Dear Commons Community,

The US Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for the handover of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee after a three-year legal fight.

The court, with no dissents, rejected Trump’s plea for an order that would have prevented the Treasury Department from giving six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.

Alone among recent presidents, Trump refused to release his tax returns either during his successful 2016 campaign or his four years in the White House, citing what he said was an ongoing audit by the IRS. Last week, Trump announced he would run again in 2024.  As reported by the Associated Press.

It was the former president’s second loss at the Supreme Court in as many months, and third this year. In October, the court refused to step into the legal fight surrounding the FBI search of Trump’s Florida estate that turned up classified documents.

In January, the court refused to stop the National Archives from turning over documents to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Justice Clarence Thomas was the only vote in Trump’s favor.

In the dispute over his tax returns, the Treasury Department had refused to provide the records during Trump’s presidency. But the Biden administration said federal law is clear that the committee has the right to examine any taxpayer’s return, including the president’s.

Lower courts agreed that the committee has broad authority to obtain tax returns and rejected Trump’s claims that it was overstepping and only wanted the documents so they could be made public.

Chief Justice John Roberts imposed a temporary freeze on Nov. 1 to allow the court to weigh the legal issues raised by Trump’s lawyers and the counter arguments of the administration and the House of Representatives.

Just over three weeks later, the court lifted Roberts’ order without comment.

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the committee chairman until the next Congress begins in January, said in a statement that his committee “will now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years.”

In a message on his social media network, Trump said the Supreme Court’s action created “terrible precedent for future Presidents.” He accused the court of becoming “nothing more than a political body, with our country paying the price.”

He also said: “Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do!”

The House contended an order preventing the IRS from providing the tax returns would leave lawmakers “little or no time to complete their legislative work during this Congress, which is quickly approaching its end.”

Had Trump persuaded the nation’s highest court to intervene, he could have run out the clock on the committee, with Republicans ready to take control of the House in January. They almost certainly would have dropped the records request if the issue had not been resolved by then.

The House Ways and Means panel first requested Trump’s tax returns in 2019 as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s audit program and tax law compliance by the former president. A federal law says the Internal Revenue Service “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers.

The Justice Department under the Trump administration had defended a decision by then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to withhold the tax returns from Congress. Mnuchin argued that he could withhold the documents because he concluded they were being sought by Democrats for partisan reasons. A lawsuit ensued.

After President Joe Biden took office, the committee renewed the request, seeking Trump’s tax returns and additional information from 2015-2020. The White House took the position that the request was a valid one and that the Treasury Department had no choice but to comply. Trump then attempted to halt the handover in court.

Then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation. That case, too, went to the Supreme Court, which rejected Trump’s argument that he had broad immunity as president.

Would anyone be surprised if  Trump’s IRS tax returns were leaked to the press!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

For more than two years of the coronavirus pandemic, Americans looked to Fauci to dispel fear and offer reassurance — and, sometimes, to shoulder the blame for the medical establishment, which was not always nimble or forthcoming.

Many celebrated him for delivering hard truths in a comforting, avuncular demeanor. Some denounced him for defending mask requirements and vaccine mandates. Few will forget the many months during which he was the face of the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic. As reported by various news media.

“I’ve never left anything on the field,” Fauci said at yesterday’s press briefing at the White House. It was expected to be his final appearance at the podium where he was a mainstay in the spring of 2020, standing next to or behind then-President Donald Trump, urging Americans to mask and observe social distancing, and pleading with them to stay home to “flatten the curve” and “stop the spread.”

Fauci, 81, announced his retirement earlier this year, as the pandemic appeared to be on the wane. A government official since the Reagan administration, he was early to recognize the danger posed by AIDS. He became the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, a position he has held since then.

Although not necessarily shy about his accomplishments, Fauci retained the service-oriented outlook of his early Jesuit schooling in New York City, where he was born and raised. During an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in 2014 and 2015, Fauci personally treated patients. He also maintained a jogging routine that took him through the leafy neighborhoods of upper northwest Washington, D.C., where he has long lived with his wife and three daughters.

The coronavirus was his last great professional battle, one that often confounded his expectations. “I don’t think any of my colleagues imagined that we would see a three-year saga of suffering and death,” he said. More than a million Americans have died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

With winter approaching, Fauci and Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House pandemic response team coordinator, urged Americans to receive their bivalent coronavirus boosters, which protect against both the original strain of the coronavirus and more recent Omicron subvariants. Reiterating a point both men have made before, Fauci said that the coronavirus can only be relegated to a background concern if Americans regularly update their vaccinations.

“We’re gonna get there,” Fauci said. “We can get there with less suffering.”

Fauci has been cheerleading, prodding, cajoling and warning for nearly three years, with mixed results that have visibly taken their toll on the once-ebullient immunologist.

The “herd immunity” he envisioned in 2020 never materialized, because new variants kept arising, finding new ways to evade the protection offered by vaccines and prior infection. As frustration with the pandemic deepened, public trust in Fauci ebbed.

This loss of confidence probably had to do less with Fauci than with the fact that it was difficult to determine which protective measures were effective and which superfluous, what to open and what to close, where to mask and where to breathe free. Did students in classrooms need to sit 6 feet apart or 3 feet? Was it safe to fly? Was it safe to hug? When could we live as we once did?

Often, it fell to Fauci to provide an answer.

“We were not dealing with a static situation,” Fauci explained Tuesday. It took months for scientists to grasp how the coronavirus spread. Initial guidance against masking from other public health officials was reversed; then, the plastic screens and other evidence of so-called “hygiene theater” gradually vanished as it became clear that the coronavirus was not spread via surfaces. It also became clear that children, for the most part, did not get seriously ill from the coronavirus, making many officials — including Fauci — rethink their endorsement of school closures in the spring of 2020.

“The recommendations that were based on what you knew in January — when you get to March, April and May, they will change,” Fauci said. “Understandably, that leads to a question on the part of the public.”

At first, Trump seemed to bask in Fauci’s confident expertise, but as the summer of 2020 approached, the president grew frustrated that the coronavirus had not been vanquished — and took his frustrations out on Fauci. He and other conservatives celebrated Republican governors like Brian Kemp of Georgia and Greg Abbott of Texas, who resisted public health advice and opened their states before the CDC recommended it.

Fauci was increasingly sidelined in favor of Peter Navarro, a hawkish economist with no medical expertise, and Dr. Scott Atlas, a Stanford neuroradiologist with unconventional views. Trump never heeded calls to fire Fauci, which would have been difficult to do with a public servant of his stature. But he also did nothing to discourage attacks against him.

Jha praised Fauci as “the most consequential public servant” in recent history. The last two years, however, have not been easy, with Fauci facing increasingly pointed attacks from conservatives, for example when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged supporters to “chuck him across the Potomac.”

During congressional testimony, Fauci developed an acutely adversarial relationship with Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-oriented Republican who opposed most pandemic restrictions. Fauci’s bouts with GOP critics are not necessarily over yet. Having won control of the House of Representatives in the congressional midterm elections held earlier this month, Republicans have indicated that they want to question Fauci about what he knows about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a matter of ongoing dispute.

The prevailing conviction is that the disease originated in the wild, but some skeptics believe that it “escaped” from a Chinese laboratory, a hypothesis for which there is limited but intriguing evidence. Some Republicans accuse Fauci of hiding the extent of U.S. collaboration with potentially culpable Chinese counterparts, a charge that Fauci has forcefully denied.

Fauci indicated that he will comply with requests to appear on Capitol Hill. “If there are oversight hearings, I absolutely will cooperate fully and testify before the Congress,” he said.

Reflecting on his career, Fauci especially lamented the bitterly partisan discourse on masks and vaccines, which has made public health yet another arena for enervating culture wars played out on social media and cable news.

”I don’t want to see anybody die from COVID,” he commented Tuesday. “Whether you’re a far-right Republican or far-left Democrat doesn’t make any difference to me.”

Thank you Dr. Fauci for your service.  You saved my life and my wife’s life as well as those of  millions of other Americans.

Bless you and may you have a long and healthy retirement!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

While all eyes were on the Senate and the House of Representatives on Election Day, under the radar was the fact that Democrats did very well in maintaining and gaining control of state legislatures. Democrats defended every state legislative chamber in their control this year — making it the first midterm elections since 1934 in which the party in power has not lost a chamber. 

They were also able to flip chambers in several states, a shift from previous midterm cycles where Democrats have struggled at the state level. In Pennsylvania, Democrats narrowly gained control of the state House for the first time since 2010. They flipped the Minnesota Senate and both chambers in Michigan, giving the party a trifecta in both states. In Wisconsin and North Carolina, Democrats prevented Republicans from gaining supermajorities, protecting Democratic governors’ veto power.

In a memo first shared with CBS News, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) said the victories serve as a lesson to Democrats up and down the ballot.

“Democrats made history in state legislatures this year — defying the odds, bucking political wisdom, and laying out a blueprint for Democratic wins at the state legislative level,” wrote DLCC president Jessica Post. She credited investing early and helping local leaders and said that unlike 2010, Democrats this decade will be able to go on offense. Now, the DLCC is calling for the party to continue building from the ground up.

Post argued that some of the obstacles Democrats faced this year stemmed from GOP control of some of the nation’s state legislatures because it’s the legislature that often controls the way congressional districts are drawn.

“Democratic efforts to control the U.S. House are more difficult because of Democrats’ failure to invest in state legislatures earlier,” Post wrote. “Congressional Democrats were running in districts rigged by Republican state legislators in many states. If Democrats want to fight back against the MAGA agenda and make our country better for all Americans, that work must start in state legislatures.”

The state level successes come on the heels of redistricting. According to the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), there are many reasons for Democrats’ victories in 2022 but investment in state level races was a part of it. 

“It was a big lesson of the last decade, that Democrats needed to be more focused on the states and state level infrastructure, and I think you’ve seen the party really rally to that over the last several cycles, and 2022 was the culmination of that investment,” said NDRC President Kelly Burton said.

The NDRC started its work before the actual redistricting process. Compared to the previous decade, Republican control over the redistricting process decreased by more than 20%. Burton said without such efforts, the results would have been worse for Democrats. She believes the party will continue to invest heavily on the state level because it’s paying off.

The DLCC started sending funds to legislature candidates for 2022 last fall and released its strategy identifying what it believed would be the most competitive states in the spring. In total, the DLCC raised and spent $50 million this cycle, surpassing the 2018 midterms. Its finance team also helped state partners raise more than $105 million for targets this election season. 

The memo noted two major themes were front and center during this election cycle as part of its winning strategy: abortion rights and protecting democracy. 

The DLCC recognized abortion rights would be a major factor in state legislative elections early on and launched its States to Save Roe website in January even before the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. It then continued to capitalize on the issue “at every turn.” 

The committee also worked to tie all Republicans to what it called “MAGA extremists” and warned Republicans posed an existential threat to democracy. As part of that, they took aim at state officials like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania who was in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, for former President Trump’s speech.

At the same time, candidates continued to address how they would lower costs, the memo said, blunting some of the attacks by Republicans amid soaring inflation. Some efforts included direct relief checks, tax rebates or working to cut child and health care costs.

While the DLCC is calling for the party to build off the 2022 successes, it was not alone in its efforts to increase Democrats’ numbers in the state assemblies and senates. The States Project invested nearly $60 million in state chambers, the most in a single cycle by an outside effort. 

The DLCC is now looking to 2024, helping to defend majorities as well as flip seats in states like New Hampshire and Arizona. Next year, Virginia is also a battleground with its off-year elections. 

While Republicans lost chambers in 2022 – they did see representation grow in several states. In Florida, where the party already had a trifecta, Republicans were able to gain supermajorities in both the state House and Senate. They were also able to gain supermajorities in at least one chamber in Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Wisconsin. In Oregon, GOP candidates also gained seats – ending Democrats’ supermajority in the state.

Let’s hope the Democrats can keep their act together for 2024!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was riding with his wife Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife Nellie when he was fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. Governor Connally was seriously wounded in the attack. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally recovered.

Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department 70 minutes after the initial shooting. At 11:21 a.m. November 24, 1963, as live television cameras were covering his transfer from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was fatally shot in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald’s murder, though it was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.

I remember the day and hour as if it was yesterday.

Our country was never the same!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading David Corn’s new book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.  It is a review of the Republican Party’s performance during the last seven decades and examines the influences of the likes of Senator Joe McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and of course, Donald Trump.  Corn covers a lot of ground that has been covered before.  For example, he quotes Jerry Falwell as saying:  “ I am to the right of wherever you are.  I thought Barry Goldwater was too liberal.”  Corn is a New York Times best-selling author and knows how to weave the stories of the “dark forces” and the individuals who had great influence on the ultra-conservative path that the GOP has taken.  I found it a good book not necessarily a great book.  Below is a brief review published in Kirkus.

Tony

—————————————————————————————

Kirkus

AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS

A HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION OF HOW THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WENT CRAZY

by David Corn ‧

Sept. 13, 2022

The veteran political journalist connects the authoritarianism and White supremacism of yore with the Trumpism of today.

At the 1964 Republican National Convention, liberal Republicans tried to introduce a resolution to condemn the extremism of the John Birch Society and Ku Klux Klan and were shouted down by supporters of Barry Goldwater, who said that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Corn’s vivid narrative starts there, but it goes back much further, to the anti-immigrant Know-Nothingism of the 1850s, where the author locates the beginnings of a recurrent theme: Just as Abraham Lincoln could not disavow the nationalists because he needed their vote, Richard Nixon had to ally with racist Southerners, and George W. Bush had to pal around with Christian fundamentalists to win the 2000 primary against a more principled John McCain. In turn, McCain turned to Sarah Palin to placate far-right, tea party supporters, a group that morphed into the Trumpists of today. It’s a zigzag line indeed, but Corn makes important connections. “Nixon attained the presidency by exploiting the paramount divisive force in American society—racism—and the sense of fear and dread spreading through much of the nation,” he writes, and substituting Trump for Nixon makes that sentence scan without a hitch. Much of the “psychosis” of recent years has hinged on a long pattern of lies. While the author makes clear that Trump is master of the form, he had plenty of predecessors, from Joseph McCarthy to Palin’s winking insinuations that Barack Obama was a Muslim, the latter yielding what Corn calls Palinism, “a combination of smear politics, conspiracism, and know-nothingism.” Since then, it’s only gotten worse. “Formed 168 years earlier to save the nation from the expansion of slavery,” writes the author, “the Republican Party, now infected with a political madness, [is] a threat to the republic.”

A sobering look at the ideological destruction, born of cynicism and opportunism, of a once-principled party.

Dear Commons Community,

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie urged the GOP to dump Donald Trump in harsh remarks at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership meeting in Las Vegas on Saturday.

“It is time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on and this country on,” said Christie, who emphasized that he was with Trump from early on in his first campaign.

“We keep losing and losing and losing,” Christie added, referring to Republicans’ dismal midterm elections performance. “The fact of the matter is the reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.”

Christie said Republicans are now faced with a choice between “the party of me,” referring to Trump’s self-involvement, or the “party of us.”

“We don’t want to do bending to the will of one person, rather than advocating for the good of all of our people,” added Christie, who may run against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

Christie is a former  Trump supporter who has found religion and is calling for abandoning the Donald!  However, anyone who has lived or worked in and around New York City as Christie has, knew that Trump was always a huckster.  As former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of Trump in 2016 at the Democratic National Convention:  “I am a New Yorker. I know a con when I see one.” Where were you Mr. Christie?

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in an interview that aired Friday on PBS that his former boss, Donald Trump, should “stand aside” and forego his campaign for another presidential term because he doesn’t have what it takes.

Barr also said it appeared “increasingly more likely” that the Department of Justice will indict Trump for the hoard of classified documents from the White House that the FBI found stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. And the Justice Department “probably” has what it needs for “legitimately indicting” him, Barr added.  As reported by The Huffington Post.

As for another run at the presidency, Trump “failed” the first time, Barr told news host Margaret Hoover in the interview on “Firing Line.”

“He didn’t do what the whole country hoped — that he would rise to the occasion and rise to the office, and he didn’t do that,” said Barr.

“So he’s had his chance,” Barr said. “He obviously does not have the qualities necessary to unite the party, which is the first step on the road back, and he should stand aside.”

Barr also flatly stated that he thinks the Department of Justice “probably” has the “basis for legitimately indicting” Trump for the classified documents he was holding at Mar-a-Lago. The charges could be serious, he warned.

“If the Department of Justice can show that these were very sensitive documents, which I think they probably were, and also show that the president consciously was involved in misleading the department, deceiving the government and playing games after he had received the subpoena for the documents, those are serious charges,” Barr said.

Barr also said it was important for the Justice Department to prosecute anyone — including a former president — if they broke the law. But he added that it has to be weighed against the damage done to the office.

Trump appointed Barr to succeed Jeff Sessions in 2019 before special counsel Robert Mueller released the report on his investigation into Russian collusion in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Before the report was made public, Barr downplayed its findings.

Barr’s interview was filmed before Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday the appointment of a special counsel to take over investigations of the former president.

Trump has not yet responded to the Barr interview. But he has called the appointment of a special counsel “the worst politicization of justice in our country.”

Critics said it took Barr far too long to announce to the public that Trump didn’t have what it takes to be president. He was a longtime fervent backer of Trump.

Barr claims the relationship between the men began to seriously fray in late 2020 during Trump’s reelection campaign. Barr has recounted in his memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another,” that he warned Trump that he was alienating voters.

Barr said the former president would have been reelected by “moderating even a little of his pettiness,” he wrote in the book, which was published in March. He urged the GOP to move away from Trump and his “erratic personal behavior” ahead of the 2024 election season.

Barr said Trump grew “detached from reality” after losing reelection. He resigned about a month later, on Dec. 23, 2020, and has since testified that Trump tried to pressure him into lying that there had been widespread election fraud.

Thank you Mr. Barr but you are a little late in your characterization of Trump!  For the sake of the country, you should have alerted the American people of his failings while you were his Attorney General.

Tony

Gianni Infantino with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, at the World Cup.Credit…Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

Dear Commons Community,

Gianni Infantino, the president of world soccer’s governing body on Saturday sought to blunt mounting concerns about the World Cup in Qatar with a strident defense of both the host country’s reputation and FIFA’s authority over its showpiece championship.

In pushing back against criticism of the event, particularly from Europe,Infantino, seemed to revel in redirecting much of that anger toward himself.

In an extraordinary  soliloquy delivered in a grand auditorium one day before the opening game of the World Cup, Infantino attacked Western critics of Qatar, Western companies who do business in the country and human rights groups and news media organizations who have highlighted the cause of migrant workers.

All of them, he said, had engaged in what he labeled “moral lesson-giving” and “hypocrisy.” Citing statistics, history and even childhood to bolster his case, he at one point likened his own experience as a redheaded child of immigrants to Switzerland to the assimilation problems of gay people in the Middle East, and defended the laws, customs and honor of the host country.

“You want to criticize someone, come to me,” Infantino said. “Criticize me. Here I am. Crucify me,” he added, rising in his seat and extending his arms out wide.

“Don’t criticize Qatar,” he continued. “Don’t criticize the players. Don’t criticize anyone. Criticize FIFA. Criticize me, if you want. Because I’m responsible for everything.”

In meandering remarks tinged by scorn and false equivalencies, Infantino also sought to reassure gay fans and others that they would be welcome and safe in the tiny Gulf state; pushed back against growing evidence that Qatar, and not FIFA, was in control of major decisions related to the tournament; and defended the last-minute decision by local organizers on Friday to ban the sale of beer at the tournament’s eight stadiums.

“I think personally, if for three hours a day you cannot drink a beer, you will survive,” Infantino said dismissively. There were still dozens of other locations around the country, he pointed out, where as many as 100,000 people could be served alcohol at any one moment.

But he also spent a significant portion of his address defending Qatar’s treatment of migrant laborers, the workers hired from some of the poorest corners of the planet to rebuild the desert state in a decade-long buildup to the first Arab World Cup. Thousands of workers have died in that period, according to human rights groups, after working long hours in intense heat and other harsh conditions. Qatar has repeatedly disputed those death tolls, and has defended itself by noting it has changed laws and instituted reforms to improve workers’ lives.

Given that, Infantino branded criticism of Qatar’s treatment of immigrants as “hypocrisy” and “moral lesson-giving” from a part of the world that should remember its own history.

“I think for what we Europeans have been doing around the world for the last 3,000 years, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years, before starting to give moral lessons,” Infantino said.

His performance may have been helpful to his Qatari hosts, though, in that it shifted the World Cup’s conversation away from them, and from far more difficult topics.

Infantino had come prepared, surprising the hundreds of journalists who had gathered expecting a 45-minute news conference filled with familiar talking points. Instead, reading from notes on the table, Infantino began his monologue with a tone and language that set up what was to follow.

“Today I have very strong feelings, I can tell you that,” he said. “Today I feel Qatari. I feel Arab. I feel African. I feel gay. I feel disabled. I feel a migrant worker.”

He then tackled one issue after another, expressing his irritation at how, in his mind, the reality of life in Qatar was far different from what was in the pages of newspapers, which he made a point of saying he ignored.

He insisted fears over the treatment of LGBTQ+ people attending the World Cup were overstated, and repeatedly said they were welcome in Qatar even though homosexuality remains criminalized in the country.

“Everyone’s security is guaranteed, from the highest level of government,” Infantino said. “This is the guarantee we’ve given, and we stick with it.”

He then sought to play down Friday’s abrupt U-turn on the availability of beer at stadiums, a last-minute change that shocked the longtime FIFA partner most affected by it, Budweiser. Far from souring that relationship, Infantino insisted, the sudden rupture had in fact strengthened the relationship with the brewer.

He offered no evidence to support his claim, one day after Budweiser had released a statement that seemed to grudgingly accept a decision — made in consultation between Qatar and FIFA, Infantino insisted — that was out of their control.

That sudden reversal of years of promises by tournament organizers had raised questions about FIFA’s authority of its own event, with the beer ban being demanded by the most senior Qatari royals. Infantino, however, insisted that all decisions, even those made late, and apparently influenced by royal fiat, were made jointly.

“I feel 200 percent in control of this World Cup,” he said.

Infantino hinted darkly about what underpinned the sudden change of heart on beer, blaming the move on “threats that were not known before.” His comments also underlined concerns about Qatar’s suitability to host such a large event: With four games per day in the opening group stage, all played in what is effectively a single city-state, Infantino said the movement of large groups of fans within such a compact environment carried greater risks if they were fueled by beer.

Asked about the appropriateness of his language. Infantino remained unapologetic, doubling down whenever he was pressed to explain himself.

The remarkable 90-minute curtain-raiser ended with the unexpected intervention of FIFA’s director of communications, who in defending Infantino’s inclusion efforts revealed that he was gay.

Having spent an hour and a half in the role of lightning rod for his hosts, Infantino let that be the last word. Besides, he had already hit all the points he wanted to make, offering all the defenses that he said they did not need.

“I don’t have to defend Qatar,” he said. “They can defend themselves.”

Bravo Gianni!

Tony

Jack Smith

Dear Commons Community,

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced yesterday that he had appointed career prosecutor Jack Smith to lead two investigations into former President Donald Trump and to make a decision on whether to charge him with criminal offenses.

The two investigations, Garland said, involved Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home and country club in Palm Beach, Fla.  As reported by The Washington Post, Yahoo and other news outlets.

“Today, I signed an order appointing Jack Smith to serve as special counsel,” Garland said during a news conference held at the Justice Department in Washington. “The order authorizes him to continue the ongoing investigation into both of the matters that I have just described and to prosecute any federal crimes that may arise from those investigations.”

In a statement, Smith, who was not in attendance at yesterday’s event due to a bicycle accident that required knee surgery, according to The Washington Post, promised to use “independent judgment” in his handling of the two investigations and to complete them without delay.

“The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgment and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” Smith said.

Given the sensitivity of the decision on whether to charge Trump with crimes in the two matters, Garland spent much of Friday’s news conference seeking to assure the nation about Smith’s qualifications for the role of special counsel.

“Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. He began his prosecutorial career in 1994 as an assistant district attorney with the New York County DA’s office. In 1999, he became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where over the course of nine years he prosecuted matters ranging from gang murders of police officers to civil rights violations. From 2008 to 2010, he served with the International Criminal Court, where he supervised war crimes investigations,” Garland said.

“In 2010, Mr. Smith returned to the Justice Department to serve as chief of the public integrity section, where he led a team of more than 30 prosecutors who handled public corruption and election crimes cases across the United States. In 2015, he agreed to serve as the first assistant attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, later becoming the acting U.S. attorney. Most recently, Mr. Smith served as a chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague, charged with investigating and adjudicating war crimes in Kosovo.”

Smith, Garland said, would be returning from the Netherlands “immediately” to begin his work on the two Trump cases, portraying him as “an impartial and determined prosecutor.”

In the days and weeks ahead, the attorney general said, Smith will work on his own. He also promised that Smith’s appointment would not result in the slow-walking of the investigations of the former president.

“Although the special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the department, he must comply with the regulations, procedures and policies of the department. I will ensure that the special counsel receives the resources to conduct this work quickly and completely,” Garland said. “Given the work done to date and Mr. Smith’s prosecutorial experience, I am confident that this appointment will not slow the completion of these investigations.”

In the photo above, Mr. Smith looks like he will be a very serious prosecutor!

Tony