I'm off to the jail in the mountains and won't be back until after dinner. It's a beautiful day for the drive though.

In the news, Argentina has charged Pablo Escobar's widow and son with money laundering. I tried to read the 57 page order in Spanish, but all I got was the investigation was started due to information received from our holy global warriors, the DEA, in conjunction with Colombia, who passed it on to Argentina. At first there wasn't enough evidence to charge them, but the court now believes there is. They will both remain free pending the outcome.

The charges seem to be that they invested money with a drug trafficker in Colombia named José Bayron Piedrahita Ceballos, who worked with the "Office of Evigago" and Cali Cartel who also managed investments in Colombia and Argentina. He was arrested last year and is awaiting extradition to the U.S. on bribery and obstruction of justice charges in the Southern District of Florida. The Indictment is here. (He allegedly bribed an ICE agent.) [More...]

Donald Trump has commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who came to his attention through Kim Kardashian, who learned of Johnson on Twitter.

As Kevin Drum writes at Mother Jones, while Johnson should have her sentence commuted, Trump is not due any praise for this.

Just in case anyone is tempted to praise Trump for this, please don’t. Sure, Johnson deserved to have her sentence commuted in some way, and I’m happy for her personally. But Trump has turned the pardon power into a cynical PR tool and this is just more of the same. The pardon power isn’t meant to be a lottery played out at the whim of a man-child in the White House who’s discovered a shiny new toy.

[More...]

Mexico has carried through with its threat to impose tariffs on some items the U.S. exports to Mexico.

With its presidential election 26 days away, Mexico’s government imposed a 20 percent tariff on U.S. pork, apples and potatoes and 20 to 25 percent tariffs on cheese and bourbon. Mexico tailored the list of retaliatory duties to hit states governed by senior Republicans, such as the bourbon produced in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

Donald Trump: The art of the deal, he is not. Not only is Mexico not paying for his wall, now U.S. manufacturers of these goods will suffer. According to Quartz, Trump's steel tariffs will cost Americans 400,000 jobs.

Here is an NPR article from 2015, How NAFTA changed American (and Mexican) Food Forever, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's May 31, 2018 quarterly report, Outlook for U.S. Agricultural Trade.

Donald Trump today blamed Jeff Sessions (yet again) for the Russia "witch hunt, writing on his Twitter account:

The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself...I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined...and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!

Trump is becoming predictable in his attempts to steer the headlines away from the alleged ongoing malfeasance of so many people connected to him. Paul Manafort is now accused of witness tampering while on bail for which the government is seeking to modify or revoke his release order. A hearing will be held next week. [More...]

We haven't had an open thread in a while. Here's a new one, all topics welcome.

The Trump and Giuliani show continues. Donald Trump today said he absolutely has the right to pardon himself, but he has no reason to do so because he has done nothing wrong.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)responded on Twitter, disagreeing and citing an Office of Legal Counsel memo written four days before Nixon resigned. He quotes from the memo:

“Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself,”

His tweet continues:

I know you have attention span problems, but it’s the first sentence: [Memo link]

The memo further explains:[More...]

In a 7 to 2 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the baker who refused to take an order for a gay wedding cake. From the opinion, available here.

....religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression.

The Court's ruling seems to be a limited one, turning on the Court's finding the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was prejudiced against the baker. [More...]

Donald Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza. The New York Times editorial board asks, Really? (I asked, who? I've never heard of him.) The Times explains:

On Thursday, Mr. Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing troll known for, among other things, posting racist tweets about President Barack Obama, spreading the lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator and writing that “the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”

Today Trump said Martha Stewart and Rod Blagojevich may be next. Yesterday, he took a celebrity photo at the White House with Kim Kardashian who was there to advise him on "prison reform". She learned of a single case of a 91 year old serving a long drug sentence via Twitter of all places, and now she's invited to the White House to opine? Does she really believe that Donald Trump, who is so anti-offender than he fired her sister Khloe Kardashian from the Apprentice because of a DUI (watch the video) gives a sh*t about any offender who isn't related to him? I certainly don't. [More...]

Subtropical storm Alberto made landfall this afternoon in Laguna Beach, Florida near Panama City. It's moving north, up through the Florida Panhandle. I hope everyone stays safe. Two TV news persons died when a tree fell on their car.

On Donald Trump and Memorial Day, from David Frum in the NY Times:

It’s not news that there is something missing from Trump where normal human feelings should go. His devouring need for admiration from others is joined to an extreme, even pathological, inability to return any care or concern for those others. But Trump’s version of this disconnect comes most especially to the fore at times of national ritual. Donald Trump cares enormously about national symbols—the flag, the anthem—when he can use them to belittle, humiliate, and exclude.

[More...]

So Harvey Weinstein is the new Most Hated Man in America. Turning that image around so that he's viewed as an old school casting couch director who only showed his junk to those who were willing to trade their bodies for camera time and film roles, and who never forced anyone to do anything is going to be a tough sell. The imagery doesn't work in his favor. He's gigantic and the accusing actresses and models probably all weighed 110 pounds or less.

What does work in his favor is the law. While the grand jury may add additional charges, as of now he's charged with forcibly making one woman engage in oral or a*nal s*x with him in 2004, and forcing another woman to have sex with him at (presumably) her hotel in March, 2013. I assume she was a company employee as Harvey Weinstein would never stay at a Doubletree in New York. (He was a Peninsula kind of guy.) [More...]

"First Step" Act, my foot. If this bill passes, it will be the last time federal criminal justice reform is given a thought by Trump. There will be no sentencing reform and no "second step." From the Atlantic:

“The bill is a tempting half-measure, but lawmakers should resist the lure,” Holder wrote in a Monday op-ed for The Washington Post, warning that passing a narrow bill now would “derail momentum” for the broader set of changes Democrats and a coalition of Republicans have sought for years.

More than 100 civil rights organizations have written a letter opposing the bill. The federal prison workers union opposes the bill.

Here is the letter by Senator Durbin, Senator Harris, Senator Booker, Representative Jackson Lee, and Representative Lewis explaining why they oppose the bill. [More...]

Jared Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer yesterday afternoon. I listened on the car radio. The full interview is here, and I highly recommend watching the whole thing. CNN's abbreviated and edited version is here.

Abbe is a terrific lawyer and I believe he is a straight-shooter. As to the interview, he was so articulate and confident, it was like he was interviewing himself. He took the reins right away -- Wolf seemed somewhat flummoxed at the beginning. In this short clip from the interview, Abbe castigates Wolf (and the media) for using prosecutor words like witness, subject and target, which appear in the U.S. Attorneys' manual but don't have a legal meaning of their own.

Before listening to the interview, on hearing the news that Jared Kushner was interviewed again by Mueller for 7 hours in April and that he just got his security clearance restored I was thinking that his interview in April was a proffer session, that he passed the Special Counsel's test for telling "the truth", and that not only did he get immunity from prosecution but that Mueller's team agreed to inform the intelligence division that in the Special Counsel's view, Jared is not a security threat, has cleared up all his filing lapses and is cleared of any wrongdoing.

But according to Abbe, that's not the case. As to the security clearance, he said it was totally separate, proceeded through regular channels and there was no politics involved. [More..]