People in Glass Houses

For the past five years, I have written extensively about American politics, history and sociology. (I don’t believe it possible to separate the three.) I have been critical particularly of the interpretation of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as well as racial discrimination, which featured slavery at the very start of the Republic and continues to manifest itself in such actions as police violence against African Americans. However, over the past few days, I have been reminded of the proverb, ‘people in glass houses should not throw stones.’ There is a real possibility that the leaders of our major political parties are racist. So, this week, the blog will make a U turn and look at life in UK in relation to racism.

Let’s start with a definition of racism: “prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race or colour based on a belief that one’s own race or colour is superior.”   There are other definitions but those I’ve seen are all along similar lines.

In 1947, the SS “Empire Windrush” landed in the Port of London. Its passengers were from the Caribbean, having been invited to Britain by the Labour government to help with this country’s major post-war problem: a labour shortage and the need to fill jobs to work in transport, health, schools and other public institutions.  Bus drivers and conductors, nurses and hospital porters, school janitors and cooks were in short supply. People arriving on the Windrush and other ships helped immensely and were rewarded with legal immigrant status. However, appropriate documentation - passports, identity cards and the like - were not provided.

Fast forward to the 21^st century. Immigration in UK has become a political hot potato. The British people, it was said by the press, especially The Daily Mail and The Daily Express, are concerned by high levels of illegal immigration, although the Home Office, the responsible institution for this matter, had no figures or data to establish with any accuracy the extent of the problem. In the political debate, the distinction between legal and illegal was blurred.

In May, 2006, John Reid, the man PM Tony Blair appointed as Home Secretary and an acknowledged “safe pair of hands,” admitted that the beleaguered Immigration Directorate in the Home Office was not fit for purpose. This was an extraordinary statement, never defined. A vast Office of State was simply a failure in coping with immigration.

Reid ordered a fundamental overhaul but it failed, as evidenced by the attitudes of Home Office personnel towards the Windrush generation. Citizens who left UK for a family celebration or holiday to the Caribbean have been denied re-entry. Windrush generation people have been denied treatment by the National Health Service because they cannot prove British citizenship. There is an immense catalogue of wrongdoings on record by the Home Office against people who are living in this country lawfully as British citizens. Only recently has the media given major news coverage to the scandal, despite efforts of MPs like David Lammy to bring the Windrush situation to parliamentary and public attention.

In 2014, the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, introduced new laws intended to create a “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants. I do not go so far as to say there were elements of Nazism in the new legislation but there should be a principle that a civilised country like UK should not act in a hostile manner to anyone. Mrs May was warned that Windrush people and their undocumented descendants who, I remind you, are resident legally, would be penalized by the new laws. The warning was ignored.  

Last week, we had the spectacle of Mrs May’s successor at the Home Office, Amber Rudd, denying to a Parliamentary Committee that the Home Office set targets to reduce illegal immigrants only for her to return to Parliament the following day to admit that there were indeed targets for deportation, although only for internal monitoring. Like Mrs May, Mrs Rudd was aware of the Windrush problem but until the press exposed the scandal, she chose to ignore it. More of Mrs Rudd later.

The government policy, which has damaged and destroyed the lives of people who live here legally but who have been treated as illegals, is nothing less than appalling and tantamount to racism. Yet no Minister has resigned, nor has any civil servant been fired. So much for accountability. But this is politics. Mrs Rudd is taking the flack for Mrs May. If either had true honour, both would resign. The Conservatives cannot expect me to vote for a Party that endorses racism and takes no action to make people accountable. I hope they get a drubbing at the ballot box in this week’s London local council elections.

To make matters worse, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, is now perceived as in thrall to an unelected but powerful left wing group, Momentum, who have encouraged antisemitism within the Party. Antisemitism can be defined as hostility to or prejudice against Jews. It is racism in specific form. A recent key test for Corbyn is the disciplinary hearing of Labour activist Marc Wadsworth, who challenged a Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, for working “hand in hand” with the media against Labour. Wadsworth’s heckling was viewed as personal abuse and bullying and on Friday he was expelled from the Party. He commented, “Jeremy doesn’t see that I did anything wrong.”

Labour Against the Witch-Hunt is a campaign group set up to protest against Labour Party member expulsions, often caused through antisemitism. The emotive term “witch-hunt” indicates where some sympathies lie in eradicating the problem. Significantly, these groups perceive the expulsions as attacks upon Corbyn personally. Consequently, this highlights likely antisemitic sympathies in the heart of the Labour Party, not on the periphery as Baroness Shami Chakrabati, a Labour Party politician, would have us think. She chaired a 2016 investigation into allegations of antisemitism and other forms of racism in the Labour Party and found racism virtually non-existent. The report is widely regarded as a whitewash.

Labour Against the Witch-Hunt and probably Momentum will have many cases to argue and protest as more instances of antisemitism are exposed. Another Labour man and former MP, Ken Livingstone, has been suspended by Labour for anti-Semitic statements, including that Hitler was a Zionist. Corbyn, himself, speaks of Hezbollah and Hammas as “our friends.” He espouses the Palestinian cause, arguably with justification. However, he never balances it by speaking for Israel’s position.

Last week, Corbyn’s hopes of reassuring the Jewish community over his efforts to combat antisemitism suffered a serious blow after Jewish leaders labelled their meeting with him “disappointing, a missed opportunity” with nothing achieved. The heads of the Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies said Corbyn had failed to agree to any of their requests, including stronger personal leadership, a swift resolution of party disciplinary cases, including Livingstone’s, and Labour adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.

All of this has arisen because Corbyn has done little or nothing to eradicate antisemitism from the Party. He says he wants to stamp out antisemitism in the Party but hides behind Labour committees which delay or defer decision making on issues relating to the subject. However, last week, under pressure from some of his own MPs, Corbyn finally issued a condemnation of antisemitism, saying the party’s structures were unfit for purpose and that it must confront the fact that a number of members held antisemitic views. He said that in the past fortnight alone, more than 20 individuals had been suspended from party membership, and more were being investigated. What took him and the Party so long?

What has happened to the liberal democracy in which I was raised and live my life? In an op-ed piece last Saturday, Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian reminded his readers of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. Danny Boyle master-minded a spectacle of the history of Great Britain and featured so much of what was best of the British multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, tolerant society. I cannot judge how badly it has been affected by the recent actions of our political leaders. Why are we constantly fighting a battle over race not just at grass roots but in parliament?

Late on Sunday night, Mrs Rudd resigned as Home Secretary. Her reason: “inadvertently misleading MPs over targets for reporting illegal immigrants.” It is a great pity that she failed to be honest. Rather than imply that blame should not be attributed to her but to civil servants who failed to brief her properly, it would have been so much better and refreshing had she said she can no longer support an immigration policy which, at its base, is racist. By resigning, Mrs May’s back is exposed.

Before Mrs Rudd resigned, I wrote: “What worries me greatly is that the two leaders of UK’s major political parties are either racist or cannot see the racism in their words. The Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, wrote: ‘People should be judged not by what they say but what they do.’ He was so right. May, Rudd and Corbyn are in public life and we have the right to judge them. I find them wanting and hope they go. However, in all likelihood, they will stay in post until they answer at the ballot box. They are not the type of people who do the right or honourable thing.”

 

 

Watergate Revisited

Last week’s Guardian featured an article by Stanley Cloud who was part of Time magazine’s Watergate team and went on to become Time’s Washington D.C. bureau chief. I have never re-published an article in its entirety in my blog but there is a first time for everything. I do so mainly because Mr Cloud is a highly respected journalist, although not as well-known as Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee. Here is the Cloud piece:

 

                “As Trump threatens to fire Mueller, a journalist who was reporting during Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre reads the warning signs

                “Ever since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, the golden rule for presidents under investigation by a special prosecutor or special counsel has been that the president shall not fire the person conducting the investigation. For there – as medieval maps sometimes warned travellers – “be dragons”. Donald Trump has been lectured repeatedly on this score by various advisers and pundits. Yet word keeps leaking out of the White House that Trump would like nothing more than to fire Robert Mueller. So far, Trump has heeded the warnings. But how much longer, one wonders, can a man who famously bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it be expected to resist temptation to dismiss the special counsel?

                “Since May 2017, Mueller, dogged as Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, has been investigating assorted misdeeds allegedly committed by Trump and his aides – from “collusion” with Russians meddling in the 2016 presidential election to the payment of large sums of hush money to a porn actor and a former Playboy model. Mueller has already either indicted or wrung guilty pleas from 19 people, including Trump’s former campaign chair. What’s more, it appears that Mueller is following a trail left by former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump did fire last year, on a possible obstruction of justice charge against the president.

                “Clearly, Trump is feeling pinched and would like the cause of his pain to vanish. So let us review the short history of that golden rule everyone keeps warning him about. What are the allegations in the Trump-Russia investigation?

            “What are the most serious allegations?: The investigation into Trump and his team appears to encompass allegations of collusion, obstruction of justice, abuse of power and charges specific to Trump aides and former aides. Any case along these lines against the president would be historic. Both of the presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the past century, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, faced obstruction of justice and abuse of power charges. Is there anything we don't know? It's important to note that the work of the special counsel is secret, and the public has no way of knowing for certain what charges prosecutors may be weighing against the Trump team or, in what would be an extraordinary development, against the president himself. What can the special counsel investigate? Mueller is authorized to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" and related matters. In other words, potential collusion during the 2016 election. But so-called “collusion” is only part of it. The special counsel has the broad authority to build a prosecution wherever the inquiry may lead. The investigation has already resulted in charges against former Trump aides such as tax fraud that do not relate directly to election activity. Anything else? In the course of the investigation, Trump's past business practices have also come under scrutiny. With his first indictments of people in Trump's orbit, the special counsel has demonstrated an appetite for the prosecution of alleged white-collar crimes. The president has denied all wrongdoing.

                “[Back to Watergate] On Friday, 19 October 1973, Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena for copies of tape recordings made by Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. With that, Nixon decided he’d had just about enough of Cox, an upright and highly respected attorney and Harvard law professor. The very next day, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, who had appointed Cox the previous May, to fire him immediately. Richardson refused and resigned. His successor in the justice department’s chain of command, the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, likewise refused and resigned. Next up was the solicitor general (and acting attorney general), Robert Bork, who obeyed the president’s order, fired Cox and kept his job. The White House announced the firing – soon dubbed “the Saturday Night Massacre” – at 8.35pm that same night.

                “As a member of Time magazine’s Watergate reporting team, I well remember that night 45 years ago. Normally, by 8.30pm on a Saturday night, the magazine was entering the final stages of its weekly production cycle. But on this Saturday night, Time’s Washington bureau was in all-out crisis mode – correspondents, including me, were frantically phoning sources in Congress, in the White House, in the justice department, at the FBI and anywhere else imaginable, trying to learn what precisely had happened and why and what the ramifications were. Until the previous December, I had been on a three-year assignment, covering the Vietnam War. So I was not unfamiliar with what it felt like to report under pressure. But this situation was something completely new to me.

                “We all understood that a political volcano had just erupted, and I think many of us sensed that the US was on the brink of being changed forever. Not since the civil war had an American president seemed so close to impeachment and never before had the list of impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanours” against a sitting president been so lengthy. The words “constitutional crisis” were on just about everyone’s lips as the full impact of the Cox firing began to be felt during those hectic hours of crash reporting, writing and filing by telex and phone that were necessary in order for us to get the news into the magazine that would be in mailboxes and on the stands 48 to 72 hours later.

                “Soon, Congress also swung into action. At least 22 impeachment resolutions were quickly introduced in the House, along with 12 bills and resolutions, sponsored by 94 Democrats and four Republicans, calling for the appointment of a new special prosecutor. So ferocious was the public and official outcry that within 12 days, a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was indeed appointed, and would win access to the Nixon tapes before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Senate select committee on Watergate continued its televised hearings, uncovering layer on layer of criminal and unconstitutional behaviour.

                “Eventually, the tapes obtained by Jaworski provided the “smoking gun” of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up, which in turn led the House judiciary committee to approve three articles of impeachment on bipartisan votes, and forced Nixon’s resignation in disgrace less than a year after the Saturday Night Massacre. As for me, I knew Nixon was doomed politically when, just a week after the massacre, I received a letter from Irene Cloud, my aunt who lived in the tiny town of Kingman, Kansas, some 50 miles or so west of Wichita. Cloud was a dedicated Lincoln Republican in the moderate, anti-slavery Kansas tradition that had existed from the civil war to the 21st century, when the far right captured the state house.

                “An unmarried grammar school teacher, Cloud wrote me rarely but always to a purpose. When I opened the envelope, I found inside a light blue sheet of note paper on which in her perfect, schoolmarm’s hand, she had written “Dear Stanley, I have reached the conclusion that Mr Nixon is a bad man …” If Nixon had lost my Aunt Irene, he had lost the nation.

                “Not everyone today believes that Donald Trump will necessarily suffer the same fate as Nixon should he fire Robert Mueller. At least two good friends of mine who are experts in measuring public opinion – and who are not themselves conservatives – told me recently that they believe Trump’s “base” in the Republican party will stick with him in a way that Nixon’s base, including my Aunt Irene, did not. “They would think firing Mueller was just another example of Trump bringing Washington to heel,” said one. Perhaps so. But there are still dragons out there.”

 

What Mr Cloud does not say is that whatever the rights and wrongs of the Nixon impeachment, the Democratic-controlled Congress wanted Nixon gone and a huge ground-swell of public opinion was evident in opposing Nixon’s presidency and seeking his removal. Most important of all, the politics of impeachment became more important than the constitutional issues. In the end, Nixon knew he did lost his political base. He did not have the 34 Senate votes he needed to defeat the impeachment proceedings.

It is my understanding that, at this moment, there are nowhere near enough Senate votes to remove Trump from office. Of course, this can change if the Mueller enquiry reveals serious wrongdoings by Trump. But what if the President reaches terms with North Korea, resolves the trading issues with China, finds a truce in Syria and middle-America starts seeing the benefits of the tax cuts? In those unlikely circumstances, even if Mueller finds damning evidence against Trump personally, will it be enough to start the impeachment process? It could be a very lively summer. And as was said in medieval days, there are dragons out there.

 

Watergate Revisited

Last week’s Guardian featured an article by Stanley Cloud who was part of Time magazine’s Watergate team and went on to become Time’s Washington D.C. bureau chief. I have never re-published an article in its entirety in my blog but there is a first time for everything. I do so mainly because Mr Cloud is a highly respected journalist, although not as well-known as Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee. Here is the Cloud piece:

 

                “As Trump threatens to fire Mueller, a journalist who was reporting during Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre reads the warning signs

                “Ever since the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, the golden rule for presidents under investigation by a special prosecutor or special counsel has been that the president shall not fire the person conducting the investigation. For there – as medieval maps sometimes warned travellers – “be dragons”. Donald Trump has been lectured repeatedly on this score by various advisers and pundits. Yet word keeps leaking out of the White House that Trump would like nothing more than to fire Robert Mueller. So far, Trump has heeded the warnings. But how much longer, one wonders, can a man who famously bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it be expected to resist temptation to dismiss the special counsel?

                “Since May 2017, Mueller, dogged as Inspector Javert in Les Misérables, has been investigating assorted misdeeds allegedly committed by Trump and his aides – from “collusion” with Russians meddling in the 2016 presidential election to the payment of large sums of hush money to a porn actor and a former Playboy model. Mueller has already either indicted or wrung guilty pleas from 19 people, including Trump’s former campaign chair. What’s more, it appears that Mueller is following a trail left by former FBI director James Comey, whom Trump did fire last year, on a possible obstruction of justice charge against the president.

                “Clearly, Trump is feeling pinched and would like the cause of his pain to vanish. So let us review the short history of that golden rule everyone keeps warning him about. What are the allegations in the Trump-Russia investigation?

            “What are the most serious allegations?: The investigation into Trump and his team appears to encompass allegations of collusion, obstruction of justice, abuse of power and charges specific to Trump aides and former aides. Any case along these lines against the president would be historic. Both of the presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the past century, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, faced obstruction of justice and abuse of power charges. Is there anything we don't know? It's important to note that the work of the special counsel is secret, and the public has no way of knowing for certain what charges prosecutors may be weighing against the Trump team or, in what would be an extraordinary development, against the president himself. What can the special counsel investigate? Mueller is authorized to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump" and related matters. In other words, potential collusion during the 2016 election. But so-called “collusion” is only part of it. The special counsel has the broad authority to build a prosecution wherever the inquiry may lead. The investigation has already resulted in charges against former Trump aides such as tax fraud that do not relate directly to election activity. Anything else? In the course of the investigation, Trump's past business practices have also come under scrutiny. With his first indictments of people in Trump's orbit, the special counsel has demonstrated an appetite for the prosecution of alleged white-collar crimes. The president has denied all wrongdoing.

                “[Back to Watergate] On Friday, 19 October 1973, Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena for copies of tape recordings made by Richard Nixon in the Oval Office. With that, Nixon decided he’d had just about enough of Cox, an upright and highly respected attorney and Harvard law professor. The very next day, Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, who had appointed Cox the previous May, to fire him immediately. Richardson refused and resigned. His successor in the justice department’s chain of command, the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, likewise refused and resigned. Next up was the solicitor general (and acting attorney general), Robert Bork, who obeyed the president’s order, fired Cox and kept his job. The White House announced the firing – soon dubbed “the Saturday Night Massacre” – at 8.35pm that same night.

                “As a member of Time magazine’s Watergate reporting team, I well remember that night 45 years ago. Normally, by 8.30pm on a Saturday night, the magazine was entering the final stages of its weekly production cycle. But on this Saturday night, Time’s Washington bureau was in all-out crisis mode – correspondents, including me, were frantically phoning sources in Congress, in the White House, in the justice department, at the FBI and anywhere else imaginable, trying to learn what precisely had happened and why and what the ramifications were. Until the previous December, I had been on a three-year assignment, covering the Vietnam War. So I was not unfamiliar with what it felt like to report under pressure. But this situation was something completely new to me.

                “We all understood that a political volcano had just erupted, and I think many of us sensed that the US was on the brink of being changed forever. Not since the civil war had an American president seemed so close to impeachment and never before had the list of impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanours” against a sitting president been so lengthy. The words “constitutional crisis” were on just about everyone’s lips as the full impact of the Cox firing began to be felt during those hectic hours of crash reporting, writing and filing by telex and phone that were necessary in order for us to get the news into the magazine that would be in mailboxes and on the stands 48 to 72 hours later.

                “Soon, Congress also swung into action. At least 22 impeachment resolutions were quickly introduced in the House, along with 12 bills and resolutions, sponsored by 94 Democrats and four Republicans, calling for the appointment of a new special prosecutor. So ferocious was the public and official outcry that within 12 days, a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, was indeed appointed, and would win access to the Nixon tapes before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Senate select committee on Watergate continued its televised hearings, uncovering layer on layer of criminal and unconstitutional behaviour.

                “Eventually, the tapes obtained by Jaworski provided the “smoking gun” of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up, which in turn led the House judiciary committee to approve three articles of impeachment on bipartisan votes, and forced Nixon’s resignation in disgrace less than a year after the Saturday Night Massacre. As for me, I knew Nixon was doomed politically when, just a week after the massacre, I received a letter from Irene Cloud, my aunt who lived in the tiny town of Kingman, Kansas, some 50 miles or so west of Wichita. Cloud was a dedicated Lincoln Republican in the moderate, anti-slavery Kansas tradition that had existed from the civil war to the 21st century, when the far right captured the state house.

                “An unmarried grammar school teacher, Cloud wrote me rarely but always to a purpose. When I opened the envelope, I found inside a light blue sheet of note paper on which in her perfect, schoolmarm’s hand, she had written “Dear Stanley, I have reached the conclusion that Mr Nixon is a bad man …” If Nixon had lost my Aunt Irene, he had lost the nation.

                “Not everyone today believes that Donald Trump will necessarily suffer the same fate as Nixon should he fire Robert Mueller. At least two good friends of mine who are experts in measuring public opinion – and who are not themselves conservatives – told me recently that they believe Trump’s “base” in the Republican party will stick with him in a way that Nixon’s base, including my Aunt Irene, did not. “They would think firing Mueller was just another example of Trump bringing Washington to heel,” said one. Perhaps so. But there are still dragons out there.”

 

What Mr Cloud does not say is that whatever the rights and wrongs of the Nixon impeachment, the Democratic-controlled Congress wanted Nixon gone and a huge ground-swell of public opinion was evident in opposing Nixon’s presidency and seeking his removal. Most important of all, the politics of impeachment became more important than the constitutional issues. In the end, Nixon knew he did lost his political base. He did not have the 34 Senate votes he needed to defeat the impeachment proceedings.

It is my understanding that, at this moment, there are nowhere near enough Senate votes to remove Trump from office. Of course, this can change if the Mueller enquiry reveals serious wrongdoings by Trump. But what if the President reaches terms with North Korea, resolves the trading issues with China, finds a truce in Syria and middle-America starts seeing the benefits of the tax cuts? In those unlikely circumstances, even if Mueller finds damning evidence against Trump personally, will it be enough to start the impeachment process? It could be a very lively summer. And as was said in medieval days, there are dragons out there.

 

Scooter Libby: Is the Pardon out of Bond, Smiley or Stalin?

While the world is looking at America, France and UK and their military moves on Syria, President Trump has pardoned Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Who is this man? In politics memories are short but he was Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, a man who fell on his sword for his boss. Libby was convicted of four felonies including obstruction of justice and perjury. In 2007, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000.

Last week, The Washington Post predicted the pardon would happen. I am trying to understand why. To start, you need to understand the facts of the case but be warned that it’s as tortuous as Reagan’s Iran/Contra affair, when the Israelis acted as brokers to sell US arms to Iran in exchange for release of hostages and dollars, with the latter transferred to the Contras in direct contravention of an Act of Congress.

So, to Mr. Libby. In 2002, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer, sent a memo to her superiors in which she queried the wisdom of engaging her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, as a CIA operative for a mission to Niger. However, the US government wanted to him to use his contacts and confirm claims that Iraq had purchased and imported uranium from Niger. President Bush had alleged that Saddam Hussein was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa, prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction. (WMD.) Wilson travelled to Niger and subsequently published an op-ed piece in The New York Times, querying that any such transaction with Iraq had taken place and that it was unlikely that Iraq was storing WMD, thus undermining the President and the administration.

A week after Wilson's op-ed was published, Robert Novak published a column in The Post which mentioned claims from ‘two senior administration officials’ that Valerie Plame had suggested sending her husband to carry out the mission. Subsequently, Novak confirmed he had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage. It was suggested that Armitage and another official had leaked the information as political retribution for Wilson's article. The other official was Karl Rove but he was not prosecuted for the leak.

The outing of a CIA operative is extremely serious. It put the lives of Plame’s colleagues stationed abroad as well as their informants in peril. The scandal led to a criminal investigation; no one was ever charged for the leak itself. However, Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush but his fine remained.

In the closing arguments of Libby's trial, defense lawyer Ted Wells told the jury "The government in its questioning really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney...And the clear suggestion by the questions were, well, maybe there was some kind of skullduggery, some kind of scheme between Libby and the Vice President going on in private, but that's unfair." Prosecution lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, responded to this assertion by telling the jury, "You know what? We'll talk straight.

There is a cloud over the Vice President. He sent Libby off to meet with New York Times reporter, Judith Miller. At that meeting, the defendant talked about Joe Wilson’s wife. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened.” The clear implication was that Cheney knew everything and used Libby as a shield. Interestingly, Cheney lobbied Bush aggressively for a pardon for Libby, and Bush’s original refusal was said to have caused a strain in the relationship between the two men. To the former Vice President and others in his orbit, Libby’s conviction was the product of an overzealous special prosecutor and a liberal Washington jury. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?

I need to ask why President Trump has granted the pardon. Does he want to deliver a message that it’s acceptable to lie to a grand jury to protect political superiors because you will get a full pardon? In the light of the avalanche falling on him with Mueller, Stormy Daniels and the like, is he preparing grounds to pardon himself?

What Mr. Trump said was: “I don’t know Mr. Libby,” Trump said in a statement, “but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.” But he was convicted of four felonies including obstruction of justice and perjury. How was he treated unfairly? He had the best legal representation. The outing of Valerie Plame was unconscionable and done out of spite.

Where are the ethics? Where is justice? Is this pardon not the action of a dictator? The President has signaled before that he has power and inclination to reward those who stay loyal. Last year, he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the ex-sheriff of Arizona, who had been convicted of criminal contempt of court for defying an order of a federal judge to stop racial profiling of Latinos. The pardon had a rare and unusual aspect. It was delivered before Arpaio’s sentencing.

There is a connection here to James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame affair. Ashcroft’s deputy was James Comey who appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel. It was Fitzgerald who had Libby convicted. Comey has just published his own book which is highly critical of the President, who, Comey said in an interview, is morally unfit to be President. So not much love lost there.

There are millions of Americans languishing in jail, convicted for non-violent crimes. Some will have had unfair trials. They are likely to be poor and black or Latino. Surely you might consider pardons for them too. But, unlike most of your predecessors, you granted no pardons last Christmas. Where are you on this, Mr. Trump?

 

 

Do The Executive Branch Shuffle.

The responsible element in America’s media - and by this I refer to The New York Times, The Washington Post and television stations like CBS - gives the impression that the White House is in constant chaos, led by a man who is both capricious and undisciplined. They portray him as a man who does not bother to study a brief, who governs on the basis of hunches, guesses and prejudice and, it seems, hires and fires at will without a comprehensible and consistent set of policies.

I have no idea of what it is like to work in the White House these days. I suspect it is difficult but there’s nothing new in that. If the Boss is unpredictable and enjoys confusion and disorder, an employee cannot do right for doing wrong. However, what can be tested is turnover. Has there been a lot of hiring and firing in the executive branch during the past 15 months? What follows is a quantitative analysis.

Let’s look at the Trump cabinet:

 ·         The most senior member is Mike Pence, the Vice-President. Trump cannot touch him. Removal is a matter for Congress.

·         Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, was replaced in March, 2018, by former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo.

·         The original Attorney General and Secretaries of the Treasury, Defence, the Interior, Agriculture, Labour (after the nomination of Andy Puzder failed), HUD, Transportation, Energy and Education remain in post.

·         At Health and Human Services, Tom Price was replaced by Alex Azar.

·         In Veteran Affairs, Kirstjen Nielsen replaced John Kelly as Homeland Security Secretary when he took over as Chief of Staff.

Clearly, there is no case to support a claim of an avalanche of replacements at this level.

Have other officials at Cabinet-level suffered a different fate?

·         The Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, was replaced by John Kelly.

·         Mike Pompeo left the CIA to take over as Secretary of State and he was replaced by Gina Haspel.

·         The United States Trade Representative, Robert Lightizer, the Director of National Insurance, Dan Coats, the Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, the Director of Office of Management and Budget, Mick Mulvaney, and the Administrator of Small Business Administration, Linda McMahon all remain in post.

 So, where is the upheaval in Trump’s White House?  The list is not comprehensive but departures include:

·         Deputy Chief of Staff, Katie Walsh.

·         Communications Directors, Anthony Scaramucci, Mike Dubke and Hope Hicks.

·         Press Secretary and Communications Director, Sean Spicer.

·         The disgraced Mike Flynn, National Security Advisers, K. T. McFarland, Dina Powell and H R McMaster, deputy National Security Adviser, Rich Higgins, National Security Council member, Sebastian Gorka, adviser on national security issues.

·         Gary Cohn. Trump’s senior economic adviser.

·         Steve Bannon, chief strategist.

·         Omarosa Manigault Newman, Director of Communications for the White House Office of Public Liaison.

·         Keith Schiller, Director of Oval Office Operations.

·         Robert Porter, Staff Secretary.  

This might seem to be a long procession of senior people leaving or being ejected from the White House. However, it is worth remembering that the West Wing and the Old Executive Building is the work place for more than a thousand senior employees. In America, federal government positions are usually a good thing to have on a CV and contacts made can be helpful for future careers but pay is considerably less than the private sector offers. I understand the average time spent working for the federal government is less than four years.

As for the President’s conduct, his modus expellandum might seem harsh but it was former British Prime Minister who said a leader “had to be a good butcher.” When FDR was Governor of New York (1928-1932), he experimented with policies in New York State to alleviate the economic depression there. He was helped hugely by three Columbia University professors, Raymond Moley, Rex Tugwell and Adolph Berle. All three followed FDR to D.C and all three left the White House within a year.

Other Presidents have been involved in high-level dismissals. Truman sacked General MacArthur for insubordination. JFK sacked CIA Director Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. And Richard Nixon took out the butcher’s knife to remove senior advisers Haldeman, Erlichman and Dean as well as Attorney-General Kliendienst. In the famous Saturday Night Massacre, he also fired the Watergate Special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, as well as the three most senior members of the Justice Department. But looking at the record of the most recent Trump predecessors, Trump has removed more people in 15 months than Obama did in 8 years. Likewise, George W. Bush encouraged loyalty and his firings are far less than Trump’s.

I don’t think the Trump cause is helped by some supporters. For example, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie acts like a sycophantic spin-man on the President’s behalf. On ABC’s “This Week” last weekend, he said: “The President was ill-served right from the beginning by a group of people who threw all the transition work out, thirty-five 8-inch binders of vetting of over 350 people, that were consistent with his views, that they got rid of, literally threw in the garbage two or three days after the election, started over.” Did Trump clone this man?

Trump’s behaviour has also set the benchmark low on personal finance probity and ethics. Senior officials have taken their cues. Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price, abused air travel rules. Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin, and others followed suit.  HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, spent $31,000 of taxpayers’ money on a dining room set. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Scott Pruitt, is fighting for his job against a barrage of allegations about issues ranging from his first-class travel to reassignment of senior staff who criticized how he was spending taxpayer funds.

This weekend, The Washington Post reported Chief of Staff Kelly saying, “I’m out of here, guys,” which colleagues interpreted as a resignation threat. A senior administration official said Kelly was just venting his anger and leaving work an hour or two early to head home. I’m inclined to believe The Post. Kelly’s role is the most important in the executive after the President and to resign within a year of appointment would send out shock waves.

Since the departures from Trump’s White House are significantly greater than other Presidencies, I have to question why. The litmus test for federal government employment includes strong son is out and Mike Pompeo is in. Post Opinions columnist David Ignatius breaks down the latest shake-up in the Trump administration.(Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

ethics, experience, honesty and self-respect. Is there is a case to suggest that public servants, who would otherwise be qualified, do not want to work in this White House? Perhaps they want to avoid any fallout over the administration’s more questionable activities.

Trump and his people assured us during the 2016 campaign that everything would work out because stellar people would be there to help Trump. How can they help a President who appears not to listen and who will plough his own furrow regardless? When one looks at people of quality like Gary Cohn, a respected official who left government because his advice on tariffs was rejected, were the voters mistaken? For me, the answer is clear. However, it is important to remember that every employee of the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the President, to fire as he pleases.