Bill Barr sends a letter on behalf of his sole client
By 
He has a special practice:
The Justice Department is going on the offensive against the anonymous author of “A Warning,” telling them in a letter obtained by CNN Business that he or she may be violating “one or more nondisclosure agreements” by writing the anti-Trump book.
The author’s publisher is rejecting the argument and saying the book will be released as scheduled.
And the author’s agents are accusing the government of trying to unmask the author.
“Our author knows that the President is determined to unmask whistleblowers who may be in his midst. That’s one of the reasons A WARNING was written,” the literacy agency Javelin said in a statement.
“But we support the publisher in its resolve that the administration’s effort to intimidate and expose the senior official who has seen misconduct at the highest levels will not prevent this book from moving forward.” . . .
“We request that you immediately provide us with your representations that the author did not sign any nondisclosure agreement and that the author did not have access to any classified information in connection with government service,” Hunt’s letter concluded. “If you cannot make those representations, we ask that you immediately provide either the nondisclosure agreements the author signed or the dates of the author’s service and the agencies where the author was employed, so that we may determine the terms of the author’s nondisclosure agreements and ensure that they have been followed.”
Ross responded later on Monday morning and said, “we are in receipt of your letter this morning. I confirm that Hachette Book Group (‘Hachette’) will be publishing an important book by an anonymous individual who is a “current or former senior official” of the Trump Administration (‘Anonymous’). Hachette is not party to any nondisclosure agreements with the U.S. government that would require any pre-publication review of this book, and Hachette routinely relies on its authors to comply with any contractual obligations they may have. Hachette has, however, made a commitment of confidentiality to Anonymous and we intend to honor that commitment. Please be assured that Hachette takes its legal responsibilities seriously and, accordingly, Hachette respectfully declines to provide you with the information your letter seeks.”
So many delicious possibilities here . . . John Bolton, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Ivanka . . . Pretty sure the truth will turn out to be something much less amusing though, because this show sucks.
But seriously, the fact that nobody could talk Trump down from going through with this little fascist exercise in illustrating the Streisand Effect is not a good sign.
(2) On another note, after posting the grim NYT story about Trump’s re-election chances, I realized that the way I’ve been dealing, psychologically speaking, with the entire Trump phenomenon is by being in denial, in probably a literal sense, about the possibility of his re-election. I don’t think the odds of that happening are good, but that they are more than negligible is not something I can contemplate without falling into despair. So at an emotional level I just deny that it can happen, even though rationally I know that the odds are far from negligible.
(3) I really hate standard time. Does anyone like having a four month stretch of the year in which there’s six hours of darkness before the soporific voice of the Weather Channel presenter causes unconsciousness, even as this living hand, still warm and capable of earnest grasping clutches the now-useless remote? That extra hour of evening gloom is the worst. And so unnecessary . . . after all, we are not farmers.
