Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Ari Melber: Evidence Points To AG Barr Abusing Law Enforcement Powers | MSNBC

"From Bombshell News To Giuliani 'Grenade': Trump Aide Warned Ukraine Plot Like A Criminal Drug Deal"

Oct 26, 2019

MSNBC

Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General, Bill Barr, is making good on Trump’s demands to ‘investigate the investigators,’ as the New York Times reports he is using the DOJ to push a ‘criminal’ probe in the Mueller investigation. MSNBC’s Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber reports on how Barr’s call for investigation, in the midst of the Ukraine impeachment probe, is Trump’s latest systematic demand to use the government’s gravest powers to go after anyone has ever opposed him. Aired on 10/25/19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ1CVbvrnFc

In video:

Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation
[...]
The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.
[...]
The move also creates an unusual situation in which the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into itself.
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Donald Trump Toys With Abuse Of Office In Beef Against Washington Post | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
May 19, 2018

MSNBC

Rachel Maddow revisits the history of Richard Nixon trying to use the IRS to audit his personal political enemies and notes the parallels
with Donald Trump's attempt to punish Amazon with higher postal rates because of his personal disdain for The Washington Post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POarWqNJS18&t=6s

From video:

Randolph Thrower, I.R.S. Chief Who Resisted Nixon, Dies at 100
Randolph W. Thrower in 1969.
By Paul Vitello March 18, 2014
[...]
The end came in January 1971, after Mr. Thrower requested a meeting with the president, hoping to warn him personally about the pressure White House staff members had been placing on the I.R.S. to audit the tax returns of certain individuals. Beginning with antiwar leaders and civil rights figures, the list had grown to include journalists and members of Congress, among them every Democratic senator up for re-election in 1970, Mr. Thrower told investigators years later.
P - He was certain the president was unaware of this and would agree that “any suggestion of the introduction of political influence into the I.R.S.” could damage his presidency, he said.
P - Mr. Thrower received two responses. The first was a memo from the president’s appointments secretary saying a meeting would not be possible; the second was a phone call from John D. Ehrlichman, the president’s domestic affairs adviser, telling him he was fired.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/us/randolph-w-thrower-dies-at-100-ran-irs-under-nixon.html

A Nolan guy, already high-up in the IRS was recommended by Treasury for the job, but
Nixon's people warned Nixon that Nolan probably wouldn't do as he was told. Nixon wanted...

NIXON SOUGHT 'RUTHLESS' CHIEF TO 'DO WHAT HE'S TOLD' AT IRS
Add to list
By George Lardner Jr.
January 3, 1997

The discussion in the Oval Office on May 13, 1971, was short and to the point. President Richard M. Nixon was enunciating his standards for a new commissioner of internal revenue.
P - "I want to be sure he is a ruthless son of a bitch, that he will do what he's told, that every income tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after our enemies and not go after our friends," Nixon told his top aides, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. "Now it's as simple as that. If he isn't, he doesn't get the job. "We've got to have somebody like that for a change in this place."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/01/03/nixon-sought-ruthless-chief-to-do-what-hes-told-at-irs/6a9dbd0a-0261-4afe-9402-21b154bb20bd/

So Nixon, on John Mitchell's recommendation, a Johnny Walters out of the Justice Dept. was hired to head the IRS. To know what happens next see from 6:13.
Hint: John Dean hands Walters a list with 199s of names on it. Nixon's "Enemies List" Then, haha, the little historical snapshot is worth a view. Surprise.

At 13:59 Nixon goes after the LA Times. Nixon said, Check re wetbacks... Yep, immigration.
1972. Almost 50 years ago. Mitchell, "Yes, sir." Today Trump's main media target is WaPo.

Abuse of power was in the impeachment articles back then.

Related:

How Democracy Dies, American-Style
Sharpies, auto emissions and the weaponization of policy.
[...]
At first Sharpiegate, Donald Trump’s inability to admit that he misstated a weather projection...
[...]
Now, according to The Wall Street Journal .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-launches-antitrust-probe-into-four-auto-makers-11567778958 , the Justice Department is considering bringing an antitrust action against those [automobile] companies, as if agreeing on environmental standards were a crime comparable to, say, price-fixing.
[...]
Who’s next? In at least two cases, Trump appears to have tried to use his power to punish Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, which the president considers (like this newspaper) to be an enemy. First he pushed for an increase in the post office’s package shipping rates .. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/04/us-postal-service-amazon-trump-1044592 , which would hurt Amazon’s delivery costs; then the Pentagon suddenly announced that it was re-examining the process for awarding a huge cloud-computing project .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/01/after-trump-cites-amazon-concerns-pentagon-re-examines-billion-jedi-cloud-contract-process/ .. that Amazon was widely expected to win.
P - In each case it’s hard to prove that these were efforts to weaponize government functions against domestic critics. But who are we kidding? Of course they were.
P - The point is that this is how the slide to autocracy happens. Modern de facto dictatorships don’t usually murder their opponents (although Trump has been fulsome in his praise .. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/08/trump-praises-kim-jong-uns-beautiful-vision-for-his-country/ .. for regimes that do, in fact, rely on brute force). What they do, instead, is use their control over the machinery of government to make life difficult for anyone considered disloyal, until effective opposition withers away.
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