Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of seventy-eight. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:29 PM, for 15h 11m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 71% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, the Chinese communist government commits the Tiananmen Square massacre:
Declassified files
In British government files declassified and made public in December 2017, it was revealed that Alan Ewen Donald, who served as the UK’s ambassador to China from 1988 to 1991, had reported in 1989 that a member of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China had estimated the civilian death toll at 10,000.[2][160][161]Other estimates
Other estimates of the death toll have been higher than the figures announced by the government. Nicholas D. Kristof, then Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, wrote on June 21 that “it seems plausible that about a dozen soldiers and policemen were killed, along with 400 to 800 civilians.”[4] US ambassador James Lilley said that, based on visits to hospitals around Beijing, a minimum of several hundred had been killed.[162] In a 1990 article addressing the question, Time magazine said that the Chinese Red Cross had given a figure of 2,600 deaths on the morning of June 4, though later this figure was retracted.[163] A declassified US National Security Agency cable filed on the same day estimated 180–500 deaths up to the morning of June 4.[164] Amnesty International’s estimates puts the number of deaths at between several hundred and close to 1,000,[163][165] while a Western diplomat who compiled estimates put the number at 300 to 1,000.[4]
Recommended for reading in full —
Trump declares himself a king:
As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2018
(Those ‘numerous scholars’ are merely Trump’s monarchical ambitions.)
Tamar Auber reports Rudy Giuliani: Even if He ‘Shot James Comey’ Trump Still Couldn’t Be Indicted:
President Donald Trump‘s personal lawyer made the bold claim that even if the president committed murder he still could not be indicted for his crime.
The comment was made in an interview to the Huffington Post on Sunday in which Giuliani argued that Trump’s constitutional powers were so broad he could do anything he wanted and still evade an indictment.
“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Giuliani told HuffPost.“I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”
…
Former White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen, however, told HuffPothat despite Trump’s campaign brags and his lawyer’s misguided claims, “A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?…It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”
He added, “The foundation of America is that no person is above the law.”
Anticipating Trump’s undemocratic ambitions, Harry Littman yesterday wrote President Trump Thinks He Is a King:
The president believes he is above the law. That’s the takeaway from the confidential 20-page memo sent by President Trump’s lawyers to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, published over the weekend by The Times. And it’s the same sentiment that Rudy Giuliani expressed on Sunday when he suggested that Mr. Trump has the power to pardon himself.
The central claim of the legal memorandum is that it is impossible for the president to illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling. That’s because, as president, Mr. Trump has the constitutional power to terminate the inquiry or pardon his way out of it. Therefore — and this is the key and indefensible point — he cannot obstruct justice by exercising this authority “no matter his motivation.”
This understanding of presidential power is radical and absolutist. It is also unsound and almost certain to be sharply rejected should it ever be proffered in court.
Even granting the contention that Mr. Trump could simply terminate the investigation, it is a non sequitur to argue, as the president’s lawyers do, that as a consequence he cannot obstruct it. Imagine, for example, that the worst version of facts proves true: that Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, tried to fire Mr. Mueller, constructed a false account of the June 2016 Russia meeting, and tried to force Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision that was driven by Justice Department policy, all to protect his own skin and his family’s fortune.
If this were the case, the elements of obstruction — in brief, the interference or attempted interference with an official proceeding, such as a grand jury investigation — would be plainly met. Most important, the president would have acted with corrupt intent as it is well understood under the law.
Jennifer Rubin observes Word salads, contradictions and hints of authoritarian delusion:
A pack of constitutional experts savaged the argument that Trump could never be prosecuted for obstruction. Daniel Hemel writes:
The Declaration of Independence charged King George III with “obstruct[ing] the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to the laws for establishing judiciary powers.” That alone is evidence that the founding generation did not believe that heads of state were immune from obstruction charges. And while Article II instructs the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” that does not give him carte blanche to wield his law enforcement powers any way he chooses.
Trump is not the first sitting president to face accusations of obstruction of justice. During the Watergate scandal, the first article of impeachment approved by the House Judiciary Committee charged Richard Nixon with obstructing justice by endeavoring to influence an FBI investigation into the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. That article passed the committee by a 27-11 vote, with six Republicans joining all the committee’s Democrats in the majority. . . . a president commits criminal obstruction only when he abuses his power over law enforcement for personal, pecuniary, or purely partisan ends. But Dowd’s claim that the obstruction statutes never apply to the president is without merit.
Laurence Tribe likewise tweeted: “Trump’s lawyers’ sweepingly Nixonian claim of unbounded presidential power is inconsistent with the core American principle that no-one is above the law. It would mean that even pardoning someone in return for a bribe is just fine. That’s simply wrong.”
And last December, Lawfare blog’s Ben Wittes explained:
That is, as long as the President is operating plausibly within the boundaries of the Take Care Clause, which requires that he “Take Care that the laws be faithfully executed,” and within the parameters of his oath to “faithfully execute” the duties of President, he probably cannot be said to act with the requisite criminal intent to violate the obstruction statutes with an otherwise lawful act of managing the Executive Branch. But I do think it’s at least theoretically possible for the President to issue orders to the Executive Branch that are so outside of the bounds of those clauses that a reasonable jury could lawfully regard him as acting with the requisite mens rea for conviction under one or more of the statutes.
One of those instances would be falsifying explanations for a meeting involving his son and son-in-law, a meeting that concerned cooperation between Russian operatives and the president’s campaign.
Here are Seven Stories That’ll Leave You Craving Japanese Food: