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National

Following the release of Attorney General Bill Barr's summary of the Mueller report, House Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler tweeted Sunday that Democrats plan to call on Barr to testify before the committee.

"In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before @HouseJudiciary in the near future."

Why it matters: In the letter Barr sent to Congress, he wrote that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein "concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense." Mueller, however, did not explicitly exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice in his report, and instead chose to present evidence "on both sides of the question."

In a statement, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer said:

"Attorney General Barr’s letter raises as many questions as it answers.  The fact that Special Counsel Mueller’s report does not exonerate the president on a charge as serious as obstruction of justice demonstrates how urgent it is that the full report and underlying documentation be made public without any further delay.  Given Mr. Barr’s public record of bias against the Special Counsel’s inquiry, he is not a neutral observer and is not in a position to make objective determinations about the report."

House Democrats call on Barr to testify about Mueller report

Barr concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to establish that Trump obstructed justice.

Politics

Bill Barr

Politics & Policy

After taking the weekend to pore over the Mueller report, Attorney General William Barr has sent Congress his summary of the "principal conclusions" from the special counsel's 675-day investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

"[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

On the question of obstruction of justice, Barr writes that while Mueller's report "does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

Barr says he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that the evidence "is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense," noting that the government would have to prove such a case "beyond a reasonable doubt."

This story has been updated to note DOJ's conclusions on obstruction of justice.

Mueller investigation finds no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia

"[W]hile this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’"

Robert Mueller leaving church on March 24, Washington, D.C. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Mueller investigation

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Capital

Axios Capital

Corruption comes in many forms: cheating, bribery, nepotism, cronyism, embezzlement, fraud, state capture. Donald Trump's nomination of Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve board falls neatly under the heading of "cronyism."

The big picture: Moore has few apparent qualifications for a seat on the Fed board. Instead, he is being rewarded for his work on Trump's election campaign and for his gushing praise of Trump in places like his "Trumponomics" book.

The proximate cause of his nomination seems to be a recent WSJ op-ed that Moore wrote claiming "the Trump administration’s pro-growth policies have attracted investment from around the globe," and which, bizarrely, urged the Fed to link domestic interest rates to international commodity prices.

Moore would politicize the Fed in an unprecedented manner: He has consistently called for higher interest rates whenever a Democrat is in the White House and lower rates when it's a Republican. Were he to be confirmed — an act that itself would qualify as state capture — Fed chair Jay Powell could no longer truthfully say that his rate-setting committee is independent, unswayed by partisan political considerations. That independence has been a Fed bedrock for decades.

The Fed shocked the bond markets this week by announcing that it was planning no more rate hikes for the rest of the year. That's despite the fact that current rates are low and growth seems healthy. By coincidence, the Fed's move follows sustained and public pressure from President Trump, urging the Fed to stop raising rates.

The markets don't believe that Trump is responsible for the new policy. But if they did suspect political influence, the Fed's credibility — by far its most important asset — would be shattered.

Further reading: John Authers explains the most likely economic rationale for Powell's actions, while Greg Ip worries that if rates need to be this low when the economy is doing well, the Fed will not be able to cope if and when the next big downturn happens. And Binyamin Appelbaum reminds us that the Fed seems to be neglecting its other big job, of regulating the banking system.

Jay Powell's Fed gives Trump what he wants

Moore would politicize Jay Powell's Federal Reserve in an unprecedented manner.

Illustration of Jay Powell's head on a teddy bear

Business

Federal Reserve

Donald Trump

Here's something that ought to catch Democrats' attention: Swing voters at a recent focus group in Wisconsin hadn't heard of either the Green New Deal or "Medicare for all."

Why it matters: These are Democrats' biggest policy staples heading into the 2020 presidential election. They're talking about them all the time, and the ideas are even being weaponized by the right to label the entire Democratic Party as socialists. But none of that is breaking through in this key battleground state.

This takeaway comes from the Engagious/FPG focus group of swing voters we watched earlier this month, which included eight Barack Obama/Donald Trump voters and four Mitt Romney/Hillary Clinton voters.

Details: Not a single person had heard of — or could explain — the Green New Deal. 

"I would only say that it's an environmental policy because it has the word 'green' in it," said one woman. 

Nine of the 12 people said they'd heard almost no news at all about "Medicare for all" in the past several months.

Half of the participants had never even heard the phrase "Medicare for all" until they walked in the room that night in Appleton, Wisconsin. 

"I think Bernie Sanders has said something about it," said Carla N., a 53-year-old Romney/Clinton voter. 

A majority of these swing voters have no idea which party is pushing the plan.

Because of that, they don't view either the Green New Deal or "Medicare for all" favorably or unfavorably.

They're also unfamiliar with most of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, as I've written. In fact, these swing voters know Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez better than all of the 2020 Democrats except for Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.

The bottom line: Democrats might have an opportunity to capitalize on Trump fatigue in 2020 in this critical battleground state — but they're a long way from winning over swing voters on the ideas that will define their campaigns.

Democrats' 2 big ideas aren't breaking through in Wisconsin

The Green New Deal and Medicare for All aren't getting much traction with swing voters.

Sen. Bernie Sanders at a "Medicare for all" rally. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

2020 presidential election

2020 election

President Trump has publicly boasted that he could beat any of his 2020 Democratic challengers. But privately, several members of the Trump campaign see a few who could pose a threat to his re-election, and are in the early stages of building out their strategy for attack.

The bottom line: The three candidates that seem to concern the Trump campaign most are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. That's in no particular order, and you’ll get a different answer depending on who you talk to.

Joe Biden: Several Trump advisers think Biden is best positioned to take back the white Rust Belt voters Trump carried in 2016 and make purple states like Michigan and Wisconsin far more dangerous for the campaign.

“A guy who loves his guns and God is not voting for Kamala Harris. But he would vote for Joe Biden. He’s a lot harder for them to demonize,” a former Trump campaign staffer told Axios.

And despite what he says about Biden in public, Trump respects him the way he respects House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the former staffer said: “He looks at Biden as that elder statesman, the guy that can connect to the working class voter.”

“Biden is the only Democrat who passes the commander in chief test which makes him appealing — particularly to swing voters,” David Tamasi, former finance director of the Trump Victory Fund, told Axios. 

The other side: "He’s low energy, and if he wins the nomination all of the energy on the Dems side will deflate like a balloon,” a Republican operative close to the campaign said. 

Kamala Harris: Trump was impressed by Harris' massive crowd for her announcement event, according to White House aides. Some of Trump's advisers view Harris as a major threat because it's obvious to them that Trump hasn't figured out how to talk about her.

He's given her no nickname and has yet to even test-drive a line of attack. A Trump adviser told Axios: "It's going [to be] hard for the president to attack her and debate her" because Democrats could easily cast his attacks as racist and sexist. 

"With Kamala ... I don't know what she does to the young, but more broadly to the African-American vote. If they come out in huge numbers that's a challenge," a Trump campaign adviser said.

The other side: Though several aides admit she’s a winner when it comes to identity politics, they also question whether she has enough experience and can sustain the momentum she’ll need.

Beto O’Rourke: Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Fox Business News last week that Republicans shouldn't underestimate O’Rourke. That is a view shared by a number of people in Trump’s inner circle.

He doesn’t have a long resume or a huge amount of experience, one Republican strategist said, but he’s got the X factor that lets you capture the media narrative. He’d also be a generational foil to Trump.

“I have personally been very concerned about Beto for quite some time,” a Trump campaign adviser said. “He seems to generate that liberal grassroots energy without being particularly in-your-face with his points of view. And he's charismatic.”

If O'Rourke was the nominee, he would also force the White House to spend a lot of money in Texas, which they don’t plan to do.

The other side: Others close to Trump think the only reason O'Rourke was so successful in his Senate campaign is “because Sen. Ted Cruz ran a bad race,” the Republican operative said. 

The runners up: Several aides close to the president said Bernie Sanders shouldn’t be discounted as a formidable contender. "He is to the left what Trump was to the right in 2016,” Tamasi said. 

And while no one on the campaign thinks Elizabeth Warren could secure the Democratic nomination, some said she’s high on their radar because they see her as a great campaigner and her jabs often get under Trump’s skin. “She can still do some damage,” a former White House official said. 

“It doesn’t matter who emerges from the Democrat convention in 2020, because that candidate will be beat up, low on funds, without a national operation, and saddled with the socialist policy positions demanded by the extreme left of their party," Kayleigh McEnany, press secretary for the Trump campaign, told Axios.

The 2020 Democrats Trumpworld fears most

Despite what Trump says in public, there are three candidates campaign advisers are keeping their eyes on.

A Make America Great Again hat dripping sweat

Kamala Harris

Joe Biden

Dayo Olopade, a Nigerian-American journalist and technologist living in London, used the term "corruption anxiety" to describe "the knowledge that society can be and has been manipulated to favor the powerful, at your expense" in a speech at Georgetown University on Tuesday.

Why it matters: It's the sentiment that drove the Arab Spring, but it's not confined to developing countries. The Tea Party, Occupy, the Brexiteers, the Yellow Vests, even Donald "stop this corrupt machine" Trump — all of them feed from a well of broad-based corruption anxiety. As Olopade puts it: "Corruption anxiety unifies the populist left and the populist right."

The big picture: Corruption scandals are magnified by each other. Theranos and Goldman Sachs and Martin Shkreli and Purdue Pharma and the Fyre Festival and the Catholic Church and billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and parking placard abuse and police violence and all the various Trump administration scandals aren't bad apples: They're part of a pattern, one that the American public is hyperaware of. These headlines foment mistrust in the fairness of the entire system.

Be smart: Western countries are generally perceived as less corrupt than most countries in Africa. But perceptions don't always mirror reality. "Our current corruption discourse is a form of geopolitical racial profiling," says Olopade. Any given act of corruption tends to get blamed on an individual actor in the West, while being considered symptomatic of a broader malaise in a place like Nigeria. 

Okwui Enwezor, the great Nigerian art curator, moved to America from Nigeria in the 1980s and found what he described as "a very affluent but unjust society."

Nordic companies, especially, are more than capable of highly corrupt activity, without Norway or Sweden being considered corrupt countries. 

"Despite the big scandals hitting Siemens or Daimler or Volkswagen," deadpans Olopade, "I never encounter polite grimaces when discussing doing business in Germany."

Meanwhile, Western nations and institutions are more than happy to play host to African kleptocrats.

The bottom line: The Mueller report has refocused America's attention on malfeasance during the 2016 election campaign. But as Robert Rotberg puts it in his book about corruption, “Greed never stops at the edge of a presidential palace." The more frequently everyday Americans are reminded that our system is rigged, the less they're going to be willing participants in that system.

Corruption anxiety

It's a broad-based sentiment that "unifies the populist left and the populist right."

Illustration of U.S. map as a rug with cockroaches crawling out

Corruption

World

House Judiciary chairman Jerrold Nadler said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that while President Trump may attempt to assert executive privilege in order to stop the Justice Department from releasing evidence from the Mueller investigation, the Supreme Court has established that executive privilege "cannot be used to hide wrongdoing."

Nadler on MTP

CHUCK TODD: “All right. Well, that brings us to this ambiguous phrase, right? "Executive privilege." And I'm just curious. Who gets to decide — who gets to arbitrate this? Is this up to the attorney general?"

NADLER: “Well, no. The president must personally assert executive privilege. And I do not believe it exists here at all because, as we learned from the Nixon tapes case, executive privilege cannot hide — cannot be used to hide wrongdoing. And in that case, the Supreme Court nine to nothing ordered that all the claims of executive privilege be overridden and the tapes be public. So I don’t think that executive — I mean, the president may try to assert it, may try to hide things behind it. But I don't think that's right or [will] be successful.”

The big picture: Nadler appeared on a number of Sunday morning cable talk shows to preemptively discuss how Democrats would approach the release of the Mueller report. He called for the full report and the underlying evidence from the Mueller investigation to be released publicly, claiming that anything less could be considered a "cover-up."

Nadler said that if evidence was withheld, Democrats would subpoena Mueller and take the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

He also added that Mueller had a much more narrow mandate than Congress, and that the investigations of Trump won't necessarily end even if Mueller concludes there was no criminal conspiracy.

Nadler: Executive privilege "cannot be used to hide wrongdoing"

"[E]xecutive privilege cannot be used to hide wrongdoing."

Conflicts, policies and powers are intersecting and shaping the world. Breaking news and analysis of national security, foreign policy and global crises.

House Intelligence chair Adam Schiff said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that even if the Mueller report does not recommend any new indictments — as has been reported — that does not necessarily rule out impeachment for President Trump.

Adam Schiff

STEPHANOPOULOS: "You told the San Francisco chronicle on Friday, if there's no bombshell, there's no impeachment. Does no new indictments qualify as no bombshell?

SCHIFF: "Not necessarily because again, George, as you pointed out, they can't indict the president. That's their policy. And therefore there could be overwhelming evidence on the obstruction issue. And I don't know if that's the case, but if there were overwhelming evidence of criminality on the president's part, then the Congress would need to consider that remedy if indictment is foreclosed."

The big picture: Attorney General William Barr is expected to submit a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings to Congress by the end of the weekend. Both Democrats and Republicans have demanded that the full Mueller report be released to the public, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledging on Saturday that she would reject any classified briefing offered by the Justice Department in an effort to promote full transparency.

Schiff: No new Mueller indictments does not mean Trump is vindicated

He also said it does not rule out impeachment, since a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Axios

Sunday's top stories

House Democrats call on Barr to testify about Mueller report

Mueller investigation finds no Trump campaign conspiracy with Russia

Jay Powell's Fed gives Trump what he wants

Democrats' 2 big ideas aren't breaking through in Wisconsin

The 2020 Democrats Trumpworld fears most

Corruption anxiety

Nadler: Executive privilege "cannot be used to hide wrongdoing"

Schiff: No new Mueller indictments does not mean Trump is vindicated

Apple’s high-stakes Hollywood audition

The great political parachute

Pelosi vows to reject classified Mueller briefing

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