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The Mental Health Ramifications We Expected for Doctors Are Here Now |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=54222"><span class="small">Lauren Serino, Slate</span></a>
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Sunday, 03 May 2020 13:05 |
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Serino writes: "Fear. Fear has become endemic during COVID season. It's not just of the virus. Everything has a patina of fear."
A medical staff member walks past a flower tribute to the late ophthalmologist Li Wenliang at the Houhu Branch of Wuhan Central Hospital in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province on February 7, 2020. (photo: Slate/Getty Images/AFP)
The Mental Health Ramifications We Expected for Doctors Are Here Now
By Lauren Serino, Slate
03 May 20
The baseline for getting physicians the care they need was low, even before the pandemic, our ER doctor writes.
 wo emergency physicians, based at two different hospitals in the New York metropolitan area, are logging their days for Slate. At the end of each shift, they write a response to three questions: What was today like? How did it compare with yesterday? And how do you feel? We have offered them anonymity so that they can write freely about their experiences. Dr. Kelly Keene and Dr. Lauren Serino are pseudonyms. Read Week 1 here, Week 2 here, Week 3 here, and Week 4 here.
Dr. Serino, April 23
“I think I’m having a panic attack,” says my friend Mark on the phone. He’s never had one before. “My heart’s racing and I can’t make it stop.” I ask him to put on the pulse oximeter I convinced him to buy when he first became sick with COVID 6 weeks ago. “It’s 160,” he says.
I tell him to send me a video. My first impulse is to be skeptical of the reading, because I prefer that to it being true. A heart rate of 160 is dangerous territory, indicative of arrhythmias, blood clots, sepsis, something. But maybe a sensor needs to be wiped quickly with a cloth. Maybe it’s not on his finger all the way! I continue mentally insulting his intelligence since that’s the safest explanation.
I get the video: its 120-160 beats per minute bouncing back and forth. He’s not short of breath. He’s not coughing. There’s no fever. Because of the way the rate is changing rapidly, I think about a-fib, which can cause strokes.
“You’re going to need to go to the hospital,” I tell him when his tachycardia doesn’t resolve.
There’s a now-familiar pause. I recognize it when I talk to any patient, whether I know them or not.
Fear. Fear has become endemic during COVID season.
It’s not just of the virus. Everything has a patina of fear. Lately, I find that I can’t stop watching the clips on YouTube of protestors demanding the economy re-open. Red-faced, screaming. I don’t really hear what they’re saying but I see it: Fear. Fear of economic collapse, fear of change, fear of uncertainty.
I feel uncertainty too, we all do. Even if my reaction and my responses are entirely different than the ones I can’t look away from on the screen.
Fear is just uncertainty that’s come looking for a target. There’s still so little we know about how the virus behaves, who has it, who doesn’t, what the future will bring. Uncertainty is uncomfortable. I meditate, and one of the hardest parts for me is sitting with a feeling of discomfort. Sometimes, it’s hard to discern if a feeling is emotional or physical, though the longer I sit with it, the distinction frequently becomes beside the point. A vague sense of unease that can’t be pinned down is anxiety provoking. We want to know where the fear is coming from, and so we point fingers. The stay at home orders are the target for some, like those protestors online, sure of a hierarchy of freedom, convinced that normalcy will ward off death. For others, the fear centers on their health, and that of their families. But as time has gone on, fear seems to have become diffuse. You can recognize it in everything. But nothing is so broadly representative of our fears as the hospital itself.
It’s the isolation from family and the lack of visitors. The visual and written representations of all those individuals who were brought in and never came out; whose bodies were never seen one last time, whose families didn’t get that last look to convince themselves of their loved ones mortality. The hospital is the synecdoche of the entire COVID crisis.
This is why my patients are calling into telehealth, for problems that are too complex to solve anywhere except an emergency room or acute care setting. But as I spoke to my friend—whose heart rate finally did improve and who agreed to be seen in the clinic the next day—I realize that the fear has become so ingrained, that even people with COVID are afraid to go to the hospital.
I can almost hear the magical thinking: If I don’t go in there, I’ll be fine. As if the act of entering the hospital is the leading cause of mortality, not the symptoms that required a visit in the first place.
I can almost hear it, because it plays in my head too. It’s a dangerous voice. As overall mortality in heavily affected cities rise compared to similar months in prior years, it’s proven to be a voice that kills. It’s important to heed warnings: wear masks, physically distance, wash hands, don’t come to the ER unless it’s an emergency. The problem is understanding what qualifies as an emergency right now. Because if it is? Please come. Please don’t wait until your appendix bursts, or let your stroke go untreated, or allow your COVID-related symptoms to threaten your life when we could support you.
And when you do come in, tell us you’re afraid. We are, too. We will get through this together.
Dr. Serino, April 25
This week, a nurse at Kings County – mythologic in her presence there for the last 30 years – died. So did a much-loved ICU doctor, also at King’s. At a few other hospitals around the city, more health care workers have passed away and one medicine attending—who has always been such a pleasure to work with—is on ECMO and I can’t imagine he’s going to make it. All of these deaths were caused by COVID19.
Tonight, a friend and colleague told me that an ER doctor in the city, who he has known since residency days, died by suicide. A 24 year old EMT did as well. Their deaths were caused by COVID-19, too.
I’m thinking back to something I wrote in the first week of these logs. “We’ll lose colleagues to this virus. Both to illness and possibly to moral injury later. I worry about everyone’s mental health.”
We’ve already gotten to ‘later.’ Later is now.
There has been some speculation amongst psychiatrists I work with as to the possibility of a physiologic, neuropsychiatric effect caused by COVID19. After all, the loss of sense of taste and smell in many patients suggests that the virus can target the nervous system. There have been case reports of encephalitis, an inflammatory condition of the brain, and other cognitive-behavioral effects. It would follow that perhaps depression, psychosis, or suicidality could also be caused by infection.
Information from the general population will have to be the source of the data that helps us see if this is the case. Because we’ll never find out if we rely on physicians who have had COVID-19 to self-report. We may experience it, feel it, fear it. But we won’t say it. The culture of medicine demands machismo.
Here’s a story: Once, I worked an entire shift attached to an IV pole with fluids and Zofran. I’d been ill for days, but if I’d called out, I would have been responsible for finding my own replacement, owing them favors, and being branded as lacking work ethic. There’s a saying amongst physicians: you’re either taking care of patients, or you are a patient. If you’re not requiring hospitalization and you claim you’re unable to work, you’re weak. And weakness? Amongst physicians, that’s considered more virulent than any biologic infection.
We’ve all known colleagues who worked until their water broke, and then still finished their day because the contractions seemed far enough apart. Physicians who found out their parent died and then showed up an hour later to start a 12-hour night-shift. We all know these stories, because we tell them ourselves in a kind of one-upmanship of commitment. This kind of pride must be the result of a sort of medical Stockholm syndrome. Because if you stop to consider how ridiculous it is to be proud of putting yourself and your patients at risk, you have to admit that you do it because it’s expected of you, and you must do it no matter how you feel about it or risk your reputation. Better, at least in feeling, to see this behavior as a badge of pride instead of a way your field subjects you to systemic abuse.
The suicide rate for male physicians is 1.41 times higher than the general male population. For female physicians, the rate is 2.27 times higher than the general female population. It’s the second-leading cause of death for medical students.
Trauma creeps in. Health care providers—from EMTs to nurses to physicians, anyone, really , who is part of the patient care team—see things that have been sterilized from modern life. The first time a patient dies under our care, the first traumatic arrest, the first young person we lose. We acknowledge the early impact. But as we accumulate suffering and loss, it becomes normalized. We become desensitized. Or, we say we do, but the longer I practice, the less I become convinced.
Just because we’ve trained ourselves to pronounce the time of death of a 6-year old who bled out in the trauma bay secondary to a gunshot and then, less than five minutes later, be at the bedside of a man with an infected kidney stone (without a hint on our faces to give away what we just saw even if there’s still a spot of blood, belonging to that boy, on our sneakers), doesn’t mean that healthy processing has taken place. Compartmentalization may be required for us to do our jobs well, and should be a skill we all have—you shouldn’t give one patient substandard attention and care because of a real-time emotional response to another—but the experience doesn’t just disappear because we will it to, or, more frequently, just don’t have time for it.
We’ve all seen things that can’t be forgotten. We all have the names and faces of those human beings we met and lost within the span of hours, or minutes, lodged deeply in our hippocampus. That detachment we cultivate is what keeps us going. But that doesn’t make it adequate coping. And it doesn’t mean that one day, those hardy memories won’t overtake the landscape, leeching the color from our well-tended gardens.
So when we wonder—is there something about COVID that affects decision making; could it have a psychiatric effect?—there’s another, more insidious component to consider. Have we made it so socially, culturally and bureaucratically punitive for a physician to come forward with a mental health concern - even one that is in reaction to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, the personal stress of which is widely acknowledged—that most are too afraid of the downstream effects to seek help?
When a doctor finds themselves in a position of psychiatric distress, the decision to seek help comes with another choice—between the job they’ve worked their entire life for and their life. At some point, let me assure you, these two things feel like one and the same. Whether you’re seeking care for a diagnosis or looking for counseling to work through a devastating patient experience or lawsuit, the mere act of seeking that care is asked about when applying for jobs and licenses. Fear of checking “Yes” to the question of seeking mental health care on these applications leads to delays to or complete avoidance of asking for help. If it is done it is often with great fear and avoidance of using insurance or traceable payment options, forcing the already fraught act of admitting to the need for help into the realm of feeling shameful.
The question often used to justify the punitive nature of disclosure is: What if a physicians’ mental health concerns lead them to be incapable of providing adequate care? What if it puts patients at risk?
But that’s the wrong question. Because what if a doctor not getting care puts a patient at risk? What if a doctor not getting care puts the doctor at risk? If we feel that getting even basic mental health support may mark a physician as unfit for patient care, what does that do to underscore the stigma already surrounding mental health care? If the very things that make us human, that cause deep hurts, are turned against us when we acknowledge our humanity and ask for help, what else can we do but avoid the support and convince ourselves that our position as physicians somehow makes us less at risk? The right question should be this: How can we acknowledge the stress and trauma inherent in being present for so much death and suffering and improve support? If there is real concern over the mental health of doctors in regard to patient outcomes, it behooves us not to punish those suffering, but to broadly prevent sequelae from untreated illness or trauma.
Psychiatrists have it right. They frequently require or offer therapy and group support for their trainees, so that they can better understand the patient’s process, but also, to work through their own experiences and learn to discern between their and their patient’s burdens. It baffles me that we don’t require and normalize counseling in other fields. So many of us have developed our own, mostly successful, coping mechanisms. But so many of us haven’t.
For me, I write about the things I see. I have always written about the things I see. Often, I don’t know what I think until I write what I think. I don’t know what I feel until I write what I feel. And in doing so, I discover the veneer of detachment is blocking the way to a number of often difficult and complicated thoughts. It keeps my honest with myself. It keeps me connected. Stories are a place for my dead to rest. Even there, they have a way of becoming restless.
Tonight, I write about our lost colleagues. I do it to remember them, not forget. But what I really want is to know how we can prevent the loss of more. And I’m worried that writing is not enough for that.
Dr. Serino, April 26
I went for COVID antibody testing today. It’s human nature to want to know. I’m not above it. The problem is, there’s one thing that I already do know: I won’t trust the results. With some tests having a sensitivity as low as 80 percent, and a specificity in the range of 90-98 percent (values whose influence on the interpretation of results changes with the prevalence of the disease, which is, of course, something we need to determine with the help of testing), each positive or negative result comes with the chance of being wrong.
If my results return positive, it may mean that I have a false positive, or that maybe it’s just picking up on another, different coronavirus infection from my past, maybe the cause of a seasonal cold. If my results return negative, it may be a false negative. I may have been infected but was tested before my body had the time to produce enough antibodies to quantify, or I may have been infected but not produced a meaningful antibody response. So If I’m positive, I may or may not have had it. And if I’m negative, I may or may not have had it. Without an associated nasal swab, it’s hard to say.
And yet, I’m still getting the test, because even if it won’t change anything about how I live my life, it’s a data point. And the more data points we have to correlate with nasal swabs and reported symptoms and large population studies, the better we can interpret results. Obviously I’m hoping that I have magic antibodies, brimming to overflow, proof of a silent and now complete bout of coronavirus. I get that this is silly. I understand that we don’t even know if or for how long antibodies confer immunity. Still, I want them.
There’s been such a lack of certainty in regards to coronavirus. This is normal—there’s a lack of certainty in regards to anything novel. But it’s also normal that we still want our experts to be able to tell us something as simple as the “classic” presentation of the illness, or to provide a test that can tell us with some level of certainty if we have it or not. I want this, even as the expert sometimes is me. Our ability to model the future in the face of COVID depends on our ability to answer the question of who is infected and what antibodies mean practically. Is herd immunity possible? How long does immunity last? Can the presence of antibodies be the passport to returning to a “normal” life? I know from my days in med school that there’s a good chance they’ll do something, and that it will be something protective. But it’s not a given. And changing our behaviors too soon may lead to unnecessary risks. Until we know more we’ll have to bide our time.
There’s one other thought I’ve been having too: Antibodies may be a powerful asset in my search for work, which has continued to be a series of dead-ends locally, which will likely continue to be the case until the next wave hits and the job market improves. Including antibody status in a cover letter may be helpful if it turns out antibodies confer some level of immunity. A prior illness would suggest you’d be unlikely to call out sick, or complain about PPE. This week, even as coworkers die of the disease, many more are having their hours cut significantly, retroactive pay cuts have been established, some of my graduating residents have had their first job offers rescinded and recruiters, who were previously aggressive in their tactics to hire, are not returning calls. One that did said that they heard hospitals were focusing on a nurse-practitioner led ER-staffing model, so they were holding off on physician hires for now. What that means is that doctors and their tens of thousands of hours of training and expertise may be in the ranks of “heroes,” but hospitals may soon prefer to provide the bulk of a patient’s emergency care from a different kind of health care worker. Non-physician healthcare workers like nurse-practitioners and physician assistants play an important team role, but they do not have to complete a three to four year residency in the specialty of emergency medicine after completing medical school.
So, while I wait for my results, I’m hopeful that my data point (mixed with thousands of others data points in this study that involves the sampling of asymptomatic, high-risk-of-exposure individuals) will lead to information that points us forward. If I appear to have antibodies, I’ll be able to get tested a second time and, if positive, donate plasma to critically ill patients in New York. That way, I can be put to work against COVID even when I’m not in the hospital on shift. Helping to heal people while asleep in my own bed? That’s what doctors dream of.
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How Trump and the GOP Just Might 'Liberate' You to Death |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=49734"><span class="small">David R. Lurie, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Sunday, 03 May 2020 13:05 |
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Lurie writes: "In the beginning, Donald Trump said 'I alone' can fix everything."
Demonstrators protest during a rally to re-open California in San Diego, California. (photo: Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images)
How Trump and the GOP Just Might 'Liberate' You to Death
By David R. Lurie, The Daily Beast
03 May 20
Trump and Bill Barr and Mitch McConnell aren’t just urging states to reopen. They’re finding ways to reward states that do and punish states that don’t.
 n the beginning, Donald Trump said “I alone” can fix everything. Then, as the pandemic gripped the nation, Trump said, the Constitution required the states to take the lead and mandated that governors compete amongst themselves for critical medical equipment and decide whether or not to impose stay-at-home orders to protect their citizens’ lives.
But more recently, things took a different turn. Trump has declared that the country must be “liberated” in plenty of time for the fall election season. And if the states don’t agree, Trump is making it plain that he’s prepared to use the full force of the federal government, along with gun-toting militia members, to force governors’ hands, regardless of the danger to Americans’ lives.
If Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and their corporate allies have their way, the pandemic will provide the pretext for an unprecedented campaign of federal interference with state governments, and possibly the wholesale voiding of hard-fought worker and other legal protections, some of which have been in place since the Great Depression.
The first indication of Trump’s scheme to coerce the states came several weeks ago when Attorney General William Barr complained that stay-at-home orders instituted at Trump’s express behest were “draconian” and said that the Department of Justice might intervene in court proceedings to undermine them. That was soon followed by a “statement of interest” by the DOJ in a lawsuit that successfully pressured a Mississippi city to limit the application of its social distancing rules to a church.
On April 27, Barr issued a memorandum to the nation’s United States Attorneys declaring the Justice Department is taking it upon itself to “monitor state and local” emergency public health policies and adjudge whether they’ve appropriately “balance[ed] public safety with the preservation of civil rights.”
As Barr explained it, the DOJ will now determine whether any “state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread [of the virus] into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections.” Barr named a U.S. Attorney from Michigan (whose governor has been a focus of Trump’s ire) as cohead of the project.
As The New York Times reported, Barr has also privately been spearheading a wide-ranging campaign, together with a network of Trump donors and religious and other conservative leaders, to force recalcitrant states to “open up.”
Tony Perkins, a right-wing religious leader close to Trump and a participant in the scheme, has declared: “The tolerance level has been reached, so either governors need to start partnering with churches and the private sector, or they’re going to lose control.” Put otherwise, if governors like Gretchen Whitmer, or as Trump has been wont to call her “that woman from Michigan,” don’t toe the line and “open up,” the DOJ may take to the courts in an effort to pry them open.
It remains, however, entirely unclear just how Barr proposes to challenge “overreach[ing]” public health measures under federal law. As the president himself has been emphasized at times he’s sought to avoid responsibility for the rapidly increasing COVID-19 death toll, the Constitution vests the states with broad “police powers” including and especially the authority to take measures reasonably calculated to protect the public health.
In the absence of discriminatory conduct or an infringement upon a constitutionally protected religious liberty right (as the DOJ has claimed in the context of religious services), the federal government has limited authority to interfere with such state regulations, and indeed has exceedingly rarely even attempted to do so.
Indeed, while Trump’s attorney general is making an unprecedented threat to establish the DOJ as the policeman of the states’ exercise of the police powers, Trump has declared that he has no authority to prevent the governors of states like Georgia to order the reopening of hair salons and tattoo parlors while COVID-19 caseloads continues to increase, in direct contravention of the president’s own guidelines.
Accordingly, it appears that the newly discovered power of the federal government to review state health protections does not extend to second-guessing the choices of governors to recklessly risk the lives of their citizens—but permits the second-guessing of governors prudently trying to protect their citizens.
In any event, rather than bringing meritless federal lawsuits, it is far more likely that Barr’s campaign will rely more on intimidation and pressure tactics than the law. The DOJ succeeded in getting its way in the recent Mississippi case simply by making a court filing in favor of the congregation. The mere threat that the DOJ will marshal the full weight of the federal government against recalcitrants like “that woman in Michigan” will inevitably have a political, if not a legal, impact.
Furthermore, GOP legislators and others have begun to file lawsuits in state courts alleging that their “liberty” has been impaired by efforts to protect the public health.
For example, one Illinois legislator actually won a courtroom victory against the application of the state’s stay-at-home order to him last week, though it may soon be overturned on appeal. A court challenge to the constitutionality of Michigan’s stay-at-home order failed, but the governor and Michigan’s gerrymandered GOP legislative majority are at odds on the issue.
Even as Barr has been ramping up his campaign against state efforts to protect the health of their citizens, Trump, together with congressional Republicans, are opening another front: this time against the state efforts to protect the rights of the most vulnerable workers.
On April 13, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a leading lobbying organization for large corporations, released a memo proposing a sweeping and unprecedented federal weakening or voiding of state and federal protections for employees and business customers during the pandemic, including limiting claims for exposure to the coronavirus itself to the weakening of anti-discrimination and layoff notice requirements.
The chamber even asked for the nullification of a Civil War-era law that rewards whistleblowers for exposing fraud in federal contracting, despite the already substantial evidence of fraud and other misconduct in connection with the massive sums being spent by governments in connection with the pandemic.
The president and his GOP allies heard the corporate call. Since then, McConnell has declared that the GOP will hold the requests of economically strapped states and municipalities for aid to defray some of the punishing costs they have incurred during the pandemic on Democrats’ agreement to enact many of labor law and liability stripping provisions the chamber has sought into law.
It remains to be seen whether McConnell’s gambit will succeed, but Trump is not waiting for the result. The nation’s meat processing plants, most staffed by large numbers of immigrant workers from Latin America, are second only to nursing homes and prisons in serving as deadly incubators for the coronavirus.
Several have been shut down after workers, who have reportedly worked in close quarters with limited or no safety protections, have been infected in sometimes staggeringly large numbers, and have in turn caused outbreaks in their surrounding communities. As one former worker put it, “If you’re not in a casket, they want you there.”
Last Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order declaring that meat processing is “critical infrastructure” under the Korean War-era Defense Production Act. That is the same act Trump has refused to invoke to facilitate the production of either PPE or viral testing. The executive order does not, as some initially, reported, squarely prevent states and localities from shutting down dangerous slaughterhouses; but the message it sent was clear: The president wants them open, regardless of the risk they may pose to workers’ lives.
The fact that Trump has intervened to protect the interests of meatpacking companies is striking not only because some of those firms have allowed their workers and their families to become ill, but also because slaughterhouses played a critical role in the development of modern labor regulation. Journalist Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle portrayed the extraordinary dangers faced by low paid immigrant laborers, most of them from Europe, in Chicago’s stockyards, and the book played a role in inducing the enactment of first federal meat inspection laws.
But the fight to provide legal rights for such unskilled workers took far longer, in part because a conservative Supreme Court majority consistently struck down state and federal worker safety protections until well into the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, often on the ground that they impaired workers’ economic “liberty.” It was only after the president threatened to “pack” the Court with new members that the court retreated, and began to uphold the New Deal reforms that included some of the very labor protections that McConnell is now seeking to void.
For decades, conservatives, including members of the Federalist Society which has been key in selecting the young judges Trump has named to pack the federal courts, have sought to resuscitate the so-called Lochner era (named after a 1905 Supreme Court case voiding New York law regulating sanitary conditions in bakeries to vindicate workers’ “freedom of contract”).
It would be a brutal irony if a moment in which many slaughterhouse workers are facing dangers of death they may not have faced since the time of Sinclair could be the time that a Republican president chooses to take away their legal protections, and likewise void states’ rights to protect their citizens from a deadly virus, in the name of “liberation.”
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FOCUS: Flynn Redux: What Those FBI Documents Really Show |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47809"><span class="small">Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare</span></a>
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Sunday, 03 May 2020 12:07 |
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Excerpt: "Over the past few days, the president’s supporters have taken a brief break from COVID-19, the economic collapse and the 2020 presidential campaign to fixate anew on the case of General Michael Flynn."
Michael Flynn supporters wait outside the federal courthouse while Flynn is inside awaiting sentencing, December 2018. (photo: Flickr/Lorie Shaull)
Flynn Redux: What Those FBI Documents Really Show
By Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare
03 May 20
 ver the past few days, the president’s supporters have taken a brief break from COVID-19, the economic collapse and the 2020 presidential campaign to fixate anew on the case of General Michael Flynn.
You remember Mike Flynn—the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who set a land-speed record for time between appointment as national security adviser and scandal-induced resignation.
Why the sudden interest in the Golden Oldies of the Trump scandals? The reason is the release of some documents from inside the FBI dealing with Flynn’s original interview by agents from the bureau, back from the period when the Trump administration was just coming into power. Flynn’s sentencing on his guilty plea for lying in that interview has been serially delayed. According to some commentators, the documents supposedly show that he was somehow set up, framed or entrapped. A lot of people seem to be expecting his sudden vindication. And a lot more people, some of whom should know better, seem remarkably credulous of Flynn’s new claims.
They should take a deep breath.
The president may well pardon Flynn, as he has long hinted. It’s possible—though for reasons we’ll explain, we think unlikely—that Judge Emmet G. Sullivan will allow Flynn to withdraw his plea. And it’s possible as well that Attorney General William Barr, who has already intervened in the case once before and has asked a U.S. attorney to review its handling, will intervene once again on Flynn’s behalf.
So far, however, nothing has emerged that remotely clears Flynn; nothing has emerged that would require Sullivan to allow him to withdraw his plea; and nothing has emerged that would justify the Justice Department’s backing off of the case—or prosecuting it aggressively if Flynn were somehow allowed out of the very generous deal Special Counsel Robert Mueller cut him.
We have put together this post in an effort to cut through a lot of the disinformation floating around about the Flynn case. We proceed in several distinct steps. First, we offer a procedural history of the case’s recent machinations—how we got to where we are, what the parties are fighting about and how these documents came to be public. Next, we examine the applicable law that governs the matters at issue. We then turn to what’s in the documents and how they interact with the legal standards. Finally, we offer some thoughts and analysis of where things are likely to go from here.
Sentencing Flynterrupted
Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators in December 2017. By December of the next year, the government was ready to go forward with sentencing, as Flynn had completed his cooperation with the special counsel’s office. But Flynn still hasn’t been sentenced.
The story is a long one—but the main reason is that in June 2019, Flynn fired his longtime lawyers from Covington & Burling, who had seen him through his guilty plea in November 2017. Instead, he hired Sidney Powell—a lawyer who had been sharply critical of the Mueller investigation—and proceeded to back away from his plea and subsequent affirmation of wrongdoing before the judge, with Powell arguing that Flynn had been “ambush[ed]” by FBI agents aiming to “trap ... him into making statements they could allege as false.” In January 2020, Powell filed two motions directly attacking the case against Flynn: a motion to dismiss her client’s prosecution “for egregious government misconduct,” and a motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
The government responded to Powell’s first motion by arguing that the actions alleged by Powell—including errors made by the Justice Department and FBI concerning the Carter Page Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications, as documented by the Justice Department inspector general—do not amount to the “egregious government misconduct” necessary to dismiss the case. In order to respond to the second motion, the government requested access to documents from Covington concerning Flynn’s case: Powell asserts that Flynn should be able to withdraw his plea because he was not adequately represented by his legal team during the negotiation process, and the government wants the relevant material from Covington in order to evaluate Flynn’s claim. Flynn waived his attorney-client privilege with his Covington team with respect to his ineffective assistance of counsel claims, which are predicated on alleged conflicts on the part of the firm.
On the order of Judge Sullivan, Covington began producing documents to the government—essentially, sharing with the government material that it had already provided to Powell when it handed off Flynn’s representation. As part of the firm’s review, it discovered “emails and two pages of handwritten notes” concerning Flynn’s case that mistakenly had not been shared with Powell when Covington had transferred its case file to her after the change in Flynn’s representation. Covington informed the court of its discovery of the materials on April 9 and passed them to Powell.
(Two weeks later, on April 28, the firm notified the court that it had discovered roughly 6,800 additional documents and emails that had not been transferred to Powell. For comparison, by its own estimation, Covington provided about 663,000 documents to Powell when the materials were first handed off. Sullivan has since ordered the firm to review its entire case file to make sure there are no lingering materials that have yet to be provided to Flynn’s new defense team. This second batch of additional material is not important for the rest of the story we’re about to tell, but it’s useful context. Notably, presumably because of the need to review the documents provided by Covington, the government has not yet filed a reply to Powell’s motion to withdraw her client’s guilty plea.)
Meanwhile, Powell was about to receive another tranche of documents from a different source: Jeffrey B. Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. In January 2020, Attorney General Barr appointed Jensen to review Flynn’s prosecution—an unusual move in line with Barr’s appointment of Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham to conduct a similar review of the Russia investigation as a whole. Many commentators, ourselves among them, have criticized Durham’s probe as an apparent effort by Barr to cast the legitimacy of the Mueller investigation into doubt, and Jensen’s review is open to similar criticism as part of the same effort.
On April 24, the government filed a letter with the court announcing Jensen’s review and indicating that he was sharing unspecified, sealed documents with Powell “as a result of this ongoing review.” That same day, Powell filed a supplement to her motion to dismiss for government misconduct, pointing to two sets of documents: one set of emails from the Covington production, and one document, under seal, from Jensen. Powell wrote that the Covington emails show “misconduct” by Brandon Van Grack, the lead prosecutor handling Flynn’s case, and that the material from Jensen “prove[d] Mr. Flynn’s allegations of having been deliberately set up and framed by corrupt agents at the top of the FBI.”
Five days later, on Sullivan’s orders and without the government’s objection, the Jensen document—containing a handful of emails and a page of notes from FBI officials about the investigation into Flynn—was filed on the public docket. This is what caused the first burst of renewed interest in the Flynn case among the president’s supporters in recent days.
Also on April 29, the government filed another letter indicating that Jensen had passed more material to Flynn’s team. Powell followed the same playbook as last time, filing a supplement to her motion to dismiss for government misconduct and attaching redacted copies of the documents shared with her by Jensen. This material contains further correspondence within the FBI about Flynn’s case.
Flynnterpreting the Actual Law
At least in court—the domain in which he is apparently fighting—Flynn’s argument turns on two bodies of law. His claim that the entire case should be dismissed because of “outrageous government conduct” stems from a 1973 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Russell, which held out the possibility that a court “may some day be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.”
The Justice Department summarizes the defense as follows in the Criminal Resource Manual:
The Supreme Court has never held that the government's mere use of undercover agents or informants, or the use of deception by them, gives rise to a due process violation, although in Russell it left open that possibility. The requisite level of outrageousness could be reached only where government conduct is so fundamentally unfair as to be "shocking to the universal sense of justice." Id. at 432. No court of appeals has held that a predisposed defendant may establish a due process violation simply because he purportedly was induced to commit the crime by an undercover agent or informant. See, e.g., United States v. Pedraza, 27 F.3d 1515, 1521 (10th Cir.) (not outrageous for government "to infiltrate an ongoing criminal enterprise, or to induce a defendant to repeat, continue, or even expand criminal activity."), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 347 (1994).
Notably, the Supreme Court, in positing the defense in Russell, denied that it precluded prosecution in a situation in which agents had literally given the defendant hard-to-obtain ingredients for illegal drugs. And as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit put it in 1992, “The stringent nature of the test is demonstrated by the fact that although the defense has been raised many times, in only a small handful of those cases has the government's conduct actually been held to be outrageous.” The successful invocation of the defense has generally involved, the Tenth Circuit explained, either substantial government participation in the criminal activity or significant government coercion in inducing the criminal behavior in the first place. For reasons we explain below, the current record gives Flynn no plausible grounds to prevail on a claim of outrageous government conduct.
The second body of law—the one concerning Flynn’s request to withdraw his plea—is more forgiving and actually leaves some ground for Flynn to make headway. The burden on a defendant to withdraw a guilty plea prior to sentencing is not all that high. As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit summarized its case law in 2007:
A defendant may withdraw a guilty plea prior to sentencing if he "can show a fair and just reason for requesting the withdrawal." FED.R.CRIM.P. 11(d)(2)(B). Although "[w]ithdrawal of a guilty plea prior to sentencing is to be liberally granted," United States v. Taylor, 139 F.3d 924, 929 (D.C.Cir.1998), we review a district court's refusal to permit withdrawal only for abuse of discretion, United States v. Hanson, 339 F.3d 983, 988 (D.C.Cir.2003). In reviewing such a refusal, we consider three factors: "(1) whether the defendant has asserted a viable claim of innocence; (2) whether the delay between the guilty plea and the motion to withdraw has substantially prejudiced the government's ability to prosecute the case; and (3) whether the guilty plea was somehow tainted." Id. (quoting United States v. McCoy, 215 F.3d 102, 106 (D.C.Cir.2000) (quoting Taylor, 139 F.3d at 929)).
The cited case Taylor may give Flynn some running room. He is claiming his former lawyers at Covington had conflicts of interest, a matter on which the factual record is wholly undeveloped and currently just a set of allegations. Taylor might be read to require that he get an evidentiary hearing to develop the point.
At the end of the day, however, Flynn will still have to convince Judge Sullivan that he has asserted a viable claim of innocence and that his plea is tainted. Neither of these points is obvious at all. One thing Flynn does not appear to be claiming, after all, is that his answers to questions at that FBI interview were accurate.
Flynnvestigating the Documents
So what’s actually in all of this released material? The material Powell has released from Covington consists of two emails, both largely redacted.
The first, from Flynn’s Covington attorney Robert Kelner to his co-counsel Stephen Anthony, dates to March 18, 2018, and shows Kelner writing to Anthony, “We have a lawyers’ unofficial agreement that they are unlikely to charge Junior in light of the Cooperation Agreement.” The second, dated March 18, 2018, is from Anthony to Kelner and two Covington colleagues. The only unredacted text in the email reads, “The only exception is the reference to Michael Jr. The government took pains not to give a promise to MTF [presumably referencing Flynn] regarding Michael Jr., so as to limit how much of a ‘benefit’ it would have to disclose as part of its Giglio disclosures to any defendant against whom MTF may one day testify.” (Under Giglio v. United States, the government must inform defendants of information concerning immunity deals that might impeach a witness’s credibility.)
Flynn’s current lawyers try to cast this as evidence of prosecutorial misconduct—a gross effort to threaten Flynn with the prosecution of his son combined with an effort to cover it up. In fact, if prosecutors did use Flynn’s son as leverage, this is within the range of normal prosecutorial hardball. Flynn’s consulting group, with which his son was employed, engaged in practices that raised legal questions under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, exposing both father and son to potential criminal liability. (And that’s before we get to the reported involvement by both Flynns in a possible plot to kidnap cleric Fethullah Gulen on behalf of the Turkish government.) Prosecutors were apparently willing to forego other charges against Flynn in exchange for his cooperation and plea to the single felony. According to the Covington emails, the prosecutors apparently would not promise to forego further charges against Flynn’s son, although they signaled that they were “unlikely” to move forward against him if they received satisfactory cooperation from his father.
Leaning on a potential defendant for cooperation using the criminal liability of family members as leverage is not unheard of. This does not mean the practice is beyond criticism—but the handling of Flynn’s case is not some kind of aberration, let alone the sort of conscience-shocking thing that might justify a dismissal.
And to the extent any nod-and-a-wink arrangement on Flynn Jr. would raise any kind of Giglio issue, it certainly does not with respect to Flynn, who was obviously aware of the predicament his son faced and any role of his plea in alleviating it. That issue would only arise, as the Covington email reflects, if Flynn’s testimony were used against someone else and any arrangement with respect to his son were not disclosed.
The first batch of documents provided by Jensen and released on April 29 contains two email chains within the FBI from Jan. 23 and 24, 2017—the day before the FBI spoke with Flynn in the interview for which he was later charged with lying, and the day of the interview, respectively—along with a page of handwritten notes, partially redacted and dated Jan. 24. The documents appear to show conversations within the bureau regarding how to handle the interview and Flynn’s case.
One email chain shows an exchange between FBI lawyer Lisa Page (who was then working in the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) and FBI official Peter Strzok (who was working on the Russia investigation), as well as an unidentified individual in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel. This chain shows Page and the Office of General Counsel official discussing if and when it was appropriate or necessary to notify an interviewee that lying to a federal official is a criminal offense under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, the statute under which Flynn pleaded. Page writes asking whether “the admonition re 1001 could be given at the beginning of the interview” or whether it has “to come following a statement which agents believe to be false”; the other correspondent writes that, “if I recall correctly, you can say it at any time,” and indicates that he or she will double-check.
The next email, sent early in the morning of Jan. 24, is from Strzok to a redacted email address; then-FBI General Counsel James Baker is copied on the email, along with another redacted address. Strzok’s note contains a list of questions for McCabe to consider how he might want to answer in advance of a phone call with Flynn—that is, questions Flynn might ask him about the ongoing FBI investigation. From the Mueller report and other internal FBI documents released by Powell during the Flynn litigation, we know that McCabe spoke with Flynn by phone around noon on Jan. 24 and informed him that the FBI wanted to interview him about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Flynn agreed, and Strzok and another agent interviewed him at around 2:15 p.m. that same day. With that in mind, the Jan. 24 email appears to show the bureau preparing McCabe for how to discuss his request for an interview with Flynn.
The last document in this tranche is a page of handwritten notes, with some redactions, dated Jan. 24; it is not clear whether the notes were written before the Flynn interview was conducted or after it. The writer seems to be sketching out thoughts—it is not clear whose—on how the bureau should navigate the politically tricky investigation, particularly regarding whether or not the FBI should allow Flynn to lie or confront him with evidence of his falsehood. The notes appear to show the writer moving toward the argument that the bureau should take the latter path. “What’s urgent?” the writer asks. “Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” The notes go on:
- We regularly show subjects evidence with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing
- I don’t see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him
- If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give this to DOJ and have them decide
- Or, if he initially lies, then we present him [redacted] and he admits it, document for DOJ, and let them decide how to address it
- If we’re seen as playing games, WH [White House] will be furious
- Protect our institution by not playing games
Flynn’s new lawyers cite these notes, which were presumably written by then-FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap, as supposed smoking-gun evidence that the FBI was seeking to entrap Flynn in a lie. The trouble with that argument is that absolutely nothing forced Flynn not to tell the truth in that interview. And while FBI officials appear to have discussed the strategic purpose of the interview, there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that. To be sure, a possible criminal prosecution based on the Logan Act case was weak leverage, given that the statute has virtually no history of enforcement, but agents hold relatively weak leverage over witnesses all the time. And yes, it’s wrong for the bureau to set up an interview in the absence of a viable case in order to induce a witness to lie for purposes of prosecution, but there’s no evidence that is what happened—merely evidence that the possibility was on a list of possible strategic goals for the interview. And yes, the bureau will sometimes confront a witness with a lie and specifically warn the person about lying being a felony, but that is not a legal requirement.
In fact, the Flynn interview gave Flynn every opportunity to tell the truth. As the FBI’s partially redacted memo documenting Flynn’s interview reflects, the questions were careful. They were specific. The agents, as Strzok later recalled in a formal FBI interview of his own, planned to try to jog Flynn’s memory if he said he could not remember a detail by using the exact words they knew he had used in his conversation with Kislyak. And Flynn, as he admitted in open court—twice—did not tell the truth. That is not entrapment or a set-up, and it is very far indeed from outrageous government conduct. It’s conducting an interview—and a witness at the highest levels of government lying in it.
The second batch of documents produced by Jensen and released on April 30 contains a draft FBI memo closing Flynn’s case (which was never finalized), along with an internal FBI email chain and what appear to be internal FBI text messages or instant messages. It appears that the FBI drafted a memo to close the case on Flynn, a memo that is dated Jan. 4, 2017, but was likely written earlier. But FBI leadership then decided to keep the case open.
The memo describes how the FBI opened a case on “CROSSFIRE RAZOR” (clearly, from the description, Flynn) “based on an articulable factual basis that CROSSFIRE RAZOR (CR) may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security.” After describing investigative steps taken by the bureau, the memo states that the “CH team” (a reference to the bureau’s name for the Russia investigation, “Crossfire Hurricane”) “determined that CROSSFIRE RAZOR was no longer a viable candidate as part of the larger CROSSFIRE HURRICANE umbrella case,” and that the bureau is therefore closing the case. Notably, the memo flags that “FBI management” requested that Flynn not be interviewed.
A chain of messages included in the documents shows communications between Strzok and a redacted individual regarding the memo. On Jan. 4, Strzok messaged the other person to tell him or her not to close the case, apparently at the direction of FBI leadership. It’s not clear from the documents what caused the change in course, but another message between two redacted individuals notes a comment by Strzok suggesting that FBI leadership decided to interview Flynn after all.
The documents themselves don’t reveal the reason for the shift. But reporting by the New York Times provides a hint. According to the Times, the Jan. 4 decision not to close the case may have resulted from the FBI’s discovery that Flynn had spoken with Kislyak in the previous days and advised Russia against retaliating against U.S. sanctions levied by the Obama administration in response to Russian election interference—the matter about which FBI agents eventually interviewed Flynn, and about which he lied repeatedly to them. The issue was of concern to the bureau in part because it appeared that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about those contacts as well, and the FBI became worried that Flynn’s falsehoods “posed a blackmail risk,” the Times writes. In other words, there’s a very good explanation for why the FBI made a U-turn on closing Flynn’s case: When the memo was drafted, the writer wasn’t yet aware of the most concerning conduct by Flynn.
In his recent book, “The Threat,” McCabe describes the chain of events that seems to have led to the discovery of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak—and why the bureau wasn’t aware of that information before:
Near the end of December, the administration and National Security Council prepared sanctions on Russia as punishment for their involvement in the election … The sanctions were announced on December 29.
The next day, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, issued an unusual and uncharacteristic statement, saying that he would take no action against the United States in retaliation for those sanctions. The PDB [Presidential Daily Brief] staff decided to write an intelligence assessment as to why Putin made the choice he did. They issued a request to the intelligence community: Anyone who had information on the topic was invited to offer it for consideration. In response to that request, the FBI queried our own holdings. We came across information indicating that General Mike Flynn, the president-elect’s nominee for the post of national security advisor, had held several conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in which the sanctions were discussed. The information was something we had from December 29. I had not been aware of it. My impression was that higher-level officials within the FBI’s counterintelligence division had not been aware of it. The PDB request brought it to our attention.
...We felt we needed time to do more work to understand the context of what had been found—we don’t just run out and charge someone based on a single piece of intelligence. We use intelligence as the basis for investigation.
Quite apart from this history, there is nothing wrong with the bureau contemplating the closure of a case without interviewing the subject, then deciding not to close it and that an interview is appropriate, proceeding with the interview, and prosecuting the individual for lying in that interview. The emails do not make out even a colorable case of misconduct by anyone.
The remainder of the tranche contains an email chain between Strzok, Page, and other FBI officials including Priestap. The emails are dated Jan. 22, two days before the Flynn interview, and show that officials were still debating how to handle the Flynn case at this point and had not yet settled on an FBI interview of Flynn. Strzok suggests providing Flynn with a defensive briefing—that is, alerting him of the bureau’s concerns that the Russian government may be using Flynn for its own ends—and “see[ing] what he does with that.” Another, redacted correspondent writes that, “[a]t the very least, we need to debrief or interview [Flynn] (unless told not to).” This last writer also notes, “If we usually tell [the White House], then I think we should do what we normally do”—perhaps voicing a desire to inform the White House of the FBI’s counterintelligence concerns regarding Flynn, though it is not clear. (The email chain also contains a reference to what is presumably another Crossfire Hurricane subject, “CROSSFIRE TYPHOON,” but all other information about this is redacted.)
Messages between Strzok and Page dated Jan. 23 and Jan. 24 describe disagreement among FBI leadership—seemingly Priestap, McCabe and FBI Director James Comey—though it is not clear specifically what is at issue. Another message from Jan. 24 shows Strzok alerting a redacted correspondent about an email containing suggestions for how McCabe should prepare for a call with Flynn—the same email contained in the first batch of documents from Jensen and described above.
Finally, messages between Strzok and Page dated Feb. 10 appear to show the two discussing unspecified edits to an unidentified document. The Times writes that the messages concern,
editing notes on the questioning of Mr. Flynn. His lawyers said they were further evidence that the F.B.I. doctored the interview notes known as a 302, a claim that the judge overseeing Mr. Flynn’s case, Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, has previously rejected.
None of this material gives rise to a colorable claim of misconduct, and as the Times notes, Sullivan has already rejected the notion that the 302 was doctored. As the judge wrote back in December: “[T]he Court agrees with the government that there were no material changes in the interview reports, and that those reports track the interviewing FBI agents’ notes.” Sullivan went on: “Having carefully reviewed the interviewing FBI agents’ notes, the draft interview reports, the final version of the FD302, and the statements contained therein, the Court agrees with the government that those documents are ‘consistent and clear that [Mr. Flynn] made multiple false statements to the [FBI] agents about his communications with the Russian Ambassador on January 24, 2017.’”
Flynnterpreting the Facts and the Law
In light of all of this, let’s consider the likelihood of positive outcomes for Flynn in ascending order of probability.
The least plausible outcome is that Flynn will be “exonerated” or “cleared” as a result of anything that has happened. Flynn isn’t within a country mile of being able to establish outrageous government conduct, and Judge Sullivan is most unlikely to dismiss the case as a result of these releases.
A somewhat more likely possibility is that the judge will allow him to withdraw his guilty plea. This would, of course, expose Flynn to the full range of possible charges he potentially faced. It might also expose his son to possible indictment. But that assumes that the Justice Department under Attorney General Barr would actually seek to protect the prosecutorial equities of the United States, something Barr has already declined to do once in the Flynn case alone. So withdrawal of the plea could be a windfall for Flynn or a disaster depending on what happens next. To get the plea withdrawn, Flynn would have to convince Sullivan that the alleged Covington conflicts are real and genuinely impaired his defense, and that he has a viable claim of innocence. This is a tall order, but he may be entitled to an evidentiary hearing on the matter and who knows what could arise out of that? The likelihood of Flynn getting the plea scotched is not high, but not trivial either.
The third possibility is that Barr will step in again. As we noted, he has already done this once in the Flynn case—the government suddenly agreed that Flynn’s conduct merited a sentence of probation after previously advocating up to six months’ incarceration—and he has appointed Jensen to review it too. He’s got his eye on the matter, and what he has planned is unclear. Suffice it for now to say that there’s reason to worry the Justice Department will not pursue the matter aggressively under Barr’s leadership, particularly if a plea withdrawal happens and the question of actually prosecuting the original case comes back on the table.
Finally, there’s the president. Trump has not ruled out pardoning Flynn—and has recently railed against the prosecution. Flynn’s most likely path out of the criminal justice system is through presidential clemency, which could arrive any day and with no warning. A great deal of the legal machinations in court and the verbal machinations in the media may well be aimed not at the legal process but at inducing the president to finally grant Flynn a pardon.?
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FOCUS: Donald Trump's Four-Step Plan to Reopen the US Economy - and Why It Will Be Lethal |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9643"><span class="small">Robert Reich, Guardian UK</span></a>
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Sunday, 03 May 2020 11:01 |
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Reich writes: "Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back."
Robert Reich. (photo: Getty)
Donald Trump's Four-Step Plan to Reopen the US Economy - and Why It Will Be Lethal
By Robert Reich, Guardian UK
03 May 20
The president and his allies are hiding the facts and pretending ‘freedom’ conquers all. As a result, more Americans will die
 onald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.
But much of the economy remains closed because of the pandemic. The number of infections and deaths continue to climb.
So what is Trump’s re-election strategy? Reopen the economy anyway, despite the risks.
Step 1
Remove income support, so people have no choice but to return to work.
Trump’s labor department has decided that furloughed employees “must accept” an employer’s offer to return to work and therefore forfeit unemployment benefits, regardless of Covid-19.
Trump’s ally, Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says employees cannot refuse to return to work for fear of contracting the disease. “That’s a voluntary quit,” making someone ineligible for benefits.
GOP officials in Oklahoma are even threatening to withhold the $600 a week of extra unemployment benefits Congress has provided workers, if an employer wants to hire them. Safety is irrelevant.
“If the employer will contact us … we will cut off their benefits,” says Teresa Thomas Keller of the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.
Forcing people to choose between getting Covid-19 or losing their livelihood is inhumane. It is also nonsensical. Public health still depends on as many workers as possible staying home. That’s a big reason why Congress provided the extra benefits.
Step 2
Hide the facts.
No one knows how many Americans are infected because the Trump administration continues to drag its heels on testing. To date only 6.5m tests have been completed in a population of more than 200 million adults.
Florida, one of the first states to reopen, has stopped releasing medical examiners’ statistics on the number of Covid-19 victims because the figures are higher than the state’s official count.
But it’s impossible to fight the virus without adequate data. Dr Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading infectious disease expert, warns that reopening poses “a really significant risk” without more testing.
Not surprisingly, the White House has blocked Fauci from testifying before the House.
Step 3
Pretend it’s about “freedom”.
Weeks ago, Trump called on citizens to “LIBERATE” states like Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, imposed strict stay-at-home rules.
Michigan has the third-highest number of Covid-19 deaths in America, although it is 10th in population. When on Thursday Whitmer extended the rules to 28 May, gun-toting protesters rushed the state house chanting: “Lock her up!”
Rather than condemn their behavior, Trump suggested Whitmer “make a deal” with them.
“The Governor of Michigan should give a little, and put out the fire,” he tweeted. “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely!”
Meanwhile, the attorney general, William Barr, has directed the justice department to take legal action against any state or local authorities imposing lockdown measures that “could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens”.
Making this about “freedom” is absurd. Freedom is meaningless for people who have no choice but to accept a job that risks their health.
Step 4
Shield businesses against lawsuits for spreading the infection.
Trump is pushing to give businesses that reopen a “liability shield” against legal action by workers or customers who get infected by the virus.
This week, he announced he would use the Defense Production Act to force meat-processing plants to remain open, despite high rates of Covid-19 infections and deaths among meatpackers.
“We’re going to sign an executive order today, I believe, and that’ll solve any liability problems,” Trump said.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, insists that proposed legislation giving state and local governments funding they desperately need must include legal immunity for corporations that cause workers or consumers to become infected.
“We have a red line on liability,” McConnell said. “It won’t pass the Senate without it.”
But how can the economy safely reopen if companies don’t have an incentive to keep people safe? Promises to provide protective gear and other safeguards are worthless absent the threat of damages if workers or customers become infected.
The truth
The biggest obstacle to reopening the economy is the pandemic itself.
Any rush to reopen without adequate testing and tracing – far more than now under way – will cause a resurgence of the disease and another and longer economic crisis.
Maybe Trump is betting that any resurgence will occur after the election, when the economy appears to be on the road to recovery.
The first responsibility of a president is to keep the public safe. But Donald Trump couldn’t care less. He was slow to respond to the threat, then he lied about it, then made it hard for states – especially those with Democratic governors – to get the equipment they need.
Now he’s trying to force the economy to reopen in order to boost his electoral chances this November, and he’s selling out Americans’ health to seal the deal. This is beyond contemptible.
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retchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, is “arrogantly forcing the residents of her state to remain alive,” Attorney General William Barr charged on Friday.
