Two More: Josh Putnam and Desart

Given the wide disparity among the various quants, it will be interesting who among them is closest to the final electoral vote count. Nate Silver has been very cautious about Hillary Clinton's chances, which may be an over correction to his insistence during the summer that there was no way Trump would win the RNC primary.

Josh Putnam (Frontloading HQ) - http://frontloading.blogspot.com/
Hillary Clinton: 340
Donald Trump: 198

Desart (Utah Valley) - http://research.uvu.edu/DeSart/forecasting/november.html
Hillary Clinton: 347
Donald Trump: 191

Judge Kozinski on prosecutorial misconduct - Helps Explain Late Election FBI Leakfest

Here are excerpts of an article by Judge Alex Kozinski discussing examples of prosecutorial misconduct. Perhaps not surprisingly, several of his examples involve the pursuit of political leaders in the midst of an election. The fact that it happens among prosecuting attorneys is bad enough. However, investigating agents may have even less checks on their ambitions to bring down a big fish. At least prosecuting attorneys are constrained by the fact that they will ultimately need to prove their cases beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

In contrast, an investigator has more leeway to investigate before clear evidence of wrong doing has been discovered. Of course, the prospect of bringing down a big target can lead to abuses similar to those described below, which is becoming increasingly apparent in the FBI with the desperate last minute leaks of damaging information against Hillary Clinton.

http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Preface.pdf

Prosecutors hold tremendous power, more than anyone other than jurors, and often much more than jurors because most cases don’t go to trial. Prosecutors and their investigators have unparalleled access to the evidence, both inculpatory and exculpatory, and while they are required to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense under Brady, Giglio, and Kyles v. Whitley, it is very difficult for the defense to find out whether the prosecution is complying with this obligation.

Prosecutors also have tremendous control over witnesses: They can offer incentives — often highly compelling incentives — for suspects to testify. This includes providing sweetheart plea deals to alleged co-conspirators and engineering jail-house encounters between the defendant and known informants.

Sometimes they feed snitches non-public information about the crime so that the statements they attribute to the defendant will sound authentic. And, of course, prosecutors can pile on charges so as to make it exceedingly risky for a defendant to go to trial. There are countless ways in which prosecutors can prejudice the fact-finding process and undermine a defendant’s right to a fair trial.

This, of course, is not their job. Rather, as the Supreme Court has held, “A prosecutor is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones.”

All prosecutors purport to operate just this way and I believe that most do. My direct experience is largely with federal prosecutors and, with a few exceptions, I have found them to be fair-minded, forthright and highly conscientious.

But there are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors — and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices — engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials. The misconduct ranges from misleading the jury, to outright lying in court and tacitly acquiescing or actively participating in the presentation of false evidence by police.

Prosecutorial misconduct is a particularly difficult problem to deal with because so much of what prosecutors do is secret. If a prosecutor fails to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense, who is to know? Or if a prosecutor delays disclosure of evidence helpful to the defense until the defendant has accepted an unfavorable plea bargain, no one will be the wiser. Or if prosecutors rely on the testimony of cops they know to be liars, or if they acquiesce in a police scheme to create inculpatory evidence, it will take an extraordinary degree of luck and persistence to discover it — and in most cases it will never be discovered.

There are distressingly many cases where such misconduct has been documented, but I will mention just three to illustrate the point. The first is United States v. Stevens, the prosecution of Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican Senator in history.

Senator Stevens was charged with corruption for accepting the services of a building contractor and paying him far below market price — essentially a bribe. The government’s case hinged on the testimony of the contractor, but the government failed to disclose the initial statement the contractor made to the FBI that he was probably overpaid for the services. The government also failed to disclose that the contractor was under investigation for unrelated crimes and thus had good reason to curry favor with the authorities.

Stevens was convicted just a week before he stood for re-election and in the wake of the conviction, he was narrowly defeated, changing the balance of power in the Senate. The government’s perfidy came to light when a brave FBI agent by the name of Chad Joy blew the whistle on the government’s knowing concealment of exculpatory evidence.

Did the government react in horror at having been caught with its hands in the cookie jar? Did Justice Department lawyers rend their garments and place ashes on their head to mourn this violation of their most fundamental duty of candor and fairness? No way, no how. Instead, the government argued strenuously that its ill-gotten conviction should stand because boys will be boys and the evidence wasn’t material to the case anyway.

It was only the extraordinary persistence and the courageous intervention of District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who made it clear that he was going to dismiss the Stevens case and then ordered an investigation of the government’s misconduct that forced the Justice Department to admit its malfeasance — what else could it do? — and move to vacate the former senator’s conviction. Instead of contrition, what we have seen is Justice Department officials of the highest rank suffering torn glenoid labrums from furiously patting themselves on the back for having “done the right thing.”

* * *

While most prosecutors are fair and honest, a legal environment that tolerates sharp prosecutorial practices gives important and undeserved career advantages to prosecutors who are willing to step over the line, tempting others to do the same. Having strict rules that prosecutors must follow will thus not merely avoid the risk of letting a guilty man free to commit other crimes while an innocent one languishes his life away, it will also preserve the integrity of the prosecutorial process by shielding principled prosecutors from unfair competition from their less principled colleagues.

WaPo Editorial - Donald Trump "Represents a Danger to the Republic."

Nice editorial that reviews some of the biggest Donald Trump whoppers. Of course, WaPo itself jumped on the bandwagon with the Comey letter announcing a whole lot of innuendo, but this is still a good article.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-trump-can-win/2016/11/02/1512d15c-a07c-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.580bdffe99ca

“If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely.”

This lie is emblematic, for two reasons. First, Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns is an unprecedented sign of contempt for voters; every major-party nominee of the modern era has respected this basic norm of transparency.

Second, this early lie presaged a campaign built on lies. Mr. Trump went on to deceive about almost everything else: whether American Muslims celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, whether he opposed the invasion of Iraq, whether he mocked a disabled reporter, whether his tax plan would benefit him, whether accusations from women he groped have been debunked, and so on and on and endlessly on.

Most politicians are caught in falsehoods from time to time. Mr. Trump revels in them, and when caught simply repeats the lie, more loudly. Similarly, he trades in conspiracy theories that he must know to be false, the more lurid the better: that President Obama was born in Kenya, that Vincent Foster and Antonin Scalia were murdered, that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The campaign even lies about his initial lie, denying that Mr. Trump ever promised to release his returns.

With Hillary, the Fear Is She Is Not Telling The Truth; With Trump, The Danger is That He Is...

The narrative that you hear from both the left and the right is that while Hillary says one thing, she may really mean it notwithstanding the fact that most fact checkers generally rate the bulk of her statements as true. Nonetheless, critics speculate that maybe she secretly wants to start a war with Iran, maybe she actually is racist, maybe she will cut taxes for the rich, rather than raise them, maybe she will accept TPP. Yet, as Ezra Klein noted, most Presidential candidates do try to fulfill their campaign promises for better or worse.

That being said, with Trump, we have pundits and his supporters repeatedly dismissing his most outrageous statements as not being serious or being sarcastic. It is impossible to list them all, but the statements include:

* His calls for Russia to hack his opponent.
* His proposal to threaten default on the U.S. debt.
* His suggestion that the spread of nuclear weapons is okay.
* His endorsement of torture much worse than water boarding.
* His statements that he might not live up to the U.S.'s NATO treaty obligations.
* His dismissal of grabbing women by the genitals as locker room talk.
* His claims that judges are biased against him because of their race.
* His claims that the election is rigged and insistence that he would not accept the results of the election.
* His claim that climate change is a Chinese hoax.
* His insistence that Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals.
* His calls to reintroduce racial profiling.
* His insistence that the election is rigged, and that his supporters should take active steps to prevent rampant voter fraud.

Every time that Trump has said these statements, even after he has doubled down with a follow-up tweet, pundits and his campaign dismiss his statements as sarcasm or hyperbole.

What is scary is how the media and even his own supporters seem to take it as a matter of faith that Trump is bullshitting us, and that is okay, because we hope that he is more reasonable than he sounds. We are counting on him lying to us on some very key, fundamental issues. I think this is crazy.

This is what I would raise with Trump supporters. While they complain that Hillary might be lying, the danger with Trump is that he might be telling the truth regarding the nature of the policies he believes in and wishes to adopt. If so, heaven help us that he might be telling the truth on his most outrageous claims and promises.

Vox - Two experts say Donald Trump should be investigated for criminal tax evasion

Donald Trump has, for years, served as president of a charitable foundation that, though named after himself, is not financed with contributions made out of his own pocket. Instead, contributions mostly seem to come from a range of Trump’s business partners, allowing him to parlay celebrity into securing credit for charity work.

And much of the foundation’s spending doesn’t really fit the traditional conception of philanthropy at all. Some of the money seems to flow back into Trump’s pockets through his businesses, while other funds are used to punish his political enemies or try to gain new friends in the conservative movement.

At times the level of self-dealing becomes downright comical. It spent $20,000 on a portrait of Donald Trump, for example, and $12,000 on buying Trump an autographed Tim Tebow helmet. When Trump's Mar-a-Lago club racked up $120,000 in fines from the town of Palm Beach, Florida for violating a local ordinance regarding the height of flagpoles, Trump eventually settled the dispute by agreeing to a $100,000 donation to a veterans' charity — and then had his foundation rather than the club pay the tab. The largest gift the foundation ever made was a $264,631 bequest that was used to renovate a fountain outside the windows of Trump’s Plaza Hotel. He’s also used the charity for some surprisingly small-time frauds.

Various aspects of this almost certainly violate the laws governing charities (he’s already been sanctioned by the state of New York), but several experts are also raising the question of whether Trump is guilty of criminal tax evasion. This is a difficult charge to prove, but the law requires the government to demonstrate knowledge and intent which means that scofflaws can often get off by pleading ignorance. But both Philip Hackney, a former IRS attorney now working as a professor of tax law, and Adam Chodorow, a tax law professor at Arizona State University, have written that the elements exist to at least begin an investigation.

The Nation - How Trump’s Media Cheerleaders Turned Campaign Coverage Into a Total Disaster

Interesting story of how the corporate media enabled Trump in the pursuit of both right wing ideological goals, as well as the pursuit of profits at the expense of informing the public.

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-trumps-media-cheerleaders-turned-campaign-coverage-into-a-total-disaster/

Now that the Trump campaign is reaching its final implosion, let’s take stock of those journalists and media moguls who used their influence and airtime to enable this catastrophe.

First and foremost on the list would have to be Rupert Murdoch. New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman has detailed the genesis of what he termed the “Murdoch-Trump alliance.” He quoted a Murdoch insider explaining that the boss “doesn’t like people to be snobs and treat Trump like a clown,” though, of course, this is exactly what he is. Despite the kerfuffle with prize Murdoch property Megyn Kelly, in which Trump put his ignorant misogyny on full display, Murdoch tweeted that the GOP “would be mad not to unify” behind Trump. The deal, according to Sherman, was largely brokered by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Orthodox Jewish owner of The New York Observer, who doubles as a top adviser to the billionaire’s campaign of anti-Jewish hatred. As a result, Sherman noted, Trump’s fellow sexual predator, former Fox News honcho Roger Ailes, sent out the word: “Make sure we don’t go after Trump.” This led one anchor to complain, “We’ve thrown in the towel.”

Pushing Trump has also been the rule at other Murdoch properties. The New York Post is among the few newspapers in America to endorse his campaign, terming him “King Don” after his New York primary victory. (Joining the Post in this lonely endorsement was the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which—surprise, surprise—is owned by Sheldon Adelson and deployed, much as Murdoch uses the Post, as a propaganda sheet for its owner’s business interests and extremist ideology.) The Wall Street Journal generally does not endorse, but editor in chief Gerry Baker made sure his staff understood the need to be “fair” to Trump, lest their professionalism interfere with its owner’s political agenda. This attempt to further bias the paper’s Murdoch-meddled news coverage is, of course, augmented by its far-right, science-denying, supply-­side-economics-cheerleading editorial page.

 Per usual, Murdoch’s corporate interests and ideological obsessions reinforced each other regarding Trump’s candidacy. Not only did ratings reportedly dip on Fox whenever anyone was too critical, but when Trump loses, Fox will have to start worrying that a Trump-branded “alt-right” media empire will steal away its most fervently nutty viewers. Over at CNN, however, things are less complicated: Sucking up to Trump brought in viewers and hence massive amounts of advertising dollars for the network, something its president, Jeff Zucker, has known since the days when he promoted Trump’s reality shows at NBC. Zucker disgraced CNN by constantly running Trump phone calls and rallies as if the “C” stood for “Cheerleader.” He also hired Trump apologists, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who, while being paid by CNN to allegedly offer his honest opinions on the election, was simultaneously being paid by the Trump campaign to do exactly the opposite. At no point did Lewandowski do anything on the air that was inconsistent with his role as an official Trump mouthpiece—up to and including his willingness to parrot Trump’s recent complaint that the election is somehow “rigged,” a move that power-hammered the final nail in his political coffin. And yet Zucker had no problem with deliberately misinforming his audiences in the service of exploding ad revenue.

Trump Is Coming Back in Polls Because Too Many People Are Afraid To Take a Stand

Here is Trump just freely lying and pushing conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/29/politics/donald-trump-fbi-doj-corruption-james-comey-hillary-clinton-emails/index.html

In the closing weeks, the media has once again taken to giving Trump softball interviews, including this one by Mark Halperin who himself chastised other journalists for refusing to press Trump on his failure to disclose his tax returns:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/28/mark-halperin-s-donald-trump-interview-even-fails-mark-halperin-test/214179

Finally, putting party over country, the GOP has stood by even as Trump has cozied up to Russia even when they themselves have said that Russia has taken an active role in trying to influence the election.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/mike-mccaul-trump-russia-hacks-230286

This is how we descend into facism. When people are afraid and intimidated to do what is right.

Hypocrisy - Daily Beast - "GOP Blocks Probes Into Trump-Russia Tie"

While Russia, Er, Republicans go on television and complain about Hillary's use of personal e-mail constituting a security threat, watch the MSM ignore Republican efforts to kill any examination of ties between Trump and Russia.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/30/gop-blocks-probes-into-trump-russia-ties.html

Suspicion is mounting about Donald Trump’s ties to Russian officials and business interests, as well as possible links between his campaign and the Russian hacking of U.S. political organizations. But GOP leaders have refused to support efforts by Democrats to investigate any possible Trump-Russia connections, which have been raised in news reports and closed-door intelligence briefings. And without their support, Democrats, as the minority in both chambers of Congress, cannot issue subpoenas to potential witnesses and have less leverage to probe Trump.

Privately, Republican congressional staff told The Daily Beast that Trump and his aides’ connections to Russian officials and businesses interests haven’t gone unnoticed and are concerning. And GOP lawmakers have reviewed Democrats’ written requests to the FBI that it investigate Trump before they were made public.

But the lawmakers in both chambers have declined to sign on to them. Republicans have no appetite to launch inquiries into their party’s presidential nominee, and they continue to believe the FBI flubbed its investigation into Clinton and her aides, who should have been charged with mishandling government secrets, the staffers said.

Instead Republican lawmakers appear far more interested in probing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, nearly three months after the Justice Department declined to press charges against her or her aides. FBI Director James Comey has been called to testify to Congress three times about the email investigation, and Republicans have launched a separate inquiry into whether the former secretary of State committed perjury when she testified before Congress about her unorthodox communications system. As a result, Clinton is likely to face relentless grilling on Capitol Hill from now until Election Day, but Trump can rest assured that his fellow partisans will go easy on him.

Reminder - Vox - The media's 5 unspoken rules for covering Hillary

This reminds me of the media's rush of Clinton Foundation stories.

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/6/8900143/hillary-clinton-reporting-rules

1) Everything, no matter how ludicrous-sounding, is worthy of a full investigation by federal agencies, Congress, the "vast right-wing conspiracy," and mainstream media outlets

2) Every allegation, no matter how ludicrous, is believable until it can be proven completely and utterly false. And even then, it keeps a life of its own in the conservative media world.

3) The media assumes that Clinton is acting in bad faith until there's hard evidence otherwise.

4) Everything is newsworthy because the Clintons are the equivalent of America's royal family

5) Everything she does is fake and calculated for maximum political benefit

Vox - Last year, no candidate got more negative media coverage than Hillary Clinton

While Donald Trump bases his whole campaign on how the media is so unfair to him in reporting the things he says and does, the MSM ignores the ongoing negative narrative by which it has framed Hillary Clinton.

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/20/11949860/media-coverage-hillary-clinton

Fox News ran 330 stories about Hillary Clinton in 2015. About 300 of them were overtly negative, according to new research.

Fox News may have hit Clinton harder than any other news outlet, but it’s hardly been alone in treating her candidacy with extra scrutiny. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy released a report this week that says the top news outlets hammered Clinton in 2015 far more than any other presidential candidate.

According to the report, eight of America’s most influential news outlets wrote coverage "negative in tone" about Clinton 84 percent of the time — compared to just 43 percent for Donald Trump, and 17 percent for Bernie Sanders.

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5nrYxuiAeMEeuqstBuNEmL0Tgnw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679779/figure-7_2.0.jpg

In every month of 2015 but one — October, when Clinton was widely praised for her handling of the Benghazi hearings — those eight outlets devoted far more negative than positive coverage to Clinton, the report found.