Pew's new poll released yesterday, was devastating enough before yesterday's smoking gun: Trump Begins Third Year With Low Job Approval and Doubts About His Honesty. 37% approval and 59% disapproval. "A growing share of Americans say they trust what Trump says less than what previous presidents said while they were in office. Nearly six-in-ten (58%) say they trust what Trump says less than previous presidents, up from 54% last June and 51% in February 2017, shortly after he took office. The public also continues to fault the ethical standards of top administration officials. Just 39% rate their ethical standards as excellent or good, while 59% say they are not good or poor."What smoking gun? Oh yeah... forgive me for brushing by that so quickly. Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier broke the story at BuzzFeed News: Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project. Here's the long and short of it: "Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter. Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. 'Make it happen,' the sources said Trump told Cohen. And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project. Cohen pleaded guilty in November to lying about the deal in testimony and in a two-page statement to the Senate and House intelligence committees. Special counsel Robert Mueller noted that Cohen’s false claim that the project ended in January 2016 was an attempt to 'minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1'-- widely understood to be Trump-- 'in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations.' Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie-- by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did-- in order to obscure Trump’s involvement."If this report of Trump suborning false testimony-- in other words, broke the law by making one of his employees lie under oath for him-- is confirmed, then Trump committed a felony and must resign or be impeached. That's the smoking gun I was referring to. Let's start with the early morning tweet from Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR):Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a former state Attorney General, had a similar tweet around the same time:And then Jerry Nadler, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. A tiny bit of background. When John Conyers announced he was leaving Congress, Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) made a play to vault over the second most senior]member of the committee, Nadler, to claim the chair for herself. (She is next in seniority after Nadler.) Lofgren played the woman card but it didn't work and the Policy and Steering Committee-- probably at Pelosi's urging-- recommended Nadler. The vote was 118-72 in his favor. There was some talk at the time that if the Dems won back control of the House, Nadler would follow Pelosi's instructions to the letter on impeachment talk. So he's completely slow-walked it and talked it down and came up with a bullshit narrative that they have to wait for Mueller. Mueller works for the executive branch and has nothing whatsoever to do with impeachment, even though his investigation will be useful to the committee that's supposed to investigate impeachment: Judiciary.And it hasn't been just me, urging Nadler to get off his ass. Tom Steyer agrees he's got to go: "On behalf of the nearly 7 million Americans who have joined the Need to Impeach movement, I call on Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler and every Member of Congress to begin impeachment hearings. It’s time for the legislative branch of government to do its constitutional duty." One of the committee members, Ted Lieu (D-CA) tweeted that "it is time for the House Judiciary Committee to start holding hearings to establish a record of whether @POTUS committed high crimes." Another member of the committee, Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told me that "In a courtroom, 'impeachment' means exposing lies and deceptions, so that kind of impeachment hearing starts on day one. As for constitutional impeachment, well, everything in due course." Friday morning Trump didn't respond directly, just atypical Giuliani robotic lie--"Any suggestion, from any source, that the President counseled Michael Cohen to lie is categorically false"-- and a bunch of bullshit tweets and a retweet of one of Trump's Fox apologists, even though, if true, the allegations-- and remember, few Americans believe anything Trump says-- constitute both obstruction of justice and suborning perjury. Trump’s instructions to lie were already known to Mueller through testimony from multiple witnesses and through documentation. In fact, Cohen only confirmed information Mueller already had.By the way, did you watch the Senate confirmation hearings for William Barr? How about these exchanges?
Graham: So if there was some reason to believe that the president tried to coach somebody not to testify or testify falsely, that could be obstruction of justice?Barr: Yes. Under an obstruction statute, yes.Klobuchar: You wrote on page one that a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?Barr: Yes. Well, you know, any person who persuades another.Klobuchar: You also said that a president-- or any person-- convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction. Is that right?Barr: Yes.Klobuchar: And on page two, you said that a president deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence would be obstruction. Is that correct?Barr: Yes.
There's some chit-chat on Capitol Hill now that Trump wants to withdraw Barr's nomination. Now, that would be funny.
