File under Gravity Makes Things Fall Down:

Stating the obvious, federal judge ruled this week that former AG Bill Barr misled her, Congress, and the American people about the Mueller report, using an internal DOJ memo as the excuse to not charge Trump with obstruction of justice in the investigation.  Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the DC Circuit ordered the DOJ to release the memo saying that it was more of a strategy memorandum and not a legal opinion protected by attorney client privilege.

I would say there’s a good chance that Barr’s going to get his for letting Trump off the hook, lying in public, and then politicizing the DOJ to protect Trump and punish his enemies (and career staff).  This is long overdue, and I’ll be popping popcorn for this show.

Many of the stormtroopers that cleared Lafayette park the other evening to make a path for Trump to do his photo op in front of St. John’s Church were wearing tactical gear, but no badges, ID plates or insignia.  The press immediately noticed and began investigating.  The Washington Post got to the bottom of it this week – they’re from the federal Bureau of Prisons, called up personally by Bill Barr.  The BOP confirmed this shocking news and lied that they weren’t wearing BOP insignia or identification because they were being used “in a broader mission.”  NO, they wore no insignia to make it harder to figure out who to hold accountable for police violence.

Adding to his mountain of lies, Bill Barr actually denied ordering the BOP officers and others to clear Lafayette Park to give Trump a clear lane to carry out his stunt for the photo op. He said that park police were already clearing the park when he arrived. That assertion doesn’t pass the straight faced test, and that wasn’t the question.  The question is, did he give the order to clear the park so Trump could safely strut over to the church?  Of course he did, and while they were at it, cordoned off the park with heavy security fencing to permanently distance the White House from Americans Trump is hiding from.  And he did all that with his employees from his prisons in unmarked uniforms to conceal their identities.  This is the exact same tactic that Putin used when he deployed “little green men” into Ukraine in 2014 in his attempt to take over that country and Crimea.  The Russian government later admitted that those soldiers were indeed Russian military.

Welcome to the new normal of Trump’s America.

Federal judge Reggie Walton (appointed to the bench by GWB) issued a scathing opinion today about Bill Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, calling into question his “candor” and “credibility”.  He has ordered that the DOJ release the unreacted report so he he can judge for himself if Barr essentially lied to the public to protect Trump and bury the report.  A few meaty tidbits:

“The Court has grave concerns about the objectivity of the process that preceded the public release of the redacted version of the Mueller Report and its impacts on the Department’s subsequent justifications that its redactions of the Mueller Report are authorized by the FOIA.”

“…a review of the redacted version of the Mueller Report by the Court results in the Court’s concurrence with Special Counsel Mueller’s assessment that Attorney General Barr distorted the findings in the Mueller Report.”

And the crowning blow:

“The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller Report, causes the Court to question whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller Report—a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller Report.”

Like all stories about corrupt officials, the truth of this particular corruption will come out.  This opinion by this Republican appointed judge is just the first step in dismantling the veil of lies constructed by Trump, his minions, and his corrupt attorney general.

It’s just a matter of time.

In an interview with ABC News today, Bill Barr said Trump’s tweets are making it “impossible to do my job,” and that he won’t be bullied into doing anything.  He also said, “I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” and that he’s prepared for any consequences of crossing Trump.  He continued saying he can’t do his job with a continuous background of commentary from Trump on criminal cases.

It’s a rare split from His Orangeness; Barr’s sudden reversal is just one sign of the chaos at DOJ and the FBI that Trump has created.  A mutiny is certainly underway and Barr had to step in.

A little ray of sunshine in the dark abyss of Trump corruption.

Oh, and a message to Ted Cruz and John Cornyn…This is all on you.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Last year, Barr’s DOJ granted over $1 million to Hookers for Jesus and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation while denying established organizations Catholic Charities of Miami and Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix. Why?  Hookers for Jesus was founded by a conservative christian and anti-gay activist, Annie Lobert.  She is a former prostitute who supposedly ministers to sex workers in Las Vegas.  Oh, and she’s anti-gay.  The Lincoln Tubman Foundation was started in 2018 by the daughter of a Trumpist who was actually a Trump delegate at the 2016 Republican convention.

Why were the more established charities denied?  Both organizations are active with Democrats and oppose cruel Trump immigration policy.  So Trump has even corrupted US charitable grants, damaging those who oppose him and helping friends.  He doesn’t care what it looks like.

As if that meant anything.

The Mueller Report just hit the public and MSNBC is frantically going through it.  While doing that, one thing has become crystal clear, and that is Bill Barr, the AG of the US, is a goddam liar.  AND, he’s a goddam liar on national television.  As they read Mueller’s words, it’s clear there was a LOT of evidence of collusion with Russians and obstruction of justice.  During his remarks this morning, I noticed that while lying, Barr was very careful to talk about collusion with the Russian GOVERNMENT, not Russians themselves.  This will only get uglier as the day wears on.