While a minerals deal and "peace plan" hang in the balance, Putin hands Trump "back-alley access" to resources that could be worth billions of dollars

 

As we noted yesterday, Donald Trump wants to get his hands on Ukraine's mineral riches as part of a   "peace plan" to end the Russia-Ukraine war, but available evidence indicates that is not likely to happen. In fact, we suggested Ukraine President Volomydyr Zelensky might be wasting his time  by meeting with Trump at the White House today to iron out the final details on a deal.

But Trump's willingness to kiss up to Russia's Vladimir Putin could wind up paying off. That's because Putin has stated that he could provide Trump with what might be called "back-alley access" to Ukraine's minerals. How could that happen? The New Republic (TNR) explains under the headline "Vladimir Putin Just Offered Trump a Huge Gift; As Ukraine balks at Trump’s efforts to seize its mineral reserves, the Russian president just suggested that the U.S. could access minerals … in Russian-held Ukraine." Edith Olmsted writes:

Russian President Vladimir Putin just offered to cut Donald Trump in on his invasion of Ukraine by pillaging its seized minerals.

After Ukraine initially refused to offer up its mineral reserves as payback for U.S. military aid, Putin has swooped in to offer the U.S. minerals from … Russian-occupied Ukraine. Putin told state media Monday that Russia was “ready to work with our partners, including the Americans” to access several mineral reserves across the country—and outside of it too, according to Politico.

The autocrat emphasized that Russia had “an order of magnitude more resources of this kind than Ukraine,” but it seems that his bid also included reserves in Ukraine. Putin name-dropped Donbas, a Ukrainian region occupied by Russian forces, and referred to the country’s seized lands as “so-called new historical territories.”

The offer comes as U.S. and Ukraine officials enter the final stages of a contentious mineral agreement.

The deal would funnel half of the Eastern European nation’s rare earth minerals—hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of materials used in tech and electronic products—into the American market but wouldn’t do anything to ensure Ukraine’s security or economic interests in the future.

In other words, Zelensky might not want to bother showing up to meet with Trump. After all, Putin has made it clear that he and Trump have a plan in place, behind the Ukraine leader's back, to box him out of any deal. Of course, Putin's word generally should not be trusted, and it's possible he could be lying to Trump about access to minerals in parts of Ukraine controlled by Russia. But if Putin is telling the truth, it's hard to see how Zelensky and his countrymen could benefit. They are having to deal with a  pair of rattlesnakes who would rather bite than play fair. Olmsted writes:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy publicly balked at a deal proposed by the Trump administration Sunday, which would grant the U.S. preferential access to Ukraine’s critical mineral resources.

“I will not sign what 10 generations of Ukrainians will have to pay back,” Zelenskiy said Sunday. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Olga Stefanishyna wrote in a post on X Monday that U.S. and Ukrainian officials were “in the final stages” of negotiations.

On Monday, Trump held a meeting with the G7 Summit, where he said that he “emphasized the importance” of the proposed “Critical Minerals and Rare-Earths Deal” between the U.S. and Ukraine. The Trump administration has repeatedly pledged to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, but has also openly echoed Moscow’s rhetoric downplaying its role in the yearslong conflict. Last week, Trump claimed that Ukraine had actually invited Russia’s illegal and deadly incursion into its territory, and the U.S. also joined 18 countries that refused to sign a U.N. resolution to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine.

Should Trump accept Putin’s offer to raid Ukraine’s mineral resources, he won’t just be rubber-stamping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he will be participating in it too!

Would Trump have any problem with that outcome? Would he check his moral compass and say, "I can't treat my Ukrainian friend that way"? C'mon, we're talking about Donald J. Trump here. Moral compass? Pfftt . . .

Trump appears to be conning Zelensky, given that America's president seems more interested in kissing Putin's butt than helping Ukraine achieve peace

Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump (Reuters)

 

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to meet with Donald Trump at the White House tomorrow to work out final details of a minerals deal that, in theory, is designed to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. News reports yesterday, however,  suggest Zelensky might be wasting his time. 

That is because Trump already has said he will not guarantee Ukraine's security, leaving that up to Europe; Zelensky has said security guarantees must be a part of any peace plan to help ensure that Russia's Vladimir Putin does not decide to invade his neighbor again. Zelensky also has pushed for Ukraine to join NATO, but Trump said the country "can forget" that. (More on those issues in a moment.)

To make conditions even less favorable for peace, Trump clearly has soured on Zelensky over the past two weeks, and now it appears his supporters also have turned on Zelensky, according to a report yesterday at The Washington Post. Under the headline "Trump turned sharply against Zelensky. Now the MAGA base has, too; It’s the latest episode of Trump’s base quickly adopting his posture, despite the evidence." Aaron Blake writes:

At this point, it shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans would adopt President Donald Trump’s framing of things. Trump’s base has regularly aligned with him, even when his claims were baseless or wrong. (See: his wild claims of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election and the claims about Haitian migrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio late in the 2024 election, etc.)

But rarely have we seen as stark a shift as we’ve witnessed in the past week.

Starting on Tuesday of last week, Trump took a sharp turn against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia and called Zelensky a “dictator” who wanted the war in his country to continue “to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.”

The Republican base, it turns out, has followed that up by taking its own sharp and sudden turn against Zelensky.

An Economist-YouGov poll, conducted largely before Trump’s comments,  showed Republicans were about evenly split on Zelensky. While 40 percent had an unfavorable view of him, 38 percent had a favorable one.

Today, Zelensky’s numbers have fallen off a cliff with Republicans. Fully 56 percent now dislike him, compared with 20 percent who still hold a favorable view.

The poll provides details about the fall Zelensky's image has taken in the eyes of Trump's strongest allies. Blake writes:

The percentage of Republicans with a “very unfavorable” view of Zelensky doubled, from 16 percent to 32 percent.

Zelensky hasn’t been a popular figure with the Republican Party since about 2023. But that 36-point overall negative split is by far his worst to date. It makes him one of the most unpopular world figures with the right.

And it’s not the only evidence that Trump’s reluctance to support Ukraine and Zelensky — and now his decision to outwardly criticize them — has pushed the right away from an ally. It’s also apparently caused the right to reckon with the idea that Trump might not want Ukraine to win the war.

Dating at least to the Ronald Reagan era, Republicans have taken a dim view of the Soviet Union and Russia. But now, under Trump, the GOP appears to have forgotten the lessons Reagan taught. It now seems Democrats might be more likely than Republicans to adopt Reagan's distrusting view of Russia. During Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, many Democrats began to see Trump as "Putin's Puppet," and evidence suggests the phrase might fit even more today than it did before. Baker writes:

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, nearly two-thirds of Republicans (64 percent) said Russia was an “enemy.” And that number largely stayed in the majority through 2024, including 53 percent shortly before the 2024 election.

Today, that number has declined into the 30s: The most recent poll shows just 38 percent of Republicans regard Russia as an “enemy.” Many instead label it “unfriendly.”

And just 10 percent of Republicans now regard Ukraine as an “ally,” while 3 percent say the same of Russia.

There are limits to how much of Trump’s view of the conflict his base is willing to swallow, but we also see large numbers adopting rather dubious claims.

Despite Trump’s repeated false claims that Ukraine started the war, the new poll shows 57 percent of Republicans said it was Russia that started it. But even there, about 3 in 10 Republicans said either that Ukraine started it (6 percent) or that both countries are “equally” to blame (23 percent).

And a separate YouGov poll last week showed Republicans are about evenly split on Trump’s false claim that Zelensky is a “dictator.” While 31 percent said Zelensky is not, 33 percent said he is.

(Zelensky was popularly elected, and while Ukraine didn’t hold a scheduled election last year, that’s because its constitution doesn’t allow for them while the country is under martial law. Its parliament this week unanimously affirmed Zelensky’s legitimacy and the requirement that elections can’t currently be held.)

Republicans once seemed to be the Americans who held rock-solid views in favor of a tough foreign policy. ("Don't tread on me.") Now, they seem to have morphed into change agents -- or at least "I'm gonna change my mind agents." From The Post's report:

Another shift has come on views of Trump’s posture.

For the past year-plus, Americans have generally viewed Trump as sympathizing more with Russia than with Ukraine — a striking review of his foreign policy, given Russia has long been an adversary. But Republicans resisted this framing; a December 2023 Economist-YouGov poll showed 43 percent of Republicans said Trump favored Ukraine, compared with just 5 percent who said he favored Russia. The gap was 27-10 in Ukraine’s favor just last week.

Today, Republicans aren’t so sure. They’re now nearly as likely to say that Trump favors Russia (16 percent) as that he favors Ukraine (23 percent).

We haven’t seen as wholesale a shift in whom Republicans themselves favor; 47 percent sympathize more with Ukraine, while just 6 percent sympathize more with Russia.

But to the extent Trump continues his campaign to attack Ukraine and Zelensky, we shouldn’t be too surprised if those numbers narrow, too. Trump has certainly laid the groundwork, and there are already signs that he’s moving his base.

What about the notion that Zalensky might be wasting his time with a trip to the White House? An article at sharghdaily.com, titled "Zelensky expected to visit Washington on Friday to meet Trump," points in that direction:

Ukraine's prime minister disclosed the details of a draft minerals deal with the United States on Wednesday, saying its wording showed Washington backed Kyiv's effort to get security guarantees, but touting nothing more concrete for now.

The deal is at the heart of Kyiv's push to win over Donald Trump's robust support as the U.S. president strives to reach a rapid end to the war with Russia that Ukraine's supporters fear could come at the expense of its national interests.

Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine's prime minister, said the government would authorize the draft agreement later Wednesday so it could be signed, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expected to visit Washington on Friday to meet Trump.

He said: "After the Ukrainian president and the U.S. president agree on security guarantees, agree on how we tie this preliminary agreement to security guarantees from the United States for our country, in the presence of [both] presidents, a representative of the Ukrainian government will sign this preliminary agreement."

The prime minister, outlining the draft in televised comments, said Kyiv would contribute 50% of "all proceeds received from the future monetisation of all relevant state-owned natural resource assets and relevant infrastructure."

Those proceeds would go into a fund under the joint control of the United States and Ukraine, he said.

"Already existing deposits, facilities, licenses, and rents are not subject to discussion when creating this fund," he added.

Note that Ukraine's prime minister says that once Zelensky and Trump have agreed on security guarantees from the United States, the Ukrainian government will sign the preliminary agreement. Trump, however, already has said there will be no security guarantees. That suggests Zelensky's best bet is to hope for a refund on his airline ticket.

An article at The Times of India, under the headline "Trump says Ukraine can ‘forget about’ joining NATO as he plans to host Zelensky," points in the same direction:

US President Donald Trump says Ukraine can “forget about” joining NATO as he prepares to host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks.

Trump also says he hopes to soon speak face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin in hopes of reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine that began when Moscow invaded in February 2022.

The Republican president declines to detail what concessions he will ask the two sides to make, but he underscores his administration’s position that Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, the Western military alliance, is not tenable.

“NATO, you can forget about it,” Trump says. “I think that’s probably the reason the whole thing started.”

Let's see if we have this straight: Trump is going to blame the war on NATO, not Russia? That sounds like a talking point that came right from Putin's mouth. Given Trump's long-term bromance with the Russian leader -- and the financial favors Russian oligarchs (probably at Putin's encouragement) reportedly have lavished on Trump over a period of decades -- the talking points probably did come straight from Putin.

Maybe Trump will have the good manners and decency to ring Zelensky and say, "We really don't have anything to discuss, so why don't you just stay home, save a little money -- I'm big on that these days -- and play some golf over the weekend -- I'm big on that, too, especially when taxpayers are paying the freight."

We are talking here about Donald Trump, and he likely does not have good manners, and we know decency is beyond him. So Zelensky is likely to get stuck in Washington. Trump probably knows some big-time hookers, so maybe "Z" can ask about that as an entertainment option. Unlike Trump, "Z" might take his marriage seriously, so perhaps he can score tickets to the Dropkick Murphys concert tonight at The Anthem -- DC. I don't know much about Dropkick Murphys, but they are described as "an American celtic punk band." You can't get much more eclectic than that, and they are known for "loud, energetic live shows." Heck, I might enjoy that. Maybe I can call "Z" and invite him to the concert, so he won't get stuck having to hang out with Trump.

I'm not the flashiest guy around -- my musical tastes run toward artists like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, John Fogerty, Billy Joel, the Doobie Brothers, and Phil Collins (with a predilection for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.) But hanging out with me has to be better than spending an evening with Trump. A good concert is one of my favorite forms of entertainment, and I think Dropkick Murphys might fit the bill. Gotta give Z a call.

 

Dropkick Murphys (Music Museum of New England)

Trump's cuts to government funding are bringing studies to a halt, possibly leading to mounting deaths worldwide, perhaps eclipsing U.S. COVID fatalities

UAB Medical Center in Birmingham, AL (U.S. News & World Report)

 

The Trump administration's cuts to government funding, are putting biomedical research at risk and imperiling worldwide health. Benjamin Mueller, who covers the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for The New York Times (NYT), explains under the headline "President Trump's Cuts to Medical Research." At NYT's The Morning newsletter, Mueller writes:

The Trump administration stormed into office, loudly firing workers and closing diversity programs. But behind the scenes, it has also brought biomedical research to the brink of crisis by holding up much of the $47 billion the United States spends on the field every year.

The world’s leading medical labs can be found in the United States, and they rely on grants from the National Institutes of Health. The agency has stopped vetting future studies on cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and other ailments. Trump aides have said they just need time to review spending their predecessors had promised, but it’s unclear what they’re looking for at the N.I.H. or when scholars can expect to start receiving money again.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll walk you through what happened — and why it matters.

A complex machine

Late last month, when the Trump administration froze government grants, a federal judge said it couldn’t just hold back money Congress had agreed to spend. But spending money at the N.I.H., which awards more than 60,000 grants per year, isn’t so simple.

That’s because new grants endure a tortured bureaucratic process. The agency has to notify the public of grant review meetings in The Federal Register, a government publication. Then scientists and N.I.H. officials meet to discuss the proposals. The problem is that the Trump administration banned those announcements “indefinitely.” So new research projects can’t get approved.

In effect, scientists say, the Trump administration is circumventing the court order. Health officials didn’t block research outright, but by shutting down the process, they’re still not spending much of the money Congress allocated to various research goals.

The administration has also proposed other big changes, saying that universities should bear more of the “indirect costs” of research: maintaining lab space, paying support staff. Trump aides say the changes would trim administrative bloat and free up more government money for research.

That forced laboratories on university campuses around the country, such as UAB in Birmingham, AL, to put many of their life-saving studies on hold. What's next? That is hard to answer with any certainty. But we do know this much: These are matters of life and death -- and this is an instance where reckless and incompetent actions by the Trump administration probably will cause people to die -- not only in the U.S. but around the world. The number of fatalities could dwarf the roughly 1.3 million U.S. deaths from the COVID pandemic, which was brought to you by the first Trump administration.  What lies ahead? Mueller paints a decidedly grim picture -- a picture of which the general public probably is unaware, perhaps thinking, "Hey, Donald Trump is back in office, and he will make us great again! What could go wrong?" The answer is a lot, Mueller writes:

It’s hard to say how long the holdup will last. The Trump administration hasn’t submitted a single new grant review meeting to The Federal Register since a day after it took office. And even if it started adding new ones, the agency traditionally gives several weeks’ notice.

At risk are not only the tens of thousands of grants the N.I.H. awards each year, but also American dominance of biomedical research. Every dollar the agency spends on research generates more than two dollars in economic activity, the N.I.H. has said. Scores of patents follow. By some measures, the United States produces more influential health-sciences research than the next 10 leading countries combined.

The science unfolds across the country, including in red states (such as Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas) where lawmakers have complained about proposed changes to indirect costs. Government-funded research (in blue and red states) can be a critical part of early-stage studies, often forging a path toward ground-breaking studies, before the private sector is even involved. Mueller writes:

Those findings often fuel pharmaceutical advancements, laying a foundation for drugs and vaccines long before private funders see such work as worth investing in.

Even Ozempic traces its roots back in part to work at the N.I.H on animal venom. Scientists found that the toxin from Gila monster lizards seemed to have particular physiological effects, helping lead eventually to one of the world’s most profitable and promising drugs.

New advances like those, scientists say, are in danger.

MSNBC's purge of non-white hosts comes soon after Trump, without providing evidence, claimed the network was "an illegal arm of the Democratic Party"

Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid (inset) (MSNBC)

MSNBC's most high-profile figures are reacting with venom to the network's decision to cancel several shows that were hosted by non-white anchors. From a joint report at CNN and Yahoo! News under the headline "Rachel Maddow and other anchors lambast MSNBC’s decision to cancel Joy Reid and Alex Wagner’s shows." Maddow noted the issue of race in her statement, which should raise questions about the network's motivation. The firings come a few days after MSNBC received heavy criticism from President Donald Trump:

Some of MSNBC’s biggest stars are – in extraordinary on-air fashion – rebuking management’s decision to cancel Joy Reid and Alex Wagner’s shows and lay off their production staffs.

Rachel Maddow used part of her Monday night show — MSNBC’s most watched hour — to call the move “a bad mistake.” She said it “feels indefensible” that “both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend.”

Maddow also said the impending layoffs are quite simply, “not the right way to treat people.” Producers and other staffers are being put in limbo, she said, and “the anxiety and the discombobulation is off the charts at a time when this job already is extra stressful and difficult.”

Meanwhile, conservative commentators are celebrating the changes and trying to undermine the progressive network’s credibility, and right-wing personalities are touting the cancelation of Reid’s show as a victory.

But MSNBC says it is not buckling to pressure from President Trump; far from it.

Some of the changes make a lot of sense on paper. For example, Phang and MSNBC weekday morning anchor José Díaz-Balart broadcast from NBC studios in Miami. Once Comcast’s spinoff takes effect and MSNBC is part of a separate enterprise, utilizing NBC’s space won’t be an option, so those Miami-based shows are ending. Díaz-Balart will stay with NBC as the weekend “Nightly News” anchor and Phang will remain with MSNBC as a legal correspondent.

Still, the shakeup has been unsettling for viewers – and for some MSNBC staffers. That’s what Maddow and company highlighted on Monday.

Stories started to circulate on Friday night about Reid and Wagner possibly being replaced, but none of the changes were confirmed until Monday, when new MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler rolled out a revamped schedule that reflects Comcast’s upcoming spinoff of MSNBC and other cable assets.

Viewers mostly learned about it from the anchors themselves. Reid said she was hosting the final edition of “The ReidOut” but didn’t say why. MSNBC didn’t give any reason for her departure, either.

What’s next for MSNBC

In the coming weeks, “The Weekend” co-hosts Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez will move into Reid’s 7 p.m. time slot. Once Maddow returns to a once-a-week schedule in April, Jen Psaki will host the 9 p.m. hour Tuesday through Friday. (Wagner will become a senior political analyst.)

MSNBC says employees on the cancelled shows are being encouraged to apply for new jobs, but the bottom line is that multiple show teams are being axed, with no guarantees that folks will be hired back. “The idea that those people are all now adrift somehow makes absolutely no sense,” O’Donnell said on air, adding, “I hope something can be done about that.”

Why might race be a factor in the firings? That is not clear, although Trump heaped strong criticism on the network in recent days:

In a Truth Social post late Sunday, Trump labeled MSNBC a “corrupt” and “illegal” arm of the Democratic Party and said “they should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.”

Pro-Trump commentators have followed his lead. Right-wing personalities like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool posted videos on Monday gloating over Reid’s exit. Johnson called her a “DEI hire.” Major right-wing publishers like Breitbart, The Daily Wire, and Outkick also blasted Reid and MSNBC, with some claiming that the network determined Reid was too far left for MSNBC’s own good.

On Monday night, Fox comedian Greg Gutfeld’s very first quip was about Reid, and his studio audience cheered and hollered with approval.

The Legal Schnauzer blog, sidelined last week by technical difficulties due to a balky computer, plans return to regular publishing schedule soon

(smart.uk.com)

 

Editor's note: Our laptop has decided to misbehave recently, forcing us to the publishing sidelines last week due to technical difficulties. It has taken us a while to get a grip on what seems to be going on, and while we probably don't have it fully figured out, it appears enough progress has been made to allow a return to regular publishing soon, hopefully in the next day or two. Special props to Mrs. Schnauzer for her help in sorting things out. She grew up with a father who was pretty good with his hands, and that skill seems to have rubbed off on her. I also had a father who was very handy, but that gene apparently did not get passed along to me.

I'm not sure how often laptops become balky, but my guess is that it's not an unusual occurrence. Our research indicates laptops typically last 3 to 7 years, and ours passed that stage some time ago. This is the first time in almost 18 years of continuous publishing that we have missed a full week of publishing (eight days to be exact), so we we have been fortunate in that regard. 

We appreciate your patience and hope to see you back in the blogosphere soon. The incompetence of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their goons continues to be on display daily, so we need to get the Schnauzer's voice back into action. 

All the best (with prayers for our country),

Mrs. and Mrs. Schnauzer

Clueless about the law and hungry for revenge, Donald Trump drives the DOJ toward a cliff we haven't seen since the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate

Donald Trump and Pam Bondi (Getty)

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) might be heading into its deepest period of crisis since the days of Richard Nixon, according to a report at Associated Press (AP). Under the "direction" of Donald Trump, who lacks the intellectual heft and the sturdy spine needed to oversee the justice apparatus of the world's foremost democracy, the DOJ appears to be spiraling into chaos -- and Trump has not even been in office for one month.

The department has been awash in controversy since Trump apparently pressured top officials last week to dismiss a criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The Adams case is emitting the stench of an unlawful quid pro quo, a term that became well known around the country when Karl Rove reportedly launched a baseless criminal case against Alabama's Democratic Governor Don Siegelman during the George W. Bush administration -- mainly, it seems, because Republicans could not figure out how to beat Siegelman at the ballot box. Perhaps figuring Siegelman would be less of a headache if he and codefendant Richard Scrushy were behind bars, the Bushies arranged for that to happen, with the assistance of former federal judge Mark Fuller (a Bush appointee,  who had ties to Bush-era criminals Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, plus slimy GOP Governor Bob Riley, who was Siegelman's chief political rival.  and wound up being forced off the bench after pleading guilty to beating his wife in an Atlanta hotel room.) How low did Rove go? He even acted like a jackass toward Siegelman's daughter, Dana, when the two ran into each other at the Democratic National Convention.

As for Donald Trump, his cluelessness about matters of law is driving the DOJ around some dangerous curves. The Eric Adams matter has been the source of heavy and unflattering news coverage in recent days. But Trump's struggles with justice issues go way beyond the Adams case. Here are two persistent problems that seem to be digging a hole for the president:

1. Criminal prosecutions must be based on a finding of probable cause, that an offense has been committed, and the accused committed it. Any attempt to prosecute a defendant based on Donald Trump's yearnings for revenge, and not probable cause, is unlawful. Let's consider our post dated 4/9/24 under the headline "Donald Trump's plot to prosecute Joe Biden without probable cause is based on a lie and ignorance, as MSNBC analyst Joyce White Vance makes clear":

Donald Trump and his allies are plotting to prosecute President Joe Biden if Trump wins the November election, according to a report from Axios. After months of Congressional inquiries, no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden has surfaced, so it is unclear what would form the basis of a Trump-fueled prosecution. But this much appears to be clear: Trump apparently wants to prosecute Biden because he believes Biden had him prosecuted -- even though Trump has offered no evidence to support that claim. One prominent legal analyst has stated that Biden did not have Trump prosecuted and could not have done so. Those matters come down to grand jurors.

Also, the Axios report suggests Trump has no problem violating roughly 40 years of U.S. policy that holds the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is to operate independently of the White House -- that presidents are not prosecutors, and they are to be excluded from decisions to charge or not charge suspected wrongdoers. . . . 

Almost every issue raised in the Axios article grows from the idea that Joe Biden is having Trump prosecuted. In Trump's brain, that has to be true because Trump cannot be responsible for anything that goes wrong. But this is a lie, one Trump apparently is convinced his MAGA followers are gullible enough to believe. But here is the truth, as stated by MSNBC legal analyst and former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, who wrote in a recent tweet:

"Joe Biden didn't indict Trump. Prosecutors must go before a grand jury, made up of citizens, including Republicans & Democrats. These citizens hear evidence & vote on whether a defendant should be charged. Different grand juries have now done that with Trump 91 times."

2. Trump can't resist exerting demands on the DOJ, mainly because he is desperate to extract revenge on his perceived political opponents. But that runs contrary to longstanding U.S. policy, as spelled out in the DOJ's Justice Manual. This is from Section 1-8.600 - Communication with the White House:

In order to promote and protect the norms of Departmental independence and integrity in making decisions regarding criminal and civil law enforcement, while at the same time preserving the President’s ability to perform his constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” the Justice Department will not advise the White House concerning pending or contemplated criminal or civil law enforcement investigations or cases unless doing so is important for the performance of the President’s duties and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective.

Is that how the White House and the DOJ are operating in the Trump administration? The answer appears to be no, as the AP's Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer report:

Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.”

Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that.

Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump before the 2024 election, and ordered the dismissal of a criminal case against New York Mayor Eric Adams by saying the charges had handicapped the Democrat’s ability to partner in the Republican administration’s fight against illegal immigration.

Even for a department that has endured its share of scandals, the moves have produced upheaval not seen in decades, tested its independence and rattled the foundations of an institution that has long prided itself on being driven solely by facts, evidence and the law. As firings and resignations mount, the unrest raises the question of whether a president who raged against his own Justice Department during his first term can succeed in bending it to his will in his second.

“We have seen now a punishing ruthlessness that acting department leadership and the attorney general are bringing to essentially subjugate the workforce to the wishes and demands of the administration, even when it’s obvious” that some of the decisions have all the signs “of corrupting the criminal justice system,” said retired federal prosecutor David Laufman, a senior department official across Democratic and Republican administrations.

He spoke not long after Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, resigned in protest following a directive from Emil Bove, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, to dismiss the case against Adams.

In a letter foreshadowing her decision, Sassoon accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda. Though a Democrat, Adams had for months positioned himself as eager to aid the administration’s effort in America’s largest city, even meeting privately with Trump at Trump’s Florida estate just days before the Republican took office. 

Multiple high-ranking officials who oversaw the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which prosecutes corruption cases, joined Sassoon in resigning.  

For those of us who lived through the '70s, all of that sounds positively Nixonian. But count me as one who is convinced Trump is capable of birthing a scandal that would make Watergate pale in scope and depravity. In fact, I would not be surprised if we already are in the early stages of such a scandal. Tucker and Richer write:

On Friday, a prosecutor involved in the Adams case, Hagan Scotten, became at least the seventh person to quit in the standoff, telling Bove in a letter that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet his demand to drop the charges. (Bove and department lawyers in Washington ultimately filed paperwork Friday night to end the case).

“Even though there may not be more resignations, a clear message has been sent about the objectives and the expectations of the department,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush until his 2007 resignation in the wake of the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys.

“The purpose of the department is to ensure that our laws are carried out, that those who engage in criminal wrongdoing are prosecuted and punished,” Gonzales said. And to some it may appear “that if you have some kind of relationship with the White House, there may not be consequences for doing something that ordinary Americans engaged in similar conduct would be punished.” 

Bove, a former New York federal prosecutor himself who represented Trump in his criminal cases, pointedly made no assessment about the legal merits of the case against Adams. Bove cited political reasons, including the timing of the charges months before Adams’ presumed re-election campaign and the restrictions the case had placed on the mayor’s ability to fight illegal immigration and violent crime.

In a letter to Sassoon, Bove said case prosecutors would be subject to internal investigations.

Bondi defended the decision to drop the case, asserting in a Fox News interview Friday that Adams was targeted after he criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

Do news reports support the assertions of Bondi and Bove regarding the Biden administration? If so, they are well hidden. This is from an account NPR: 

The Justice Department memo calling for charges against Adams to be dropped doesn't question the facts or merits of the case.

Instead it lays out two political reasons for the corruption case to be dropped. First, it echoes an unsubstantiated claim that former President Joe Biden and his administration may have used the prosecution to punish Adams, a fellow Democrat, for publicly criticizing Biden's immigration policies.

"It cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior administration's immigration policies before the charges were filed, and the former U.S. Attorney's public actions created appearances of impropriety," the memo said.

No evidence of the Biden team interfering in DOJ prosecutorial decisions was offered to support that assertion. In the memo, DOJ officials also said the case, if allowed to move forward, would hinder Adams from devoting his full attention to one of Trump's top policy initiatives: curbing "illegal immigration and violent crime" in New York City.

Adams has signaled growing openness to partnering with Trump administration officials on immigration enforcement in the city and has reportedly ordered NYC officials to avoid criticizing Trump or his policies.

Some critics, including city and state officials running against Adams in the mayor's race, condemned the DOJ move to drop charges and voiced alarm at growing ties between Adams and the Trump team.

Posting on social media, New York City comptroller Brad Lander blasted what he called "Adams' effort to get a pardon for his pay-to-play charges."

"Eric Adams sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom," wrote New York state Sen. Jessica Ramos on X. "Donald Trump may think this buys him access to terrorize our communities, but New Yorkers always stand up for one another."

It's unclear how this move by the DOJ will affect investigations and criminal cases against a wide array of Adams' political allies, donors and former members of his administrations. 

Critics are stunned when Trump's careless language turns into an apparent confession that Elon Musk and his DOGE goons are operating on shaky legal ground

Musk and Trump in the Oval Office (Getty)

Donald Trump's mouth has gotten him in trouble again, this time due to careless language that suggested Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are operating on shaky legal footing. Trump's words -- in the form of a standard word salad that passes for normal language in the president's world -- caught the ears of those who pay attention to what comes out of his mouth. Matthew Chapman, of Raw Story, explains under the headline ''Disgrace': Critics outraged by apparent confession at Trump's latest press conference":

President Donald Trump was finally confronted, at a joint press conference with the Japanese prime minister, about tech billionaire Elon Musk's rapid infiltration of government IT systems — in particular, access to the system that handles almost all payments for the Treasury Department and gives Musk and his engineering team theoretical access to huge troves of Americans' Social Security numbers and private financial information. 

When a reporter asked Trump whether Musk and his "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) task force really needed that kind of access to Americans' sensitive data, the president replied, "Well, it doesn't, but they get it easily. I mean, we don't have very good security in this country and they get it very easily."

Commenters on social media were shocked by Trump's words — with many pointing out that this was essentially a confession that Musk's scheme isn't on strictly legal footing.

When news outlets, such as The Hill and Yahoo! News,  report that Trump and Musk "are violating the law right and left, that catches attention. But to hear it from Trump's own mouth, it creates a WTH moment. What kind of reaction did Trump's words draw? Chapman describes it:

"JFC," wrote social media influencer Art Candee.

"Oh, very reassuring…" wrote Republicans Against Trump.

"Trashing our security and the fbi on the national stage is a gift to enemies and a disgrace," wrote author and TV personality Lea Black. "The press should call him out."

"Cc: Every attorney in the country filing suit against DOGE," wrote Center for International Policy adviser and former Senate staffer Dylan Williams.

"'They get it very easily' because Trump gave them unfettered access 'at his insistence,' wrote technology attorney and New York University professor Michael Kasdan. "I hope this is used in Court against them all."

The original exchange can be viewed at this link. 

Court pushes back on Trump's attempt to cut funding for medical research -- a move that threatened life-saving studies and economies in blue and red states

(YouTube)

The Trump administration's losing streak in court continues, this time over its attempt to cut funding for biomedical research -- a move that would have threatened life-saving studies on cancer, heart disease, brain disorders, Alzheimer's, and a host of other health-related issues. From a report at CNN, under the headline "Trump tried massive cuts to health research; the swift legal response shows that courts aren’t holding back":

Among dozens of court cases challenging President Donald Trump’s policies, one case this week has moved faster than most.

In less than 24 hours, the American medical community and dozens of universities secured an early win in blocking the Trump administration’s effort to cut millions of dollars of federal funding supporting medical research.

After the Trump administration capped the amount of money research institutions receive from the government to support health research, 22 states plus health-care systems and universities from across the country filed multiple lawsuits on Monday to stop it.

By midnight, a federal judge issued a nationwide injunction blocking the cutbacks — marking one of the fastest-moving, most robust examples yet of the courts standing in the way of Trump’s efforts to overhaul the U.S. government.

As Trump and his DOGE chief, Elon Musk, have taken a sledgehammer to the federal government – stopping federal foreign aid, firing federal workers, ending government programs and even closing agencies altogether – the unprecedented executive actions have been met by nearly four dozen emergency lawsuits designed to slow or stop them.

So far, the lawsuits have been effective: The Trump administration was told in five different ways on Monday and once on Tuesday it must stop or pause the implementation of its policies.

That included federal judges blocking Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, pausing its effort to offer “buyouts” to federal workers, restoring the flow of federal money to environmental and health-care programs, reinstating (at least temporarily) the top investigator for federal whistleblowers who had been fired, ordering some health-care data to be posted again to government websites, and blocking the attempt to cut federally subsidized medical research.

These early legal wins – even temporary ones – are quickly creating a new playbook for how Trump policies are tested and responded to. 

“What we’re seeing is an effort to arrogate control over federal spending on a scale we’ve never seen, and with callous disregard for the consequences. And the courts are responding in kind,” Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown University Law Center professor and CNN legal analyst, said Tuesday morning about Trump’s approach so far.

Often the judges sitting at the trial-court level have tried to preserve the status quo before irreversible harm could be done. Trump administration officials say they were expecting these early moves to be challenged in court, and in many cases, legal issues will be revisited in the days and months ahead, by multiple levels of courts, including potentially the US Supreme Court.

Trump officials, as well as the president, have bristled at some of the judicial rulings, with Vice President J.D. Vance and Musk both suggesting the administration should disregard court rulings, a scenario that has raised fears the country could be barreling toward a constitutional crisis.

Trump criticized the judges in a radio interview Monday, saying they made “very bad rulings” and that “they want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country.”

Trump seems to be saying that he, and he alone, should run the country -- never mind that our democracy is built on a "separation of powers" system that gives the legislative and judicial branches an equal say to that of the executive branch. For now, at least, Trump's view of how our government should function is taking its lumps in court. From CNN:

The cases so far have demonstrated how the Trump policies that startled Washington over the past four weeks could change American life – from reshaping the national approach to immigration to curtailing medical research and foreign aid programs. The research universities, for instance, said on Monday a loss of millions of federal dollars that supports their labs’ overhead costs would “devastate medical research.”

Lawmakers from both parties raised concerns that the cuts would hit their local economies, both in blue and red states.

Massachusetts took the lead in one of the challenges to the National Institutes of Health grant funding cuts, which had been announced by the Trump administration last Friday. The state was the first mover because of how deeply the policy would affect universities’ research programs there, slashing tens of millions of dollars in federal support for institutional overhead costs – but also because the state is among several Democrat-led states that are mounting some of the most significant challenges against the administration.

“We will not allow the Trump administration to play politics with public health,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said at a press conference on Monday.

The response to medical funding cuts was one of many cases where Trump’s actions have been almost immediately challenged in court.

The lawsuits that have been filed fall into several categories. They include questions about whether the president can halt funding approved by Congress or fire whole categories of federal workers, whether privacy protections can prevent Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing personal data held by the government, and whether the Trump administration’s social policies and immigration crackdown stretch beyond the limits of law and Constitution.

Republicans, as has become their custom, seem content to let Trump try whatever he wants. That has helped spark concern about how Team Trump might respond to court orders it dislikes:

One of the rulings that’s sparked the strongest reaction from Trump’s allies was when a federal judge this past weekend blocked DOGE from accessing a critical Treasury Department payment system, which the judge said risked “irreparable harm.”

The efforts from Musk’s team to access the Treasury’s payment system – which doles out trillions of dollars in government spending – prompted five former Treasury secretaries to write a joint op-ed on Monday saying they were so “alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments” and that, if pursued, Trump’s approach would be “unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.”

The backlash to the judge’s ruling on the Treasury system from both inside and outside the Trump administration – including from Trump and Vance – raised new concerns that the Trump White House will ignore court orders. . . 

Judges are already warning the administration not to ignore their rulings. On Monday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the reinstatement of funding for environmental and health groups that was held up, writing that the administration violated the “plain text” of his earlier order unfreezing billions of dollars in federal aid.

And in a separate case Monday, in Washington, DC, federal employees told a judge that the administration had failed to reinstate USAID workers who were put on leave. A major hearing in that case is set for today.

A final note: The damage from Trump's attempted actions hardly would be limited to Massachusetts or the Northeast. In Alabama, a decidedly red state, the heart of its biomedical research enterprise is in Birmingham, where studies at the UAB Medical Center have replaced the declining steel industry as a driver of the economy. The harm to the city and state financial pictures would be severe if Trump had his way. (Full disclosure: In my capacity as an editor in UAB Communications, I frequently wrote about biomedical research at the university and was familiar with its impact on the statewide economy. Call me stunned that even a president as clueless as Trump would try to take a figurative dump on Birmingham, which has enormous potential to become a "New South" city.)

Birmingham and Alabama are not alone in feeling the threat. Across the South, the economies of urban centers -- Nashville, TN; Tampa, FL; Atlanta, GA, New Orleans, LA, Memphis, TN (home to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, an affiliate of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center) -- are heavily dependent on biomedical research. All four of the states mentioned above voted for Trump in 2024, so they are largely responsible for him being in office. One might think Trump would be at least a little concerned about threatening their economies. But he apparently is ill informed or simply does not care. Voters in Deep South states should remember that as the next four years. unfold.