Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
There’s a lot we don’t know about the legacy Donald Trump will leave behind. And it is, of course, hugely important what happens in the 2020 election. But one thing seems sure: Even if he’s a one-term president, Trump will have caused, directly or indirectly, the premature deaths of a large number of Americans.
Some of those deaths will come at the hands of right-wing, white nationalist extremists, who are a rapidly growing threat, partly because they feel empowered by a president who calls them “very fine people.”
Some will come from failures of governance, like the inadequate response to Hurricane Maria, which surely contributed to the high death toll in Puerto Rico. (Reminder: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.)
Some will come from the administration’s continuing efforts to sabotage Obamacare, which have failed to kill health reform but have stalled the decline in the number of uninsured, meaning that many people still aren’t getting the health care they need. Of course, if Trump gets his way and eliminates Obamacare altogether, things on this front will get much, much worse.
But the biggest death toll is likely to come from Trump’s agenda of deregulation — or maybe we should call it “deregulation,” because his administration is curiously selective about which industries it wants to leave alone.
Consider two recent events that help capture the deadly strangeness of what’s going on.
The logic seems to go that everyone is better off, even minorities, when white people are calling the shots.
Donald Trump’s lie-filled rage tweets about Puerto Rico this week over disaster aid continue a Trump pattern that mirrors a method that white supremacists have used throughout American history. Particularly present since Reconstruction, this method involves proclaiming that minorities lack the character and capacity to create effective government, and therefore minority-led jurisdictions are a hopeless drain on resources.
He tweeted that Puerto Rico’s government “can’t do anything right” and that the island’s politicians are “incompetent or corrupt” and only “complain and ask for more money,” which they spend “foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.” He specifically called the mayor of San Juan “crazed and incompetent.”
Point of fact: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. It is a territory. Its citizens are U.S. citizens. The structure of Trump’s comments leaves open the possibility that he doesn’t know that, or conversely, knows it but doesn’t fully accept it or care about it.
If this were a one-off spat with politicians opposed to his conduct, one might reasonably write Trump’s comments off as politics as usual. Instead, this questioning of the competence of black and brown leaders is not anomaly but motif.
Not new “News” and certainly front and center since Gina Haspel, who has been proven to have run a CIA Torture Site in Thailand, still managed to get approved as DCI.
Wait ek, isn’t she a “good guy” for standing up to Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio?
Well, that’s a little like saying a Serial Killer was a nice quiet neighbor who loved animals, it’s kind of a non sequitur.
Cable: There’s a list we’re goin to work down, together. Number 1, I’m going to bend something that’s not meant to bend.
Weasel: I’m going to stop you right there because I’m not going to make it to 2. I won’t even make it to 1. I don’t do well with pain, you know. I stub my toe, I’m done for the day. I cried when they canceled Felicity I think. When I get scared, I get nervous erections. I have one right now. Don’t look. It will only make it worse. I don’t want you to hurt me and I’ll tell you anything, anything you want to know. Except for where they are.
[Ominous Glare from Cable]
Russell’s in a convoy headed southbound on Gerry Duggan Parkway. The monster’s with them. I wouldn’t mess with him.
And that’s why torture doesn’t work ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you anything I think you want to hear. I’m not proud like that and I will lie my ass off to avoid pain. I’m a completely unreliable.
Except in matters related to the torture which are corroborated by the meticulous notes and videos (at least there used to be, and I’m not convinced all the copies were destroyed; by the way- Haspel was complicit in that Obstruction of Justice too) we, just like the Nazis, kept.
As testimony, even in a Kangaroo Court like the Guantánamo Military Tribunals, it’s useless. Merely evidence of War Crimes by W and Cheney and every President of the United States since who are Accessories After the Fact because of their complicity in the coverup. We hung Japanese and Nazis on less evidence.
The United States has gone to great lengths to pretend this never happened, even letting some bloodthirsty murdering terrorists walk scott free so they don’t have to explain and excuse our heinous behavior in Court.
Seventeen-and-a-half years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and a decade after President Barack Obama ordered the C.I.A. to dismantle any remnants of its global prison network, the military commission system is still wrestling with how to handle evidence of what the United States did to the Qaeda suspects it held at C.I.A. black sites. While the topic of torture can now be discussed in open court, there is still a dispute about how evidence of it can be gathered and used in the proceedings at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
By law, prosecutors cannot use evidence gained through torture — or any other involuntary statements — at the war court, where eight of Guantánamo’s 40 prisoners are accused of being complicit in terrorist attacks. Prosecutors have made clear that nothing the defendants said at the black sites will be used as evidence.
But defense lawyers have continued to press for details of what happened to their clients and to be able to use the information either to fight the charges or to win more lenient sentencing. And they have been aided by changing circumstances, not least the government’s declassification of some details of how the prisoners were interrogated by the C.I.A.
The issue has been most intensely debated in Guantánamo’s two death-penalty cases: the 9/11 terror attacks that killed 2,976 people and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in which 17 American sailors died.
Defense lawyers in those cases have sought for years to get access to eyewitnesses and graphic details from the C.I.A. sites. The lawyers want to use descriptions of torture to ask the judge to exclude some of the defendant’s own statements after they left the black sites. The defense lawyers also have said they would cite torture to seek dismissal of the charges on grounds of outrageous government conduct, an extraordinary legal defense that is used in civilian courts but is seldom granted.
If the men are convicted, the lawyers want the details of how the defendants were treated to argue that the United States has lost the moral authority to execute men it has tortured.
The fight over access to evidence and witnesses from the black sites is one of the factors that has slowed progress in the cases. In the process, it has illustrated how fundamental legal issues about the rights of Guantánamo defendants remain unresolved — and how the passage of time is altering how some of them are handled.
The conflict is not limited to the death penalty cases, as Mr. Khan’s proceedings show.
The topic of his torture was strictly taboo on Feb. 29, 2012, when he made his first court appearance since disappearing from his native Pakistan in 2003 at age 23. At that first hearing, Mr. Khan, who lived in suburban Baltimore for seven years and graduated from high school there in 1999, admitted to volunteering to work for Al Qaeda after Sept. 11 and plotting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused architect of the attacks.
But in the intervening years, the Obama administration declassified details of what Mr. Khan said the C.I.A. did to him. By his account, he was beaten, hung naked from a wooden beam for three days with no food, kept for months in darkness, and submerged, shackled and hooded, into a tub of ice and water.
Additional details of his treatment were revealed in the partly declassified introduction to a Senate study of the George W. Bush administration’s black site program. In his second year of C.I.A. detention, according to a cable cited in the study, the agency “infused” a purée of pasta, sauce, nuts, raisins and hummus up Mr. Khan’s rectum, because he went on a hunger strike.
The C.I.A. calls this “rectal feeding.” Defense lawyers call it rape.
Mr. Khan’s lawyers now want to call witnesses and gather evidence to show his sentencing jury what happened to him.
Yup, we ass rape people.
Explain the difference between us and the Nazis again.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Bomb strikes a West Berlin disco; Gen. Douglas MacArthur and billionaire Howard Hughes die; Educator Booker T. Washington born; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sets an NBA record; Katie Couric to become CBS anchor.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.
If nothing else, the Mueller Team has been notoriously tight lipped, speaking only through indictments and warrants. It was a great surprise to me and I’m sure many others that it ended so suddenly and inconclusively.
Or maybe not. What we hear now from “sources close to the investigation” is that A.G. Barr has seriously misrepresented the results of the inquiry.
Trump’s game, echoed by his propagandists, has been to use William P. Barr’s cursory letter to downplay in advance the findings from Robert S. Mueller III’s report — which is reportedly more than 300 pages — to the point where the political media treats this as a closed matter. Perversely, he has simultaneously weaponized the letter against the very act — full release of the report — that would let Americans judge for themselves whether that characterization is actually true.
In this, the Barr letter gave Trump what he’d hoped for. It set a baseline definition of exoneration (no criminal charges) against which any demands for a fuller accounting of the undermining of the integrity of the election that lifted him to the presidency, and the extensive corruption and misconduct by Trump himself that flowed from it, could be cast as a refusal to “move on.”
A good deal of media analysis claiming a “cloud has lifted” from Trump uncritically internalized this framing.
The new revelations in the New York Times and The Post about anger among Mueller investigators at Barr will make this spin — and that media framing — a lot harder to sustain.
The Times reports that some of Mueller’s investigators “have told associates” that Barr “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry,” and that they were “more troubling” for Trump than Barr’s letter indicated. Those Mueller investigators believe Barr “should have included more of their material.” It’s not clear from the Times report how exactly these investigators thought Barr’s letter oversimplified their findings.
But The Post’s account adds substantially to this portion of the story. Barr’s letter stated that Mueller’s report details evidence on “both sides” of the question of whether Trump committed criminal obstruction of justice, and said Barr stepped in to conclude that Mueller’s findings were “not sufficient” to establish that criminality.
…
The Post also reports that Mueller’s team had prepared summaries of their conclusions. Critically, one official says this was done so these summaries could be shared with the public, as opposed to the public being informed by “the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
All of that is not just a direct indictment of Barr’s process decision to summarize the findings as he did. In effect, it also says that his summary has, through omission, misled the public about the gravity of those findings.
…
But when it comes to Trump’s obstruction of justice, we already know Mueller found damning evidence, some of which weighed in the direction that it constituted a crime. Barr’s letter explicitly says this — Mueller laid out “evidence on both sides of the question” — but without disclosing what any of that evidence was.
This rendered it impossible to evaluate Barr’s decision that the obstruction wasn’t criminal. And this is no small matter: As Randall Eliason explains, we simply don’t know whether that decision was grounded in Barr’s previously declared view that presidential interference in investigations cannot be obstruction of justice by definition, or in a comprehensive evaluation of whether the evidence pointed to corrupt intent on Trump’s part.
If the new reporting is correct, we’ve now learned that the Mueller team wanted the initial public release to disclose more of that actual evidence on obstruction than Barr did — and that Barr’s characterization of it potentially distorted the total picture created by that evidence.
Which points to another big question raised by the new revelations: whether the Mueller team wanted Barr to declare a finding on obstruction at all, or whether Mueller merely wanted the question placed before Congress, with no Justice Department conclusion preshaping perceptions.
Congress’ role in this matter is different from that of the Justice Department. As House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler notes, the special counsel’s role has been to “investigate allegedly criminal conduct” stemming from Russia-Trump campaign links, while Congress’ role “is to hold the president accountable any time he undermines the rule of law.”
Democrats are demanding the full report — not a redacted one, as Barr has promised — to carry out that latter mission, which entails examining the full factual record, regardless of whether criminality occurred. It bears repeating that even if Mueller didn’t find enough evidence to bring criminal charges for conspiracy with Russia, the report might still contain extensive evidence — beyond what we already know — of damning misconduct and wrongdoing on that front.
Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation, then, constituted an effort to prevent a full accounting of all of that misconduct and wrongdoing — as well as an accounting of the full extent of Russian sabotage of the 2016 election, regardless of whether there was conspiracy, which might call into question the integrity of his election victory. The full report would give us that accounting — and a full accounting of Trump’s obstructive efforts to prevent all of that from ever coming to light.
That basic public accountability — which Congress now has an institution obligation to pursue — is what Trump is trying to prevent from happening, now that he’s backpedaling furiously on his previous claim that he wants the full report released.
The Barr summary, whether intended or not, has become Trump’s No. 1 weapon in service of that goal. What remains to be seen is how unfaithful that summary was to the full factual picture in creating the impression that this matter is a largely a settled one. The new revelations should make it much harder to keep that full factual picture concealed — and much harder to sustain that impression, as well.
Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.
At stake in the dispute — the first evidence of tension between Mr. Barr and the special counsel’s office — is who shapes the public’s initial understanding of one of the most consequential government investigations in American history. Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.
Otherwise a ton of crap about how Barr was justified. So much for the toadies and suck ups at the Gray Lady.
Members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team have told associates they are frustrated with the limited information Attorney General William P. Barr has provided about their nearly two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether President Trump sought to obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the matter.
The displeasure among some who worked on the closely held inquiry has quietly begun to surface in the days since Barr released a four-page letter to Congress on March 24 describing what he said were the principal conclusions of Mueller’s still-confidential, 400-page report.
In his letter, Barr said that the special counsel did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. And he said that Mueller did not reach a conclusion “one way or the other” as to whether Trump’s conduct in office constituted obstruction of justice.
Absent that, Barr told lawmakers that he concluded the evidence was not sufficient to prove that the president obstructed justice.
But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.
“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
…
Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had prepared, according to two people familiar with their reactions.
“There was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work instead,” according to one U.S. official briefed on the matter.
Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.
The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
If you’ve ever seen The Post (and you should, it has Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks) it’s kind of funny to remark on the similarity to the rivalry portrayed in the film.
They don’t smoke as much any more, or at least not cigarettes.
So TMC and I are on the other side of the border in Niagara Falls where we stopped so she could mess with me by dangling over precipices which drives me nuts.
No, it was nothing like that. We were on our way home from a funeral and while our original intention was to shepherd Richard and Emily there, back, and around they were too sick to travel so we pressed on alone.
I have other stories but this will do. After scaring the crap out of me we went up the Midway (oh, if you’ve been, you know- could pay a buck to see a dissected fetus in the Museum of Life first time I was there) and found an Outback for dinner.
Now, everything in Canada is just… better. Except for Tim Hortons (to be fair they have a pretty good bacon croissantwich). You have to factor that in. Outback had a special on Sirloin but it’s not a cut I usually go for as I am frequently disappointed.
But we did 2 and I must say it was great. Very tender and flavorful.
I don’t normally go for Beef, I’m more a seafood guy, but I’m not a vegetarian though I can make a complete meal without meat and not miss it at all.
Aglio e Olio
At it’s core you only need 4 ingredients and water-
The Pasta
Pasta
This sauce is normally used with a noodle kind of thing, but that’s no reason you couldn’t pick any Pasta you happen to have on hand. I think Ravioli, Large Ziti or Shells, Lasagna, things like that, and really small things like Orzo could be problematic, but stuff like Tortolini would be fine.
Salt
The water is to cook the Pasta, the Salt is to flavor it. How salty should it be? “As Salty as the Sea.” But seriously it’s nearly impossible to over salt and the most frequent mistakes are not using a big enough pot or enough water or not bringing it to a full rolling boil before tossing the salt and again before you drop the Pasta (you can turn down the heat after you get there). Or not saving some Pasta Water as a general rule to keep the Pasta loose so you can sauce it, though that’s not usually a problem with this recipe because Olio.
Also, don’t overcook. Al Dente is Al Dente and if it’s mushy out of the pot it will be extra mushy on the plate as it continues to cook. If you’re not tasting/testing at 6 minutes (sooner for amounts less than a pound) you’re missing the window.
The Sauce
Which is why I like to have my sauce ready. Timing is a problem and were I really good I’d be able to have them both ready at exactly the critical moment.
I am not that good.
Olive Oil
Extra Extra Virgin, you’re not going to be cooking any hotter than you would with butter. I have an electric range. I run it at 40%.
The Olive Oil is to cook the Garlic in, then coat and transport the taste to the Pasta. You need enough for that (probably less than you think) but you don’t have to worry about being a little generous. You’re not going to be serving this swimming in sauce and the excess will mostly just drip off.
Garlic
The best Garlic you can lay your hands on.
Organic is pretty much a scam garbage label so don’t pay more. Go to the loosey bin in your store and pick ones that look fresh at the root end (it’s a relative thing) and all the bulbs are firm to the touch. In a pinch jarred minced Garlic or even Garlic powder will do but if a Head of Garlic costs you more than a $1 you’re being ripped off.
How much to use? If all you want is flavor and aroma you press it or mash and mince it (press myself, my knife skills aren’t all that great) and you’ll need about 3 – 5 cloves. If, like me, you enjoy a nice pan roasted Garlic, Whole Clove, Chunked, or Sliced, you’ll need 3 – 5 Heads or more depending on the amount of Pasta.
Don’t freak out. It doesn’t make it any more Garlicky. The longer you cook Garlic the less you taste it. You want Garlic? Try my 5 Lemon 5 Garlic Hummus or my Kalamata Tapenade.
They use raw Garlic. In this preparation Aromatic is done about the moment it hits the pan (no, really, it cooks that fast), for chunkier stuff you’ll want to get a little carmelization happening.
Assuming you’ll be early (overdone Pasta is impossible to fix) park it over the lowest low you can muster to keep it warm and liquidy.
Assembly
Toss the Pasta in the sauce allowing the extra to drain off when you transfer the Pasta to the Serving Bowl.
Umm… that’s it. Stupid simple eh?
Garnishes
Ok, some of these are pretty desirable but they are optional.
Cracked Black Pepper
Ok, practically a necessity but not quite.
Grated, or better, Shaved Parmesan
Most people use too much. If you are adding it you can toss with the Pasta in the Serving Bowl or you can serve individually so any guest who does not like Parmesan can skip it (my niece is fairly convinced she has a lactose intolerance).
Parsley
Why? For color? It doesn’t taste like anything but it’s in every classic recipe I looked at.
Of course there are a Billion variations. Make it your own.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Martin Luther King Jr. is assasinated; President William Henry Harrison dies; Hank Aaron hits 714th career home run; Maya Angelou is born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
Umm… the Mueller stuff is not going away. It is true beyond a reasonable doubt that Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has been laundering money for years and years. It’s also true there’s a convictable Quid Pro Quo in the Moscow Tower deal but we’re going to highlight instead Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Bank of last resort- Deutsche Bank.
Compliance workers for Deutsche Bank AG flagged some of at least $150 billion in transactions that the bank’s U.S. subsidiary handled for a tiny Estonian unit of Danske Bank A/S, according to a former compliance officer.
It’s not clear how urgently the Florida team warned executives at Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas. But when workers sought broader scrutiny of certain clients, they got a familiar response from some higher-ups, the officer said: Shut up, focus on the transaction in front of you, file your paperwork and move on.
Internal documents, court records and interviews with dozens of people — including more than 20 current and former employees of the troubled German lender — show that its U.S. unit largely resisted strict money-laundering compliance for years. The insider accounts help explain why Deutsche’s U.S. subsidiary kept handling Danske’s business after competitors quit.
Although U.S. executives routinely promised regulators they’d get tough, former staffers say such efforts were often disregarded in favor of cozy relationships with overseas customers. The suspicious billions kept flowing — not just from Danske’s Estonian branch, but from various clients that would eventually be snared in other global money-laundering scandals.
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Deutsche’s U.S. trust company, which houses a global transaction bank, a private wealth unit and a lender, has attracted attention for the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans it extended to President Donald Trump’s real estate business. But it’s now the focus of a Federal Reserve probe into the Danske affair, according to a person briefed on the situation who asked not to be named because the regulator’s work isn’t yet public. The U.S. Department of Justice has also sought information from the bank, two other people have said.
…
(I)n cases where the bank wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing, it also provided banking services for:
Russia’s Sberbank PJSC while the government-controlled bank was involved in a years-long scheme that funneled millions to a man in the U.S. who admitted to smuggling $65 million worth of potential nuclear technology to Russia, according to federal prosecutors;
Kenyan fraudsters who scammed U.S. income tax refunds using identities stolen from Indiana sex offenders;
and a Colombian drug cartel that received payments from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as part of an undercover operation. The payments, disguised as profits from auto-parts sales, were transferred into a Deutsche account and exhibited what a DEA undercover agent called “obvious red flags.”
Today, Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas is one of the last Wall Street banks that’s actually on Wall Street. Former employees say the subsidiary — housed in a skyscraper that’s sheathed in glass and lined with mahogany paneling — has been a kind of legal mirage for most of its existence. The unit provides an entrée for Deutsche Bank to operate as a lender in America, those people said, but its U.S.-based executives have had little authority.
…
For foreign banks like Danske, the unit opens an industrial-scale teller window into the U.S. financial system that their customers can use — what’s known as a correspondent banking relationship. Of course, when the plumbing fails, the results can be unpleasant.
In Danske’s case, Danish regulators say Estonian employees covered up money-laundering violations for years. The bank has admitted that roughly $230 billion that passed through that unit between 2007 and 2015 — much of it from Russian clients — was suspicious. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that at least $150 billion flowed through Deutsche Bank, and one report put the figure at about $185 billion.
…
Banks’ efforts to prevent money laundering revolve around three words: “Know your customer.” U.S. rules under the Bank Secrecy Act require bankers to keep tabs on who they’re doing business with. The goal is to keep criminals and terrorists from plowing illicit cash into legitimate investments.
In Jacksonville, that task fell to an office that was understaffed and overly permissive, insiders recall. It was akin to assembly-line work with little review of potential clients and transactions, said a former employee who added that the organization’s willingness to bank just about anybody was a running joke.
Files submitted to compliance workers from overseas often lacked detail about who was transmitting money, according to former workers and legal filings in the 2016 lawsuit. Specialists hired to advise the bank on gaps in its monitoring systems were instead assigned to review individual transactions that those systems had flagged. They were often rebuffed by New York executives or supervisors in New Jersey if they singled out particular customers for deeper scrutiny.
In such cases, staff members were directed to file routine “suspicious activity reports,” or SARs, a basic legal requirement in cases where bank employees consider a source of funds to be questionable. Such filings record potentially problematic activity but don’t trigger government reviews on their own. Often, they simply languish at the Treasury Department.
Deutsche executives’ public responses to the Danske case tend to sidestep concerns about “know your customer” efforts. Because their bank had a correspondent relationship with Danske, they’ve argued that the Danish bank was the only customer they were required to know — not clients who were banking with Danske.
“The primary duties rest with the bank that has the immediate contact with the client,” said Karl von Rohr, Deutsche Bank’s co-deputy CEO and legal head, on Feb. 1.
As Douglas Sloan, then a financial crimes investigative chief for Deutsche’s U.S. unit, said in testimony in December 2017: “We don’t know our customers’ customer on the other side of the planet.”
But it’s not that simple. U.S. banking laws require correspondent banks to make sure their customers are policing their own clients — especially on big transactions. Another bank clearly had qualms about Danske; JPMorgan Chase & Co. ended its correspondent relationship with Danske’s Estonian branch in 2013. Bank of America Corp. cut off its relationship with the unit in May 2015. Deutsche Bank was the last to break with Danske later that year.
…
Like other correspondent banks, it relies on a largely automated system called “straight-through processing,” or STP. That system checks names and places against government risk lists and other factors. For years, executives have bestowed an “STP Excellence Award” on customers that successfully move money through Deutsche’s system while raising the fewest red flags. The awards have sometimes gone to questionable recipients.
Cyprus-based FBME Bank Ltd. won eight of them through 2013, according to news releases. The Treasury Department later accused that bank of having weak money-laundering controls that allowed customers to conduct more than $1 billion in suspicious transactions through various correspondent accounts, including one with Deutsche Bank’s U.S. unit, from 2006 to 2014. Treasury officials said FBME helped organized crime and terror groups move money, evade sanctions and develop banned weapons. Deutsche Bank wasn’t accused of wrongdoing in the case.
The “mirror trades” scandal surfaced another issue: Warning bells sounded at the U.S. investigations unit after another European bank questioned some of the transactions, but the unit failed to follow up, according to an internal Deutsche report and a 2017 consent order issued against the bank by New York’s Department of Financial Services. Beyond that, the German bank didn’t even deem Russia to be at high risk for financial crime until late 2014 — much later than its peers — according to that 2017 order.
Accessory not After the Fact, but Complicit during Commission of the Crime.
You know, Corporations are fictional aggregations of money that are given permission by the State to operate and are a relatively recent development Historically. It is fully within the State’s power, particularly for criminal activity but in fact for any random reason (monopolistic practices and sheer bigness) that is politically acceptable, to revoke that permission and force dissolution and distribution or seizure of assets.
It’s called the “Corporate Death Penalty” and I am a staunch advocate.
They’re not really people. That’s just a line inserted a century and a half ago by a corrupt clerk.
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
In the post-Watergate era, most Americans have taken for granted that a president would not fire an F.B.I. director investigating him, or replace an attorney general for insufficient loyalty to the president’s personal interests. Dangling a pardon before potential witnesses to influence their testimony? Unheard of.
Whatever one’s feelings about the end of the Mueller investigation, the Barr letter makes one thing clear: The guardrails that were established after Watergate against these types of abuses have been smashed. We still need to see the full Mueller report, but unless corrective steps are taken, Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr will have changed, perhaps profoundly, the shape of presidential power, and in troubling ways.
It’s therefore up to Congress and the 2020 presidential candidates to step in and harden the policies that for 40 years prevented improper political interference in law enforcement.
They can do this by enacting comprehensive legislation to codify rules and practices that were previously voluntary. Those who subscribe to the Barr memo view of expansive executive power might claim that such legislation would violate the Constitution. On the contrary, such legislation would help enforce it.
Once more, President Trump stands ready to dazzle with his willingness to sacrifice the national interest on the altar of his political whims.
For days, the president has been indulging in one of his made-for-TV teasers by threatening to shut down the United States-Mexico border. Not beef up the Border Patrol. Not tighten security at ports of entry. Just hang up a “Closed” sign and call it a day.
As the White House tells it, the failures of Mexico and congressional Democrats to stop illegal crossings have left the president no choice: The influx of drugs, criminals and other undesirables has reached the point where drastic action is required.
Mr. Trump is nothing if not a man of drastic action, or at least ominous vows of drastic action.
Dismayed critics have rushed to object that shutting the border will do nothing to solve the humanitarian strains caused by the flood of migrant families from Central America — that such a move will, in fact, make things only worse by disrupting the legal flow of people and commerce, wreaking social and economic havoc.
The Brexit situation is very confusing and one reason I don’t burden you with the daily details is that it is still quite fluid.
In recent developments there have been a series of non-binding votes on competing Brexit Plans, the most successful of which proposed a Customs Union/Single Market solution. True Brexiteers are appalled because it also (must actually because the EU says so) includes the continued Free Movement of people within the CU/SM and that won’t do at all because it’s always been about keeping out the bloody Wogs (Racism) anyway. All the crap about making Britain able to craft great new Trade Deals that allow for the importation of Chlorinated Chicken (dipped in Bleach to sanitize them and perfectly acceptable in the U.S. because we eat any kind of Mega Agribusiness garbage) is mere gaslighting to disguise the Bigotry. There is no argument among Economists that Brexit will cause a substantial decline in their Economy any more than there is argument among legitimate Scientists (as opposed to Wacky Crackpot Mad ones) about Global Warming.
What they did manage to pass was what we in the States would call a Motion to Proceed to debate a proposal delaying Brexit for a period of time, at least a year and perhaps 2. If adopted it’s likely the EU would accept it since their only quibble with a more short term delay is the necessity to hold Elections for the European Parliament which are scheduled this Summer. Britain would be forced to elect Representatives.
Now Brexiteers view this as unreasonable because they have no patience for postponement and they realize that their political support is melting away like ice cream on a hot sidewalk. They’d just as soon have a Crash Out April 12th (just 9 days folks!) and May has been angling for a short extension to May (the Month) 22nd avoiding the dreaded prospect of holding MEP Elections.
The EU has made it clear that she’s not going to get that.
She’s also opened negotiations with Jeremy Corbyn which has many Tories acting as if she is participating in some Satan summoning ritual involving carnal activity with goats and the blood of Christian babies. The Labour position, which Corbyn has reluctantly accepted because he’s a Left Euroskeptic, is the CU/SM with a Second Referendum which is, actually, entirely reasonable.
Of course what Corbyn is angling for is a General Election where he thinks Labour will beat the Tories like a rug, and he’s probably right. That’s why the Tories fear it so much, it will be a bloodbath for them and it’s the only stick May has left to keep her job.
I can’t imagine she’ll keep it much longer anyway. She’s clearly lost control of about half her Party and has already offered her resignation if Parliament passed her Brexit Scheme which is dead Jim, dead.
The clock keeps going tick tock (9 Days!) and true Brexiteers are desperately trying to tie up Parliament so that a No Deal Brexit (their preferred solution) sorta kinda happens by default.
