RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/recession-false-alarm-11554506440

Friday’s solid labor report ought to ease fears that the U.S. economy is skidding toward recession. Employers added a healthy 196,000 jobs in March while unemployment held at 3.8%, confirming that the labor market continues to expand following a freeze in February and should continue despite economic problems abroad.

Job growth has averaged 180,000 for the last three months, which is down from 223,000 in 2018, but still strong for an economic expansion that’s going on a decade. Average hourly earnings climbed 3.2% in March and have moderated over the past few months, which suggests rising wages are unlikely to push up prices and fuel wage-push inflation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/david-malpass-world-bank.html?action

David Malpass, President Trump’s pick to be president of the World Bank and a longtime critic of the influence wielded by the bank and other multilateral institutions, was unanimously approved by its executive board on Friday.

Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Malpass, the Treasury under secretary for international affairs, in February. He will begin his five-year term on Tuesday, the executive directors said in a statement. He succeeds Jim Yong Kim, who stepped down abruptly in January to join an investment firm.

In a note to World Bank employees on Friday, Mr. Malpass, 63, said the organization was capable of “measurable successes” like raising median incomes, improving debt transparency and increasing private-sector development. He urged the bank’s staff to “work tirelessly” toward “a stronger, more stable global economy for all.”

The mission of the bank, which was created in 1944 and is collectively owned by nearly 200 countries, includes reducing global poverty, providing financial aid to needy countries and fighting the effects of climate change. Last year, it provided $20.5 billion for projects involving renewable energy, agriculture and emissions management.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-report-attorney-general-grand-jury-information/

Democrats will complain, but the attorney general can’t be faulted for following the law.

In disclosing the Mueller report, Attorney General William P. Barr will have to redact grand-jury information. That is the upshot of the ruling today by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

I flagged this case, now called McKeever v. Barr (formerly McKeever v. Sessions), last week. It did not arise out of the Mueller investigation, but it obviously has significant ramifications for the Mueller report — in particular, how much of it we will get to see.

At issue was this question: Does a federal court have the authority to order disclosure of grand-jury materials if the judge decides that the interests of justice warrant doing so; or is the judge limited to the exceptions to grand-jury secrecy that are spelled out in Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure? The D.C. Circuit’s McKeever ruling holds that the text of Rule 6(e) controls. Consequently, judges have no authority to authorize disclosure outside the rule.

This is significant for the Mueller report because Rule 6(e) does not contain an exception to secrecy that would permit disclosure to Congress.

The case involves a writer, Stuart McKeever, who was researching a book on the disappearance of Columbia University professor Jesús de Galíndez Suárez in 1956. It was suspected that Galíndez, a very public critic of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, was kidnapped and flown to the D.R., where he was murdered. In the course of a federal investigation, suspicion fell on John Joseph Frank, a former FBI agent and CIA lawyer, who later worked for Trujillo. Frank was eventually prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent but never charged with any involvement in Galíndez’s murder.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/04/dear-citizen-collusion-truther-you-own-this-too/

Hey, what’s up . . . wait, where are you going?

Why the dark glasses? Did you dye your hair? What’s with all the deleted tweets and Facebook posts lately?

Oh, I get it. Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Ruskies to throw the 2016 election, you want to move on. Act like it never happened. Or at least pretend that you weren’t part of the whole damn hoax from the start.

But . . . not so fast.

It wasn’t just the entire American media infrastructure—every broadcast network, cable news outlet, opinion page, political website, blue-checked social media account, washed-up D.C. pundit, unhinged MSNBC host, irrelevant Bush hanger-on, complicit Obama lackey, and Clinton bitter clinger who fell for the Trump-Russia collusion fairy tale. It wasn’t just every Democratic lawmaker and candidate—and a good chunk of the establishment Republican elite—who peddled a bogus story for two years. It wasn’t just every Hollywood actress, producer, legend, fluffer, has-been and late night host who caterwauled for months about Trump’s treachery.

You did it, too, my fellow citizen.

For two years, you helped do the dirty work of the vanquished Hillary Clinton campaign and the sore-loser Democratic Party. You reposted memes on your Facebook and Instagram pages that depicted Donald Trump as a Putin puppet, even suggesting tongue-in-cheek (in a way that you’d call homophobic if the other side did it) that Trump was Putin’s gay lover. You warned your neighbors that Trump’s son was a traitor. You insisted to your co-workers that, yes, Trump’s campaign team was populated by Russian agents and that the president’s attorney general, his secretary of state, his education secretary, his national security advisor, his son-in-law—among others—were Kremlin plants in the new administration.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mueller-coverup-gambit-11554420235
The only surprising thing about the new “coverup” accusation against Attorney General William Barr is that it took it two weeks to get there. The question is whether Republicans fall for this naked effort to revive the collusion-and-obstruction narrative.

Democrats and the media are still smarting over special counsel Robert Mueller’s no-collusion findings, but their “coverup” fallback has its advantages. They can claim Mr. Barr’s four-page summary of the report is a sham, that he’s hiding the real truth. That’s nonsense, but it allows them to continue stoking Trump-Russia collusion fantasies.

It also aids the Democrats in their larger goal: getting their hands on a fully unredacted report, along with its underlying documentation, before the public can see it. That way, they could plumb the voluminous documentation for more wild allegations and personal smears—and leak away.

The “coverup” claim is only one of the levers Democrats are pulling, aided by friendly scribes at the New York Times and Washington Post, who published stories Thursday claiming anonymous members of the Mueller team are dissatisfied with the Barr summary. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday also authorized subpoenas for an unredacted report and documents. And Democrats everywhere are accusing Republicans of hypocrisy. How dare Republicans spend two years demanding documents from the Justice Department about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s behavior in 2016, but now accept a redacted report?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-defends-barrs-summary-of-mueller-report-from-critics/

The Justice Department on Thursday defended Attorney General William Barr’s short outline of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, hours after the New York Times reported that some members of Mueller’s team were concerned Barr had downplayed the results of the investigation to make it seem more favorable to President Trump.“Given the extraordinary public interest in the matter, the Attorney General decided to release the report’s bottom-line findings and his conclusions immediately – without attempting to summarize the report – with the understanding that the report itself would be released after the redactions process,” read a statement from DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec. “The Department continues to work with the Special Counsel on appropriate redactions to the report so that it can be released to Congress and the public.”Barr’s four-page outline of the report’s conclusions stated that Mueller had found no collusion between the Trump team and the Kremlin but left open the question of whether the president had obstructed justice during the investigation. It also made clear that Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had concluded there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trolling-the-mueller-report-11554333841

Democrats are still reeling from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s conclusion that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russians in 2016. But they’ve now hit upon a political comeback strategy: Accuse Attorney General William Barr of a coverup.

That’s the context for Wednesday’s decision by House Democrats to authorize subpoenas, on a partisan vote, demanding that Mr. Barr immediately hand over the entire Mueller report and its supporting evidence. This is intended to give the impression, abetted by a press corps that was fully invested in the collusion story, that Mr. Barr is somehow lying about Mr. Mueller’s real conclusions.

That’s preposterous, since Mr. Barr’s four-page letter quotes directly from Mr. Mueller’s report. The AG surely understood on releasing the summary of conclusions last week that he would be open to contradiction by Mr. Mueller if he took such liberties. Mr. Barr also knew he’d be called to testify before Congress once the rest of the report is released.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14005/mueller-report-waiting

We can reasonably expect that those investigators who favored accusing the President with obstruction will lay out their case against Trump. This raises the legal and ethical question of whether it is proper for prosecutors publicly to disclose the evidence and arguments against the subject of a criminal investigation who is not being charged.

The law cannot be ignored. The law requires the Attorney General not to disclose grand jury evidence without a court order. It also requires the non-disclosure of privileged material, including executive privilege, and of legitimately classified material. The public, and even Congress, will therefore have to wait until the Attorney General completes his legal review. The courts should not shortcut that review by enforcing subpoenas from partisan Congressional committees.

Remember that the report, however redacted, will be a one-sided document, based on uncrossexamined witnesses selected by prosecutors. No witnesses favorable to the subjects of the investigation will have testified before the grand jury. An investigation by a special counsel is not a search for objective truth. It is a search for incriminating evidence sufficient to charge.

The waiting game is on as politicians and pundits try to read the tea leaves regarding the soon-to-be-released Mueller Report. We know the major conclusions: no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia; and no charges of obstruction by President Trump, based on a division of opinion among the investigators and a decision by the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General. What we do not know is how critical the report will be, especially with regard to obstruction. We can reasonably expect that those investigators who favored accusing the President with obstruction will lay out their case against Trump. This raises the legal and ethical question of whether it is proper for prosecutors publicly to disclose the evidence and arguments against the subject of a criminal investigation who is not being charged.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-democrats-request-trump-tax-returns/
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal formally requested President Trump’s personal and business tax returns on Wednesday, setting up what will likely become a protracted and high-profile legal battle between the administration and Congressional Democrats.

In a letter sent to the IRS, Neal requested Trump’s personal income taxes from 2013 to 2018, as well as the tax returns associated with eight of his business entities, and cited his oversight role to justify the request.

“Under the Internal Revenue Manual, individual income tax returns of a President are subject to mandatory examination, but this practice is IRS policy and not codified in the Federal tax laws,” Neal wrote in the letter, which was first obtained by CNN. “It is necessary for the committee to determine the scope of any such examination and whether it includes a review of underlying business activities required to be reported on the individual income tax return.”