Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a four-in-ten chance of afternoon thunderstorms, and a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:15 AM and sunset 8:35 PM, for 15h 19m 56s. The moon is a waning gibbous with 60% of its visible disk illuminated. Today is the {tooltip}two hundred twentieth day.{end-texte}Days since Trump’s election, with 11.9.16 as the first day.{end-tooltip}
On this day in 1911, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, the predecessor company to IBM, incorporates in New York. (IBM’s Watson technology is named after Thomas J. Watson Sr., president of the company, and successor IBM, from 1915-1956.) On this day in 1832, Henry Dodge and twenty-nine soldiers engage the Kickapoo in the Battle of Pecatonica.
Recommended for reading in full —
Haley Hansen reports that Body cam video shows 1.69 seconds between shots in Sherman Park [Milwaukee] police shooting:
Body camera footage exhibited in court Thursday shows former Milwaukee police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown sitting in a squad car after he fatally shot Sylville Smith last August.
“It happened so quick,” he said, snapping his fingers.
During the eight minutes the body camera is running, Heaggan-Brown never asked about Smith’s condition.
According to court testimony from Thursday, 1.69 seconds separated Heaggan-Brown’s first shot that hit Smith in the arm and his second shot that hit the 23-year-old in the chest.
Heaggan-Brown, 25, is on trial on a charge of first-degree reckless homicide in the August 2016 incident that sparked two days of violent unrest in parts of the Sherman Park neighborhood.
Heaggan-Brown was fired from the Milwaukee Police Department in October after he was charged in an unrelated sexual assault.
Sari Horwitz, Matt Zapotosky and Adam Entous report that Special counsel is investigating Jared Kushner’s business dealings:
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is investigating the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, as part of the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
FBI agents and federal prosecutors have also been examining the financial dealings of other Trump associates, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Carter Page, who was listed as a foreign-policy adviser for the campaign.
The Washington Post previously reported that investigators were scrutinizing meetings that Kushner held with Russians in December — first with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, and then with Sergey Gorkov, the head of a state-owned Russian development bank. At the time of that report, it was not clear that the FBI was investigating Kushner’s business dealings.
Jonathan Chait writes that Trump’s Cover-up May Be Worse Than the Crime, But the Crime Seems Pretty Bad:
Trump’s defense has begun to emphasize the unfairness of the process. “They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story,” tweeted the president. The supposed lack of evidence for any underlying crime for Trump to obstruct has become an article of faith on the right. Andrew McCarthy’s column in the Journal of American Greatness, large portions of which are italicized for emphasis, sarcastically notes, “All that was lacking was—wait for it—actual evidence of collusion.”
What, you might wonder, would count as evidence of Trump colluding with Russian election interference? How about one of his campaign advisers having advance knowledge of the Russian hacking operation? Because that exists. If that’s not enough to count as evidence, what if I told you Donald Trump asked Russia to hack his opponent’s email system and publicize the results in order to help Trump, and it was on video? Because that exists, too.
So the evidence for collusion in the email hacking lies right out in the open — just like evidence that Trump fired James Comey to obstruct the Russia investigation, which the president confessed to in an NBC News interview. (Sometimes it seems like this investigation doesn’t even need a special counsel, just a video-montage editor.) But the collusion is almost surely not limited to the planning of the email hack. It seems to run much deeper, into a web of financial ties between Vladimir Putin’s regime and Trump and his closest advisers.
Sarah Kendzior writes that Trump is reportedly under investigation. Does that signal his end? Not so fast:
On Donald Trump’s 71st birthday on Wednesday, he received a special gift: a news report that he was under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller for possible obstruction of justice. The Washington Post reports that after a year of FBI inquiry into whether Mr. Trump’s associates co-ordinated with the Kremlin, Mr. Trump himself was now the subject of a special council probe for possibly obstructing the investigation by firing FBI director James Comey in May….
But does this mean Mr. Trump’s reign is reaching its end? Not so fast. It is possible that the President will fire Mr. Mueller, much as he fired Mr. Comey, even though this will be perceived as further admission of guilt and possibly open up yet another obstruction of justice investigation.
Pundits who speculate that the optics of this decision will hold Mr. Trump back are still mired in the presumption that the President respects democratic norms and rule of law, which he does not. The optics Mr. Trump favours are those of an autocrat: blatant demonstrations of power that proclaim, “We know that you know what we did, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
In other words, Mr. Trump does not care if firing Mr. Mueller makes him look guilty, as long as he continues to get away with his crimes. Last week, Attorney-General Jeff Sessions made it clear he will protect Mr. Trump at any cost, claiming blanket ignorance of the Russian interference case (in which he’s implicated to the point of recusal) and reducing Mr. Comey’s firing to the need for “a fresh start.” One can easily envision Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions deciding that Mr. Mueller needs a fresh start as well.
In Los Angeles, the city displayed a bat signal in honor of the late Adam West. Clever, kind:
The bat-signal lights up Los Angeles in honor of Adam West pic.twitter.com/yak6HyJEgr
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 16, 2017