Ex-White House adviser lays out two main things Democrats need to do to win on impeachment
September 26, 2019
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Donald Trump has been hurling ominous warnings and racist insults against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg ahead of a possible indictment, and legal experts fear those threats could provoke violence in the same way his rhetoric fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The former president has attacked state and federal prosecutors "thugs," claimed two Black districts attorney are "racist" and used anti-Semitic tropes to suggests he's the victim of a "globalist" conspiracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the prosecutors who are investigating him, reported The Guardian.
“Trump cannot stop the judicial process, although he can try to slow it," said Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor. "But he can undermine its credibility through his charges and by mobilizing his supporters. I see what he’s doing now as aimed at them, just as he tried to discredit the election returns in their eyes and anger them with baseless charges over the 'steal.'"
Trump's legal defenses have recently weakened after federal courts required some of his top aides, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, to testify in the Jan. 6 grand jury investigation, and compelled the testimony of his current lawyer Evan Corcoran in the classified documents case, and prosecutions in Manhattan and Georgia also appear to be nearing conclusion.
“If I were on the prosecution teams in Manhattan or Georgia, I would expect Trump to assert every defense he can think of, including accusing the prosecutors of misconduct,” said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Michigan.
“None of these accusations about the motives of prosecutors, however, will negate the evidence of Trump’s own crimes," McQuade added. "A jury will focus on the facts and the law, and not any of this name calling. The Trump strategy may work in the court of public opinion, but not in a court of law."
Trump's lawyers are using his trusted stalling tactic by raising "specious" objections in Georgia, according to former Watergate prosecutor Phlip Lacovara, and Trump is “trying to pollute the jury pool” with attacks on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.
“All he needs is one juror who believes this is all a concocted plot,” Lacovara said.
Trump used many of the same tactics in his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, which ultimately led to the deadly U.S. Capitol attack.
“This is more of what we saw during the election,” said Donald Ayer, who served as deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration. “He throws up gibberish and obstruction.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron's personal ratings are approaching their lowest recorded level over his handling of pension reform and protests, a poll indicated Tuesday.
The survey by the Odoxa polling group said only 30 percent of respondents thought he was a "good" president, down by six percentage points in a month, while 70 percent judged him negatively.
Macron's popularity is approaching the low reached in December 2018 during so-called "Yellow Vest" anti-government demonstrations, when only 27 percent of people held positive views of the president.
The survey, carried out for the Public Senat channel and regional newspapers, showed falls for most of the French political class amid increasingly violent protests against the government's bid to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen saw her favorability rating slump three percentage points to 32 percent, but the country's most popular political figure, Macron's first prime minister Edouard Philippe, skidded by seven points to 34 percent.
"If Edouard Philippe falls again next month, it's likely that for the first time in the history of our political trackers (meaning six or seven decades), we would have someone from the far-right at the head of our table," Odoxa said.
The survey showed that 71 percent of respondents favored a referendum on raising the pension age and 67 percent would vote against, with opposition to the move relatively stable since the start of the year.
Rubbish on streets
Other surveys have also confirmed a slump in Macron's ratings as rubbish builds up in the streets of Paris due a strike by refuse collectors and protesters blocking ports and refineries.
Tuesday marked the 10th day of national strikes and protests organized by trade unions since the start of the year.
A poll by the BVA group published on Monday showed that 28 percent had a positive view of the president, the lowest level since November 2018.
A tracking poll by the Ifop group published on March 19 showed 28 percent of respondents were "satisfied" with the president, not far off the low of 23 percent reached during the "Yellow Vest" crisis.
Even at these low levels, Macron is still more popular than his predecessor Francois Hollande while he was in office.
Hollande, a Socialist, plumbed historic depths to a four percent approval rating after the publication of a disastrous tell-all book that ended his hopes of seeking re-election.
Like his highly contested predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande has bounced back since leaving office and now figures among the most-liked political figures in France.
© 2023 AFP
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'The billionaire bailout': FDIC Chair says the biggest deposit accounts at SVB held $13 billion
March 28, 2023
In prepared testimony for a Senate Banking Committee hearing slated for Tuesday morning, the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reveals that the 10 largest deposit accounts at Silicon Valley Bank held a combined $13.3 billion, a detail that's likely to intensify criticism of federal regulators' intervention in the firm's recent collapse.
When SVB was spiraling earlier this month, the FDIC, Treasury Department, and Federal Reserve rushed in to backstop the financial system and make all depositors at the California bank whole, including those with accounts over $250,000—the total amount typically covered by FDIC insurance.
"At SVB, the depositors protected by the guarantee of uninsured depositors included not only small and mid-size business customers but also customers with very large account balances," FDIC chief Martin Gruenberg writes in his prepared testimony. "The ten largest deposit accounts at SVB held $13.3 billion, in the aggregate."
Gruenberg goes on to estimate that the FDIC's $125 billion Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF)—which is financed primarily by assessments on insured banks and "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government"—took a $20 billion hit as a result of the SVB intervention.
According to Gruenberg, nearly 90%—$18 billion—of the DIF loss stemming from SVB is "attributable to the cost of covering uninsured deposits." He added that the DIF absorbed a roughly $1.6 billion cost to cover uninsured deposits at Signature Bank, which failed shortly after SVB.
The FDIC chair's testimony comes as federal regulators continue to face scrutiny for glaring oversight failures in the lead-up to the collapse and backlash over the emergency response, which many have characterized as a bailout for the wealthy and well-connected given SVB's role as a major lender to venture capital and tech startups.
Billionaire Peter Thiel, whose firm was accused of helping spark a bank run by advising clients to pull their money from SVB, told the Financial Times that he had $50 million in a personal account at the bank when it failed earlier this month.
"The bailout really did protect billionaires from taking a modest haircut," Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project tweeted in response to Gruenberg's testimony.
Writing for The American Prospect on Monday, Revolving Door Project researcher Dylan Gyauch-Lewis called the federal government's swift action in the wake of SVB's failure "a good illustration of the enormous class bias in American policymaking."
"As soon as corporations and the wealthy run into trouble, elites trip over themselves, discarding both law and precedent, to rescue them," Gyauch-Lewis wrote, noting that federal regulators had to classify SVB's collapse as a "systemic risk" to the financial system—a disputed characterization—in order to legally guarantee deposits over $250,000.
For contrast, Gyauch-Lewis added, "consider student loan forgiveness. The legal justification is clear as day, and the authority itself is used regularly. According to the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, the Education Department can forgive student loans as it sees fit in a national emergency."
"At bottom, the core reason SVB's depositors got bailed out had little to do with morals or even financial risk," Gyauch-Lewis argued. "It happened because they had rich and powerful friends with the ear of the president's chief of staff. Broke students don't. The students have to organize and campaign for decades to get something far worse than what they wanted, and for that to hang in the balance at the Supreme Court. The SVB depositors just had to whine on Twitter and make a few calls."
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