Some Choices.

Posted on September 14, 2023 by jsh54

Walter Russell Mead, who comments on foreign affairs for the Wall Street Journal, discerns several long-term shifts underway in international affairs.[1]

First, Europe continues to decline as a force in world politics. This can be seen as the latest stage in a long-running process. The “European Civil War” of 1914-1945 wrecked the basis of European global power. The Eastern and Western parts of the Continent then found themselves bound to alliances with the Soviet Union and the United States. However, in Western Europe, dramatic post-war economic modernization and the construction of the European Union (EU) allowed a revived role.[2]

Now it seems that the wheels have come off in a serious way. It’s possible to point to all sorts of current problems: the collapse of French influence in Africa; the EU’s confrontation with a Turkish Republic that uses refugees as a weapon; and the dangers to Germany posed by China’s automobile industry, and to all Europe by its trade practices. More fundamental, says Mead, are the rapid aging and eventual shrinking of Europe’s population; all the policies and incrustations that have produced a low growth economy; the follow-on effect of robbing national security to pay for social security; and the surrender to wishful thinking in diplomacy.

Second, there is the “emergence of India as one of the world’s leading powers and as an increasingly close partner of the U.S.” This should not be misunderstood as a real reflection of Indian economic or military power. What matters much more is that Europe’s long-term decline has created a tension between the rising nations of Asia and the “South,” on the one hand, and international institutions in which European countries are over-represented, on the other hand. The advance of India represents an entering wedge for other countries. Their ambition is a “reform” that shoulders aside the doddering countries of Europe.

Third, China, Russia, and some follower-countries are intensifying their challenge to the “American-led”[3] post-1945 world order. Part of their effort—as it was in the Cold War—is an attack on the existing, Western-dominated, international institutions. This is intended to play to the ambitions and frustrations of the Indo-Pacific and Global South.

This convergence of factors creates a dilemma for American policy makers. It is likely to take some time to resolve because it requires making painful choices. Mead, a not-unfriendly critic since the start of the Biden Administration, chooses to emphasize the “woke” agenda of current American diplomacy. The Administration assigns great importance to the Democratic causes of climate-change, human-rights, and democratic government. The trouble is that most of the countries that need to be courted don’t assign the same importance to these issues as does the Administration. If anything, they resent being harped-at by American progressives. Which will you have?

There is also the far more important issue of American national reconstruction. No one seems to speak for higher taxes, lower spending, trying to shift values and culture, and pursuing national reconciliation. Yet those issues matter too, and perhaps most of all.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “The G-20 Reveals a Shifting World Order,” WSJ, 12 September 2023.

[2] All the same, the post-war fantasies of Charles de Gaulle seem absurd. Even French historians and policy-makers must be circumlocuting their way around calling him “not very realistic,” to use Stalin’s judgement.

[3] “American-led” always makes me think of “first among equals,” a label claimed by Octavian.

The Towering Inferno of Our Time.

Posted on September 8, 2023 by jsh54

“The Towering Inferno” (dir. John Guillerman, 1974) was an epic disaster movie about a fire in a Los Angeles skyscraper. It had an all-star cast and was nominated for eight Academy Awards. More importantly, it was the highest grossing movie of the year and earned back fifteen times what it had cost to make.[1]

Fifty years on, it’s ripe for a remake that adapts the story to the issues of our own time.

On the one hand, New York City has entered a doom spiral. The Covid pandemic popularized working from home. Now it’s hard to get people back in the office. This imperils the business models of both property developers and big cities like San Francisco and New York. Big cities depend on big and dense populations with a large share of high-income earners. Dense crowding leads to small living units; small living units and busy professional lives push people out to restaurants, theaters, galleries, bars, concerts, and museums. These service industries employ masses of people who can barely afford to live in the molten core of American urbanism. Then there are the vast numbers employed in the construction industry and all its myriad up-stream suppliers. Decades of continual growth have led banks to loan immense sums of money to developers. If people don’t come back to the office, then this skyscraper of cards will crash.

On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people want to come to America to escape their “shithole countries,” just as did the ancestors of all other Americans. In the years since the the financial crisis of 2007-2009, a flood of humanity has been entering the United States across the southern border. After relentlessly criticizing Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, Democrats have seen their own “Remain in Texas” policy fail. Texas and, to a lesser extent Arizona, have been bussing illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to major “sanctuary cities” like San Francisco, Washington, DC, and New York. Now the counties surrounding New York City have been trying out a “Remain in Manhattan” policy. New York mayor Eric Adams is loudly complaining that the city’s shelters and services are swamped; he has—so far unavailingly—demanded assistance from the federal government. Agonizing policy choices for progressives abound. Where to house these distressed people? How to pay for housing and all the other services they need without gutting every other part of the city budget? How to non-coercively assimilate them into American life? What if they just keep coming? How will New Yorkers respond?

The story is set in the recent future. It weaves together these two strands of problems in the story of “The Towering Inferno.” The unstoppable influx of impoverished immigrants continually increased the demand for more cheap housing. Developers have fallen so far behind in their payments on loans, that they have begun to default. The banks are left owning increasing valueless collateral and lose all interest in maintaining the buildings.

Developer Peter Rockman appears on the scene as a God-send. Himself an immigrant from Ukraine, he proposed creating huge numbers of affordable housing units in the vacant floors of under-utilized office buildings. Construction companies and banks began to see him as a lifeline. His vision tempts the owners of one tower building into supporting his experiment. Rockman has a darker side. His real intention is to flood the towers with immigrants far greater in number than his permits allow, then to rack-rent the tenants. He expects the impoverished tenants in his Tower of Babel to cause the remaining businesses to flee, permitting him to buy the building at a fire-sale price. He backed up his appeal with corruption and black-mail to get the necessary permits to repurpose and reconstruct the buildings. Tenants who complain soon encounter Mike Malik, Rockman’s terrifying Director of Tenant Welfare.

Over the course of a few years, the planned apartments are sub-divided and open spaces are filled with hovels built of packing crate and palettes; rats scurry along the corridors piled with garbage; without air-conditioning in summer, the tenants have smashed holes in the windows; without heat in winter, the holes are plugged with rags or covered with boards; much of the wiring and electrical fixtures are stripped out; fires for light, heat, and cooking have scorched the floors, the plumbing has failed; criminals seize some of the apartments as bases for their businesses and to prey on the other tenants.

The tenants prove not to be the sheep Rockman expects. They come from Central America, West Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The story focuses on three of them: a Guatemalan woman fleeing with her children from a drunken and abusive husband who belongs to the MS-13 gang; a Senegalese veteran of ISIS who has lost his faith in “jihad”; and a young couple from India who have run away from looming arranged marriages. All have hell-hounds on their heels: the MS-13 gunman, two ISIS scalp-hunters, and the elder brothers of the runaway couple.

Rockman and the Mayor combine forces in an effort to restore their reputations. An upper floor is transformed into an event-space, with several express elevators restored so that guests can bypass 80 floors of squalid nightmares. To inaugurate the new venue, the Mayor will attend a gala celebration honoring the casts of some of the television shows set and filmed in New York. Members of the casts of “Law and Order,” “Blue Bloods,” “Seinfeld,” and “Sex and the City” will attend. Among the other dignitaries is the British Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Steven Martin-Short.

Things go terribly wrong. On the one hand, the Hell-hounds arrive in deadly pursuit of the migrants/fugitives. Mayhem erupts in different parts of the vertical homeless encampment. On the other hand, and as a result, fire sweeps through the middle floors on the night of the gala. The staircases become chimneys.

Who will live and who will die? How will the city choose to help those in danger? The second half of the movie focuses on the struggle for survival of the residents and top-floor guests, and on the heroic efforts of the FDNY.

The firemen confront a nighttime re-run of the 9/11 Twin Towers disaster. Blue-eyed men running up the steps toward death. Swarms of helicopters land on the roof to evacuate the well-heeled, dodging around the news helicopters filming those waiting below in a macabre version of the Oscars’ red-carpet show. “Look, there’s Tom Selleck!”

In the fight for survival, the immigrants exhibit the determination and ingenuity that led them to break with their own pasts and gain entry to the United States. In contrast, the Hell-hounds fall from their inability to abandon the “old ways,” to think anew and act anew.

In a brief closing scene, New York City donates the burned-out hulk of the building to the Mohegan Tribe as a subsidiary of their reservation in Connecticut.

[1] The Towering Inferno – Wikipedia

The Present Danger.

Posted on August 24, 2023 by jsh54

Competition between states provides the fundamental dynamic in international relations. Economic wealth and –especially–industrial power translate into military, political, and cultural power. In alliance with other countries, the United States fought a “Fifty Years’ War” (1940-1990) against aggressive tyrannies. In the end, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all were laid in the dust. After 1945, Germany and Japan were reconciled with their foes and became vital pillars of the “West.” Reconciliation failed with post-Soviet Russia.[1]

Some countries reacted against the most recent Western victory, and especially against the United States.[2] China, Russia, and Iran hold pride of place among the “revisionist” states hoping to un-do American leadership (or “hegemony” or “empire”).[3] China’s headlong drive toward economic power began to pay-off in a dramatic military build-up. Russia both balked at the American propensity for regime-change and sought to restore much of the territory lost in the break-up of the Soviet Union. Iran pursued both nuclear weapons and the use of Shi’ite and related groups throughout the Middle East. Contemporary conservatives tend to blame the Barack Obama administration (2008—2016) for a loss of focus on great-power politics during a critical moment.[4] However, almost twenty years of botched relations with the “revisionist” states on the part of both the United States and the European Union preceded the arrival in power of this bunch of highly-intelligent, well-educated fools. Donald Trump then bolted from the multilateral executive agreements crafted in Obama’s second term, leaving both the deal with Iran and the Paris Climate Accord; and alienated America’s European allies.

The Biden administration seems to have believed that things would snap back into place once the adults regained control in 2021. Instead, the “revisionist” states doubled-down on their pursuit of national advantage while tightening the bonds between them. Their bet seems to be that there is something fundamentally wrong with America these days. That’s a big gamble.

It took until 2023, but the Biden administration now seems to realize the nature of the situation. Gone is the open hostility to Saudi Arabia. India, for all the flaws of its leader Narendra Modi, is being courted. Engagement with Ukraine deepens, to the point where Americans are increasingly telling Kyiv exactly how to fight the war. The visit of the Taiwanese leader to the United States, like President Biden’s summit meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea are important steps in opposing Chinese expansionism.[5]

Could this new conflict spiral out of control into catastrophe? After 9/11, the danger from “radical Islam” was over-played. Is this crisis the same or different? A clear discussion leading to a bi-partisan consensus would support American efforts.

[1] Why the former Soviet Union did not follow the same path remains an important question for historians. People who invoke the Marshall Plan analogy don’t know anything about what made the Marshall Plan work.

[2] Worth a read: James Headley’s essay “Post-Communist Russia and the West: From Crisis to Crisis?” in Steven Fish et al, eds., A Quarter Century of Post-Communism Assessed (2016).

[3] The future stance of the European Union remains open to question.

[4] Walter Russell Mead, “Geopolitical Climate Denialism,” WSJ, 10 August 2023.

[5] Walter Russell Mead, “Power Matters More Than Diplomacy,” WSJ, 22 August 2023.

Monolithic Only in Their Opposition to the Democrats.

Posted on August 22, 2023 by jsh54

Nate Cohn analyzes the very non-monolithic Republican Party a year out from 2024.[1]

“Newcomers” amount to one-twelfth (8 percent) of Republicans; are—obviously newcomers to the party and probably former Democrats; are diverse, with a large component of Hispanics (18 percent); see themselves as “moderates” or “liberals,” supporting abortion and transgender rights; are really exercised about the direction of both the economy and the country; and just hate the current “woke,” government-aggrandizing Democratic Party.

“Blue Collar Populists” amount to one-eighth (12 percent) of Republicans; are not-as-newcomers and refugees from the Democratic Party; mostly (75 percent) lack a college education;[2] are heavily concentrated in the Northeast; have assimilated legal abortion and marriage equality into their sense of the “traditional values” that are now under attack; strongly oppose immigration “reform”; and strongly support Trump.

“Right Wing” Republicans amount to just over a quarter (26 percent) of Republicans, but has a level of “engagement” that magnifies its numbers within the party; predominantly self-identify as “very conservative”; are older and working class; and fervently support Trump.[3]

“Traditional Conservatives” figure as just over a quarter (26 percent) of Republicans; support tax cuts, oppose abortion, support immigration reform, and support aid to gallant little Finland—um, Ukraine. Just a hair over 50 percent of this group’s primary voters support Trump, even though only 39 percent of this group’s general election voters have a strongly positive view of Trump-the-man.

“Libertarian Conservatives” amount to one-seventh (14 percent) of Republicans; value individual liberty over any other good; dislike big government; and are wary of both major parties. They’re not pro-Trump, but not pro-any other major politician either.

The “Moderate Establishment” amounts to one-seventh (14 percent) of Republicans; is socially moderate; and thinks Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush had the right ideas on immigration, trade, and foreign policy.[4] While Cohn characterizing this faction as often “Never Trump,” the polling data says even this group would vote for Trump over Biden by 46 percent to 27 percent.[5] A quarter of 14 percent is 3 percent, of Republican voters willing to vote for Biden.

Libertarian Conservatives and Moderate Establishment Republicans (28 percent) are soft to hostile on Trump. They have nothing else in common and most will go along with Trump.

Blue-Collar Populists and Right Wing Republicans (38 percent) strongly support Trump, even though they disagree on other issues.

Newcomers and Traditional Conservatives (34 percent) will reliably vote against the Democratic candidate. If winning means voting for Trump, they’ll do it.

Newcomers and Blue-Collar Populists (20 percent) are refugees from the Democratic Party’s evolution over the last 50 years. Probably no Republicans have become Democrats.

Who will Trump pick as his Vice Presidential candidate? Ted Cruz or Tim Scott?

[1] Nate Cohn, “Where Trump Stands With These Six Kinds of Republican Voters,” NYT, 22 August 2023.

[2] Compared to 72 percent of Blacks. Census Bureau Releases New Educational Attainment Data

[3] They get their news from Fox and they think all of the recent indictments are hog-wash.

[4] That is, “Freedom, freedom, and freedom—and let’s keep it that way.”

[5] Why? Because they hate the Democratic vision even more than they hate Trump. Thanks Joe.

The Viper Pit.

Posted on August 16, 2023 by jsh54

The post-Cold War “Era of American Hegemony” proved remarkably brief. The world has entered a new era of competition. As in previous such eras, wealth and power form both the means and the ends of these struggles. It is possible to understand the current Middle East policy of the Biden Administration in this light.[1]

First, the world’s economy still runs on oil and will for a long time to come. The pricing policies of the Gulf States affect the performance of the global economy, notably that of the United States. Even as the Biden administration seeks to de-carbonize the United States, China remains a massive consumer of Middle Eastern oil. Influence (if not control) over Middle East oil gives the US leverage on China.

Second, the Middle Eastern oil states buy a lot of military hardware from the United States. Buying hi-tech weapons systems inevitably ties the purchaser to the manufacturing and support sectors of the producing country. Buy the first iteration of a weapons system and you go on buying parts and up-dates, and paying for the training on how to use the systems. All this helps the American balance of payments while spreading the enormous development costs.

Third, as the United States shifts its primary policy toward the struggle with China, it needs partners to take up the slack elsewhere. Europe and the Middle East figure as the two chief “elsewheres.” In the Middle East, the chief problem that has to be addressed is the Islamic Republic of Iran.[2] A crisis point approaches in the long-running civil war in the Muslim world between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran. The agreement reached between Iran and its opponents during the last stage of the Obama administration had opponents in both the United States and Iran. President Donald Trump abandoned that agreement and returned to open opposition. The Biden administration seems to have begun by hoping that—Orange Man having left the scene—the previous agreement could be quickly restored. Alas, the Iranian opponents of the agreement seem to have gained the upper hand.

Looking for help in the Middle East, the most promising, but also most problematic, states are Israel and Saudi Arabia. They are promising because of their long-standing ties with the United States, Israel’s military power (including nuclear weapons) combined with a willingness to use it, and Saudi Arabia’s great wealth and influence over lesser Arab states. The Trump administration pushed Israeli-Saudi cooperation against Iran as the basis for Middle East stability as America shifted its attention to China. As with other Trump policies, the Biden administration seems to be recognizing the merits.

They are problematic because their leaders, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Saudi Crown Prince, seem to think that America has gone soft and also seem to personally despise President Biden. The “America’s gone soft” view is the older, bigger, and more consequential problem. The United States spends a lot on its military and it has some impressive weapons systems. It is much less clear that the United States will fight on foreign soil in the near future. There also exist some doubts about how well-led are American forces. Doubting America itself, it must seem like a much safer bet than in the past to treat its president with disdain.

America needs to solve its own problems to be able to step down on the vipers.

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Biden’s New Approach to the Middle East,” WSJ, 15 August 2023.

[2] For previous installments in this long-running “franchise,” see: Iran | Search Results | waroftheworldblog

Grand Jury.

Posted on August 13, 2023 by jsh54

Grand juries are much in the news these days. What are the essential characteristics of a grand jury?[1] The grand jury developed as an element of the English Common Law. As such, it was exported to all the British colonies. The newly-independent United States preserved the institution in the Fifth Amendment: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury …”

Despite the name, they are not part of the court system and they are not overseen by any court. They are an instrument used by the prosecution.

A federal grand jury is made up of 16 to 23 members. Federal law calls for grand jurors to be chosen from the voter rolls to represent a “fair cross section of the community.” Grand jurors are not screened for bias and the person under investigation cannot challenge potential jurors. In the election of November 2020, 92.15 percent of the District of Columbia voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden; in New York county (Manhattan), Biden never fell below 69 percent of the vote and most precincts ran for Biden in the 80 percent-plus range; in Fulton County Georgia, Biden won 72 percent of the vote; and in the three southeastern counties of Florida, Biden won 60-80 percent of the vote.

To issue an indictment, 12 of the 16-23 jurors must agree that the evidence meets the same “probable cause” standard that applies to police officers: “whether at [the moment of arrest] the facts and circumstances within [an officer’s] knowledge and of which they had reasonably trustworthy information [are] sufficient to warrant a prudent [person] in believing that [a suspect] had committed or was committing an offense.” Actual criminal trials require a unanimous verdict and apply the tougher “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.

Grand jury proceedings are not trials, so they are not adversarial in the way that court trials are adversarial. There is no judge; the prosecutor decides which witnesses to call and what evidence to present; evidence that was obtained illegally and which would not be permitted in a trial, can be presented; the prosecutor is not obligated to reveal exculpatory evidence to the jurors; people appearing before a grand jury do not have a right to have a lawyer present or to cross-examine witnesses.

It should surprise no one that grand juries almost always follow the recommendation of the prosecutor. They indict who they are told to indict for the crimes that they are told to charge. This is the origin of the quote attributed (incorrectly) to New York court of Appeals Judge Sol Wachtler that a district attorney could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”[2]

While the grand jury was a feature of English Common Law spread all around the globe by the British Empire, only two countries still employ the institution: the United States and Liberia.

Discussion is good. Informed discussion is better.

[1] See: Grand juries in the United States – Wikipedia

[2] See: Sol Wachtler – Wikipedia Ah, New York, New York.

Trump Indictment Syndrome.

Posted on August 9, 2023 by jsh54

Donald Trump invokes the “Russia collusion hoax” whenever he is charged with something. It has the desired effect. Many Republicans believe that the criminal justice system—both that of the federal government and those in blue states—is not trustworthy.[1]

An argument pushed both by some members of Robert Mueller’s investigative team and in the media that celebrated their work centered on the issue of obstruction of justice. Donald Trump had not been a compliant investigative target. He had fought against revealing aspects of his business and had used the bully pulpit in an effort to bully the Justice Department lawyers trying to nail his hide to the barn door. In many eyes, that resistance proved that he had something to conceal. Alternatively, that difficult behavior might be explained by his certain knowledge that he had not “colluded” with the Russians. Apparently, the view of the Department of Justice is that it is unfair for an innocent person to fight back. Subsequently, the multiple reports of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice and the report of Special Counsel John Durham spread the dirty laundry of the Justice Department around in public.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Trump in the Stormy Daniels “hush money” case has an even worse pedigree. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, Jr., had his people investigating Trump for much of Trump’s term[2] without coming up with anything that would support charges. Alvin Bragg had trumpeted his anti-Trump credentials while running for office. Once elected, he found so little of substance, that he wanted to shut down the investigation. His prosecutors took their resistance to the public. Bragg changed course, obtaining an indictment that converted a misdemeanor into a felony by combining it with a violation of federal law that the Department of Justice hadn’t seen as worth pursuing.[3] The main purpose seemed to be to get Trump in front of a “deep blue Manhattan jury,” as the New York Times said. The looming indictment of Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, will arouse the same sort of suspicions, no matter how much better founded the charges. Fulton County went 72 percent for Biden in November 2020.[4] The plea deal with Hunter Biden only adds fuel to the fire of Republican distrust.

This distrust of a seemingly politicized judicial system reinforces, if it doesn’t entirely cause, a rally of many Republican voters to Donald Trump.[5] Arguably, Democrats would rally round one of their standard-bearers if s/he was subjected to the same seemingly unfair treatment. Wait! They already have! It seems more than likely that Hilary Clinton would have fired James Comey in thirty seconds flat if she had been elected President in 2016. She would have been roundly applauded by loyal Democrats.

Much attention has focused on the huge sums being drained from Trump’s campaign war-chest by his legal bills. He gets a vast amount of free coverage from being prosecuted In/By “deep blue” DC, Manhattan, and Fulton County. So, it’s money well spent.

[1] Rich Lowry, “Each Indictment Solidifies Trump’s Base,” NYT, 8 August 2023.

[2] I really don’t want to say “first term.” Please, God, no.

[3] See: Prosecution of Donald Trump i

New York – Wikipedia

[4] See: Election Night Reporting (clarityelections.com)

[5] Trump is crushing his Republican rivals in early opinion polls, but as much as a third of Republican voters want someone else to be the Republican candidate in 2024.

Goldsmith on the Trump Prosecution.

Posted on August 8, 2023 by jsh54

The Justice Department and the FBI have suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds in the past decade. These have undermined trust in the institutions among voters, a distrust which Donald Trump is only too happy to exploit.[1] In the view of one Never-Trump Republican, the prosecution of Trump may make it worse.

The 2016 Clinton Campaign inspired the creation of the Steele Dossier, a fake compilation alleging close collaboration between Donald Trump and the Russians. The Obama-Biden administration’s Justice Department officials knew it was fake from early on, but a) permitted the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation and b) continued the Mueller Investigation from May 2017 to March 2019. FBI officials high and lower who were supervising the investigations displayed a hostility toward Donald Trump. They broke a number of rules–always to Trump’s disadvantage–in the course of the investigations. It isn’t Trump supporters who say this. It’s the Inspector General of the Department of Justice.

President Biden’s Justice Department reportedly dragged its feet on beginning an investigation of Donald Trump’s effort to hold onto power. Then, with Republican primary season looming and Trump running even with Biden in opinion polls, the Justice Department moved with lightning speed to indict Trump. Furthermore, the federal indictments relating to Trump trying to stay in power involve “novel applications of three criminal laws and raises tricky issues of Mr. Trump’s intent, his freedom of speech and the contours of presidential power.” That is, it’s far from being a slam-dunk and it is easy to interpret as specious.

Then, “honesty is the best policy” has never held an unchallenged sway in American politics. (Doesn’t matter what my Mom thought should be the case.) Donald Trump is being charged as an extreme example of behavior that is not uncommon.[2]

In contrast, the Biden Justice Department had been gored in recent weeks, by IRS whistleblowers who have testified under oath, that the Justice Department dragged out its investigation of President Biden’s wayward son until the statute of limitations had expired on the most serious charges, and had obstructed searches and interrogations. Only the glare of media criticism from the Republicans caused the seams in the “plea bargain”—in which the government did all the giving and Hunter Biden all the getting—to come un-stitched.

Does any sane person want a large share of the electorate saying that “The law for the President’s enemy works one way; the law for the President’s son works another way”?

If American politics was not polarized and poisoned, the institutional problems could be absorbed and dealt with. In current conditions, however, the prosecution of Donald Trump “may well have terrible consequences beyond the department for our politics and the rule of law.” Tit-for-tat investigations leading to ever more dubious special prosecutors pursuing ever more dubious prosecutions could bend the legal system to the worst elements in politics. (One of the things that brought Zelensky to office as president of Ukraine was the public revulsion against the subordination of the judicial system to competing political factions.)

Jack Smith may see the prosecution of Trump as “protecting democratic institutions and vindicating the rule of law”; but “American democracy and the rule of law [may be], on balance, degraded as a result” of that prosecution.

[1] Jack Goldsmith, “The Prosecution of Donald Trump Could Have Terrible Consequences,” NYT (on-line), 8 August 2023. On Goldsmith, see: Jack Goldsmith – Wikipedia

[2] There is much to criticize in the actions of Adam Schiff as he investigated, then prosecuted, and then investigated again Donald Trump, all in the shadow of the end of Diane Feinstein’s time as Senator from California.

A Wink and a Nod.

Posted on August 2, 2023 by jsh54

In early 2021, the FBI used Riva Networks, an independent contractor, to track the location of the cell phones belonging to suspected drug smugglers and fugitives in Mexico. The FBI has said that it believed that Riva could exploit security gaps in the Mexican cell phone system using its own “geolocation tool.”

However, it appears that Riva Networks may have been using a surveillance system called “Landmark.” An Israeli technology firm, NSO, had developed “Landmark.” An earlier surveillance tool developed by NSO, called “Pegasus,” had become wildly popular with authoritarian (and non-authoritarian) governments. Eventually, this became known and was widely criticized by right-thinking people. Reportedly, the FBI told Riva Networks at some point during 2021 that it could not use any NSO tools.

According to the FBI, Riva Networks did not tell the FBI at the time of the original assignment that it was using “Landmark.” In November 2021, Riva Networks renewed its contract with NSO and did not tell the FBI about “Landmark.” They just reported the information desired by the FBI without explaining how they got it.

In November 2021, as part of the run-up to President Biden’s “Summit for Democracy,”[1] the United States “blacklisted” NSO. This prohibited US companies from doing business with NSO. Still, from November 2021 to April 2023, “Landmark” allowed the FBI to track the cell phones of people in Mexico “without [the FBI’s] knowledge or consent.” It appears that some other Federal agency may also have been using “Landmark” because cell phones were tracked “throughout” 2021, not just from November of that year.[2]

In March 2023, the White House issued a further executive order banning the use spyware that have been used in a repressive fashion by foreign governments.

Awkwardly, in April 2023, the New York Times reported that Riva Networks had been using “Landmark.” FBI Director Christopher Wray ordered his people to find out what government agency had been using “Landmark” in spite of the ban on its use.

By late April 2023, the FBI was “shocked, shocked to discover that” the guilt fell on Riva Networks, its own contractor. Riva Networks, it appears, had “misled the bureau.” Director Wray terminated the contract with Riva Networks.

In late July 2023, the FBI began to inform the elite press of what had happened.[3] As part of its coverage of this story, the New York Times reported that many Israelis who once worked for NSO have founded their own spyware companies to pick up the slack in the Supply-Demand equation. The proliferation makes it difficult to keep track of all the suppliers. Moreover, according to one report, they often employ “complicated and opaque corporate practices that may be designed to evade public scrutiny and accountability.”

US foreign policy (or Presidential politics) seems to have come into conflict with US drug war policy. How to reconcile the two? “Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie.”

[1] Summit for Democracy – Wikipedia

[2] NSO also contracts with the Defense Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency. So, did the FBI get sick and tired of always being a step behind the DEA? For example, see: Alan Feuer, Behind the New Indictments of El Chapo’s Sons, Rivalry Seethed Between Agencies – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[3] Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, and Adam Goldman, “F.B.I. Financed Use of Spy Tool U.S. Outlawed,” NYT, 31 July 2023.

Dead Ends.

Posted on July 28, 2023 by jsh54

Two recent government investigations have hit dead-ends. First, who leaked the draft opinion of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade? Apparently, it wasn’t any of the law clerks or administrative support staff. The investigation stopped there. Second, somebody left a bag of cocaine near an entrance to the West Wing of the White House. Apparently there isn’t sufficient video surveillance of the West Wing to determine whom that might have been. The investigation stopped there. Journalists seem not to be pursuing the questions on their own.

Upton Sinclair once said that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” Well, it’s also difficult to investigate something when you don’t want to know the answer.

Then there’s the Hunter Biden case. It seems clear that Republicans are pursuing this case in hopes of besmirching President Biden before the 2024 election. So what? That’s how James Madison imagined the Constitution would work: the bad behavior of one side would hold in check the bad behavior of the other side.[1] That seems to have more-or-less worked for better than 200 years.

Did Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal” because his father is the President of the United States? According to Attorney General Merrick Garland and U.S. Attorney David Weiss, Hunter Biden got no favors. Everything was done by the book. Weiss had a completely free hand. He could have charged Biden with anything the evidence would support and in any jurisdiction; the plea deal fell within completely normal guidelines for similar cases.

Not so, say a couple of IRS agents involved in the five-year investigation. Their statements have been well-aired in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, although the detailed remarks of subject-area experts don’t make for television news sound-bites.

What does matter is that the statements of the “whistleblowers” were made in public, for the record, and under oath. The Attorney General has replied with rostrum statements and press releases. I am reminded of a brief scene in the television series “Dopesick” Dopesick – They cannot be bought – YouTube

Then there’s the New York Times. “[I]n mid-2022, Mr. Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Mr. Shapley’s testimony. A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Mr. Shapley testified. A second former I.R.S. official, who has not been identified,[2] told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.”[3] So which is it? How do we find out?

[1] There doesn’t seem to be any question that Republican politicians are engaged in bad behavior. Hunter Biden appears to be a psychologically badly wounded human being. Even if guilty, prison is going to destroy what little is left, not rehabilitate it. His alleged crimes are as nothing in comparison to those alleged against Donald Trump. At the same time, I know that I am engaged in bad behavior as well. I’m not spending this kind of time or thought (such as it is) on the possible destructive impact of prison on some 20-something Black drop-out gang-banger who dealt drugs or shot up a birthday party. Yet “hath not a Jew eyes?”

[2] Now known to be Joseph Ziegler.

[3] Glenn Thrush and Michael Schmidt, “Competing Accounts of Justice Dept.’s Handling of Hunter Biden Case,” NYT, 27 June 2023.

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