Attention to the Unseen

Politico reports: The White House counsel’s office is down to a skeletal staff, potentially leaving it unprepared to deal with a flood of subpoenas for documents and witnesses when Democrats take control of the House. The office has been without a permanent leader since White House senior attorney Don McGahn left the administration in mid-October. His replacement, Pat Cipollone, is caught up in an extended background check that’s prevented him from starting. And in the coming weeks, deputy counsel Annie…

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The Economist reports: Few governments send ambassadors to China to be brave about human rights. Envoys to Beijing are scholars of realism, their fine minds applied to a delicate task: managing profitable relations with a deep-pocketed, unapologetic dictatorship. It is, therefore, a big deal that at least 14 ambassadors from Western countries, led by Canada, have come together to confront China over its mass detentions of Muslims in the far-western region of Xinjiang, most of them ethnic Uighurs. Officials say…

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ABC News reports: Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of President Donald Trump, said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be “devastating” for the president. The Harvard Law professor emeritus told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that he believes the president will have to navigate the political impact of a potentially damning final report from the special counsel. “I think the report is going to be devastating to the president and I know that the president’s team is already working…

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The Washington Post reports: Congressional Republicans continued to line up this weekend to criticize President Trump over his defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA believes ordered the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “I disagree with the president’s assessment,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s inconsistent with the intelligence I’ve seen . . . . The intelligence I’ve seen suggests that this was ordered by the crown prince.” Lee has split…

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The Observer reports: For Omar Abdulaziz, a 27-year-old Saudi dissident living in exile in Canada, the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi was more than a prominent columnist and veteran who knew the ins and outs of the Saudi royal court. He was a mentor and father figure. Abdulaziz, who often lambasts the Saudi leadership and the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in online videos that garner a huge following, cannot see his parents, who still live in the kingdom. Khashoggi was…

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Noha Khashoggi and Razan Jamal Khashoggi write: Jamal Khashoggi was a complex man, but to us, his daughters, he was simply “Dad.” Our family has always been proud of his work, and we understood the awe and grandeur with which some people viewed him. But in our lives, he was “Baba” — a loving man with a big heart. We loved it when he took us every weekend to the bookstore. We loved looking through his passport, deciphering new locations…

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Joshua Zoffer and Niall Ferguson write: On May 17, 1973, Senator Sam Ervin Jr. opened Senate hearings into the Watergate affair. “It is the constitutional duty of this committee,” he said, to expeditiously investigate allegations that American democracy “has been subverted and its foundations shaken.” Ervin, a Democrat, did not mince words in characterizing the gravity of the accusations leveled against Richard Nixon’s campaign and administration. At stake were “the workings of the democratic process under which we operate in…

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