Crank, Meet Bill Barr. Bill Barr, Step on crank.

Stupid is as stupid does   Mama Gump

Lord, I am weary. These walking ass gaskets have been at this for 3 1/2 years now, and Tubby the Ewok has been the Attorney General for two of those. How can a bunch of cheap thugs in shiny suits still be so abysmally incompetent at hiding even the most obvious beginnings of their attempted criminal enterprises.

I guess His Lowness couldn’t find a handy cabinet level Inspector General to shitcan in a Friday News Dump, so had to settle for a US Attorney instead. But once again arrogance and plain stupidity managed to trump even a modicum of common sense.

Here’s the quick down and dirty. At about 9:30 EDT last night, Bill Barr released a press dump stating that the US Attorney of the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, had stepped down from his post. Barr went through the usual nose flute nonsense of thanking Berman for his service, and wishing him well in his future endeavors.

The problem seems to be that nobody bothered to tell Geoff Berman that he was stepping down. Within the hour, Berman took the highly unusual step of releasing a statement of his own, making clear that he was highly pissed off to learn of his termination from a news report, sound familiar James Comey?, and that he wasn’t going anywhere. He made it crystal clear that there were several sensitive investigations that the SDNY was in critical parts of, and he had no intention of abandoning them.

Gee, ya think? He can’t mean that petty shit like possible money laundering by the Trump organization, other possible malfeasance by the same group, and a criminal investigation into Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Ghouliani? Any kid fresh out of law school, and awaiting his bar results could sail through that stuff.

While announcing Berman’s replacement, Barr confounded common sense by announcing that he was appointing the US Attorney for New Jersey to oversee the office for a period of six months. Howcomewhaforwhy? That job should fall to the Assistant US Attorney for the SDNY. Maybe because the Jersey US Attorney is a Trump and Barr flunky, who is already involved in the Trump witch hunt into the origins of the Mueller investigation?

Once again, Barr has tried to use a nutcracker in a situation where a sledge hammer would have done fine. All Barr had to do was to come out and say that Berman had lost the confidence of the President, and was being replaced. Instead he tried to use intimidation to keep Berman quiet, and to submit meekly to the powers that be, which obviously Berman had no intention of doing. Apparently neither Barr nor Trump remembers the name Preet Bahrara.

But at least I get the logic for that one. If Trump and Barr are able to get Berman to step down voluntarily, albeit it under pressure, then it makes it easier for them to make all kinds of claims of executive privilege to try to prevent Berman from testifying to congress if called. After all, they already fired James Comey by media, and dumped Michael Cohen into the shark tank with steaks tied to him, and they saw how well that turned out. Why risk firing Berman, and have his outrage drive him directly into the witness chair at a House committee hearing.

But forget about all of that. Because literally, as I was typing that paragraph, MSNBC broke a letter from William Barr to Geoffrey Berman, in which he whined about Berman pissing in the punch bowl last night with his statement, and informing Berman that he had asked Trump to fire Berman, which Trump  did, effective immediately. But apparently the paradigm has changed, because if I heard correctly, Barr announced that the Assistant USA for the SDNY will take over, not The New Jersey USA, so I can only infer that Barr got heavy congressional pushback after the announcement last night.

The thing that you have to remember is that Geoffrey Berman was a Trump appointee, and apparently a loyal one. Berman had repeatedly contributed to Trump’s campaign. But the other thing to remember is that Trump didn’t actually appoint Berman, he was judicially appointed when Trump couldn’t confirm a nominee by the deadline. And almost immediately, Berman pissed Trump off uber by recusing himself from a case that Trump was counting on him to make come out right.

This is so fucking stupid! Once again, with their ham handed, and tone deaf media presentation, Trump and Tubby have all but ensured that there will almost immediately be a House Judiciary or Oversight committee investigation into all of this. And from where I’m sitting, Barr piling on the indignity of trying to “resigning” him by press release, in his firing letter, Barr accused Berman of choosing public spectacle over public service. Why doesn’t Barr just send a DOJ limo over to take Berman to Capitol Hill for his hearing? Because the truly stupid fact of the matter is that, even if Barr pressures the SDNY into dropping the offending cases, most of them have plenty of time left on the statute of limitations for a new Attorney General in January to reopen them again. Stupid is as stupid does.

To know the future, look to the past.before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen

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