result of” the work her group and other gun rights advocates had done.

The center also alleges that Mashburn, a former associate director at the conservative Heritage Foundation, violated her ethics pledge by attending multiple private events held by her former employer.

Nancy DiPaolo, a spokeswoman for the inspector general, said in an email, “We have opened an investigation and are considering all the material presented by CLC, but because it is an active investigation, have no further comments.”

The move comes a week after the office launched a probe into whether Interior Secretary David Bernhardt violated federal conflict of interest rules by weighing in on policies that could affect the former clients he represented while working at the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck.

Bernhardt, who was confirmed earlier this month, has denied any wrongdoing and said he has cleared any action affecting his former employer or clients with the department’s ethics office.

Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said in an email that while the department does not typically comment on personnel matters, the secretary’s office “immediately consulted” with department ethics officials after receiving the center’s complaint in February.

“Ethics reviewed each matter and provided materials to the chief of staff, who has taken appropriate actions. All of these materials have been provided to the inspector general,” said Vander Voort, who declined to specify what actions the department had taken. “The department takes ethics issues seriously.”

The other two senior officials with the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs now under investigation are Todd Wynn and Timothy Williams. All of the officials named in the complaint continue to work at Interior, except for Vincent DeVito, who left his job as the department energy policy counselor in August to join an offshore oil drilling firm.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"How Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac dodged a $600,000 cap on CEO pay"

Spoiler

For years, the chief executives of two giant government-controlled companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, have operated under a strict constraint: They can’t be paid more than $600,000 a year.

The housing companies may have found a way around that congressionally mandated pay cap. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created a new job — president — transferring some of the work traditionally done by the CEOs to the new positions, according to government investigators. The presidents will be paid more than $3 million each.

That arrangement has been challenged by federal investigators and lawmakers. The companies’ new government regulator, Mark Calabria, said he is “reviewing” the matter. It has raised a thorny question for the Trump administration: How much should executives at government-controlled companies supported by taxpayers be paid?

The Treasury Department was alerted to the new plan late last year but did not raise significant concerns. Executive compensation “is a matter that requires careful consideration given the taxpayers’ ongoing support of both companies,” Craig Phillips, counselor to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, said in an October letter sent to the company’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and obtained by The Washington Post.

“Treasury believes that compensation packages for . . . executives should reflect fiscal discipline in light of their conservatorship,” the letter said.

At Fannie Mae, five executives earned more than $2 million each last year, while four executives at Freddie Mac earned more than $3 million, according to data compiled by Equilar, a research firm. The total amount spent on salaries for the top executives increased 31 percent at Fannie Mae and 4 percent at Freddie Mac last year, according to the data.

Fannie Mae declined to comment for this report. Freddie Mac challenged the conclusions of an Office of Inspector General report questioning the arrangement. “Simply put, the facts do not support the report’s conclusions,” company spokesman Christopher Spina said.

The companies’ regulator had also defended the arrangements, telling the FHFA inspector general’s office: “Many corporations have a president who reports to the CEO and is second-in-command for the organization. Some corporations have more than one president."

But Calabria, who took over as director of FHFA earlier this month after the CEO positions were split, said in a statement to The Post, “We take both our Congressional mandate and our responsibility to protect taxpayer resources very seriously and are currently reviewing the issue.”

The debate comes as the Trump administration has prioritized finding a way to release the companies from a decade of government custody and amid a growing debate around CEO salaries. For critics of the new pay deals, it is also a reminder that regulators tasked with coming up with rules to rein in Wall Street pay after the global financial crisis have failed.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stand as part of the last unfinished business from the crisis. The companies have been under government conservatorship since 2008 and received more than $100 billion in taxpayer bailouts.

Lawmakers have been slow to develop a plan for their futures, concerned that tinkering with their structure could threaten the availability of 30-year mortgages. The companies buy mortgages from lenders, then package them into securities to sell to investors. More than half of the country’s mortgages are backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

In the meantime, the housing giants have continued to grapple with how much to pay their top executives. To be sure, their pay is dwarfed by those at other large financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO made $33 million last year, and Bank of America, whose chief made $26.5 million. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives still earn less than their predecessors before the financial crisis, when the CEOs each made more than $10 million a year.

In the midst of the crisis, the companies’ regulator cut CEO salaries by more than half to about $4 million but then struggled to find executives to fill the top jobs, said Jim Lockhart, the former head of FHFA.

Lawmakers also considered requiring that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives be paid in line with federal workers, but that was abandoned in favor of just capping the salary of the CEO at $600,000 — nearly twice the top government salary.

“Six hundred thousand is too low, and maybe the $4- or $5 million we were doing is too high. Maybe there is something in between that,” said Lockhart, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and vice chairman of WL Ross, a private equity company.

Running companies of Fannie and Freddie’s size and complexity would typically be a career highlight for an ambitious executive. Fannie Mae has $3 trillion in assets, and Freddie Mac’s assets total $2 trillion. But the relatively low salary and the lack of rich stock options, or even the hope for a bonus, make it a tough sell, executive recruiters say. The companies’ CEOs also have little control over the ultimate fates of the housing giants, which is being debated by Congress and regulators, they say.

At $600,000, many qualified CEO candidates would consider the job a “public service,” said Alan Johnson, a compensation expert who consulted with Fannie Mae on pay issues before the crisis. “The job itself, that doesn’t feel like a lot of fun,” he said. “If something goes wrong, you are going to get blamed.”

That argument has been unconvincing to lawmakers and consumer advocates who say the companies are still benefiting from the backing of U.S. taxpayers. If they run into financial trouble, taxpayers are still on the hook for bailing them out. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have introduced legislation to block the new pay arrangements.

The issue became pressing as both companies faced major turnover last year. Fannie Mae’s longtime chief executive, Tim Mayopoulos, announced he would be stepping down before the end of the year.

While deciding how to replace Mayopoulos, now president of a digital lending company, Fannie’s board came up with a plan: The CEO’s pay would remain $600,000, but it would create a new position, president, and that person would earn more than $3 million a year.

The company’s CEO salary is “more than 90% below” the median for executives at comparable companies, Fannie Mae said in a report to shareholders earlier this year. “Our current level of chief executive officer compensation puts pressure on our ability to attract and retain executive talent,” Fannie said.

Both positions were filled by company insiders. Hugh Frater, who had served on Fannie Mae’s board since 2016 and is also the nonexecutive chairman of Vereit, a real estate investment company, was picked to be CEO. David Benson, their chief financial officer, was promoted to president. Less than two months after Benson was appointed, Fannie Mae proposed increasing his salary 11 percent to $3.6 million, the Office of Inspector General noted.

Fannie Mae is now spending $4.2 million for work that used to be done for $600,000 when it had only a CEO, the inspector general’s report concluded.

At about the same time, Freddie Mac’s longtime chief executive, Donald Layton, announced he would be stepping down this summer. Freddie also created a new position, promoting the head one of its largest business units, David Brickman, to the president’s job, earning $3.25 million. But unlike its sister housing company, Freddie Mac says that when Brickman becomes chief executive in July, his pay will fall to $600,000 and the president’s job will disappear.

“Freddie Mac created the position of president to ensure a seamless transition to the role of CEO,” Spina, the Freddie spokesman, said in a statement.

Still, the inspector general’s office has challenged the arrangement. Freddie Mac now spends $3.85 million to pay two people for work that used to be done by one person for $600,000, according to the report. Both companies are involved in “financial engineering” meant to allow them to “circumvent” the salary cap put in place by Congress, the report said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"State Department office manager admits conspiring to hide contacts with Chinese agents"

Spoiler

A veteran State Department ­office manager pleaded guilty Wednesday to hiding extensive contacts with two Chinese intelligence agents who showered her with tens of thousands of dollars in gifts as they asked for diplomatic and economic information.

Candace Claiborne, 63, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by repeatedly covering up foreign intelligence contacts over more than five years. She was required to report the contacts because of her top-secret security clearance.

Because the lies allowed Claiborne to keep her job and salary, prosecutors calculated the scheme netted Claiborne the equivalent of $550,000, and both sides in a plea agreement said Claiborne faces a maximum five-year prison term at sentencing July 9.

U.S. authorities did not describe any of the material passed on by Claiborne as classified. However, they said she responded to requests for internal U.S. government information “that would provide an advantage to Chinese officials” in ongoing economic talks between the two countries, and failed to report her exposure to foreign contacts that could subject her “to coercion, influence, or pressure” to compromise U.S. national security.

The Justice Department said from 2011 to 2016, two intelligence agents for the People’s Republic of China gave Claiborne’s family $20,000 in cash, electronics, trips, an apartment and tuition for a young relative at a Chinese fashion school.

“Ms. Claiborne . . . is everything in the statement of facts true and correct?” U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss asked in a 45-minute plea hearing in Washington.

“Yes, your honor,” said Claiborne, wiping a tear from her eye after pleading guilty.

Prosecutors agreed to drop counts of felony obstruction, lying to the FBI and wire fraud.

The case comes as U.S. officials have called Chinese economic espionage the nation’s most severe counterintelligence threat, and mounted a string of espionage and trade-secret prosecutions.

Claiborne had worked at the State Department since 1999, including overseas postings in Iraq, Sudan and China, and as an office manager for the minister of public affairs for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Since her March 29, 2017, arrest, Claiborne, who is from Northwest Washington, has spent 10 months under house arrest, then a release to the community with high-intensity supervision including electronic monitoring. She will remain under those conditions until she is due to report to jail June 5, the day after the end of Ramadan, Moss said, according to the plea deal.

Claiborne and two conspirators described as agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security in Shanghai “conspired to hide their close and continuing connections” and gifts to keep Claiborne employed and able “to supply internal State Department information,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Gillice of the District told the court.

“They carried this out through lies spoken and written, and through deletions of relevant communications, contact and gifts,” said Gillice, who handled the case with Justice Department national security division prosecutors.

In a 24-page statement of facts agreed to by both sides, Claiborne admitted that one agent asked her to provide internal U.S. analyses of economic talks with China in 2011, and wired her bank account nearly $2,500.

After Claiborne responded with publicly available information, the agent replied, “What they are looking for is what they cannot find on Internet.”

The agent, who was not named but was described as an importer and exporter who runs a spa and restaurant in Shanghai and has known Claiborne since 2007, added, “If you find something next time don’t send them by email bcs others also can catch it with ­Internet.”

In 2012, Claiborne met every month or so with the two agents after they requested internal information on upcoming meetings or visits between U.S. and Chinese officials, dialogues or plans.

Claiborne believed the pair to be agents of the Chinese government, and would turn over envelopes containing State Department cables, white papers or other nonpublic documents that she had searched for. In return, she would receive an envelope with Chinese currency, according to plea documents.

Other gifts went mainly to an unidentified younger family member who lived with Claiborne, including tickets to the United States and Thailand, one year’s tuition and a job, court filings said.

Claiborne, who appeared in court with seven supporters who declined to comment after the hearing, has no criminal record, the judge said. Assistant federal defender David Bos said he would argue for leniency in a sentencing recommendation due July 2.

 

[Howl]

On 4/23/2019 at 3:32 PM, fraurosena said:

Good grief. Could they lay it on any thicker that Barr is there to protect Trump at all costs?

Barr gets waiver on case linked to inquiry into Trump's re-election effort

Yes, it's getting harder to ignore Barr as a made man in the Trump Crime Family and the Trump administration legal consigliere.   Anybody  excited that Trump-related cases were referred by Mueller to Federal prosecutors will probably be disappointed at the outcome.  Barr is ultimately in charge of those cases....

We got a copy of Time's 100 most influential people. Each person has a little paragraph written by someone who admires them.  I shit you not, Rod Rosenstein gave William Barr a damn tongue bath.  

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank, complete with more horrible crap spewed by Moore: "Stephen Moore needs a vacation from women"

Spoiler

Stephen Moore, one of President Trump’s many exotic picks to staff the federal government, declared this week that his opponents are “pulling a Kavanaugh against me.”

Moore, Trump’s pick for the Federal Reserve Board, is so convinced he is being treated like Brett Kavanaugh, whose Supreme Court confirmation was marred by sexual-misconduct allegations, that he reportedly hired a PR firm that helped Kavanaugh.

Any day now, Moore will appear before the Senate Banking Committee, sniff prominently, turn pages furiously and testify thunderously: “I LIKE QUANTITATIVE EASING!”

But there is a key difference. In Moore’s case, the enemy is . . . Moore — specifically, what he wrote 15 to 20 years ago for conservative outlets such as National Review.

Now CNN, the New York Times and others are reprinting Moore’s greatest hits, including his joke about how he potty-trained his son by “pasting a photo of Hillary Clinton with a bullseye target on the bottom of the potty.” And his hilarious tale about showing his children pictures of the “mangled and bloody” corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons with the message “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO KIDS THAT GROW UP TO BE DEMOCRATS!” And the riotous bit about him “hitting on” a “gorgeous 20-something blond,” then telling his concerned son “how nice it would be if you had a much younger mommy.”

He’s in town all week, folks!

In other writings, Moore defended misbehavior on college campuses: “If [women] were so oppressed and offended by drunken, lustful frat boys, why is it that on Friday nights they showed up in droves in tight skirts to the keg parties?” He reserved particular derision for his wife. After she voted Democratic, he wrote: “Women are sooo malleable! No wonder there’s a gender gap.”

Moore is now divorced from her — and was held in contempt of court in 2013 for failing to pay more than $300,000 in child support. There’s a tax lien against his home because he owes the Internal Revenue Service $75,000.

In other words, Moore should fit in perfectly with his fellow Trump appointees.

I’m fascinated by the je ne sais quoi that mutually attracts Trump and an endless parade of oddballs. Just before Moore’s writings resurfaced, another Trump pick for the Fed, Herman Cain, withdrew from consideration after the revival of sexual harassment allegations dogging the pizza magnate and “9-9-9 Plan” originator.

Trump’s 2016 campaign chief is doing time in federal prison for international criminality. Former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, of Stormy Daniels and taxi-medallion fame, is headed to prison, too. Numerous aides have come to grief — Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Tom Price, Ronny Jackson — after discovering they couldn’t get away with stuff the boss does.

For important jobs, Trump has seen fit to tap the unfit — a cabana boy, a party planner, a bartender, a muffler-shop guy, a judicial nominee who didn’t know the law. (Trump’s previous attorney general had recently pitched hot tubs.) Even the qualified tend to depart in disgrace: John Kelly, Gary Cohn, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Kirstjen Nielsen. Now comes Attorney General William Barr, already trashing his reputation with his dishonest unveiling of the Mueller report.

I have some sympathy for Moore and what the New York Times called his “attempts at humor.” My entire career might be so labeled. But now he’s sacrificing his integrity like many others, serving a president whose immigration policies he once called “extreme nativist,” “crazy” and “dangerous.” (As CNN’s KFile found, Moore said this during the same 2015 radio interview in which Larry Kudlow, now another top Trump adviser, likened Trump’s immigration ideas to Nazi-era barbarism during the same interview.)

Among Moore’s writings were parodies of year-end letters to friends in which he referred to himself in the third person. One shudders to imagine this year’s version:

Steve had a rough year. First came news that he didn’t pay child support or his taxes. And for some reason, people didn’t think his jokes about mangled corpses and urinating on Hillary Clinton were funny. Wet blankets! Anyway, the really bad news came when the Senate had to confirm Steve, and — of all the rotten luck — 24 senators, including seven Republicans, turned out to be women. Ewww!

The senators didn’t like Steve’s claim that female tennis pros “want equal pay for inferior work” or him calling it an “obscenity” for women to referee men’s games. (“Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?” Steve asked.) They didn’t join his cry for “no more women refs, no women announcers, no women beer vendors, no women anything” — unless they “look like Bonnie Bernstein,” a sportscaster who, Steve wrote, should wear halter tops.

Now Steve is enjoying the private sector. He didn’t get the Fed job, but the publicity earned him a consolation prize: a vacation from women.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, Howl said:

 I shit you not, Rod Rosenstein gave William Barr a damn tongue bath.  

I have had my doubts about Rosenstein ever since he wrote that letter for the firing of Comey. He is playing a game I can’t follow. It could be a really complicated design he’s weaving, acting as a double agent. Or it could simply be he’s doing anything he has to in order to keep his job. I hope it’s the former, and he’s secretly aiding the efforts to oust the national security threats. But I’m afraid that it’s the latter. Time will tell.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

So Rosenstein held a speech yesterday.

 

Quote

“Peri yerego.” Good evening.

Rick, I am grateful for your friendship and for your 20 years of exceptional service to the Department of Justice — including seven years as the United States Attorney for Northern New York.

I am pleased to see several U.S. Attorneys here tonight: Geoff Berman from Southern New York, Richard Donoghue from Eastern New York, Grant Jaquith from Northern New York, and Craig Carpenito from New Jersey; as well as eight former U.S. Attorneys, and many other current and former government employees.

I am thankful to Armenian Bar Association Chair Gerard Kassabian, and Vice Chairs Kathryn Ossian and Lucy Varpetian.

My wife served on your board of governors from 1993 to 2002. I got to know many of the members, particularly the group that traveled with us to Armenia in 1994 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the University of Yerevan.

When I met Lisa in 1988, some of her relatives viewed me as “odar,” an outsider to the culture. But recently a friend introduced me as “Armenian by Choice.” After tonight, I have an even stronger claim to be an honorary Armenian.

“Shot Shenorhagal em.” Thank you very much.

Our wedding featured an Armenian opera singer who is in the audience tonight, Maro Partamian. One of my favorite songs was “Lerner Hyreni,” or “Mountains of Armenia.” We hired the “Dark Eyes” band to play at the reception, which was great except that I chose a country song called “I Swear” by John Michael Montgomery for the first dance. It did not sound quite right with an Armenian accent.

One of Lisa’s relatives was raised in Syria, where government service was not highly valued. Before he approved of the marriage, he wanted to know when I planned to get a real job, in the private sector.

Unfortunately, many native-born Americans also are skeptical about government service. My Uncle Harold was a self-employed carpet installer. One beautiful spring afternoon in 1994, I called him from an office in the Department of Justice headquarters building. It was a Saturday. And when I told him that I was working through the weekend, he said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

And I said, “You don’t understand. There is no place that I would rather be.”

I first walked into that building as a federal prosecutor on December 3, 1990, at age 25. I remember how honored I felt to represent the people of the United States. I will still feel the same way when I walk out for the last time next month.

I joined the Department of Justice because I believe in the mission. I stayed because I believe in the people who carry out the mission.

Our agents, analysts, and attorneys demonstrate great intellect and integrity. They possess superb academic credentials and exceptional character. They pass rigorous screening interviews and face thorough background checks every few years. They are ethical, honorable, and admirable people.

No organization with 115,000 employees is error-free. But we have serious, professional, nonpartisan internal watchdogs. We investigate credible misconduct allegations. We correct mistakes and punish wrongdoers.

I have served under five Presidents and nine Senate-confirmed Attorneys General — ten, if you count Bill Barr twice. I served mostly outside the D.C. beltway, but I worked at Department of Justice headquarters three times — four years in the early 1990s as a career prosecutor, four years in the early 2000s as a supervisor, and two years in my current job.

Our headquarters is a beautiful Depression-era building. I frequently speak about the inspiration that I draw from three aspects of the building – the art it contains; the people it employs; and the principles it represents.

There are reminders of heroes, mentors, and friends on every floor. They taught me that our Department stands for the principle that every American deserves the protection of the rule of law.

We use the term “rule of law” to describe our obligation to follow neutral principles. As President Trump pointed out, “we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather [than] … the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy explained it this way: in a rule of law system, when you apply to a government clerk for a permit and you satisfy the objective criteria, you are not asking for a favor. You are entitled to the permit, and it is the clerk’s duty to give it to you.

The idea that the government works for the people is relatively novel. In some countries, that concept of a government bound by law to serve the people does not exist.

When I visited Armenia in 1994, the nation was emerging from seven decades of Soviet domination. Gyumri and other northern cities were not yet rebuilt after the 1988 earthquake. The six-year war with Azerbaijan was halted by a recent ceasefire, but the blockade over Nagorno-Karabakh crippled the economy.

We flew on Air Armenia, which used a shabby old Russian jet. Our plane needed to stop for fuel in Bulgaria, and we heard that the pilots paid with cash.

Armenia faced many challenges in 1994. Many skilled and educated people had left the country. When we hired a taxi to visit Lake Sevan, the driver turned off the engine at every downhill stretch to conserve gasoline.

We stayed at a nice hotel near Republic Square, but some mornings there was no water to flush the toilets, and some evenings there was no electricity to cook the food.

 I gave a lecture at the University of Yerevan about public corruption.  When I finished, a student raised his hand.  He asked, “If you can’t pay bribes in America, then how do you get electricity?”

I repeat that question in many speeches. It usually elicits laughter. But the point is profound.

The question illustrates how that young man understood Soviet society. Corruption undermines law. It stifles innovation, creates inefficiency, and inculcates distrust.

The question explains why I devoted my career to law enforcement: because the rule of law is the foundation of human liberty. The rule of law secures our freedom. It will secure our children’s freedom. And we can only achieve it if people who enforce the law set aside partisanship, because the rule of law requires a fair and independent process; a process where all citizens are equal in the eyes of the government.

I do not care how police officers, prosecutors, and judges vote, just as I do not care how soldiers and sailors vote. That is none of my business. I only care whether they understand that when they are on duty, their job is about law and not politics.

There is not Republican justice and Democrat justice. There is only justice and injustice.

In the courtyard of the Department of Justice headquarters, there is an inscription that reads, in Latin: “Privilegium Obligatio.” It means that when you accept a privilege, you incur an obligation. Working for Justice is a privilege.

Our commensurate obligations are established by our oath to well and faithfully execute the duties of the office. To honor that oath, you need to know your office’s unique duties. At our Department, our job is to seek the truth, apply the law, follow the Department’s policies, and respect its principles.

The rule of law is our most important principle. Patriots must always defend the rule of law. Even when it is not in their personal interest, it is always in the national interest. If you find yourself asking, “What will this decision mean for me?” then you probably are not complying with your oath of office.

At my confirmation hearing in March 2017, a Republican Senator asked me to make a commitment. He said: “You’re going to be in charge of this [Russia] investigation. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you’ll do it right, that you’ll take it to its conclusion and you’ll report [your results] to the American people.”

I did pledge to do it right and take it to the appropriate conclusion. I did not promise to report all results to the public, because grand jury investigations are ex parte proceedings. It is not our job to render conclusive factual findings. We just decide whether it is appropriate to file criminal charges.

Some critical decisions about the Russia investigation were made before I got there. The previous Administration chose not to publicize the full story about Russian computer hackers and social media trolls, and how they relate to a broader strategy to undermine America. The FBI disclosed classified evidence about the investigation to ranking legislators and their staffers. Someone selectively leaked details to the news media. The FBI Director announced at a congressional hearing that there was a counterintelligence investigation that might result in criminal charges. Then the former FBI Director alleged that the President pressured him to close the investigation, and the President denied that the conversation occurred.

So that happened.

There is a story about firefighters who found a man on a burning bed. When they asked how the fire started, he replied, “I don’t know. It was on fire when I lay down on it.”  I know the feeling.

But the bottom line is, there was overwhelming evidence that Russian operatives hacked American computers and defrauded American citizens, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of a comprehensive Russian strategy to influence elections, promote social discord, and undermine America, just like they do in many other countries.

In 1941, as Hitler sought to enslave Europe and Japan’s emperor prepared to attack America, Attorney General Robert Jackson admonished federal prosecutors about their role in protecting national security. He said: “Defense is not only a matter of battleships and tanks, of guns and [soldiers]….  It is raw materials, machines and [people who] work in factories.  It is public morale.  It is a law abiding population and a nation free from internal disorder . . . the ramparts we watch are not only those on the outer borders which are largely the concern of the military services.  There are also the inner ramparts of our society — the Constitution, its guarantees, our freedoms and the supremacy of law.  These are yours to guard and their protection is your defense program.”  

As acting Attorney General, it was my responsibility to make sure that the Department of Justice would do what the American people pay us to do: conduct an independent investigation; complete it expeditiously; hold perpetrators accountable if warranted; and work with partner agencies to counter foreign agents and deter crimes.

Today, our nation is safer, elections are more secure, and citizens are better informed about covert foreign influence schemes.

But not everybody was happy with my decision, in case you did not notice.

It is important to keep a sense of humor in Washington.  You just need to accept that politicians need to evaluate everything in terms of the immediate political impact.

Then there are the mercenary critics, who get paid to express passionate opinions about any topic, often with little or no information. They do not just express disagreement. They launch ad hominem attacks unrestricted by truth or morality. They make threats, spread fake stories, and even attack your relatives. I saw one of the professional provocateurs at a holiday party. He said, “I’m sorry that I’m making your life miserable.” And I said, “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”

His job is to entertain and motivate partisans, so he can keep making money. My job is to enforce the law in a non-partisan way; that is the whole point of the oath of office.

In our Department, we disregard the mercenary critics and focus on the things that matter. As Goethe said, “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” A republic that endures is not governed by the news cycle. Some of the nonsense that passes for breaking news today would not be worth the paper was printed on, if anybody bothered to print it. It quickly fades away. The principles are what abide.

America’s founders understood that the rule of law is not partisan. In 1770, five American colonists died after British soldiers fired on a crowd in the Boston Massacre. The soldiers were charged with murder. Many people believed that they deserved the death penalty.

John Adams agreed to represent the soldiers. His political beliefs were firmly against them. But Adams felt obligated to protect their rights under the law.

Defending British soldiers was a very unpopular cause, to put it mildly. Adams faced a serious risk, in his words, of “infamy,” or even “death.” In a diary entry about the trial, he wrote as follows: “In the evening I expressed to Mrs. Adams all my apprehensions: That excellent Lady, who has always encouraged me, burst into … Tears…. he was very sensible of all the danger to her and to our children as well as to me, but she thought I had done as I ought, [and] she was … willing to share in all that was to come and place her trust in Providence.”

The rhetoric mirrors an earlier letter that Adams wrote to explain his preference for integrity over acclaim. Adams wrote that in theaters “the applause of the audience is of more importance to the actors than their own approbation. But upon the stage of life, while conscience claps, let the world hiss.”

Adams endured harsh criticism in the court of public opinion. But in the court of law, he secured the acquittal of the British captain and six soldiers.

At the trial, Adams delivered a timeless tribute to the rule of law. He said that “[f]acts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Adams’ words remind us that people who seek the truth need to avoid confirmation bias. Truth is about solid evidence, not strong opinions. A 19th century Philadelphia doctor remarked that “sincerity of belief is not the test of truth.” Many people passionately believe things that are not true.

I spent most of my career prosecuting cases in federal courthouses. My past trials in courts of law contrast with my recent tribulations in the halls of Congress, the channels of cable television, and the pages of the internet.

The difference is in the standard of proof. In my business, we need to prove facts with credible evidence, prove them beyond any reasonable doubt, and prove them to the unanimous satisfaction of a neutral judge and an unbiased jury of 12 random citizens.

Pursuing truth requires keeping an open mind, avoiding confirmation bias, and always yielding to credible evidence. Truth may not match our preconceptions. Truth may not satisfy our hopes.  But truth is the foundation of the rule of law.

If lawyers cannot prove our case in court, then what we believe is irrelevant.

But in politics, belief is the whole ball game. In politics – as in journalism – the rules of evidence do not apply. That is not a critique. It is just an observation.

Last year, a congressman explained why he decided not to run for reelection. He said, “I like … job where facts matter. I like jobs where fairness matters. I like jobs where, frankly, … the process matters.”

He was describing an American courtroom. “I like the art of persuasion,” he said. “I like finding 12 people who have not already made up their minds and ... may [let] the facts prevail. That’s not where we are in politics.”

That congressman spoke the truth. It may never be where we are in politics. But it must always be where we are in law.

Attorney General Jackson spoke about the fiduciary duty of government lawyers, the obligation to serve as a trustee for the public interest. He contrasted the special duties of government lawyers with what he called “the volatile values of politics.” That was in 1940.

Jackson understood that “lawyers must at times risk ourselves and our records to defend our legal processes from discredit, and to maintain a dispassionate, disinterested, and impartial enforcement of the law.”

“We must have the courage to face any temporary criticism,” Jackson urged, because “the moral authority of our legal process” depends on the commitment of government lawyers to act impartially.

Jackson also spoke about the role of lawyers in preserving liberty. He used a parable about three stonecutters asked to describe what they are doing.  The first stonecutter focuses on how the job benefits him. He says, “I am earning a living.” The second narrowly describes his personal task: “I am cutting stone.” The third man has a very different perspective. His face lights up as he explains what the work means to others: “I am helping to build a cathedral.”

“[W]hether we are aware of it or not,” Jackson explained, lawyers “do more than earn [a] living[]; we do more than [litigate] [individual] cases. We are building the legal structure that will protect … human liberty” for centuries to come.

As my time in public service comes to an end, I encourage each of you to remember the cathedral. You are always building a legacy. You set an example for your colleagues, and you lay a foundation for your successors.

Time flies when you get to work with good and honorable people. In the words of an Eagles song: “I’d do it all again; If I could somehow; But I must be leaving soon; It’s your world now… Use well your time; Be part of something good; Leave something good behind; … It’s your world now.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this evening means a great deal to Lisa and me.

“Shot Shenorhagal-em yev Pari Keesher.” Thank you, and good night.

It's a jumble of contradictory statements, if you ask me. He's underlining the importance of non-partisanship and rule of law, but he also blames Obama and Comey for what he inherited, and he states thinly veiled complaints about how he was maligned by the press. After this, I'm no more the wiser on where he stands than I was before.

I see @AmazonGrace has aslo posted about this while I was typing this up...(and went shopping in the meantime)

Edited April 26, 2019 by fraurosena
no idea why text is suddenly shown as strike-through

[Howl]

Rod Rosenstein is firmly into #ETTD territory; he just doesn't know it yet.  He may very well finish out his time and get his nice pension, but his reputation is circling the drain. 

[fraurosena]

Benjamin Wittes from Lawfare has thoughts about Rosenstein that align with ours:

 

[fraurosena]

And now I see why so many people are taling about Rosenstein:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Howl]

Rod Rosenstein has resigned from DoJ.  When he appeared at William Barr's left on stage while Barr read his  Mueller Report summary "lying liar who lies" manifesto,  he looked like he was in a proof of life video.  I mean, functionally he WAS still alive, but the spark was gone.  I'm getting a vibe that Rosenstein thinks he's getting a bad rap from the MSM, but ya know, Rod, #ETTD.  

Edited April 29, 2019 by Howl