Today’s Edition: The cost of collective amnesia.

June 16, 2021.

          As the world awaits the summit between Biden and Putin in Geneva, reports back home revealed just how far Trump was willing to go to overturn the 2020 election. On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee released emails from the final months of Trump’s tenure that show a desperate attempt to overturn the election by any means necessary. In particular, Trump pressured the Department of Justice to petition the Supreme Court to invalidate the appointment of electors in states where Trump lost and declare new elections in those states. Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, pressured the DOJ to investigate the claim that “people associated with an Italian defense contractor were able to use satellite technology to tamper with U.S. voting equipment from Europe.” Fortunately, even Trump loyalists in the Department of Justice viewed his requests as “pure insanity.” The collection of emails is here: Committee on Oversight and Reform, “Selected Documents from Trump Pressure Campaign on Department of Justice.”

          Of course, the Constitution does not allow a “do-over” of an election simply because the losing presidential candidate does not like the outcome. That Trump apparently believed he was entitled to such a remedy is strong evidence that he was either insane or depraved enough to engineer a coup to remain in power. But we knew that already. See, e.g., the events of January 6th, 2021. I have two reactions to the shocking disclosures in the emails. The first is that we are fortunate that Trump’s requests were so outlandish that even his staunchest supporters could not stomach his requests. The second is that Trump’s requests were so outlandish that even his staunchest supporters should have announced their resignations on CNN and MSNBC by telling the American people that Trump was actively attempting to stage a coup. The fact that they did not was a betrayal of their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. The fact that others, like Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, actively promoted efforts to keep Trump in power by subverting the Constitution should be grounds for a grand jury investigation and indictment, if appropriate.

          I understand the urge of many readers to move on from the travesties of the Trump years. Indeed, no one wants to move on more than the guy (me) who has spent four years writing about Trump’s travesties. I am all in favor of a forward-looking agenda for the Biden administration. After all, we have elections to win in the future. But we cannot pretend that the last four years did not happen—because we are within spitting distance of repeating the last four years if we don’t defeat Trump (or his surrogate) in 2024. Trump failed in his coup attempt because he was inept and unhinged in equal measure. If we don’t defeat the 2024 GOP nominee, we may get a president who has all of Trump’s bad qualities without his ineptitude. As the Editorial Board of the Washington Post wrote on Tuesday,

          The country cannot forget that Mr. Trump betrayed his oath, that most Republican officeholders remain loyal to him nonetheless, and that it could be worse next time.

          Two branches of government have it within their power to investigate Trump’s abuses. The first is the Executive Branch, acting through Attorney General Merrick Garland. I will not repeat my disappointment in Garland’s actions to date, but will instead refer readers to commentary by others: See CNBC, “Biden's attorney general can't let Trump-era abuses of powers go. Here's what he should do.”, (“The Justice Department possesses the documents filed by its prosecutors with the court, and Garland can simply unilaterally release them.”) and The New Yorker, “The Political, Legal, and Moral Minefield That Donald Trump Left for Merrick Garland,” (“Some fear that a former judge with a passionate belief in fairness and neutrality cannot effectively counter Trump.”)

          The second institution that can attempt to uncover Trump’s misdeeds is Congress. But congressional hearings are blunt instruments that are ill-suited for fact-finding missions. The problem is that committee members jockey for position to create soundbites that will drive fundraising appeals back home. That dynamic was on display in a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday in which Republican members spent their time defending the insurrectionists who assaulted the Capitol on January 6th. See Talking Points Memo, “House Republicans Spend Oversight Hearing Expressing Concern For Insurrectionists.”

          Our options are limited. We cannot afford the cost of collective amnesia. If we pretend the last four years did not happen, we increase the likelihood they will repeat themselves. Congress has limited ability to investigate the facts. It’s up to the Department of Justice and to diligent state prosecutors to charge Trump with the crimes he committed in office. Let’s hope that both move with dispatch.

Did Obama “spy on journalists, too?”

I have received a substantial amount of feedback from readers who defend Merrick Garland’s cautious approach to investigating misconduct by Trump and DOJ attorneys who still work in the Department. In the course of my discussions with those readers, one argument that surprised me was the claim that the current scandal isn’t as bad as it seems because, “Obama spied on journalists, too.” After researching the issue, I don’t believe the argument is apt even though it is partially true. The Obama administration did issue subpoenas to obtain cell phone metadata for reporters from the Associated Press. Those subpoenas sought records for 20 cell phones belonging to people that the DOJ believed might have communicated with a leaker. That is where the parallels end. See Wired, (5/13/2013), “Obama Administration Secretly Obtains Phone Records of AP Journalists.”

The facts surrounding the Obama administration subpoenas are complicated, so I must resort to high-level summaries. In short, during Obama’s tenure, someone leaked to the AP the operational details of an anti-terror operation that foiled a plot by al-Qaida to blow up a commercial airliner headed to the U.S. The DOJ asked AP to cooperate with its leak investigation. The AP refused, and the DOJ obtained subpoenas directed to telecommunications companies without giving the AP (or its reporters) advance notice. The DOJ then sent a letter to the AP disclosing the fact that the DOJ had obtained the phone records. Those actions were widely decried in the press as “spying” on journalists. See The Week, “Why did the Obama administration spy on the Associated Press?”

          The differences are manifest. The Obama administration was investigating disclosure of operational details of a terror plot that risked exposure of human intelligence sources on the ground in Yemen. Trump was trying to learn who had embarrassed him by disclosing that his National Security Adviser had lied to the FBI and was subject to blackmail by Russia. Obama asked for the AP’s cooperation and notified the AP after obtaining the records, while the Trump DOJ kept its actions secret through a series of gag orders. Because the DOJ under Obama disclosed its actions real-time, Obama was forced to defend his actions before a hostile press corps—which he did with great conviction. Trump, Barr, Sessions, and Rosenstein did not have to defend their actions before the press or Congress because they concealed their actions for four years.

          The above incident isn’t the only one for which Obama is criticized, and I don’t mean to excuse or defend anything that Obama did regarding the press. But if someone tries to dismiss the current controversy by telling you that “Obama did the same thing as Trump,” they don’t have their facts straight.  

A grim milestone: Covid deaths reach 600,000.

          If Americans knew in January of 2020 that Covid deaths would reach 600,000 in eighteen months, the nation would have reacted to that fact with alarm and urgency. Instead, that grim milestone was passed last week with little notice. See CNBC, “Covid deaths: More than 600,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S.” Indeed, the milestone coincided with the re-opening of New York and California. See NYTimes, “‘A Momentous Day’: New York and California Lift Most Virus Restrictions.” The lifting of restrictions in those states is appropriate because “more than 70 percent of adults in both states had received a first dose of the coronavirus vaccine.”

          It is easy to believe that the pandemic is behind us. It is not. For most of the world, the pandemic rages on. See op-ed by Spencer Bokat-Lindell in NYTimes, “Stop Saying ‘Post-Pandemic’.” (“For much of the world, it’s far from over: The coronavirus has already killed more people in 2021 than it did in all of 2020.”) A raging pandemic in the rest of the world is a breeding ground for coronavirus variants that threaten the 47% of the U.S. population that has not been vaccinated. See “US COVID-19 Vaccine Progress Tracker | Vaccinations by State.”

          Let’s put aside politics and discussions of vaccination rates and remember that every one of those 600,000 victims of the coronavirus had family and friends whose lives will never be the same. Tens of millions of Americans have experienced the loss of someone close to them because of Covid. As we “return to normal,” we can’t normalize the staggering toll of the pandemic in the U.S.—or in the rest of the world. We must remain on guard and must remember the lessons of our faltering response to the pandemic in 2020.

Concluding Thoughts.

By Wednesday evening, the news will be filled with reports of “winners and losers” of the summit between Biden and Putin. Whatever those headlines say, the most important point will be that a decent and honest man who cares for America above all else will engage with the leader of our most dangerous adversary. We can’t ask for anything more, and the rest is detail.

          Talk to you tomorrow!