What’s so grand about a jury?
The big news yesterday is that Special Counsel Mueller is using a grand jury in his investigation of Russian meddling in the US election. Most Americans know about grand juries primarily from notices they receive summoning them to serve on one. But that rarely happens. I’ve been summoned for jury duty many times and served on a petit jury at the municipal level. I don’t know anyone who has actually served on a Federal grand jury, which can sit for months if not years (usually not continuously but a few days a month).
But here is the short version of what is so grand about a Federal grand jury: it enables the prosecutor (in this case Special Counsel Mueller)
- To issue subpoenas (orders to produce evidence or to testify);
- Compel testimony in secret, without a lawyer representing the witness present;
- Indict (accuse) someone of a crime, provided 12 of the 23 members of the grand jury agree.
The proceedings of a grand jury are secret, but word of them leaks out as they send subpoenas to people. Their proceedings can take a long time, so news of one does not mean that an indictment is imminent. Nor does it tell us anything about who might be indicted for what crime.
That will be little comfort to the President of the United States. It is unclear whether he can be indicted by any body other than the House of Representatives (that’s what we call impeachment). There is no precedent for that. But his associates, family, and campaign officials are certainly indictable.
All indications are that Mueller is focused on financial matters, which may mean he is looking at whether Russian cash played a role in the campaign. Moscow is too smart to have put money directly into Trump’s election effort, which would violate US law. But it may well have made money available to the campaign through “cut outs,” Americans who contributed money provided by Russia.
More likely in my view is that the Trump and Kushner real estate empires are flush with hot Russian money that has purchased condos and golf club memberships and provided loans not available from other sources. In everyday parlance, this would amount to money laundering. And yes, American companies are supposed to conduct due diligence to ensure that financing comes from legitimate sources. Russian money could go a long way to explaining why Trump never criticizes Moscow and often takes its side on specific issues.
Trump’s reaction to the grand jury news was classic distraction: he announced he would have big news at his campaign-style rally in West Virginia last night. That turned out to be the Governor announcing he was switching from the Democratic to the Republican party, which he had left only two years ago. In a scripted speech read from a teleprompter, Trump also denounced the story of Russia’s meddling in the US election as a fabrication to excuse the biggest election loss in history. The loyalist audience loved it.
Trump’s remarks continue his efforts to undermine the Special Counsel, efforts that themselves may constitute obstruction of justice, and to deny what American intelligence agencies have long since concluded: Moscow intervened in the US election to undermine democracy and help elect Trump. If the jury gets to the bottom of why the President behaves this way, it will truly be grand.
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Iraq’s post-war challenges
Celeste Ward Gventer and I did this piece for Luke Vargas’ radio program Wake. We were actually recorded separately and spliced together by Luke. I’m not sure I approve of the process, but the result is okay, apart from the more or less obvious glitches in the transcript.
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The myth of Kelly
A lot of my friends have great hopes for General Kelly, the new White House Chief of Staff. He fired a potty-mouth slated to become Communications Director before he even officially started the job, has evicted at least two nutters from the National Security Council (or at least concurred in General Mattis booting them), and is said to be tightly controlling access for people and information to the Oval Office. Presidential tweeting has slowed. So far, so good.
But I doubt it will matter in the end. There is no reason to believe that President Trump relies on information, good or bad, in reaching conclusions or formulating policy. Take today’s announcement of a big cut in legal immigration and a proposal to favor more highly qualified immigrants. Matthew Yglesias quickly tweeted this from Pew:
Of course there are American employers who import lower-skilled labor, notably Donald J. Trump himself among them. This matches, though does not exceed, his hypocrisy in manufacturing most of his poor taste clothing line abroad, especially in China.
As someone with no respect for the truth, why would Trump look to information and information quality as a source of wisdom? That would make no sense. He creates his own information: alternative facts Kellyanne Conway calls them.
Moreover, Kelly will have a hard time regulating the flow of information to someone who doesn’t sleep much, is addicted to Twitter and cable TV, and relies on his family members as his chief advisers. It simply won’t be possible to prevent really lousy information from reaching the President.
The policy formulation process in the White House right now seems to be basically this: Trump decides what will satisfy his various constituencies and gives it to them. White supremacists get the Justice Department challenging affirmative action for disadvantaged minorities, Rust Belt males get a big Foxconn plant requiring billions in subsidies, people with no university education get “repeal and replace” (even those who benefit from Obamacare like that), and the Russians get consistent and unwavering indulgence for their hacking of the American election, their attacks on the Syrian opposition, and their invasion of Crimea.
You may ask: how did Russia become one of Trump’s constituencies? My guess is that Trump’s personal business empire depends heavily on hot money investments and condo purchases by Putin cronies. If so, he has good reason not to provoke Putin. We’ll leave that for Special Counsel Mueller to elucidate.
Feeding his constituencies isn’t getting the President anywhere with the broader American public. Disapproval is soaring, while approval is weakening, according to Quinnipiac:
Sisyphus, Wikipedia tells me, “was punished for his self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it come back to hit him, repeating this action for eternity.” The self-aggrandizing craftiness and deceitfulness are Trump’s, not Kelly’s. But it is the chief of staff who is likely to be punished for now.
PS: Today’s leak of transcripts of the President’s conversations with Mexican President Pena Neto and Australian Prime Minister Turnbull prove the myth of Kelly faster than I anticipated. The continued leaking suggests he is not yet in full control, and the contents of the transcripts suggest a president who is obsessed with how he looks and indifferent to the interests of his interlocutors. Foreign leaders will be reluctant to believe either that the US can protect the confidentiality of their conversations and to hope such a conversation will lead to anything more than browbeating. That rock has already rolled back down the hill on to Kelly.
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Small beans matter
For those who are thinking, what difference does all this make? So the President wrote a fib for his son about a meeting with Russian agents, the Republicans failed to pass Trumpcare by just one vote, the potty-mouthed Communications Director got fired before he was hired? This is all small beans compared to today’s challenges: North Korea with nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach the US, Hizbollah running rampant in Iraq and Syria, Venezuela coming apart at the seams.
Yes, it is small beans, but that makes it more harmful rather than less. The President is weak domestically and disdained internationally:
He is unable to manage even small issues without embarrassing himself. International support is evaporating. Japan and South Korea have no choice but to align with the US against Kim Jong-un, but the rest of Asia is still reeling from Trump’s sinking the Trans Pacific Partnership, most of Europe and Latin America are lost to American leadership, and the Middle East is consuming itself.
Adversaries are encouraged. Only friendly dictators are comforted, knowing that Trump will not criticize the homicidal crackdown on drug traffickers in the Philippines or the restoration of military dictatorship in Egypt, never mind the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia or the elected autocracy in Turkey.
America’s two biggest challenges right now are China and Russia. The Chinese are bemused by Trump’s warmth one day followed by bluster and threats the next. He has given the Chinese no compelling reason to be helpful on anything: the South China Sea, North Korea, or trade. Beijing hasn’t done anything dramatic to show off its advantages, but it doesn’t really need to. Xi Jinping gets better ratings than Trump, even if he lags Angela Merkel:
Russia is less shy. It is expelling most of the US embassy, with nary a tweet yet from Trump in protest, and assembling a massive military exercise on the border with NATO. President Putin is disappointed in the return on his investment in Trump, but for the moment at least he seems prepared to take it out on the US government rather than Trump’s business empire, which depends on Russian purchasers and investors. That is odds-on the reason for Trump refusing to make his tax returns public, but it will be clear enough the day Russia decides to yank Trump’s personal chain.
I know lots of people think America looked weak under President Obama, who purposefully set out to reduce American commitments around the world. In withdrawing from the Middle East, he left a vacuum that others exploited. But Trump is continuing that policy, with a lot less finesse. Ending aid to the Syrian opposition, declaring that the US has no interest in Libya, allowing President Erdogan to reverse Turkey’s democratic evolution, and failing to oppose Kurdistan’s referendum on independence are decisions that will have serious consequences for a decade or more. His policy proposals are disliked worldwide:
Can the situation be saved by a retired general as White House Chief of Staff? No more than it has been saved by a general as Defense Secretary and another as National Security Adviser. The fish rots from the head, as the late lamented Communications Director averred. General Kelly may impose some order on the policy process, but the President will still say and tweet what he wants, the family will confer with him at will, and the white supremacists, alt right freaks, and Fox news friends he likes so much (except when they won’t fire the Special Prosecutor) will still have his rapt attention. None of that will change what the world thinks of the man and the country he now leads so badly:
Source for the lovely graphs: Trump Unpopular Worldwide, American Image Suffers | Pew Research Center
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Peace picks July 31 – August 4
- NATO at a Crossroads: Next steps for the trans-Atlantic alliance | Monday, July 31 | 10:00 – 11:30 am | Brookings Institution | Register Here | Throughout his campaign, President Donald Trump called into question the usefulness of today’s NATO and spoke of building a better relationship with Moscow. Would the president be prepared to go further and suggest ending NATO expansion while seeking a new security architecture that might accommodate and reduce the risk of conflict with Russia? What would be the benefits and costs of such an approach? On July 31, Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, author of “Beyond NATO: A New Security Architecture for Eastern Europe,” will be joined by Brookings Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, author of “The Eagle and the Trident: U.S.-Ukraine Relations in Turbulent Times.” Torrey Taussig, pre-doctoral research fellow at Brookings, will moderate the discussion.
- Stabilizing Iraq: What is the Future for Minorities? | Tuesday, August 1 | 1:30 – 3:00 pm | United States Institute of Peace | Register Here | Following ISIS’ rule, the inclusion of minority groups will be crucial to stabilizing Iraq. Nowhere in Iraq is this initiative more essential or complex than around Mosul, with its diverse community of Christians, Yazidis, Turkoman, Shabak, and others. On August 1, the United States Institute of Peace and the Kurdistan Regional Government present a discussion of how to help Iraq’s minority groups rebuild their communities and contribute to a more secure Iraq featuring remarks by Ambassador William Taylor (ret.) of USIP, Ambassador Fareed Yasseen of the Republic of Iraq, and Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the United States.
- Justice for the Yezidis: ISIS and Crimes of Genocide | Thursday, August 3 | 11:45 am – 1:30 pm | Hudson Institute | Register Here | On August 3, 2014, the Islamic State attacked the Yezidis of Sinjar in Iraq’s Nineveh province. Thousands of Yezidis were massacred and many others abducted, while more than half a million fled for their lives. Three years later, the conditions that led to ISIS’ rise and genocide against the Yezidis, Christians, and other ethnic and religious minorities have not been addressed. The successful political reconstruction of Iraq and Kurdistan depends on the ability to ensure justice and fair treatment for the region’s most vulnerable populations. On August 3, Pari Ibrahim of the Free Yezidi Foundation, Naomi Kikoler of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Nathaniel Hurd of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe will join Hudson Institute’s Eric B. Brown to assess how adherents of the Islamic State movement can be brought to justice for their crimes of genocide, how the safety of vulnerable minority communities can be ensured as Iraq rebuilds, and what role the United States should play in preventing genocide in the future.
- Gaza Approaching a Boiling Point? | Thursday, August 3 | 12:00 – 1:30 pm | Middle East Institute | Register Here | Political and humanitarian conditions in Gaza are in a critical state. The Fatah-Hamas rivalry and the Gulf countries’ rift with Qatar have stymied funding to the territory and exacerbated an already desperate energy crisis. In the midst of pressing humanitarian concerns, what options do Palestinians and Israelis have to help prevent renewed violence? How can the United States and the international community bring the question of Gaza back into regional deliberations and the peace process? The Middle East Institute is pleased to host a discussion with Tareq Baconi of al Shabaka, Laura Friedman of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Christopher McGrath of the UNRWA, and Natan Sachs of the Brookings Institution on ways to mitigate political and humanitarian problems in Gaza.
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Trump is a loser
Let us count the ways:
- The effort to “repeal and replace” the health care that his predecessor provided to tens of millions of Americans has failed in the Senate, ending the legislative fight.
- The Congress has passed, with veto-proof majorities, legislation that ties his hands on sanctions against Russia, which has responded by levying the retaliation it had postponed in anticipation of getting a better deal from Trump. The idea of a new reset with Russia is mostly dead.
- The North Koreans have launched another Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, thus proving empty the President’s promise it wouldn’t happen.
- The newly named White House Communications Director has demonstrated both incompetence and offensiveness in a taped on-the-record interview with a leading American journalist and in a claim that his publicly available financial records had been leaked.
- The Attorney General Trump has been trying to chase from office has refused to resign, and the Republican chair of the committee that would have to approve a successor has made it clear he will not do so. It is sounding as if the Senate may not formally adjourn for recess, which would eliminate his only option for getting a new Attorney General without Senate approval.
This is a presidency in free-fall. It gets no respect abroad except from autocrats and would-be dictators. Its support at home has declined below 40% in the population at large and likely stands no higher than that in Congress, despite Republican majorities in both houses.
How will Trump react?
The way bullies do. He will try to bluster and distract, with an obnoxious tweet here and an appearance with police officers there. He will try to shore up his base with declarations of religious devotion and homophobia. He will shove back, trying to push out his establishment chief of staff. He will try to crash Obamacare by badmouthing and denying it the funding it requires to be sustainable.
What he will not do is reflect on what has gone wrong, what the country needs, and how he can recover by providing it. There isn’t any sign at all that Trump is capable of concern about anything but himself and his family. While he has been losing battle after battle, he has been ignoring or abandoning others: he has cut aid for the Syrian opposition, failed to get involved in resolving a violent standoff between Israel and Palestinians in Jerusalem, and has ignored the damaging spat between Qatar and other Arab states that he encourage the Saudis to initiate.
The United States is over-extended and poorly led. The world is going to need to take care of itself. That’s not the worst idea. But it is a perilous one. Trump has been extraordinarily lucky not to have faced a serious international crisis in his first six months in office. The next six months aren’t likely to be so benign.
PS: I forgot to mention one more loss: Trump attempted by Tweet to instruct the US military to get rid of transsexuals. The Joint Chiefs refused to take anything but a formal, written instruction. It is clear they don’t want to follow that either, so the loss may not be only temporary.
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