Because an Innocent Man Would Totally Act Like This

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Those of us with a keen sense of American political history remember well the infamous cartoons of German artist Thomas Nast, the one man most credited with pushing in motion the ball that would eventually roll over Tammany Hall's Boss Tweed in 1871. Nast never wearied of drawing cartoons of Tweed and his equally corrupt buddies feeding at the public trough including one famous cartoon depicting Tweed with a money bag for a head.

     The current "presidential administration" that's actually a global crime wave punctuated liberally with rounds of golf held at country clubs that bear the "president's" name on them is like a Thomas Nast cartoon come to life. And, really, the closest he's come to proving his innocence is to resort to tried-and-untrue psychological tricks such as normalizing criminal behavior and making himself look like the victim just for being called on his crimes.

      To be sure, the "president" has more than his fair share of biased right wing defenders. And if one of them could be considered even more unhinged than Rudy Giuliani, that dubious distinction would have to go to Joe DiGenova, who actually called the Democrats' impeachment proceedings "regicide." Yes, regicide. The killing of a King. For good measure, he also called whistleblowers "suicide bombers." You know, minus the actual suicide, deaths, maimings. And a bomb.

     This is an attitude and a cue that DiGenova had obviously gotten from a man who recently trumpeted his "great and unmatched wisdom" after making the decision to stab our Kurdish allies in the back after Erdogan had already decided on a military strike to dislodge them in northeastern Syria and announced in a belligerent phone call to Trump last Sunday night. And if there's any doubt that Trump thinks he's a king who's above the law that should only apply to sons of his political rivals, consider that the DOJ told a federal judge yesterday that her predecessors had wrongly given Democrats a road map to impeach Nixon 45 years ago.

       Yes, they're actually relitigating Watergate and upholding Nixon's failed claim that the president is above the law. At the same time this clown show was going on, in another of Trump's Three Ring Circus was his own White House attorneys' letter to Nancy Pelosi announcing they would not be cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry. Charles Pierce nailed it when he said it read like "a MAGA rally in a toga." It was so ridiculous and laden with conspiracy theories that even Marco Rubio's former legal counsel called it "bananas" on Twitter. Mr. Kellyanne Conway called the letter "an impeachable offense" in itself.      

        Well, actually, that's not entirely true. The White House will cooperate with the impeachment investigation, provided there's no longer any impeachment investigation.

       So, there you have it, folks- The actions of an innocent man who just happens to deploy gaggles of lawyers to argue for the Nixonian Unitary Executive, announce he wouldn't cooperate in an investigation until the investigation ends and block witnesses like EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland from testifying.
         Ironically, in his sole public appearance today, Trump signed an executive order mandating, get this, "transparency in government."

Where There's a Smokescreen, There's Fire

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Donald Trump's flop sweat show, Lara Jakes of the NY Times reported this morning that Brad Freden, the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary overseeing issues in Europe and Eurasia Eastasia Eurasia sent out an email to top diplomats explaining why $141,000,000 in Ukraine military aid was being held up ("a normal review") and to "Keep moving, people, nothing to see here.” Don't believe me? That's actually the final line of the email. The letter is dated September 12, the day the funds were abruptly, if belatedly, released.
      So far, all this obfuscation, deflection and conspiracy-theorizing promises nothing but to fold more charges into the rapidly-forming articles of impeachment and create more subpoenas from House Democrats. Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) is so fed up with Trump's stonewalling, he's advocating putting Bill Barr in the jails that are actually beneath the Capitol Building.
       And why shouldn't the powers of the Sergeant at Arms finally be invoked? Why shouldn't our Congress invoke inherent contempt that, if ignored, would invoke the Sergeant at Arms to begin making arrests? The White House's refusal to cooperate with the House's impeachment inquiries cuts to the very heart of the Separation of Powers detailed in the US Constitution. The House retains the full use of subpoena powers and the White House has no protection or relief from that any more than did the Clinton White House during the GOP's sick silly abuse of the power of impeachment. There is no negotiation. The Blue House orders, the White one complies.
      Thus far this White House and various underlings have blocked the House from seeing these things:

The uncensored Mueller Report.

The uncensored transcript of the July 25th call. 

Trump's tax returns

The depositions and testimonies of several key officials, the latest being Gordon Sondland.

       This sorry excuse for an administration went to extraordinary lengths to hide that transcript of Trump's "perfect call" to Zelensky, immediately hiding it in a secure place reserved only for top secret information. He's gone to extraordinary lengths to become the first "president" in modern history to refuse to release his tax returns.

         Lastly, there's his own public behavior at his rallies, state events and Twitter in which he openly sneered and whined that he's the victim of a Deep State Democrat witch hunt, Ukraine conspired with the Clintons to throw the 2016 election, that Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are subjecting him to a "kangaroo court". It's a neverending smoke screen.

        And anyone with two neurons to rub together knows, where there's a smokescreen, there's fire. And this so-called administration is nothing but a live action Thomas Nast cartoon, complete with balding, bloated waddling villains, furtively looking over their shoulders.