We begin today’s roundup with Michelle Cottle’s analysis at The New York Times of Sarah Sanders and her refusal to do the job taxpayers are paying her to do:
At 43 days and counting, this information drought supplants the previous record of 42 days without a briefing, set in March — which broke the 41-day record set in January.
At some point, one cannot help but wonder: What is the job of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who holds the title of White House press secretary?
Philip Bump at The Washington Post crunches the numbers on how Sanders has completely avoided doing her job and finds that she’s spent more time “briefing” children at photo ops than actually being press secretary:
Her predecessor Sean Spicer held near-daily briefings until he was fired. Sanders no longer bothers. Since Nov. 1, she has held precisely three briefings. Compare that with the same period two years before.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch explains how her habitual lying has destroyed her credibility:
A White House willing to lie about such a trivial issue raised justifiable fears that administration officials could not be trusted to be truthful about important ones. In Sanders, that fear has become real. Whether the topic is voter fraud, immigrants and crime, economic data or countless other sensitive issues, Sanders has always been there to obediently repeat Trump’s lie du jour. [...]
Sanders marches in lock step with probably the most mendacious president ever to occupy the Oval Office. She could have served as a voice of integrity in this credibility-challenged administration, but instead she digs in. Those who cover this White House would do well to avoid using any information from her that isn’t reliably confirmed elsewhere. Otherwise, they're in danger of doing exactly what she does: passing along lies.
Meanwhile, on the continued fallout from the Mueller report, law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman explains that the report was essentially an impeachment referral:
The report’s very high standard for legal conclusions for criminal charges was explicitly proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” So the report did not establish crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. But it did show a preponderance of conspiracy and coordination. [...]
By the preponderance of evidence standard, the report contains ample evidence to establish conspiracy and coordination with the Russian government, sometimes through intermediaries, other times through a Russian spy. [...] High crimes and misdemeanors are not limited to felonies. One does not have to conclude that Mr. Trump committed a felony to vote for impeachment. The key points are that the report should not be interpreted as disproving the core Russian allegations. The opposite appears true, even with the redactions: It shows illegal coordination and conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence. And this evidence is relevant for further subpoenas, for an impeachment inquiry based on the Russian campaign and for proving obstruction with corrupt intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
At The Week, Peter Weber explains how Democrats can respond to Trump’s stonewalling of their subpoenas:
The House can vote to hold officials in civil or criminal contempt of Congress, opening them up to lawsuits or criminal charges. And in January, The Washington Post reports, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) backed an obscure rule giving a three-person panel — made up of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Pelosi herself — the power to approve civil contempt citations without a full House vote, as a "way to streamline the process" if the White House "sticks with its strategy."
More from Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker:
[T]he Mueller report is a powerful and positive document, because it is written testimony to the liberal faith in the power of rules and systems to bring order and justice. Mueller and his team were trying on every page of the report and in every instance to follow the rules, even if the rules they were following forced them into contorted prose and easily misrepresented positions. The rules are worth following, the underlying premise of the report insists, because only in accepting the rules can we ensure justice. This is why the language of “norms” and their violation is misapplied to Trump and his conduct. What is at stake here are not “norms,” in the sense of ornamental ritual regularities in the conduct of office. What is at stake are rules—rules meant to ensure objective judgment and fair dealing no matter who the subject may be or how you may feel about his or her conduct.
At USA Today, Senator Mark Warner highlights the continued threat of Russia to our democratic institutions:
If the president had succeeded in his attempts to shut down Mueller’s investigation, Americans would still be in the dark about much of Russia’s malign activity. In addition to his sobering findings regarding the president’s attempts to obstruct justice — findings that Congress must investigate — what Mueller’s report identifies is a danger to our democracy, one that all Americans expect their elected officials to resist.
Accepting assistance in our elections from a foreign power is wrong, and fundamentally undermines the principles that protect and strengthen our democracy. Every elected official has a responsibility to take this threat seriously, and to undertake the hard work of ensuring that it will never succeed again.
On a final note, Erwin Chemerinsky analyzes how SCOTUS become largely a rubber stamp for Trump:
A crucial function of the Supreme Court is checking the other branches of government, including the president. But the conservative justices on the Roberts court, which includes two Trump appointees in Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, have yet to stand up to the Trump administration at all. I hope I am wrong, but Tuesday’s oral arguments indicate another 5-to-4 decision split along ideological lines with the five Republican appointees lining up behind their Republican president.