RUTHFULLY YOURS

Before turning to the controversies inspired by the Public Theater’s new production of Shakespeare’s “ Julius Caesar ” at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, consider what makes the title character such a tyrant. The evidence is strangely scant. We hear from Brutus that he was ambitious. He valued theatrical display as a political tool. And while boasting of being as constant as the Northern Star, he inconsistently gave into whim and superstition.

Be that as it may, fearsome tyrant he is taken to be. But in this production, the real tyrant is not Caesar, but its director, Oskar Eustis. He more clearly comes across as ambitious, inconsistent, with little regard for limits, manipulating his audience by playing to popular taste. Perhaps, given such directorial tyranny, I might follow the example of the play’s conspirators, justly take dagger in hand, and add a bloody gouge to his self-inflicted wounds.
If that idea seems rather tasteless, is it any more so than Gregg Henry, as Caesar, impersonating not a Roman tyrant but President Donald Trump ? Or Tina Benko, as Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia, appearing as a slinky model with a Slavic accent meant to suggest Melania Trump (though Ms. Benko sounds more like a Transylvanian Israeli)?

Maybe every director is entitled to some political posturing, particularly with Shakespeare who, like Bach, can take a lot of interpretive abuse before he becomes something else. But Mr. Eustis’s territorial claims are imperial. In the program notes, he boasts: “I can say without embarrassment that I decided to open our summer season with Julius Caesar as of November 9, 2016.” In other words, he saw Trump as Caesar the day after Election Day, he thinks that point of view is self-evident, and he still sees the analogy.

Let’s say he’s correct. So when Caesar emerges from a bathtub in this production, stark naked and displaying himself for conspirators and audience alike, no doubt we are meant to think of Trumpian narcissism. What then are we to think of when this erstwhile president is lying in a puddle of blood in the Roman Senate?

Ay, there’s the rub. It is not surprising that Delta Air Lines and Bank of America announced they were pulling out of sponsorship of the production.

But, given Mr. Eustis’s political perspective, such corporate opposition must be like the coronet Caesar covets. It is an honor, which increases because he finds it so wrong-headed. He has said the play is really a “warning parable” about the dangers of fighting for democracy using undemocratic means. Brutus and Cassius come to no good. The play opposes assassination; it does not glorify it.

University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier visited North Korea over New Year’s in 2015 as a tourist, and on Tuesday the 22-year-old returned home to the U.S.—in a coma.

Mr. Warmbier traveled to North Korea for a five-day tourist trip, despite State Department warnings and the North’s long record of taking Americans hostage. As he was preparing to leave with his fellow travelers in January 2016, he was detained and accused of stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel. The next month he gave a tearful public confession, and that March he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for a “hostile act” against the state.

Mr. Warmbier’s parents told the Associated Press Tuesday that they recently learned their son has been in a coma since March 2016, or shortly after his show trial. They say North Koreans told U.S. authorities that their son contracted botulism and never awoke after he was given a sleeping pill. “We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime,” Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in their statement.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declined to comment on Mr. Warmbier’s condition “out of respect for the privacy” of the family. But a U.S. official told the New York Times that the U.S. had recently obtained intelligence indicating the young man had been repeatedly beaten in custody. A United Nations commission documented in 2014 that “the use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process” in North Korea.

Otto Warmbier’s fate underscores the grotesque nature of former basketball player Dennis Rodman’s latest visit this week with his pal Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. Kim still holds three other American hostages, and any American who visits is tempting torture and death.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told a Senate panel on Tuesday that he never met with any Russian officials last year to discuss the presidential campaign and any suggestion that he colluded with them to help Donald Trump was “an appalling and detestable lie.”

Mr. Sessions defended his role in firing former FBI Director James Comey, saying his decision to step aside from campaign-related investigations didn’t apply to broad oversight of the Justice Department. He also refused to discuss the content of any conversations he had with President Trump on the subject.

Mr. Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama and a top adviser to Mr. Trump during the campaign, spoke forcefully before the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying he needed to defend himself from “scurrilous” accusations.

Mr. Sessions was at times combative and folksy in answering and parrying questions as he sought to dispel some of the shadows cast in part by Mr. Comey’s testimony last week about the attorney general’s behavior.

Mr. Sessions alternated between strong denials and hazy recollections, saying he couldn’t recall whether he had a passing encounter with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington or any other undisclosed interactions with Russian officials.

Tuesday’s hearing became heated at times, as Mr. Sessions said he didn’t appreciate the “innuendo being leaked out there about me” while Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) suggested Mr. Sessions was “stonewalling” by declining to answer questions about his conversations with the president.

Mr. Sessions said he was protecting the president’s “constitutional right” to keep such conversations confidential and citing a Justice Department policy on not commenting on conversations between the attorney general and the president.

Such answers didn’t satisfy the Democratic senators on the committee.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.) accused Mr. Sessions of blocking the Senate inquiry. “You took an oath,” the senator said. “You raised your right hand here today and said that you would solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And now you’re not answering questions. You’re impeding the investigation.”

Testimony last week from Mr. Comey before the same panel intensified attention on Mr. Sessions’ interactions with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. But he said his two meetings with Mr. Kislyak had nothing to do with the campaign. “I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election,” Mr. Sessions said. He also said he had “racked my brain” to see if he could recall a third meeting but couldn’t.

The Senate Intelligence Committee and several other congressional panels are investigating Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. The Russian government denies that, and Mr. Trump has called the probes a “witch hunt.” He has said no one on his campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.

The attorney general’s highly anticipated testimony came after Mr. Comey portrayed Mr. Sessions as an attorney general who did little to manage a relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey that was becoming increasingly problematic. The former FBI director also hinted that there were reasons Mr. Sessions had to step away from the investigation into Russian interference in the election beyond what was publicly known. CONTINUE AT SITE

The questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions by Senator Martin Heinrich (D., N.M.) demonstrates why congressional hearings are theater, not searches for the truth.

Senator Heinrich pressed the attorney general to disclose the contents of conversations with President Trump. As a matter of policy, the attorney general does not answer such questions in order to protect the president’s power to invoke executive privilege. Heinrich may not like that privilege (at least with a Republican in the White House), but it is recognized in law. Knowing Sessions would not answer the questions, Heinrich proceeded to accuse the attorney general of obstruction — allegations of obstruction having become a Democratic fetish now that the Obama administration is no longer in power and matters such as “Fast and Furious” and the IRS abuse of conservative groups are no longer the focus of congressional hearings.

There are many relationships as to which the law protects the confidentiality of communications: marital, doctor-patient, attorney-client, priest-penitent, and so on. There is also, of course, the privilege against self-incrimination. In a trial, where a judge presides and ensures that lawyers don’t play unfair games, the lawyers know they are not supposed to ask questions in front of the jury that will induce the witness to refuse to answer. The lawyer knows that if the witness is asserting a legitimate legal privilege, the lawyer is not supposed to try to make it look like the witness is obstructing the proceeding. In fact, if a prosecutor refers to the defendant’s refusal to answer questions, it can result in a mistrial, so seriously does the law take the protection of this privilege.

Congressional committees go kangaroo court in this regard. There is no judge to tell them to knock it off.

Senator Angus King (I, Maine) followed up on Heinrich’s “obstruction” shenanigans by, first, establishing that President Trump did not invoke executive privilege in order to prevent Sessions from testifying; then, he got Sessions to acknowledge that the privilege belongs to the president and the attorney general is not empowered to invoke it. Adding two and two but coming up with five, Senator King expressed outrage that Sessions proceeded to refuse to answer questions about his discussions with Trump.

To be clear, the president’s decision not to assert his privilege in order to prevent the attorney general from appearing at the hearing is not a waiver of the privilege with respect to any individual question to which it may apply. And the attorney general’s refusal to answer any individual question is not an invocation of the privilege; it is a pause to enable the president to determine whether to waive the privilege. If the privilege is waived, then the attorney general will answer. And if senators want to advance the inquiry rather than create a misimpression of obstruction, they can submit the questions in writing ahead of time and ask whether the president will waive the privilege.

I have argued that Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the so-called Russia investigation was a mistake. The attorney general’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday afternoon bolstered this conclusion.

Sessions says that he recused himself, on the advice of career ethics experts at the Justice Department, because he thought this was required by the federal regulation controlling “Disqualification arising from personal or political relationship” (28 CFR Sec. 45.2). But judging from the public testimony that former FBI director James Comey has given about the investigation into Russia’s election-meddling, the regulation did not mandate recusal.

Section 45.2 states that an official is disqualified from “a criminal investigation or prosecution” if he has a personal or political relationship with a “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” or with a person or organization whose interests would be affected by the outcome “of the investigation or prosecution.” (Emphasis added.)

The probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is not a criminal investigation or prosecution. Moreover, when the reg speaks of the “subject of the investigation or prosecution,” it is using “subject” as a criminal-law term of art. A “subject” is a person or entity whose actions are being examined by a grand jury with an eye toward a possible indictment. There are no “subjects” in that sense in a counterintelligence investigation because the objective is not to build a criminal case and there is no grand jury.

Just last week, in his written and oral testimony, former FBI director James Comey reiterated that the Russia probe is a counterintelligence investigation. As Comey elaborated, a counterintelligence investigation is an effort “to understand the technical and human methods that hostile foreign powers are using to influence the United States or to steal our secrets,” in order to “disrupt” those activities. Again, the point is to gather intelligence about a foreign power, not investigate with an eye toward a prosecution of criminal suspects.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is slated to testify this afternoon before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The hearing is being teed up as the attorney general’s response to former FBI director James Comey’s testimony before the same panel last week.

One important aspect of the hearing is sure to be an effort to define the nature and extent of Sessions’ recusal from involvement in the so-called Russian investigation.

The attorney general’s decision in this regard is clearly among the most consequential of the Trump administration’s first months. As I opined at the time, it was a mistake. Prosecutors should recuse themselves from matters in which their participation would create an appearance of impropriety. The problem with the Russia investigation is that it is not a matter with clear parameters. It is not a criminal investigation or prosecution; it is instead a counterintelligence investigation related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Because such an investigation is designed to gather information not to build a prosecution, it lacks the definitiveness the criminal case, which focuses on whether a defined factual transaction constitutes a violation of penal law.

Thus, not only was a clear basis for Sessions’s recusal lacking. It was inevitable that there would be disputes about the parameters of the recusal.

In point of fact, the word “Russia” does not appear in Sessions’ statement outlining his recusal. The attorney general stated on March 2: “I have decided to recuse use myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.”

This is significant. As time passes, we tend to remember recusal decision through the prism of a Senate hearing in late February. In questioning by Senator Al Franken (D., Minn.), Sessions was asked about contacts with Russian officials. Franken set up his questions by referring to a dossier about then-candidate Trump that had been compiled by a former British spy for purposes of opposition research. The dossier contains lurid allegations about Trump’s activities in Russia. Those allegations have never been verified, which is why media outlets had declined to report on the dossier, despite having had it for months.

“He looks like Donald Trump… moves like Trump. He even has a wife with a Slavic accent. And at the start of the
third act, the actor playing Julius Caesar… is knifed
to death on stage, blood staining his white shirt.”

Donald Trump, Jr asked via tweet, “I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers?”

Great question.
Today, our OpenTheBooks.com investigation answered Trump Jr: Since 2009, nearly $30 million in federal, state and city grants funded the New York Shakespeare Festival – the parent company to Public Theater and its production, Shakespeare in the Park.

New York City’s Public Theater ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ production of Julius Caesar sparked political drama for its on-stage assassination of a Trump-like Roman ruler. Before the performance Donald Trump, Jr. asked via a tweet, “I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers?”

Here’s the answer to Trump Jr’s question: Data at OpenTheBooks.com shows that over $4.1 million in federal, state and city grants funded the New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF) – the parent company to Public Theater and its production, Shakespeare in the Park – over the past three years. The total amount since 2009? Nearly $30 million.

A sign promoting Julius Caesar is displayed on opening night of Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Julius Caesar at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater on June 12, 2017 in New York. A New York production of Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ drawing parallels between the assassinated Roman ruler and Donald Trump was in the eye of a growing storm, abandoned by corporate sponsors and sparking debate about freedom of expression. / AFP PHOTO / Bryan R. Smith (Photo credit should read BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images)

After Trump, Jr’s tweet, the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) was quick to clarify it had notfunded this particular Shakespeare in the Park performance. However, the NEA disclosed its $630,000 in grants to NYSF since 2009. The NEA also disclosed that it continued grantmaking to NYSF’s other Public Theater project – “New York Voices” at Joe’s Pub – giving $25,000 in February.