From Yahoo News:
Attorney General William Barr refused Wednesday to turn over his notes on a conversation he had with Robert Mueller during which the special counsel complained about Barr’s summary of his report about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump’s attempts to cover it up.
“No,” Barr responded when asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., if he would provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with the notes he took to document the call with Mueller.
“Why not?” Blumenthal responded.
“Why should you have them?” Barr answered.
Barr’s defiance came at the end of a contentious day of testimony during which Democratic members of the committee accused the attorney general of the United States of lying. Republican committee members, meanwhile, sought to shift the focus of the hearing to what they described as corruption in the FBI during the 2016 campaign.
Moments before the tense exchange, Barr derisively described a March 27 letter by Mueller objecting to Barr’s summary of his report.
…snip…
“The letter’s a bit snitty and I think it was probably written by one of his staff people,” Barr said.
…snip…
Throughout his testimony Wednesday, Barr deflected responsibility to Mueller for the decision not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. Democrats on the committee said Mueller’s interactions with Barr show that the attorney general had provided political cover for the White House.
Conway Snitty is refusing to face the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow.
HYSTERICAL RAISINS 
The infection at the White House has clearly metastasized to the Justice Department. In future history texts, this will probably be in the same chapter as Watergate.
Hi Jim!
The Daily Show calls this fiasco stupid Watergate. John Dean called Watergate a cancer on the presidency, and that was true. This time around, just like you said, it has metastasized, but not only to the Justice Department, but to almost every Cabinet department and to the entire Rethuglican Party, including the Rethugs in Congress. This is some scary shit.
Laughing so hard my side hurts. I love this, it’s perfect. Please Tweet it.
Hi Sherry! ❤
I tweeted this all over Twitter last night. Not sure how much of an impact it made.
Barr-f! It’s weird how Trump is able to get people to cast their own integrity to the winds and serve as his cravenly loyal “handmaids”. Does he have video of Barr molesting a goat or something? Or perhaps they realize that if Hair Furor Agolf Twitler goes down, the last chance of maintaining Republican domination of the country goes down with him, so they feel compelled to shore him up no matter what?
— James Comey
Jim, like I said in my response to Infidel, I don’t think the answer is that simple. This is not a new rendition of Damn Yankees. People are not selling their souls to the Devil (Twitler), because they dream of hitting a home run in the World Series. There is something else going on. The picture you get of someone like Rosenstein is so starkly different than the picture previously painted by decent people who used to know him and work with him. People don’t change that quickly. He would have been better off if he had left right after Sally Yates did. His career and reputation would have been in better shape than it is now. If he had stayed, because he thought he could make a difference and put the brakes on Twitler, then his sycophantic nauseating tongue-bath of a resignation letter makes no sense. Neither does signing onto the Barr summary not-a-summary. Maybe I need a tinfoil hat, but nothing adds up to me unless you put blackmail into the mix.
P.S. Jim Comey is not one to talk about souls, because he sold his holier-than-thou soul when he shit all over Hillary’s campaign.
Nonny, as I see it, Comey’s insight is apt. Most people, Jim Mattis being an exception, do not rise to power without some incremental compromising of principle. This can be benign. After all, the Constitution’s structure is all about compromise. The problem is, of course, that an amoral, psychopathic, narcissistic executive can corrupt the process and affect real principle in small bites.
What’s happening now reminds me of how, during the Viet Nam war, the Joint Chiefs of Staff allowed the war to be politicized by McNamara, Johnson and Nixon. Not one of them resigned in protest.
JIm,
I took a while to answer you, because I wanted to collect my thoughts so I don’t come off as some kind of raving lunatic, and because I was hungry and had to make something to eat.
I have to disagree with you and Comey. Let’s see if I can articulate it as I hear my argument in my mind (without sounding like the above-mentioned raving lunatic). First, I think the people who work for the government, especially in a place like the Justice Department and especially at the higher echelons, should be held to a higher standard than the average shmuck on the street. When you are charged with power that can change the direction of a country and affect people, both collectively and on a personal basis, to such a profound degree, then you have to be someone who cannot be compromised. That doesn’t mean you can’t compromise, but it means that you have to stand by your values and the oath that you took to protect the governmental agency you are a part of as well as protecting the rights and lives of the American people. If they can’t do that, then they don’t belong in government service. I don’t expect those people to be perfect in their personal lives, but I do expect it when they are on the job, just as I expect every other professional who has a life in their hands to respect the oaths they take. What if pharmacists decided that they could make a few extra bucks if they dilute the cancer medications they dispense? I think they are a lot worse than a baker who decides to cut down on the amount of chocolate chips they put in their cookies to save a few bucks. The pharmacists took an oath to always watch out for “the welfare of humanity” and to apply their “knowledge, experience, and skills to the best of my ability to assure optimal outcomes for my patients.” That’s among other things in the oath, but you get the picture. If they are unable to live up to their oath, they should not be pharmacists. They can be lousy bartenders at their own parties and put too much vermouth in their martinis, but they have to be meticulous in their dispensing of medicine. The baker might be cheating his customers if he tells them he still uses the same amount of chocolate chips in his cookies, but he isn’t going to kill anyone by doing so. He might lose some customers, but his customers won’t lose their lives. I guess that’s why bakers don’t have to take oaths.
Comey’s remarks also reminded me of the poor white guy’s plight in America. We see this bullshit all over. I have to admit, after all the hand-wringing over poor Michael Cohen who has to go to prison this week, I actually started to feel sorry for him. Then I thought about all the lives he might have wrecked, only for his own arrogance and/or greed. Why should I feel sorry for that douchebag who did nothing good for society for so many years? He lived the good life. He lived in places most people can never even imagine being lucky enough to live in. He had every advantage, and he used that to make other people’s lives shitty. He knew exactly who and what Twitler was, and he signed right up as soon as he realized he could make some bucks and feel like a bigshot. His friends and other rich white guys on TV try to make him out to be some flawed tragic figure. Well, you know what, we all have flaws. We are all human, and we make mistakes, but we don’t threaten a woman and her child in a parking lot, and we don’t screw honest working people out of money once they have done work for us, and we don’t help other people do that. What do we hear about Manafort? Boo-hoo, he’s old, and he might spend the rest of his life in prison! He can’t even dye his hair and wear his ostrich jackets anymore! Fuck him. He was and still is a traitor to his country. He’s a selfish asshole, and he got his just desserts, and it’s just too damned bad it took so long for it to happen. We should not forget that Cohen and Manafort and Michael Flynn and Bernie Madoff and Jack Abramoff and the guys at Enron and all the other rich shitheads would still be doing exactly what they were doing if they hadn’t gotten caught.
We see the same thing every time there is a mass murder in which the shooter is white. It’s almost a guarantee that you will see stories of how he was such a nice quiet lad, a good athlete, a singer in the church choir, etc., but something tragic must have happened somewhere along the line to make him pick up an AR-15 and blow a bunch of people away. You will never hear that about a shooter who is black or Muslim or anything other than white, American-born and Christian.
In my humble opinion, Mr. Comey in his remarks, whether he is conscious of it or not, is trying to dismiss what he did during the 2016 election. Until he gives a full-throated “I really fucked up,” I really don’t want to hear him speak about those poor tragic figures in government who can’t seem to do the right thing, even though a lot of others have. The people at the highest posts in the Justice Department, like Rosenstein and Barr, can choose to do the right thing and survive and thrive. They aren’t some destitute characters out of Les Miserables whose children will starve if they don’t prostitute themselves and sell their hair and teeth (or their principles and honor). Look at Gary Cohen and Elaine Chao, a Jew and a woman of color. They stood there in Twitler Tower, next to that bloviating piece of orange shit as he declared Nazis to be fine people. They stood there and smiled and made their planned remarks afterwards as though nothing out of the ordinary was said. What would it have cost them if they had gotten up and walked away in protest? They are both fabulously rich. They don’t need those jobs. They wouldn’t have gotten any bad publicity. In fact, they would have been applauded and praised for standing up for their principles. However, they had no principles. The only thing they care about is the accumulation of money. It is not a deficit of courage they suffer from. It is a deficit of character. They didn’t sell their souls, they gave them away for free, because they knew they would get a big return on their investment.
Well, so much for not sounding like a raving lunatic. Sorry about that, Jim.
Gee, Nonny, I hope you feel better now. : )
Believe it or not, I agree with you. I hope you run for office, I would vote for you in a New York minute.
Voters should express the same thoughts you have about authority and responsibility. I’m with you 100%. My intention with posting the quote by Comey was not to justify all of his behavior but agree with his insight on how Twitler corrupts the behavior of those around him. The likes of a Jim Mattis is a rare thing. Makes me think of the apocyphal story about how to boil a live frog. (Just raise the temperature gradually.) Peace.
Thanks Jim. Do you want to be my running mate? 😉
Did Twitler really corrupt those around him, or did he deliberately pick people he (or Putin, or whoever is working for him/them) already knew to be corrupt, corruptible or compromised? Jim Mattis was window-dressing. They had to have someone in place with an air of respectability. i applaud him to sticking it out as long as he did. And let’s not forget Sally Yates. She was fired for standing up to Twitler. The same for Preet Bharara who refused to resign and got a lot of stuff in order while waiting for Twitler to fire him. Those are just he best known ones. I am sure there are a lot of other people who left government service after many years, because they refused to serve under an ignorant tyrant. Maybe courage isn’t as rare as it seems. Maybe it’s just unrecognized or underreported.
Thanks for the VEEP invite, Nonny, but retired engineers are unlikely to have enough charisma for the job. (Think Dilbert.)
You said,
I think he mainly picks them after getting rid of the more qualified. By the way, Sally Yates was already headed for the door when fired. Just sayin’. I like the cut of her jib too. Bharara was a good case in point. To Twitler, personal loyalty trumps (ha) competence and character every time.
Hair Furor Agolf Twitler 😆 😆 😆 I love it!!!
There is something else afoot here (I really love using the word afoot). Mary Daly, Barr’s eldest daughter, has been placed at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) which was smack dab in the middle of the whole Russian spying shit in 2016. If there was a backchannel to Russia then, there is certainly still one now. Barr’s son-in-law, husband of his younger daughter, is in the White House counsel office. Why were they relocated to those particular positions? What are the conversations at the dinner table at the Barr house? There is something hinky going on, and it is all about protecting Twitler. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but is that where Twitler wants them to be, or is it where Putin wants them to be? I really wonder what it is that Putin has on Barr. I don’t think it’s Twitler who has the dirt, because Barr had to come to him with the 16-page memo. Twitler is nasty and vindictive, but he’s not smart. He’s a useful idiot. He can be nasty and make up nicknames for people and be a bully, but he doesn’t plan. That’s too complicated for him. He’s not a leader, he’s a follower. Faux News or Rush Limpballs or whoever says something, Twitler hears it, and he runs with it. He has never had an original thought, so a memo from Bill Barr would be a good way to make him think he had an original thought in nominating Barr to be AG. The real question is why Barr wrote that memo. I don’t believe he did it on his own. He was encouraged (or blackmailed?) into writing it, because someone knew it would result in the nomination.
Interesting points. Trump does seem like a “useful idiot”, with the emphasis on “idiot”. If Putin was reckless enough to meddle with our election at all, he might well be engaged in other machinations here. After the next administration has dealt with the mess Trump has created domestically, It must make an example of Putin and Russia to ensure that no one else ever dares try such interference.
The name is of course a collective effort. I got “Twitler” from you and I’ve seen variants of “Hair Furor” in several places. “Agolf” is original with me, as far as I know.
Proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing.
Well, Comey should certainly know about amoral leadership, I’ll give him that.
I don’t think Putin is reckless at all. He knows that he is dealing with an idiot, and all he has to do is flatter him in order to keep him in line. Putin is moving all the chessman around the board to exactly where he wants them to be, and Twitler and his henchmen are making sure nothing gets in Putin’s way. Comey is a shithead, but I do think he is a patriotic shithead. The cast of characters in the administration is devoid of patriots. None of them give a shit about this country.
But when Putin launched the plan to meddle in our election, Trump wasn’t President yet, and Putin couldn’t be sure he ever would be. That was very reckless. The more cautious leadership in Soviet times would never have dared to do such a thing.
They’ve been meddling in our politics for years. When he meddled this time, I would bet he had some assets on his side that we are not yet aware of. Remember when Chuckles McCarthy joked about how Dana Rohrbacher was on the Kremlin’s payroll? How many others in Congress were compromised? Are all of the Rethugs really in love with Twitler, or do they have a more insidious reason for backing him? Russia had a footprint in the NRA and in the evangelical community. How much of a risk was it for Putin and Russia? There were already sanctions in place, and it was time to go all in.