Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will see sleet and snow with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:11 AM and sunset 7:37 PM, for 13h 26m 14s of daytime. The moon is new with .3% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1861, Wisconsin receives the call: “On this date Governor Alexander W. Randall received a telegram from Washington requesting one regiment of 780 men to serve the Union for three months in the Civil War. Within a week ten companies, from Kenosha, Beloit, Horicon, Fond du Lac, Madison, and Milwaukee were ready. [Source: The History of Wisconsin, Vol. II by Richard N. Current]”

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Peter Stone and Greg Gordon report Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier:

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

➤ Norman Eisen and Richard Painter contend Donald Trump’s 5 reasons to fire Rod Rosenstein reveal true aim: Obstructing Robert Mueller:

President Trump reportedly is considering firing Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller and supervises his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. To prepare the way, Trump has by our count floated five rationales internally and externally for doing so. The briefest scrutiny of these purported justifications shows that they are baseless, and makes apparent the president’s true motivation: to obstruct the investigation that Rosenstein oversees.

Trump has reportedly complained about Rosenstein being a Democrat and coming from heavily Democratic Baltimore. In fact, Rosenstein is a decades-long registered Republican who worked as a federal prosecutor in Baltimore. That was part of a long career at the Justice Department devoted to the rule of law under both Republican and Democratic presidents. He was selected from a pool of Republican lawyers and nominated by Trump for his position as deputy attorney general. [Attys. Eisen and Painter then consider remaining five of Trump’s thin bases.]

➤ Nicole Lewis and Maurice Chammah write Seven Years Behind Bars for Two Joints — And Now He’s Free (“Bernard Noble, whose case became a symbol of harsh drug laws, walks out of a Louisiana prison”):

Bernard Noble, who became a national symbol of harsh drug laws after he was sentenced to 13 years of hard labor for carrying about two joints worth of marijuana, was released from prison early Thursday morning.

Noble, 51, was freed on parole after his lawyer and a team of advocates — including billionaire New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb — spent years pressing courts, governors and lawmakers to reverse the long sentence. He ultimately served seven years in prison.

“I really felt special, seeing my family and everyone waiting for me,” Noble told The Marshall Project by phone after he walked out of Bossier Parish Medium Security Prison, where his mother, sister, and other family members awaited his release.

“I cried a lot of times in prison silently because you can’t do it out loud in a treacherous place like that. But I always said, ‘one day it’s gonna get better,’ ” he said.

His freedom marked the end of a convoluted and high-profile legal journey that began in 2010, when he was arrested while biking in New Orleans, where he was visiting family. Police said they found about three grams of marijuana in his possession.

(One shouldn’t have to smoke anything – I don’t – to grasp that these sentences are disgracefully high. Yet for it all, there’s a lumpen lobby that screams for sentences like this, as long as they are visited on a different demographic.)

➤ Judy Newman reports State of Wisconsin Investment Board employees to take home $11.6 million in bonuses:

Employees of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board — the agency that manages retirement funds for more than 600,000 current and former public workers — will share in bonuses totaling $11.6 million, the agency said Friday.

It is the fourth-highest bonus pot in the past five years.

The incentive payments, approved by the SWIB board of trustees, are based on the five-year investment earnings that exceed general market returns. That amounted to $759 million for the past five years ending in December.

…

Of this year’s $11.6 million pot, two of SWIB’s high-level employees will each get bonuses topping $500,000.

(These bonuses aren’t high for private work of a similar kind – the obvious concern is that this isn’t private work of a similar kind; these funds could be managed well by those no longer seeking career earnings, as a true public service.)

➤ Take a Tour of the Moon in 4K (courtesy of NASA):

Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will see a mix of rain and sleet with a high of thirty-eight. Sunrise is 6:13 AM and sunset 7:36 PM, for 13h 23m 27s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 2.74% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1865, President Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth during a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater in Washington.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Scott Clement and Emily Guskin report Post-ABC poll: Majority of Americans support Mueller’s probe of Russia, Trump campaign:

A clear majority of Americans support special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion with President Trump’s campaign, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

The results show backing for inquiries into Trump’s orbit on several fronts.

Nearly 7 in 10 adults say they support Mueller’s focus on possible collusion with Russia. Sixty-four percent say they want the special counsel investigating Trump’s business activities. And a 58 percent majority supports investigating alleged payments by Trump associates to silence women who say they had affairs with him.

➤ Prof. of Law Randall D. Eliason writes Mueller doesn’t need to talk to Trump:

So how could Mueller make his obstruction case, whether in an indictment or — as appears more likely — in a report? The key to obstruction of justice is proving corrupt intent, and Mueller would prove it the same way prosecutors typically do: through circumstantial evidence. This could include the suspicious timing of events; evidence of the president’s actions and their likely consequences; lies and conflicting explanations for the president’s behavior; testimony of those who had conversations with the president, witnessed his behavior, or who were otherwise involved; the president’s own contemporaneous statements about such things as his decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey; and any notes, emails, or other contemporaneous records that might shed light on the president’s state of mind.

No single piece of evidence makes the case, but prosecutors would string them together until there was no longer any reasonable doubt about the corrupt intent behind the president’s actions.

There is no doubt Mueller would like to interview the president. In addition to the questions about obstruction, prosecutors would love to hear what the president has to say about possible conspiracy with Russians to influence the election, as well as about other allegations swirling around his campaign and administration. But if Mueller thinks he has an argument for obstruction, he doesn’t need an interview with Trump to make that case.

➤ Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Josh Dawsey and Tom Hamburger report Trump’s allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney:

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael D. Cohen sometimes taped conversations with associates, according to three people familiar with his practice, and allies of the president are worried that the recordings were seized by federal investigators in a raid of Cohen’s office and residences this week.

Cohen, who served for a decade as a lawyer at the Trump Organization and is a close confidant of Trump’s, was known to store the conversations using digital files and then replay them for colleagues, according to people who have interacted with him.

“We heard he had some proclivity to make tapes,” said one Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “Now we are wondering, who did he tape? Did he store those someplace where they were actually seized? … Did they find his recordings?”

Cohen did not respond to requests for comment. Stephen Ryan, an attorney for Cohen, declined to comment. A White House spokeswoman referred a request for comment to Cohen and his attorney.

(It’s hard to overstate how recklessly aberrant Cohen’s conduct would be to tape conversations with clients or others in his orbit.)

➤ Krishnadvev Calamur contends The Syrian War Is Actually Many Wars:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seems to have won the civil war in his country—but that doesn’t mean peace is coming. In fact, the conflict seems to be escalating—fueled by the many outside powers who have joined the Syrian battlefield with interests of their own.

“If you look at the literature on civil wars, it tends to suggest that the more foreign powers involved, the more difficult it is for a civil war to end—because most of those powers aren’t willing to quit until either they are exhausted or their claims and desires have been met,” said Christopher Phillips, author of the book The Battle for Syria: International Rivalryin the New Middle East. “And because a lot of them are backing proxies, the cost isn’t necessarily that high.”

Over the seven years of Syria’s war, it has sucked in numerous other countries, who have attempted to shape the conflict with every tool from bombing to mercenaries to special operators to weapons shipments to money. The war has grown ever more complicated and more deadly over time, and Syria’s future is now largely being determined outside of its borders. Who is fighting in Syria now, and why? [Calamur then lists roles of major fireign powers in the conflict.]

(The complexity of this conflict doesn’t excuse Assad – he merits charges as a murder and war criminal, and belongs at The Hague for trial on those charges. The question for America is how to respond effectively, and whether Trump has the needed grasp that would underlie a genuinely effective response.)

➤ See Farol de Leça da Palmeira with a Mavic Air

Good morning.

Friday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of forty-eight. Sunrise is 6:14 AM and sunset 7:35 PM, for 13h 20m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 7.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred nineteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Thomas Jefferson is born on this day in 1743.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Molly Beck reports State employee discipline for sexual harassment ranged from reprimands to termination:

State employees in the last five years have been disciplined for asking a co-worker for her underwear and naked photos, for giving a gift to a co-worker, for slapping a co-worker’s buttocks at a convention and for sending a sexually explicit text message, among other alleged behavior.

The discipline leveled for the alleged sexual harassment and misconduct included requiring letters of apology, reprimands, a suspension and, in one case, termination, according to records released recently by the state Department of Administration.

In another case, records indicate an assistant district attorney who was accused of grabbing a co-worker’s breasts and placing the co-worker’s hand on his crotch resigned amid an investigation into the allegations.

The records were released to the Wisconsin State Journal in response to a request by the newspaper in November under the state’s open records law amid increased scrutiny on how government institutions address complaints of sexual harassment.

The cases involve employees of the state Capitol Police Department, the Department of Financial Institutions, two district attorneys offices, DOA Facilities Management and the Department of Tourism.

➤ William G. Gale writes The fiscal picture is worse than it looks—and it looks bad:

On the surface, CBO’s new projections of the federal debt and deficits over the next 10 years paint a troubling picture. But, dig deeper and the story gets … more dire. The Federal government is not only running enormous deficits, but we are doing so at a time of full-employment. When the inevitable recession comes, we will be in deep trouble.

Here’s the bad part:  Under current law, CBO projects that the debt—currently 77 percent as large as annual GDP—will rise to 96 percent of GDP by 2028. And that’s if Congress does nothing. If instead, Congress votes to extend expiring tax provisions—such as the many temporary tax cuts in the 2017 tax overhaul—and maintain spending levels enacted in the budget deal (which is called the “current policy” baseline), debt is projected to rise to 105 percent of GDP by 2028, the highest level ever except for one year during World War II (when it was 106 percent).

…

Here’s the worse part: The conventional comparison is misleading. The projected budget deficits in the coming decade are essentially “full-employment” deficits. This is significant because, while budget deficits can be helpful in recessions by providing an economic stimulus, there are good reasons we should be retrenching during good economic times, including the one we are in now. In fact, CBO projects that, over the 2018-2028 period, actual and potential GDP will be equal. As President Kennedy once said “the time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”  Instead, we are punching more holes in the fiscal roof.

➤ Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn, Benjamin Wittes offer Seven Takeaways From Trump’s Threats Against Rod Rosenstein:

In short, it is not only unclear whether Rosenstein will be fired, it is also unclear what precisely the consequences would be—at least in immediate legal terms—if he is fired.

With those caveats, here are seven observations about the possible firing of Rosenstein:

First, firing Rosenstein is not the same as firing Mueller, but it would be borne of the same corrupt purpose.

…

Second, there is no non-corrupt reason to fire Rosenstein. Rosenstein is, to be sure, a complicated figure. His tenure as deputy attorney general has been marked by some ugly incidents, most significantly when he authored the memo designed to provide the president with a pretext for firing Comey as FBI director. But whatever criticisms of Rosenstein may be valid, none of them is related to the reason Trump wants to fire him.

…

Third, it would be no better for Trump to force Rosenstein’s recusal than to remove him from office entirely. Trump tweeted Wednesday encouraging people to watch Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News that evening. The program was largely dedicated to advocating that Rosenstein be fired. Alan Dershowitz, who has become something of an adviser to the president, argued that rather than directly fire Rosenstein, he would “do it differently”—perhaps sidelining him from the investigation by insisting on his recusal. CNN has reported that the White House is drafting talking points in line with Dershowitz’s message, arguing that Rosenstein’s involvement in Comey’s firing makes him too conflicted to continue overseeing the investigation. [Additional observations in full article.]

➤ Noted book critic Michiko Kakutani writes James Comey Has a Story to Tell. It’s Very Persuasive:

In his absorbing new book, “A Higher Loyalty,” the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey calls the Trump presidency a “forest fire” that is doing serious damage to the country’s norms and traditions.

“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey writes. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

Decades before he led the F.B.I.’s investigation into whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Comey was a career prosecutor who helped dismantle the Gambino crime family; and he doesn’t hesitate in these pages to draw a direct analogy between the Mafia bosses he helped pack off to prison years ago and the current occupant of the Oval Office.

…

The central themes that Comey returns to throughout this impassioned book are the toxic consequences of lying; and the corrosive effects of choosing loyalty to an individual over truth and the rule of law. Dishonesty, he writes, was central “to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic,” and so, too, were bullying, peer pressure and groupthink — repellent traits shared by Trump and company, he suggests, and now infecting our culture.

➤ There’s a Microscale Robot on This Penny That Can Travel Through Your Body:

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be variably cloudy, with a high of sixty-three. Sunrise is 6:16 AM and sunset 7:34 PM, for 13h 17m 53s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.3% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred eighteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1961, the Civil War begins with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Conservative Erick Erickson describes an Epic rant from a GOP member of Congress:

Erick Erickson caught up with a friend in Congress recently while he was visiting Washington DC. This guy supports Donald Trump in public, but in private he’s—oh, what’s the right word? Disillusioned? Despondent? Boiling over with rage?

Anyway, he told Erickson he needed to vent about Trump, so they strolled down the aisles of a local Safeway and Erickson turned on his recorder:

He may be an idiot, but he’s still the President and leader of my party and he is capable of doing some things right. But dammit he’s taking us all down with him. We are well and truly f**ked in November….It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can’t help himself. He’s just a f**king idiot who thinks he’s winning when people are b*tching about him.

….If we get to summer and most of the primaries are over, they just might pull the trigger if the President fires Mueller. The sh*t will hit the fan if that happens and I’d vote to impeach him myself. Most of us would, I think. Hell, all the Democrats would and you only need a majority in the House. If we’re going to lose because of him, we might as well impeach the motherf**ker.

….I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.

(There’s little on which Erickson and I would agree, but I’ve never known him to be dishonest – the conversation is almost certainly genuine.)

➤ Patrick Marley and Jason Stein report Wisconsin Rep. Dale Kooyenga says he will cover $30,000 settlement for taking protester’s sign as video is released:

Rep. Dale Kooyenga said Wednesday he would reimburse taxpayers $30,000 to settle a lawsuit, just as the state released video footage showing Kooyenga removing a protest sign critical of Republicans from a public area of the Capitol.

Kooyenga, a Brookfield Republican running for the state Senate, has given various explanations at different times for taking the sign last year, saying that he did so as a joke, that he thought the sign was inappropriate and that he believed it created a safety hazard because it could have hidden something dangerous.

…

In May, Donald Johnson of Madison placed a sign in the Capitol that criticized Republican President Donald Trump, without naming him, as “corrupt” and “a serial groper.” It said Republicans backed the president, “we the people be damned.”

Johnson had a state permit to display the sign in the Capitol, and he said he taped a copy of it to the back of the sign.

That month, Kooyenga removed the sign and put it in his office as a joke and because he thought it was inappropriate, according to what he told Capitol Police at the time. After Johnson complained about the missing sign, the Capitol Police saw on security video that Kooyenga had taken the sign and recovered it from him.

Gov. Scott Walker’s administration initially declined to release a copy of the video of Kooyenga taking the sign to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other media outlets. But the administration released it Wednesday after the Journal Sentinel and others requested it for a second time, saying that the settlement made the video a record of interest to the public.

 

Kooyenga has also said he took the sign because his military training had taught him that signs against curved walls create “clear risks” to the public because they could conceal something dangerous. The video shows the sign is on an easel and it appears it would be difficult to hide something behind it.

His critics have called Kooyenga’s claims about safety laughable.

“How does he even get through an intersection? Because there are a lot of signs at intersections,” Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) said.

➤ Brian Chen writes that I Downloaded the Information That Facebook Has on Me. Yikes:

When I downloaded a copy of my Facebook data last week, I didn’t expect to see much. My profile is sparse, I rarely post anything on the site, and I seldom click on ads. (I’m what some call a Facebook “lurker.”)

But when I opened my file, it was like opening Pandora’s box.

With a few clicks, I learned that about 500 advertisers — many that I had never heard of, like Bad Dad, a motorcycle parts store, and Space Jesus, an electronica band — had my contact information, which could include my email address, phone number and full name. Facebook also had my entire phone book, including the number to ring my apartment buzzer. The social network had even kept a permanent record of the roughly 100 people I had deleted from my friends list over the last 14 years, including my exes.

There was so much that Facebook knew about me — more than I wanted to know. But after looking at the totality of what the Silicon Valley company had obtained about yours truly, I decided to try to better understand how and why my data was collected and stored. I also sought to find out how much of my data could be removed.

➤ Matt Velazquez writes 76ers 130, Bucks 95: With plenty on the line, the Bucks flop into the postseason:

PHILADELPHIA – The Milwaukee Bucks saved their worst for last.

With playoff seeding and a first-round draft pick hanging in the balance, the Bucks put forth an atrocious display at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night, falling 130-95, to the Philadelphia 76ers. The 35-point margin represents Milwaukee’s biggest blowout loss of the season.

“We didn’t finish strong and we didn’t play well and that’s very disappointing,” Bucks coach Joe Prunty said. “Hopefully it’s a learning lesson for us.”

The 76ers played without all-star Joel Embiid (fractured orbital bone) and sharpshooter J.J. Redick, who was scratched from the starting lineup due to back tightness moments before the game.

➤ Bonsai!!!:

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:18 AM and sunset 7:33 PM, for 13h 15m 04s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 20.5% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred seventeenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

The Birge Fountain Committee is scheduled to meet at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1945, American soliders liberate the Nazi death camp at Buchenwald:

A detachment of troops of the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, from the 6th Armored Division, part of the US Third Army, and under the command of Captain Frederic Keffer, arrived at Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 at 3:15 p.m. (now the permanent time of the clock at the entrance gate). The soldiers were given a hero’s welcome, with the emaciated survivors finding the strength to toss some liberators into the air in celebration.[41]

Later in the day, elements of the US 83rd Infantry Division overran Langenstein, one of a number of smaller camps comprising the Buchenwald complex. There, the division liberated over 21,000 prisoners,[41] ordered the mayor of Langenstein to send food and water to the camp, and hurried medical supplies forward from the 20th Field Hospital.[37]

Third Army Headquarters sent elements of the 80th Infantry Division to take control of the camp on the morning of Thursday, April 12, 1945. Several journalists arrived on the same day, perhaps with the 80th, including Edward R. Murrow, whose radio report of his arrival and reception was broadcast on CBS and became one of his most famous:

I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1,200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.

They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book, nothing more. Nothing about who these men were, what they had done, or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242. 242 out of 1,200, in one month.

As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.

—Extract from Edward R. Murrow‘s Buchenwald Report – April 15, 1945.[42]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Robert Costa, Seung Min Kim and John Wagner report House Speaker Paul Ryan will not seek reelection:

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) announced Wednesday that he will not seek reelection this year, ending a nearly 20-year tenure in Congress and adding further uncertainty about whether embattled Republicans can maintain control of the House.

Ryan said at a news conference that he sees a “very bright future” for his party and said his decision was driven by a desire to spend more time with his family.

“I have accomplished much of what I came here to do, and my kids aren’t getting any younger,” Ryan said. “What I realized is if I serve for one more term my kids will only have known me as a weekend dad.”

Ryan, who plans to serve out his term and retire in January, said the possibility of Democrats taking over the House factored into his decision “none whatsoever.” He emphasized that he had taken the job reluctantly.

The decision comes ahead of mid-term elections that were already looking treacherous for Republicans, who risk losing control of the House.

(The price of Trumpism is political ruin.)

➤ Ben Kamisar reports GOP Rep. Ross won’t seek reelection:

Republican Rep. Dennis Ross (Fla.) is retiring from Congress at the end of the year and will not run for reelection.

Ross made the announcement Wednesday morning, shortly after Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) shared his decision not to run again in the fall.

After thoughtful prayer and consideration, my wife Cindy and I decided that I will not seek re-election for a fifth-term in office,” Ross said in a statement.

“I am grateful for this incredible opportunity to serve and I look forward to the next chapter of my life which will include, in some way, continued public service.”

(Ross will now have time to scour the classifieds until a rat-catcher position opens up.)

➤ The New York Times editorial board writes The Law Is Coming, Mr. Trump:

This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. This is how Donald Trump does business, and these are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

➤ Paul Rosenzweig writes of Michael Cohen, the Attorney-Client Privilege, and the Crime-Fraud Exception:

What then could be the basis for the SDNY search and review of these materials? Materials that, at least facially, would be protected.

That question brings us to something known as the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege. It is, if you will, an exception to an exception that allows the government to read, review, compel production of and compel testimony of an attorney and his or her records. It arises if, and only if, the client uses the attorney’s services to commit a crime. (So, to be clear, it does not apply retrospectively, as when I tell you about a crime I have already committed.) An example of this—an easy one—would be if I use an attorney to help me draft an affidavit that I am going to submit to a court, and the affidavit is false. I have used the attorney’s help to commit a crime. The lawyer may not (indeed usually does not—since, notwithstanding the public derision, most attorneys would not knowingly assist a client in committing a crime) know that the crime is afoot—he may be completely ignorant. But if the government can show a court that there is a basis for thinking that the crime has occurred (here, in my example, that the affidavit is a lie) then the attorney can be and will be required to testify as to the nature of his interaction with the client. “What did the client tell you?” is a completely impermissible question generally—but it is a lawful question when there is reason to think that the answer is “X happenend,” and the lawyer took that answer and put it in an affidavit that was submitted to a court and it turns out that the statement that “X happened” is a bald-faced lie.

You can readily imagine other examples of when and how a lawyer’s services might be used to commit a crime. The lawyer helps set up a shell corporation (perfectly legal generally) and the corporation is used to foster a Ponzi scheme. The lawyer is asked about how to secure insurance, but the insurance is then used to collect on an insurance fraud. And so on. In other words, the crime-fraud exception applies when an attorney’s advice is used to further the crime. Or, as the Supreme Court put it in Clark v. United States, 289 U.S. 1 (1933), “A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”

And that, one suspects, is where the rubber meets the road. It may well be that President Trump sought Cohen’s legal advice regarding the Daniels affair for an illegal purpose (e.g. to avoid federal campaign-finance laws or to conceal the true source of the funds with which she was paid or to threaten her). In that circumstance, it seems clear that the crime-fraud exception might apply—and it appears highly likely that the FBI and the lawyers in New York have made that showing to a federal magistrate. Or, as one observer put it: “Michael Cohen is in serious legal trouble.” President Trump may be as well.

➤ Perhaps This Drone Could Help Firefighters By Putting Out Fires:

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of forty-five. Sunrise is 6:19 AM and sunset 7:32 PM, for 13h 12m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 29% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred sixteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1866, Henry Bergh founds the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Philip Bump explains To search Michael Cohen’s home and office, the FBI had to clear a higher-than-normal bar:

Monday’s raid, though, was conducted at the direction of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, not the special counsel. Last week, Mueller’s team revealed in a court filing that deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein (who, in May 2017, appointed Mueller to serve in his current position) had outlined in a memo last August particular areas for the special counsel’s team to investigate. Mueller could expand those boundaries, but only after getting Rosenstein’s approval. In this case, it seems, Rosenstein referred the question to the U.S. attorney instead.

There are specific rules that come into play before the U.S. attorney would be granted a subpoena, as outlined in the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual. A section titled “Searches of Premises of Subject Attorneys” details six additional safeguards to ensure that the Justice Department isn’t unjustly violating attorney-client privilege. It applies to subject attorneys — people who are “suspect[s], subject[s] or target[s]” of an investigation. That distinction was highlighted last week when The Post reported that Mueller had informed Trump that the president wasn’t a target of the investigation, but only a subject of it. “Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges,” we wrote at that point. In other words, Trump wasn’t necessarily about to face charges, but he was under investigation. The same, it seems, applies now to Cohen.

To obtain that search warrant, then, the U.S. attorney would have had to meet six conditions, according to the manual [Bump then lists all six conditions].

(If Trumpists think this was an action of Special Counsel Mueller, they either don’t understand how these matters are conducted, or deliberately and falsely offer a distorted account.)

➤ Bill Whitaker reports When Russian hackers targeted the U.S. election infrastructure:

The U.S. intelligence community has concluded there is no doubt the Russians meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, leaking stolen e-mails and inflaming tensions on social media. While Congress and special counsel Robert Mueller investigate Russian interference, including whether the campaign of Donald Trump colluded with Russia, we have been looking into another vector of the attack on American democracy: a sweeping cyber assault on state voting systems that U.S. intelligence tied to the Russian government. Tonight, you’ll find out what happened from the frontline soldiers of a cyberwar that was fought largely out of public view, on digital battlegrounds in states throughout the country.

The first shots were fired here in Illinois, not far from downtown Springfield, in a nondescript shopping center, the kind you’ll find anywhere in the United States. There, in a repurposed supermarket, is the headquarters of the Illinois State Board of Elections.

Bill Whitaker: This doesn’t look like a war zone.

Steve Sandvoss: No, it doesn’t, actually.

Steve Sandvoss is the executive director.  He told us, in his first television interview about the attack, that this office is on the front lines of a cyberwar.

Steve Sandvoss: We have– a good I.T. department. But —

Bill Whitaker: No match for the Russian government.

Steve Sandvoss: Bows and arrows against the lightning, hate to say it.

Bill Whitaker: Bows and arrows against the lightning? Is that what it felt like?

Steve Sandvoss: At– at first, yes.

(Our fellow citizens need the full support of at the federal and state level to protect against persistent and devious Russian election interference. If there’s one place where federal and state power is needed, especially now, it’s to assure an unimpeded, undistorted right to vote.)

➤ Mark Sommerhauser reports State paid $541K to settle misconduct, harassment claims at UW-Madison:

The state paid at least $541,000 in settlements in the last decade in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault or harassment, by UW-Madison employees, according to public records released Monday.

UW-Madison released records of 20 cases of alleged misconduct involving faculty, staff and students, as well as the university’s investigations of them.

The release came in response to requests for such records from the Wisconsin State Journal and other media outlets, and gives the fullest picture yet of how the university has responded to recent allegations of sexual misconduct.

The State Journal and other media sought the records after the State Journal chronicled the university’s handling of sexual harassment complaints in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. The newspaper has also detailed weaknesses in the university’s ability to track and monitor complaints.

➤ Mark Muro, Jacob Whiton, and Robert Maxim consider How China’s proposed tariffs could affect U.S. workers and industries:

What do our tables and maps show? Our top line estimates suggest while the total number of jobs potentially disrupted by an all-out trade war remains modest, the count encompasses a diverse and shrewdly chosen “hit list” of hallmark American industries—one that appears well-calculated to scare both red and blue America.

Altogether, we count some 2.1 million jobs in the 40 industries that produce products now slated for possible tariffs, and see a wide variation in the type and number of exposed jobs in those industries.  Here’s a look at the industry list:

Scan the list and it ranges from sizable industrial enterprises such as plastics manufacturing, aircraft manufacturing, and automotive/light/truck/motor home production (300,000, 230,000, and 200,000 direct jobs respectively, in 2016); to farm-sector mainstays like corn (18,000 jobs), soybeans (5,000 positions), and hog production and slaughter (147,000 workers); and into specialty industries such as fruit and nut production (187,000 workers), wineries (60,000 workers), and distilleries (12,000 positions).

Overall, the list suggests that Chinese trade bureaucrats have as good, or perhaps even better, of a feel for the diverse and culturally significant key elements that comprise the U.S. production base than their U.S. counterparts. High-tech and low-tech, industrial and agricultural, commodity and specialty production are all represented and put into play.

(It should come as no surprise that a competent Chinese analyst would have a better grasp of the American econony than any of the third-tier, talk-show loving officials of the Trump Administration.)

➤ Meet Nature’s Masters of Disguise:

Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy, with morning flurries, and a high of forty-one. Sunrise is 6:21 AM and sunset 7:30 PM, for 13h 09m 26s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 39.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fifteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

Downtown Whitewater meets at 5 PM, and the Planning Commission at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1865, Lee surrenders to Grant in the village of Appomattox Court House:

Well-dressed in his customary uniform, Lee waited for Grant to arrive. Grant, whose headache had ended when he received Lee’s note, arrived at the courthouse in a mud-spattered uniform—a government-issue sack coat with trousers tucked into muddy boots, no sidearms, and with only his tarnished shoulder straps showing his rank.[14] It was the first time the two men had seen each other face-to-face in almost two decades.[13] Suddenly overcome with sadness, Grant found it hard to get to the point of the meeting and instead the two generals briefly discussed their only previous encounter, during the Mexican–American War. Lee brought the attention back to the issue at hand, and Grant offered the same terms he had before:

In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.[15]

The terms were as generous as Lee could hope for; his men would not be imprisoned or prosecuted for treason. Officers were allowed to keep their sidearms, horses, and personal baggage.[16] In addition to his terms, Grant also allowed the defeated men to take home their horses and mules to carry out the spring planting and provided Lee with a supply of food rations for his starving army; Lee said it would have a very happy effect among the men and do much toward reconciling the country.[17]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Ben White observes the budget outlook under Trump:

The CBO is about to report that there will be trillion dollar-plus budget deficits for every year of Trump’s presidency. https://t.co/8G18oyvG50

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) April 9, 2018

➤ Dave Weigel reports Farmers who propelled Trump to presidency fear becoming pawns in trade war:

When China threatened a 25 percent tariff on soybeans, Mike Petefish, who grows the crop over 2,000 acres, feared the worst. Soybeans are a $2 billion business in Minnesota.

“A 40-cent drop in soybeans, like we saw on Wednesday, meant $50,000 of value evaporating out of my bottom line,” said Petefish, the 33-year-old president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. “The last time I talked to our banker, he told me that of all his clients — these are all farmers — only four made money last year. We kind of broke even. But this year was looking tough even before the tariffs.”

➤ Matthew Rosenberg and Gabriel J.X. Dance explain ‘You Are the Product’: Targeted by Cambridge Analytica on Facebook:

Christopher Deason stumbled upon the psychological questionnaire on June 9, 2014. He was taking a lot of online surveys back then, each one earning him a few dollars to help pay the bills. Nothing about this one, which he saw on an online job platform, struck him as “creepy or weird,” he said later.

So at 6:37 that evening, Mr. Deason completed the first step of the survey: He granted access to his Facebook account.

Less than a second later, a Facebook app had harvested not only Mr. Deason’s profile data, but also data from the profiles of 205 of his Facebook friends. Their names, birth dates and location data, as well as lists of every Facebook page they had ever liked, were downloaded — without their knowledge or express consent — before Mr. Deason could even begin reading the first survey question.

The information was added to a huge database being compiled for Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm with links to Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. None of the people whose data was collected knew it had happened, not even Mr. Deason. “I don’t think I would have gone forward with it if I had,” Mr. Deason, 27, said in a recent interview.

➤ Madeleine Albright asks Will We Stop Trump Before It’s Too Late? (“Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II”):

On April 28, 1945 — 73 years ago — Italians hung the corpse of their former dictator Benito Mussolini upside down next to a gas station in Milan. Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the streets of war-ravaged Berlin. Fascism, it appeared, was dead.

To guard against a recurrence, the survivors of war and the Holocaust joined forces to create the United Nations, forge global financial institutions and — through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — strengthen the rule of law. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the honor roll of elected governments swelled not only in Central Europe, but also Latin America, Africa and Asia. Almost everywhere, it seemed, dictators were out and democrats were in. Freedom was ascendant.

Today, we are in a new era, testing whether the democratic banner can remain aloft amid terrorism, sectarian conflicts, vulnerable borders, rogue social media and the cynical schemes of ambitious men. The answer is not self-evident. We may be encouraged that most people in most countries still want to live freely and in peace, but there is no ignoring the storm clouds that have gathered. In fact, fascism — and the tendencies that lead toward fascism — pose a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.

Warning signs include the relentless grab for more authority by governing parties in Hungary, the Philippines, Poland and Turkey — all United States allies. The raw anger that feeds fascism is evident across the Atlantic in the growth of nativist movements opposed to the idea of a united Europe, including in Germany, where the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland has emerged as the principal opposition party. The danger of despotism is on display in the Russia of Vladimir Putin — invader of Ukraine, meddler in foreign democracies, accused political assassin, brazen liar and proud son of the K.G.B. Putin has just been re-elected to a new six-year term, while in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a ruthless ideologue, is poised to triumph in sham balloting next month. In China, Xi Jinping has persuaded a docile National People’s Congress to lift the constitutional limit on his tenure in power.

➤ Consider The Surprisingly Recent Invention of the T-Shirt:

Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of forty. Sunrise is 6:23 AM and sunset 7:29 PM, for 13h 06m 35s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 47.1% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}five hundred fourteenth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}

On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s home-run record:

The Braves returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game—a Braves attendance record. The game was also broadcast nationally on NBC. In the fourth inning, Aaron hit home run number 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing.[6] Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield wall trying to catch it, the ball landed in the Braves’ bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two college students [51] sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron for part of his circuit around the bases, temporarily startling him. A very youthful Craig Sager actually interviewed Aaron between third and home for a television station, WXLT (now WWSB-Channel 40) in Sarasota.[52] As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron’s parents ran onto the field as well.

Braves announcer Milo Hamilton, calling the game on WSB radio, described the scene as Aaron broke the record: “Henry Aaron, in the second inning walked and scored. He’s sittin’ on 714. Here’s the pitch by Downing. Swinging. There’s a drive into left-center field. That ball is gonna be-eee… Outta here! It’s gone! It’s 715! There’s a new home run champion of all time, and it’s Henry Aaron! The fireworks are going. Henry Aaron is coming around third. His teammates are at home plate. And listen to this crowd!”[53]

Meanwhile, Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racial tension — or apparent lack thereof — in his call of the home run: “What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. …And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.”[54]

Recommended for reading in full —

➤ Caroline Linton reports Trump Tower fire is second 2018 blaze in sprinkler-free residential tower:

The fire on the 50th floor New York City’s Trump Tower that left 67-year-old Todd Brassner dead and six firefighters injured was the second fire in the building in 2018 — President Trump’s centerpiece Manhattan skyscraper built that opened in 1984, but which does not have sprinklers on its residential floors. FDNY commissioner Daniel Nigro noted on Saturday that the upper, residential floors of Trump Tower do not have sprinklers — a measure required in new buildings since 1999, but which President Trump, then a private citizen and property developer, lobbied to try and prevent.

New York City in 1999 became last big city in the nation to require sprinklers, according to the New York Daily News. Under the 1999 legislation, buildings constructed before then were only required to have sprinklers if they underwent gut renovations.

According to The New York Times, Mr. Trump was one of the developers in the late 1990s who lobbied against sprinklers in buildings. He then recanted once the legislation passed with grandfathering provisions that meant existing buildings did not need to install them, saying that he understood they made residents “feel safer.” Commissioner Nigro said on Saturday that there is extra fire protection at Trump Tower when Mr. Trump is there.

(There’s so much about Trump in these words: he won’t provide – even apart from legislation – a common safety measure for his tenants, he falsely denigrates that measure as offering only a feeling of safety although sprinklers have been shown to save lives, but makes sure that when he’s in the building he has “extra fire protection.”)

➤ Eve L. Ewing explains Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts:

But as Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.

Authoritarian leaders throughout history have intuited this fact and have acted accordingly. The Stalinist government of the 1930s required art to meet strict criteria of style and content to ensure that it exclusively served the purposes of state leadership. In his memoir, the composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich writes that the Stalinist government systematically executed all of the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian folk poets. When Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile in 1973, muralists were arrested, tortured and exiled. Soon after the coup, the singer and theater artist Víctor Jara was killed, his body riddled with bullets and displayed publicly as a warning to others. In her book “Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship,” Claudia Calirman writes that the museum director Niomar Moniz Sodré Bittencourt had to hide works of art and advise artists to leave Brazil after authorities entered her museum, blocked the exhibition and demanded the work be dismantled because it contained dangerous images like a photograph of a member of the military falling off a motorcycle, which was seen as embarrassing to the police. Such extreme intervention may seem far removed from the United States today, until we consider episodes like the president’s public castigation of the “Hamilton” cast after it issued a fairly tame commentary directed at Mike Pence.

In its last round of grants, the NEA gave $10,000 to a music festival in Oregon to commission a dance performance by people in wheelchairs and dance classes for people who use mobility devices. A cultural center in California received $10,000 to host workshops led by Muslim artists, including a hip-hop artist, a comedian and filmmakers. A chorus in Minnesota was granted $10,000 to create a concert highlighting the experiences of LGBTQ youth, to be performed in St. Paul public schools. Each of these grants supports the voices of the very people the current presidential administration has mocked, dismissed and outright harmed. Young people, queer people, immigrants, and minorities have long used art as a means of dismantling the institutions that would silence us first and kill us later, and the NEA is one of the few wide-reaching institutions that support that work.

➤ Cristian Farias writes Mueller (Quietly) Keeps Turning Up the Heat:

Right now there are two competing narratives in Washington about Robert Mueller. The first one, pushed by Paul Manafort and various members of the GOP congressional caucus, is that the special counsel is a loose cannon, accountable to no one and way over the line in his limited authority under a Department of Justice order appointing him to the job. The other, which has a much broader constituency in the capital and beyond, is that he’s playing by the rules.

The first narrative, which Manafort has been trying to sell in recent months to a federal judge in the District of Columbia, is not faring so well in the light of some new revelations over the past several days. You know you’re on the ropes when the judge, during a hearing to dispose of your (frivolous) civil lawsuit against the special counsel, calls you out: “I really don’t understand what is left of your case.” That’s what U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort’s lawyer in open court Wednesday, according to Reuters. Kevin Downing, the lawyer, is worried (and expressed those concerns to Jackson) that his client may soon face a new round of charges from Mueller. The civil lawsuit is an effort to challenge the scope of Mueller’s authority, and thereby limit Manafort’s legal exposure.

But recent court filings by the special counsel’s office in the Russia saga paint a picture very different than the one Manafort’s legal team is trying to sell: Mueller is hewing closely to his mandate to investigate links between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and into whether crimes against the United States were committed in the process or in response to any subsequent investigation. A CNN report published Wednesday that Mueller’s team has obtained “search warrants to access electronic devices” of U.S.-bound Russian oligarchs suspected of making illegal campaign donations to the Trump campaign seems to fall squarely in line with why we have a special counsel in the first place. Mueller just won’t stop turning up the heat. 

➤ Mark Sommerhauser reports ‘Unprecedented’ outside spending hits Tammy Baldwin, boosts Kevin Nicholson in US Senate race:

Seven months before Election Day, outside groups have given Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race an early barrage of big money unlike any other in the nation — and likely, any other in history.

That torrent of political ads has put Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on the defensive. And the backing of one wealthy donor, Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein, has boosted Kevin Nicholson in his primary bid against fellow Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir.

More than $9 million has been spent in the race by outside groups, more than twice as much as any other U.S. Senate race, according to one measure by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Outside spending in Wisconsin likely is “unprecedented” for a U.S. Senate campaign, excluding special elections, at this stage, according to Andrew Mayersohn, a researcher for the center.

➤ Before Alarm Clocks, There Were ‘Knocker-Uppers’:

Imagine life without alarm clocks. Workdays would start at noon, breakfast would be brunch, and no one would make it to class before the first bell. From the early 1800s through the 1960s, factory workers didn’t have much of a choice. To get to work on time, they relied on “knocker-uppers,” aka, human alarm clocks. Using long bamboo sticks, or peashooters, Britain’s knocker-uppers would stroll down the streets rapping at windows to help their patrons kick-start their days.