FEBRUARY 9, 10 AND 11, 2019

NEWS AND VIEWS

THE SHEER AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE IN THIS CASE IS THE CAUSE FOR THE TWO YEARS THAT IT HAS CONSUMED. I’VE WATCHED MOST OF IT THROUGH THE EYES OF RACHEL MADDOW AT NIGHT, RELAXING FOR BED, AND SHE GOES INTO GREAT DETAIL. THE NUMBER OF RUSSIANS WHO HAVE BEEN IN CONTACT WITH SEVERAL OF THE TRUMPS IS AMAZING, AND A DOZEN OR MORE BUSINESS ASSOCIATES OF TRUMP HIMSELF HAVE PARADED ACROSS THE NATIONAL STAGE.

I WANT TO SEE NOT JUST HIS CLOSEST ALLIES FACE A JUDGE, BUT THE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS AND THE SENATE WHO HAVE RUN INTERFERENCE FOR HIM AS WELL. WERE THEY PAID TO DO THAT? WAS SENATOR FLAKE BUMPED OUT FOR BEING UNCOOPERATIVE? TRUMP HAS DENIED KNOWING AT LEAST ONE OF THEM, OR BEING ABLE TO RECOGNIZE HIM BY SIGHT, IN SPITE OF PHOTOS INCLUDING THE TWO OF THEM. I WANT MUELLER TO GRIND ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE MATERIAL UNTIL THE END. WHETHER OR NOT HE IS INDICTED, HE MUST NOT BE REELECTED IN 2020 AS PRESIDENT. THAT WOULD BE TOO SHAMEFUL FOR OUR PEOPLE, AND MIGHT WELL BE THE END OF OUR COUNTRY AS A FREE SOCIETY.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/11/special-counsel-robert-mueller-may-not-say-anything-russia-probe/1422892002/
Robert Mueller has spent two years investigating Trump, and he hasn't said a word. It's possible he never will.
Kevin Johnson and Bart Jansen, USA TODAY Published 8:53 a.m. ET Feb. 11, 2019 | Updated 4:49 p.m. ET Feb. 11, 2019

WASHINGTON – Occasionally, his signature appears on court documents. But on the most consequential days of the nearly two-year investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the man leading it – Robert Mueller – has been conspicuously absent.

When President Donald Trump's senior aides and confidants paraded through federal courtrooms to face criminal charges his office had filed, the former FBI director was nowhere to be seen. When some of them came back to court to be convicted, he said nothing.

It's possible he never will.

Mueller's investigation has cast a shadow over nearly all of the first two years of Trump's presidency. Prosecutors working to determine whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russian efforts to sway the election that put him in office have brought charges against some of his top aides and revealed extensive Moscow ties. As the inquiry grinds closer to its conclusion, there are signs that the public might never learn the full extent of what Mueller has – or hasn't – found.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Photo: AP)

Justice Department rules require that Mueller submit a confidential report when his work is done. William Barr, the man likely to be confirmed as his next boss, cast doubt on whether he would permit that document to be revealed. Those who know him say Mueller, reluctant to speak publicly even when the circumstances seem to require it, is unlikely to do it on his own.

"A public narrative has built an expectation that the special counsel will explain his conclusions, but I think that expectation may be seriously misplaced," said John Pistole, Mueller's longtime top deputy at the FBI. "That's not what the rules provide, and I really don't see him straying from the mission. That's not who he is."

The Justice Department's special counsel rules don't call for Mueller to make any public statements about his work, let alone deliver a report of what he has found. Instead, his confidential report must explain why he filed the charges he did and why he might have declined to bring charges against others. It would be up to the attorney general to decide whether that becomes public.

Barr, who is likely to be confirmed this month as attorney general, told lawmakers he couldn't commit to releasing Mueller's report in full. Neither was he clear on whether he would permit Mueller to testify to Congress about his work. He said he wanted to be transparent about Mueller's findings but offered few details.

"Where judgments are to be made by me, I will make those judgments based solely on the law and department policy and will let no personal, political or other improper interests influence my decision," Barr said during his confirmation hearing in January.

Some lawmakers found the answer unsettling.

After Barr's testimony, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced legislation that would require a special counsel to provide a report directly to Congress in addition to the attorney general.

People who know Mueller say that unless his bosses tried to derail his work, they would be surprised if the former FBI director did more than issue a brief statement indicating that a report had been submitted to the attorney general before quietly departing.

For any other major player in official Washington, where outsize egos routinely clash for political supremacy or simple adulation, such a scenario would be unthinkable. But Mueller's aversion to the spotlight has been consistent across a lifetime in public service, from the battlefields of Vietnam to the office that represents perhaps the most serious threat to the Trump presidency.

"I don't think that there is any chance that he strays from what the regulations say," said Chris Swecker, a former FBI assistant director who worked closely with Mueller. "So far, he has spoken through the indictments and other court documents his office has filed. You have to understand who he is. He will do what the law prescribes; he's not going to be running his own pass patterns.

“None of this has ever been about his ego,” Swecker said. “He relishes the work as much as he hates the fanfare. It’s never been about him; it’s always been about the work.”

A look at former FBI director Robert Mueller
Fullscreen

Meticulous investigator

Just as the FBI, maligned in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was transformed into his own image as a meticulous investigator, the Russia investigation has come to embody Mueller’s unflagging, buttoned-up personality.

“He’s not a warm and lovable guy,” Swecker said. “If you work for him, you are never going to feel appreciated. Things move too fast for that. He believes that you signed up to do a job. And it’s your mission to get it done. He doesn’t like drama.”

Mueller’s team embraced that approach.

His prosecutors have brought charges against 34 people and three companies, including Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort; his first national security adviser, Mike Flynn; and his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Outside of court filings, prosecutors have had nothing to say about any of them.

When the team won a jury verdict after a three-week trial against Manafort, prosecutors retreated to their offices rather than appear at a clutch of microphones outside the courthouse. Asked by email if they had any comment, Mueller's spokesman responded with a single word:

“Nope."

Pistole, who served for six years as Mueller’s deputy at the FBI, describes his former boss as “totally apolitical,” with an unmatched work ethic.

“For him, it was about what is right for the country,” Pistole said. “Nothing else.”

'Most transformative director since Hoover'
Mueller exited the FBI in 2013 as the longest-serving director since J. Edgar Hoover – amassing a legacy best defined by a grind-it-out style that kept the FBI intact.

Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, described Mueller in an interview with USA TODAY marking the FBI chief's departure as “the most transformative director in the history of the FBI since Hoover.''

"And I mean that in a good way," Chertoff said.

Robert Mueller will oversee the Russia investigation. Here's a look at his background. USA TODAY

After the FBI, Mueller stayed on the public stage but seldom in the spotlight.

As a partner at the high-powered law firm of Wilmer Hale, Mueller had clients that included some of the most recognizable corporate brands, including the National Football League.

The NFL hired Mueller in 2015 to examine the league's handling of a domestic violence incident involving then-Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice. When it was complete, the 96-page report, which cleared the NFL of any intentional improper conduct, was simply posted online. No news conference, no public appearance by Mueller to discuss the findings.

Mueller was among those Trump interviewed to replace his ousted successor at the FBI, James Comey. Instead, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017 to head the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Since then, the public has had only occasional glimpses of Mueller. One photo captured him waiting for a plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a few yards away from Donald Trump Jr. The photograph went viral, a measure not only of the chance passing of the two potential adversaries but the intense interest in the intensely private man leading perhaps the most widely watched criminal investigation in a generation.

It was months before Mueller's appointment as a Russia special counsel when Pistole last had an extended visit with his former boss. Pistole said he was surprised to encounter a "jovial" Mueller, a feature few have witnessed in such an outwardly serious character.

"He had been away from government for a while," Pistole said. "He was laughing and joking. I thought: ‘Who is this guy? What have you done with my director?’ I doubt he's had many moments since he took this job."

The case for saying nothing
Barr suggested that if the Senate confirms him, the public is unlikely to hear from Mueller directly.

Barr, who was attorney general in the administration of George H.W. Bush, has made no secret of his allegiance to the chain of command. In the midst of the 2016 campaign, he objected to then-FBI Director Comey's decision not to recommend criminal charges against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while secretary of state because he said the decision should have been left to the attorney general or the deputy attorney general, not the chief investigator.

Barr told lawmakers he would "provide as much transparency as I can, consistent with the law," about what Mueller's investigation concludes.

He expressed doubt about how much detail he would be able to reveal. Justice Department rules require only that he notify Congress about instances in which he had overruled Mueller's decisions about how the investigation should be handled. Some of the facts Mueller has gathered could be the result of grand jury proceedings, which are required by law to remain secret.

Barr pointed to a Justice Department policy to avoid publicizing "derogatory" information about people who aren't charged with a crime. Senate Democrats expressed concern that the policy, combined with the department's view that a president cannot be indicted, could lead Barr to keep confidential parts of the investigation that relate to Trump.

That could in turn set up a battle with congressional Democrats eager to know the details.

“If the attorney general doesn’t issue a public report, they can expect it to be subpoenaed by Congress because of the high public value of Americans understanding just what the Russians did and who worked with them,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lead attorney, has said repeatedly that he fully expects Mueller to produce a final report, indicating that the president's legal team would issue a "counter-report."

Last month, acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker raised expectations when he said Mueller's work was "close to being completed."

"I hope we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as possible," Whitaker said, only to suggest last week in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that even he wasn't really sure of the timing and hadn't received a report.

“Bob Mueller is going to finish his investigation when he is going to finish his investigation,” Whitaker told lawmakers.

Some doubt that a substantial final report from the special counsel is even in the offing.

"He's a federal prosecutor; they don't write public reports," said George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor. "Everybody is breathlessly waiting for the Mueller report, and I'm not sure that one is even coming."


SANDERS MAY BE READY TO RUMBLE, BUT IS HE READY TO ANNOUNCE? I HOPE HE WILL SOON, SO WE CAN GET THIS WAGON TRAIN MOVING. OF COURSE, HE HAS TO DO IT WHEN EVERYTHING IS PREPARED, OR HE WOULD BE DAMAGING HIS CHANCE OF WINNING.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/02/bernie-sanders-close-announcing-presidential-campaign/582328/
Bernie Sanders Is Ready to Rumble
The senator from Vermont thinks he can prevail against the crowded Democratic field and then beat Trump for president in 2020.
EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE
FEBRUARY 8, 2019 7:27 AM ET

PHOTOGRAPH – SANDERS SPEAKING PATRICK SEMANSKY / AP

Bernie Sanders has seen himself as on a mission since he started running for office in the 1970s, and he sees no reason to stop now. He thinks he’s dramatically changed the conversation over the past three years, and he feels like he’s close to achieving his ultimate goal.

Plus, there’s Donald Trump.

When the president used his State of the Union speech on Tuesday to preview his own reelection campaign and warn against creeping socialism, Sanders was only encouraged. He’d love to take on Trump directly, and people around him think he’ll be able to use Trump’s threat to coalesce support in the primaries.

Get the latest issue now.

“Nothing unifies Democrats like being made a villain by Trump,” said one Sanders ally.

The senator from Vermont has been huddling with staff in meetings and brainstorming on phone calls over the past few weeks, chewing over plans. Barring a surprise, last-minute change of heart, he will jump into the 2020 race, convinced he can win, according to people familiar with his plans. His spokeswoman, Arianna Jones, did not return a request for comment on Sanders’s plans.

Read: A lot of people want Bernie Sanders to run in 2020

Last time, he didn’t get in until the end of April 2015. This time, the launch will be in February. He sees advantage in a much more crowded 2020 field. The left-leaning politics he campaigned on in 2016 have been broadly embraced in a progressive surge among Democrats, and Sanders has succeeded in diminishing the nominating power of so-called super delegates, the elected officials and party elders who help consolidate establishment power within the Democratic National Committee.

Sanders will likely announce an exploratory committee in the coming weeks, followed by a rally. One major early focus will be finding a campaign manager and other top-level staffers who are not white, and preferably not male, in light of his problems appealing to minority voters in 2016 and recent revelations of sexual harassment by lower-level staffers on the 2016 campaign. Staff interviews have been quietly under way.

But a core team of advisers will return from 2016, spearheaded by Sanders’s wife and closest adviser, Jane O’Meara Sanders.

Peter Beinart: Bernie Sanders offers a foreign policy for the common man

His aides know this race will be different from his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, when he surprised even himself with how close he came to knocking her off. Democratic leaders have been impressed by the extent to which the ideas from his campaign have carried forward, injecting far-left populism into the mainstream of Democratic politics—even as many in the party still bitterly point to his candidacy as weakening Clinton to the point that Trump was able to win.

Sanders has heard the argument that his stature would be diminished by running again if he doesn’t end up winning the nomination. He’s heard the argument that he might split the progressive vote and allow a more moderate candidate to win, but that hasn’t moved him either. That’s not how Sanders thinks, people who know him point out.

“He understands what happens in the streets is what prompts actions in Washington,” said Vincent Fort, a former Georgia state senator who supported the last campaign and has been in touch with Sanders’s team about this campaign.

There are also the nuts-and-bolts political considerations that Sanders doesn’t focus as much on, but that his team pays close attention to: He’s the one with the massive email list. Alone among those eyeing the Democratic nomination, he’s the one who had 40,000 people watching various live-streams of his State of the Union response. He’s the one whose team thinks he could, on day one, raise more money online and get more attention than any of the other candidates.

Sanders believes that he continues to have the strength in Iowa and New Hampshire to either win or come close there—especially with other candidates fragmenting support and lowering the bar for what it will take to win. Likewise, in a South Carolina primary that has both Cory Booker and Kamala Harris competing for African American votes and, likely, Joe Biden drawing on his own decades of connections there, Sanders sees a path to slip through and win.

Biden in the race, after all, would make it so that the senator isn’t the only white man in his 70s in the field.

If the early states all come together, Sanders would be positioned to power through the front-ended primary calendar that has California, Texas, and several other big states voting on the first Super Tuesday, March 4, just a month after Iowa. No one else in the field has anything like his proven success with both grassroots supporters and the small-dollar online fundraising that it will take to fund the kind of massive national operation any 2020 campaign will require.

“With all the other people in, the fact is, Bernie is the one whose ideas everyone else is ‘borrowing,’ whether it be Wall Street reforms, or Medicare for all, or free college. These are all ideas that Bernie came up with first and best,” Fort said. “I’m a little bit skeptical of the sincerity of some of the latecomers.”

Changes to DNC procedures, which Sanders and his team fought for, have diminished the role of the caucuses where Sanders ran the strongest in 2016, but they have also taken power away from the elected officials and party elders who might, for example, help tilt a tight race to Biden or another candidate who isn’t an outsider insurgent.

Sanders’s team has been eyeing Beto O’Rourke nervously, given the former Texas congressman’s strong online presence and appeal with many of the same types of voters that Sanders taps into. O’Rourke also drew significant support from young former Sanders staffers who helped build the 2016 campaign into what it was. But there’s a sense that O’Rourke’s support is flagging, as he continues to talk about running without making a decision.

Now a Sanders candidacy would seem to be the biggest threat to Elizabeth Warren, who’s been campaigning on her own anti-corporate platform, with proposals such as a new tax on the ultrarich. Aides to the senator from Massachusetts have been preparing her on how to respond. But though they will clearly compete for some of the same voters, Sanders and his aides have always seen him as a greater threat to her than she is to him, and have been encouraged by the continuing problems she’s facing from the controversy over her claims of Native American heritage. He’s the one with the devoted followers, Sanders and his aides believe, and some of them are still angry at Warren for deciding to sit out the 2016 primary race rather than endorsing him.

Read: Sanders and Warren are heading for a standoff

What a Sanders candidacy may do for Warren, though, is enable her not to seem as radical as his democratic socialism. It might also enable her to note that she’s a generation younger than Sanders, as opposed to currently being the oldest Democratic candidate in the field. And a Sanders candidacy might allow Warren to argue that she’s largely in line with him politically, but the one who could actually win.

A Warren spokeswoman declined comment on how Warren would position herself if Sanders runs.

Sanders boosters note that with a field this big, coming in first in Iowa might take only about 30 percent of the vote, and that he came just shy of 50 percent of the vote there against Clinton. Rules changes to the caucuses might also play to Sanders’s favor, clarifying an arcane process that weighs votes in a way that can make the final results not fully representative of the number of people who actually show up on caucus night.

But Sanders skeptics doubt that he fully appreciates how much of the approximately 45 percent of the primary vote he received in 2016 was fundamentally an anti-Clinton vote, and doubt that he realizes how many of those people might leave him once they realize how many other choices they have. Unlike in his last run, he will start right away with the spotlight of a presumed front-runner on him, and issues involving his background and record that were overlooked in 2016 will likely receive new scrutiny. Warren, Biden, and Harris have been the focus of most of the Republican attacks and reporters’ digging so far, but that dynamic may shift if Sanders continues to run as strong as public polling suggests.

There’s the potential that once he’s in, any stumbles will be higher profile, and any drop-off in the polls could suggest he’s leaching support. Already, in the past week he waited until after all the declared Democratic candidates to call for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to resign over the blackface/Ku Klux Klan–hood photo. He also faced outrage for doing his own State of the Union response for the third year in a row; this year’s followed Stacey Abrams’s official Democratic response. Some griped that he was being disrespectful, a charge that Sanders and his team found ridiculous, even as they dealt with the fallout.

He spent most of his response explaining how Trump’s supposed economic miracle hasn’t reached many people in the country.

“I know that this will probably not shock you—I hate to say this—but not everything Donald Trump said tonight was true or accurate,” Sanders said in a live video on social media.* “For many of President Trump’s billionaire friends, the truth is, they have never, ever had it so good. But for the middle class, and for the working families of our country, the truth is that the economy is not so good.”

*This article originally misstated that Sanders delivered his response to the State of the Union address immediately after Trump spoke. In fact, Sanders delivered his response after Stacey Abrams finished giving the Democrats’ official response to the president’s address.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE is a staff writer at The Atlantic.


IT’S INTERESTING TO SEE THAT A YOUNGER AND LESS EXPERIENCED CANDIDATE IS BEING COMPARED TO SANDERS. I DID WATCH O’ROURKE SPEAK ON THE YOUNG TURKS, AND HE’S PRETTY EXCITING. HE’S NOT FOR 2020, THOUGH. I’M BEHIND SANDERS UNTIL OR UNLESS HE ACTUALLY LOSES. I ALSO LIKE OCASIO-CASTRO PRETTY WELL. SHE’S REALLY TOO YOUNG, THOUGH. I ALSO WOULD LIKE TO SEE STACEY ABRAMS GO FOR IT, IN A LATER ELECTION, THAT IS.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/us/politics/2020-democrats-campaign-funding.html
Sanders and O’Rourke Are Way Ahead in Race for Small-Dollar Donors
By Shane Goldmacher, Lisa Lerer and Rachel Shorey
Feb. 9, 2019

PHOTOGRAPH -- Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has by far the largest number of low-dollar online donors of any current or likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance data.CreditCreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

Senator Bernie Sanders would begin a 2020 presidential bid with 2.1 million online donors, a massive lead among low-dollar contributors that is roughly equivalent to the donor base of all the other Democratic hopefuls combined.

Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who narrowly lost a Senate race last year, is also poised to be a fund-raising phenom if he runs for president: He has twice as many online donors as anyone eyeing the race besides Mr. Sanders.

Three senators who are already running have their own solid track records with small donors. Senator Elizabeth Warren, with the third-highest number, has notable strength in New Hampshire, even topping Mr. O’Rourke there. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has built up broad national support among small donors, despite a reputation as a big-money fund-raiser, while Senator Kamala Harris raised $1.5 million online in her first 24 hours as a presidential candidate.

Small-dollar donations are expected to be a huge deal in 2020 — the renewable resource that Democratic candidates will depend upon to fuel their campaigns. And those five Democrats represent a distinctive top tier with the most formidable followings, each counting a base of at least 230,000 online donors, according to a New York Times analysis of six years of federal election filings from ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s dominant donation-processing platform.

[Check out the 6 days when 2020 Democratic hopefuls scored big with small donors.]

The findings provide a window into one of the most closely guarded and coveted resources of a modern campaign: the digital donor lists that bring in the vast bulk of low-dollar donations. These online donations average just under $40, and candidates like to point to such modest amounts as evidence of the breadth and depth of their support among regular people.

In the early stages of a presidential race, when polling measures little more than name recognition, the relative size of donor networks can provide one of the best metrics of strength.

“The people who have a strong base right now have a material head start,” said Teddy Goff, who served as a top digital strategist for the campaigns of President Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. “And more often than not, there is a good reason they have that base, and it’s that they have a talent for connecting with the grass roots of our party.”

For Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Rourke, the enormous early edge in their donor rolls has afforded them the flexibility to wait longer before deciding to jump in, and has sparked a sense of urgency in other campaigns. Both men have signaled they would rely overwhelmingly on small donors to fuel any campaign.

The particular power of Mr. Sanders’s list was on display in late December when he emailed supporters with the provocative subject line, “If I run.” That single email netted $299,000 from 11,000 donations, according to a senior Sanders official.

That is almost the exact amount that Ms. Warren raised on the day she announced she was entering the race, data shows.

The Times’s analysis estimated the size of the online donor armies for current and potential candidates by comparing hundreds of millions of dollars in donations processed through ActBlue. The analysis does not include candidates who have not run for federal office, such as mayors or governors, nor those who did not use ActBlue.

To get a sense of scale, if Mr. Sanders’s 2.1 million donors constituted a city, the closest approximation would be to Houston, the country’s fourth-largest by population. For Mr. O’Rourke, it would be Seattle (742,000). For Ms. Warren, Honolulu (343,000). Ms. Gillibrand would be Toledo, Ohio (271,000). Ms. Harris would be Winston-Salem, N.C. (239,000).

Image
Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman, amassed a huge number of online donors during his 2018 Senate race against Ted Cruz.CreditEric Gay/Associated Press

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who entered the race at the start of February, would be Grand Forks, N.D. (56,000) — a sign of how Mr. Booker has not yet converted his vast social-media following into financial contributors.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., despite being nationally known, would probably also begin far behind because he has not run for office on his own in a decade. His political action committee reported about $925,000 in donations of less than $200 since mid-2017, but since Mr. Biden does not use ActBlue there is no estimate of his number of donors. A spokesman for Mr. Biden declined to comment.

[Check out the Democratic field with our candidate tracker.]

Mr. Biden does have one unusual asset: access to the Obama campaign’s vaunted email list, which was 9 million-strong when turned over to the Democratic National Committee in 2015, according to the party. But email lists rapidly atrophy, and one that is seven years old is seen as a relative relic.

Donors lists can take years to compile, and the biggest ones are often only developed through running a high-profile race. Email remains the dominant way to raise money online, and campaigns heavily advertise efforts like petition-signing drives on Facebook to harvest new donor email addresses. Those lists, in turn, generate volunteers and a network of potential supporters who can amplify candidates’ messages on social media to build further support.

Grass-roots giving is seen as so important in 2020 that the Democratic National Committee has included it as part of its presidential debate qualification rules.

Who’s Running for President in 2020?
Who’s in, who’s out and who’s still thinking.

Jan. 21, 2019

“It is hard to see someone winning this nomination who isn’t at or near the top of ability to generate small donations, because they are a measure of enthusiasm,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and veteran of the Obama White House.

Candidates are under intense pressure to lock down donors, big and small, in an already sprawling race. Whether small-dollar donors and larger bundlers give to multiple candidates or stay “monogamous” remains an open question, as Democrats have not had such a sizable field since the rise of online fund-raising.

The findings represent the best snapshot of small donor strength at the starting gate of a campaign where the ability to raise tens of millions of dollars from small donors will be crucial, particularly as leading candidates are disavowing super PACs that allow for unlimited sums from wealthy backers.

Of course, in a race likely to stretch over the next 18 months, early advantages can dissipate quickly. A strong poll or viral moment can prompt donors to give to new candidates, thereby growing their lists by huge numbers — so long as they are positioned to capitalize. Ms. Harris’s launch-day haul, for instance, rivaled that of Mr. Sanders in 2015.

Ms. Dunn said she saw the initial rankings less as a predictor for the coming primary’s outcome and more as a revealing indicator of “who was able to use their 2017 and 2018 effectively to prepare for a presidential race.”

Both Ms. Harris and Ms. Gillibrand landed on the leader board despite having not faced a competitive election in recent years. The two senators spent heavily to bulk up their small donor lists, investing in multimillion-dollar campaigns on Facebook in 2017 and 2018 to add email addresses to their supporter list and lure in new contributors.

“It’s almost like growing vegetables,” said Tim Lim, a veteran Democratic digital strategist. “You have to be mindful. You have to be aware of major events. You have to be patient. But then, within six months or so, your investment will pay back.”

While it is no surprise that Mr. Sanders is ahead with small digital donors — he is the only potential candidate to have a previous run for president included in the analysis — the sheer magnitude of his opening advantage is striking.

Mr. Sanders had 369 days during his 2016 presidential campaign where he processed more online donations than Ms. Gillibrand did on her single best day in the Senate — the day after President Trump tweeted about her “begging” him for money — through the end of 2018, according to the data. (Ms. Gillibrand’s biggest days were notably smaller than those of her rivals with large bases of support.)

The advantage that Mr. Sanders and Mr. O’Rourke enjoy is not just the size of their lists but the exclusivity of their donors — the vast majority of whom (an estimated 87 percent for Mr. Sanders, 72 percent for Mr. O’Rourke) have not contributed to any other potential 2020 candidate. In contrast, less than half of Ms. Warren’s donors have given only to her among the potential 2020 field.

Ms. Gillibrand actually had slightly more donors who were exclusive to her than Ms. Warren — even though she counted 70,000 fewer donors overall.

Critical questions remain about almost every candidate’s donor lists: Will donors to Mr. Sanders from his 2016 primary challenge to Hillary Clinton stick with him in a 2020 race with progressive alternatives? How much of Mr. O’Rouke’s flock were drawn to the chance to defeat Senator Ted Cruz, a favorite liberal villain? And how many of Ms. Warren’s boosters backed her against then-Senator Scott Brown but may not be on board for a run for the White House?

Behind the top five candidates, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who is traveling through the early states as he considers a run, finished next with 114,000 donors. Next was Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who was the only senator to endorse Mr. Sanders in 2016 and is now mulling a campaign; his 105,000 online donors suggest his fund-raising potential is relatively underrated.

Mr. Booker is among the most widely followed potential presidential candidates on social media (he has 4 million Twitter followers) but the New Jersey Democrat had the seventh-most donors among senators looking at 2020 bids. Mr. Booker’s campaign website intermittently used ActBlue in 2013, 2014 and 2015, suggesting his full number of online donors is likely at least somewhat higher.

“He’s the perfect case study to show what it takes to build a large online grass-roots following today. It’s folly to think you can just grow that organically,” said Mr. Lim, the digital strategist. “Just because you have a lot of followers or people who like you or talk to you, that doesn’t translate to an organized and impactful community of donors.”

Mr. Booker has announced that Jenna Lowenstein, a former top digital strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign, would serve as his deputy campaign manager, a move seen as focusing on improving his online donor footprint.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who is expected to announce a 2020 bid on Sunday, lags far behind her colleagues, with fewer than 38,000 donors. That figure was about on par with Richard Ojeda, who briefly declared his presidential candidacy after losing a House race in West Virginia before abruptly quitting in late January.

Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who announced her bid for president in January, had 41,000 donors, but more than 75 percent of her donors overlapped either with Mr. Sanders, whom she endorsed in 2016, or with at least two other potential candidates.

Ms. Gabbard’s single best day for online donations came two and half years ago. That was the day Mr. Sanders sent a fund-raising email for her.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 10, 2019, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Race for Donations, Democrats Think Small. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe


THIS IS ANOTHER SUBJECT THAT I WAS UNAWARE OF. THE AMOUNT OF VIOLENCE OF THIS LAST CENTURY IS ALMOST UNIMAGINABLE. IT IS PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR US HUMAN CREATURES TO BECOME ANYTHING CLOSE TO WHAT I CONSIDER TO BE “CIVILIZED.” THIS IS ONE OF MANY SHOCKING TIME PERIODS AND EVENTS, AND I CAN SEE WHY THEY HAVE BEEN SET UP IN A WEBSITE TO BE REMEMBERED, BECAUSE TO FORGET IS TO FAIL TO REPENT.

“THE MOSCOW TERROR PROJECT”
https://topos.memo.ru/en/node/1

About the project
What is the project about?

The website “Topography of Terror” is part of the project “Moscow: Sites of Memory,” organized by International Memorial since 2013.

What do we do?

We conduct research and endeavor to raise public awareness about the Soviet terror in Moscow. Our aim is to make the history of the Soviet terror and the relationship between individuals and Soviet society visible on the contemporary map of the city.

From where does the name of the site originate?

The website's name is inspired by the project “Topography of Terror” in Berlin. After much deliberation, we adopted the same name because it accurately characterizes the mission of our project. Although our possibilities are far more limited, we have learned a great deal—ethically, methodologically, and technically—from our German colleagues.

How can I use the website?

The website “Topography of Terror” is an address book and database about the Soviet terror in Moscow. There are two ways to explore the contents: via the map or via articles. On the contemporary map of Moscow you can activate one or several of the themed layers and find out more about the history of the marked locations. Both current and Soviet-era names of streets and avenues can be seen. In the articles section, you can choose to read one page at a time. Every text includes an address, information about the location's history, and a description of the buildings or other artifacts related to the events. Many places have not survived intact; in this case, the area is marked with a pale color. Some sites we unfortunately cannot locate accurately; in this case, the given area is marked with dots. New thematic content appears monthly.

What sources do we use?

We use all possible sources that are reliable. We study old handbooks, maps, newspapers, and magazines. We interview witnesses and experts, research published and unpublished memoirs, and reinterpret art and literature, such as Solzhenitsyn’s and Shalamov’s works. Most importantly, we try to track down sources from the Russian state archives. This is the most difficult task—even though we know where the necessary sources are, our access is restricted. Therefore, we have to use indirect sources, such as the archives of party prisons, administrative documents, related materials, fonds, and so forth. Our work is similar to that of a detective—we investigate old crimes and try to collect evidence. A summary of the archival sources used for “Topography of Terror” can be found on an open resource at notepad.memo.ru.

How can we do it?

The answer is that we cannot succeed by working alone. We rely on the contributions of experts, researchers, trainees, volunteers, photographers, cartographers, graphic designers, programmers, and many others, including ordinary readers. If you wish to make a contribution or contact us, please send an e-mail to: ap@memo.ru


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
Great Purge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the 1936–38 Soviet purge. For the general article about political purges, see Purge.

The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938.[5] It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of wealthy landlords and the Red Army leadership, widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions.[6] In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (literally, "Yezhov phenomenon",[note 1] commonly translated as "times of Yezhov" or "doings of Yezhov"), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who was executed a year after the purge. Modern historical studies estimate the total number of deaths due to Stalinist repression in 1937–38 to be between 681,692-1,200,000.[2][1]

In the Western world, Robert Conquest's 1968 book The Great Terror popularized that phrase. Conquest's title was in turn an allusion to the period called the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution (French: la Terreur, and, from June to July 1794, la Grande Terreur, the Great Terror).[7]


HERE IS UP-CLOSE INFORMATION ABOUT THE SANDERS LIFE, FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED. THIS IS A 2016 ARTICLE, SO SOMETHING WILL HAVE CHANGED BY NOW, I'M SURE. DOES HE STILL DO HIS OWN LAUNDRY AND CHOP HIS OWN FIREWOOD? I HOPE HE DOES, BECAUSE CHOPPING WOOD IS GOOD EXERCISE, AND DOING HIS OWN LAUNDRY IS THE RIGHT WAY TO TREAT A WOMAN. I HAVE TRIED CHOPPING WOOD. I HAD HATEFUL BLISTERS ON MY HANDS, AND I’LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN UNLESS I REALLY DO HAVE TO. THAT WAS WHEN I WAS IN THE GIRL SCOUTS.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/01/20/bernie-sanders-paleo-before-paleo-thing/79065692/
Bernie Sanders 'was Paleo before Paleo was a thing'
Josh Hafner, USA TODAY Published 1:52 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2016 | Updated 3:55 p.m. ET Jan. 20, 2016

PHOTOGRAPH -- Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to a crowd of voters during a campaign appearance in Underwood, Iowa, on Jan. 19, 2016. (Photo: Tannen Maury, EPA)

Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this post misstated Burlington's location. It's in northwestern Vermont.

Journey with me, if you will, to Vermont.

There, in Burlington, off the shores of Lake Champlain, the good folks of People magazine take us into the "modest colonial home" of Bernie Sanders.

In an interview dropping [sic] Friday, the 74-year-old welcomes us to sit at a crackling wood stove with his wife, Jane, for a humanizing glimpse of the democratic socialist in an increasingly close battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Fun tid-bits ensue.

Sure, Jeb Bush got early press for losing 30-plus pounds on the Paleo diet. But Bernie's been on the diet trend all along.

(Sanders) does his own grocery shopping and grilling, sticking to a diet of mostly meat and vegetables. "He was Paleo before Paleo was a thing," says Jane's other daughter, Carina Driscoll.

And did you know people pay money for pre-cut firewood? Ha! Not Bernie.

He also chops his own firewood and can be handy around the house – just not, as Jane puts it, "with a lot of attention to aesthetics." He once tacked new screening onto a window frame without cutting away the excess, she recalls, "so we had a window with a tutu. And he said, 'Well, it works!'

And while my closet currently contains as many as 10 sweaters, Sanders thinks that's ridiculous:

Jane jokes to PEOPLE of her minimalist husband, "If Bernie has seven sweaters, that's three too many for him."

That's far too many sweaters! Oh, Bernie!

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

People
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@people
EXCLUSIVE: @BernieSanders does his own laundry (and grocery shopping, too!) http://peoplem.ag/OGniAJ8

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Glenn Reynolds: We just might get that Trump-Sanders race


https://people.com/celebrity/inside-bernie-sanders-family-and-home-life-he-does-his-own-laundry-shopping/
Bernie Sanders Does His Own Laundry (and Grocery Shopping): Inside the Family Life of the Down-to-Earth Democratic Candidate
"How far we've come is really incredible," Bernie Sanders tells PEOPLE
SANDRA SOBIERAJ WESTFALL TIERNEY MCAFEE
January 20, 2016 05:50 AM

"How far we've come is really incredible," Bernie Sanders tells PEOPLE

In the past year, everything and nothing has changed for Bernie Sanders.

The one-time Democratic dark horse has gradually become a top-tier contender for the presidential nomination, with recent polls in New Hampshire and Iowa showing him neck-and-neck with – or even leading – rival Hillary Clinton.

Yet in his heart and home the Vermont senator remains the same down-to-earth “Bernster” – as his son, Levi, lovingly refers to him – he’s always been. And that much was plain to see when PEOPLE stopped by to visit Sanders and his family at his modest colonial home in Burlington, Vermont, last month.

Bernie Sanders with his grandchildren Dylan and Ella Photographs by Martin Schoeller

As Sanders’ wife, Jane, reviewed his laundry list of accomplishments for PEOPLE at the kitchen table, the senator let out a deep sigh. “He doesn’t like to talk about himself – or hear about himself,” Jane explains. But his ears perk up moments later when the buzzer of a dryer sounds from the basement.

“That’s my cue!” Sanders says, jumping up to tend to his laundry.

For much more of PEOPLE’S interview with Bernie Sanders and his family, pick up the new issue, on newsstands Friday

Not that he has much laundry. Jane jokes to PEOPLE of her minimalist husband, “If Bernie has seven sweaters, that’s three too many for him.”

Adds Heather Titus, one of Jane’s daughters from her first marriage, “If they still sold cars with manual locks and windows, that’s what Bernie would have.”

The 74-year-old Democratic socialist from Brooklyn leads a simple home life indeed. He does his own grocery shopping and grilling, sticking to a diet of mostly meat and vegetables. “He was Paleo before Paleo was a thing,” says Jane’s other daughter, Carina Driscoll.

He also chops his own firewood and can be handy around the house – just not, as Jane puts it, “with a lot of attention to aesthetics.” He once tacked new screening onto a window frame without cutting away the excess, she recalls, “so we had a window with a tutu. And he said, ‘Well, it works!’ ”

Sanders’ bellowing indignation – against income inequality, Wall Street greed and climate change – seems to be working as well, especially among millennials who swell the crowds at rallies drawing tens of thousands.

With voting set to begin in Iowa on Feb. 1, Sanders marvels to PEOPLE, “How far we’ve come is really incredible.”