Thursday Reads: Down The Rabbit Hole With The Mad Hatter

Posted: May 3, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | 62 Comments

Good Morning!!

Is your head spinning? Mine sure is. I feel as if we’ve gone down the rabbit hole and arrived at the mad hatter’s tea party. Will we ever be able to get back to reality? Oh wait. This is our reality now.

There is a man living in the people’s house who is a pathological liar and career criminal. This person is running the U.S. foreign policy and appointing judges who will sit on the bench for life. When he’s not watching TV or playing golf, he hires other liars and criminals to advise him and speak for him. But then when they give him advice or speak publicly for him, he contradicts them and eventually fires them and replaces them with new advisers who will then be contradicted and subsequently fired. Afterward the “president” lies about why he fired them.

Please let it end!

Yesterday was another busy day in Trump world. We learned that the “president” of the United States likely bribed the government of Ukraine in order to get them to stop cooperating with the Mueller probe. We learned that another attorney, Ty Cobb, is leaving Trump’s legal team. We also learned that Trump has hired a new attorney, Emmett Flood, who defended Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial and also worked for George W. Bush.

This while we were still absorbing the news from Tuesday that in early 2017, Trump goons illegally raided the offices of Trump’s personal physician and removed all traces of Trump records and photos and that Trump himself wrote the glowing medical assessment that the physician signed off on in 2016.

But that wasn’t the end of the breaking news for Wednesday. Last night, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared on the Sean Hannity show he 1) blew up Trump’s defense in the Stormy Daniels lawsuit and apparently admitted that Trump committed felony campaign finance violations; 2) contradicted Trump’s excuses for firing James Comey; 3) Called Comey a pathological liar and a pervert who should be prosecuted; 4) Said Hillary Clinton should be in prison. And much more.

Is that a decent summary of where we stood last night?

Here’s The Washington Post’s take: Giuliani: Trump repaid attorney Cohen for Stormy Daniels settlement.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a recent addition to President Trump’s legal team, said Wednesday night that Trump made a series of payments reimbursing his attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 settlement with an adult-film actress — despite Trump’s assertion last month that he was unaware of the payment.

“The president repaid it,’’ Giuliani told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.

Trump “didn’t know about the specifics of it, as far as I know. But he did know the general arrangement, that Michael would take care of things like this, like I take care of things like this with my clients,” Giuliani said. “I don’t burden them with every single thing that comes along. These are busy people.’’

Rudy admits he covered up for his own clients when they had affairs? I’m sure his clients are thrilled with that admission.

Later, Giuliani said in an interview with The Washington Post that when Cohen paid the settlement to actress Stormy Daniels, he knew he would eventually get paid back by Trump, as he was for other expenses.

Giuliani said it was his understanding that repayment from Trump came in a series of transactions after the election that he believes were completed in 2017 but could have included a reimbursement in 2018.

That sounds like a structured financial transaction, which is illegal. Ask Denny Hastert.

“The president was always going to make sure he got it back, and enough money to pay the taxes,” Giuliani said. “There probably were other things of a personal nature that Michael took care of for which the president would have always trusted him as his lawyer . . . and that was paid back out of the rest of the money, and Michael earned a fee out of it.”

Giuliani said that even though Trump reimbursed Cohen, he does not know when the president learned of the nature of the payment Cohen had made to Daniels. Giuliani said the president didn’t learn many of the details about the settlement until the past two weeks, in the wake of an FBI raid on Cohen’s office and residence.

“I don’t know if he distinguished it from other things Cohen might have done for him during the campaign,” Giuliani said, adding, “He trusted Michael, and Michael trusted him.”

Of course, as well all know, Trump is on audio/video stating that he had nothing to do with the payment to Daniels.

Last month, a reporter on Air Force One pressed Trump about the payment, asking him, “Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?”

Trump responded, “No.”

The reporter then asked, “Then why did Michael Cohen make [the payment], if there was no truth to her allegations?”

“You’ll have to ask Michael Cohen,” Trump said. “Michael’s my attorney, and you’ll have to ask Michael.”

Another reporter asked the president, “Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?”

“No,” Trump said. “I don’t know.”

My head is still spinning, but there have been more claims by Giuliani and Trump this morning. Giuliani went of Fox and Friends first thing this morning and Trump sent out some tweets that were obviously written by someone else.

Mediaite: Fox & Friends Grills Giuliani on Stormy Daniels Payment: ‘Sounds Like the Story is Changing’

The former New York mayor and current Trump lawyer was grilled on the curvy couch over what he said about Trump reimbursing Michael Cohen, despite Trump claiming he had no idea what his hush money payments were for. Giuliani said that $130,000 was close to “pocket change” compared to how much money Trump was handling at the end of the 2016 election, and he claimed that Trump “didn’t know the details until we knew the details of it which was a couple weeks ago.”

Cohen previously said that he was never paid back for the Daniels payoff, and Ainsley Earhardt asked Giuliani about that while saying “it sounds like the story’s changing.” Giuliani said that Trump’s personal lawyer was “definitely reimbursed,” and he lamented how Cohen is being “treated like a villain” for trying to help his boss.

As Giuliani insisted that Cohen was trying to save the Trump family rather than the Trump campaign, he said that when Cohen arrived at the $130,000 figure, the attorney said to himself ‘my God, this is cheap. They come cheap. Let me get the thing signed up and signed off.” [….]

And then, Giuliani made a remark that will raise some serious questions over whether Trump’s repayment of Cohen violated campaign finance laws:

“Imagine if that came out on October 15th, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton,” Giuliani speculated. “Cohen made it go away. He did his job”

“Don’t you think a lot of these people would pay that when they can,” Giuliani asked hypothetically. “I represented clients who paid substantially more than that.”

Think Progress: Giuliani follows up disastrous Hannity appearance with equally damaging Fox & Friends spot.

A day after contradicting Donald Trump’s and longtime Trump general counsel Michael Cohen’s claims that the president knew nothing about Cohen’s payments to Stormy Daniels, Rudy Giuliani contradicted himself in a Fox & Friends interview.

The former New York City Mayor and current Trump legal team member insisted that the payments were personal, not political — but moments later demonstrated that they were indeed campaign related.

On Thursday morning, Giuliani first said that the payment was to protect the Trump family from a “six year old, false allegation” that Donald Trump had had an extramarital affair.

“If we had to defend this as not being a campaign contribution, I think we could do that,” he said. “This is for personal reasons. The was the president had been hurt personally, not politically, personally so much — and the first lady — by some of the false allegations.  That one more false allegation six years old, I think [Cohen] was trying to help the family. For that he’s treated like some kind of villain.”

Giuliani added that the $130,000 payment was “to save not so much their marriage, as much as their reputation.”

But then moments later, Giuliani noted the political reason for the payment. “Imagine if that came out of October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton…” he said. “Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”

More on the Fox and Friends interview at The Washington Post: ‘We’re not suckers’: Giuliani says he won’t let Mueller ‘trap’ Trump into perjury.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a new attorney on President Trump’s legal team, said Thursday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is seeking to “trap” the president into committing perjury with a request for an extended interview.

“What they’re really trying to do is trap him into perjury, and we’re not suckers,” Giuliani, a former New York City mayor and federal prosecutor, said during a morning interview on “Fox & Friends.”

Giuliani, conducting a fresh round of media interviews Thursday seeking to bolster Trump’s standing, asserted that the original aim of the special counsel — to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 campaign — is now “dead.”

“This silly deposition is about a case in which he supposedly colluded with the Russians but there’s no evidence,” Giuliani said.

During a later appearance on the Fox Business Network, Giuliani said Attorney General Jeff Sessions should “step in” and bring the investigation to a close. Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe last year, a move that continues to elicit anger from Trump.

My head is still spinning. I’ve done my best to try to summarize the current state of affairs. What do you think?

Tuesday Reads: Happy May Day!

Posted: May 1, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics | 29 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Happy May Day! Spring is sprung!

I’ve written about this before, but when I was a kid back in the 1950s in Lawrence, Kansas, we had a nice tradition of making May baskets with spring flowers and leaving them on friends’ doors early in the morning. We hung the baskets on the doorknob, rang the doorbell or knocked, and then hid. My mom remembers doing this when she was growing up in North Dakota. Apparently some people still do it.

From NPR: A Forgotten Tradition: May Basket Day.

The curious custom — still practiced in discrete pockets of the country — went something like this: As the month of April rolled to an end, people would begin gathering flowers and candies and other goodies to put in May baskets to hang on the doors of friends, neighbors and loved ones on May 1.

In some communities, hanging a May basket on someone’s door was a chance to express romantic interest. If a basket-hanger was espied by the recipient, the recipient would give chase and try to steal a kiss from the basket-hanger.

Perhaps considered quaint now, in decades past May Basket Day — like the ancient act of dancing around the maypole — was a widespread rite of spring in the United States.

Read more at the link.

I guess this was a hangover from the Pagan holiday Beltane. From the History Channel:

The Celts of the British Isles believed May 1 to be the most important day of the year, when the festival of Beltane was held.

This May Day festival was thought to divide the year in half, between the light and the dark. Symbolic fire was one of the main rituals of the festival, helping to celebrate the return of life and fertility to the world.

When the Romans took over the British Isles, they brought with them their five-day celebration known as Floralia, devoted to the worship of the goddess of flowers, Flora. Taking place between April 20 and May 2, the rituals of this celebration were eventually combined with Beltane.

Of course the Catholic Church absorbed these pagan traditions in order to get more followers. In my 1950s Catholic schools, we had May Day ceremonies with a Maypole and a May queen–taking an ancient fertility celebration and turning it into a day for the “Virgin Mary.”

I got started thinking about all this again when Delphyne tweeted this article about April 30, Walpurgis Night – “The Other Halloween.”

It’s so interesting how these ancient festivals are reflected in more recent traditions.

In modern times, May Day has also been associated with the Labor movement. From the History Channel again:

The connection between May Day and labor rights began in the United States. During the 19th century, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, thousands of men, women and children were dying every year from poor working conditions and long hours.

In an attempt to end these inhumane conditions, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which would later become the American Federation of Labor, or AFL) held a convention in Chicago in 1884. The FOTLU proclaimed “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.”

The Haymarket Riot, 1886, by Granger

The following year the Knights of Labor – then America’s largest labor organization – backed the proclamation as both groups encouraged workers to strike and demonstrate.

On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers (40,000 in Chicago alone) from 13,000 business walked out of their jobs across the country. In the following days, more workers joined and the number of strikers grew to almost 100,000.

That was followed by the Haymarket riot a couple of days later.

Well that was a nice interlude, but now I have to return to the present day and the ongoing nightmare we’re living through.

Yesterday we learned that National Security Adviser John Kelly–like most Americans–thinks Trump is an idiot. NBC News: Kelly thinks he’s saving U.S. from disaster, calls Trump ‘idiot,’ say White House staffers.

White House chief of staff John Kelly has eroded morale in the West Wing in recent months with comments to aides that include insulting the president’s intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country, according to eight current and former White House officials.

The officials said Kelly portrays himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government. He has referred to Trump as “an idiot” multiple times to underscore his point, according to four officials who say they’ve witnessed the comments.

Kelly called the allegations “total BS.”

Of course we all know that Kelly is also a liar. NBC also heard from WH officials that–to no one’s surprise–Kelly is a sexist. The Daily Beast summarizes:

Kelly has, on multiple occasions, referred to women as being more emotional than men, and wondered aloud to White House officials why the ex-wives of former staff secretary Rob Porter wouldn’t just move on from their accusations of domestic abuse.

How long will Kelly last? Officials are predicting he’ll be gone sometime in July when he’ll be just one more person who used to have a sterling reputation that has been destroyed by proximity to Trump.

The other big news that broke last night was a list of questions that Robert Mueller shared with Trump’s legal team and someone gave to The New York Times.

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions on an exhaustive array of subjects he wants to ask President Trump to learn more about his ties to Russia and determine whether he obstructed the inquiry itself, according to a list of the questions obtained by The New York Times.

The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. TrumMp’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.

So who leaked the questions? Sam Stein suspects Rudy Giuliani.

Another theory comes from CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin. Raw Story: Robert Mueller’s former assistant explains how grammar errors prove ‘leaked questions’ came from Trump.

Michael Zeldin, who now works as a legal analyst for CNN, told “New Day” that he doesn’t believe these questions came actually from Mueller.

“We have, this morning, been calling these questions that Mueller propounded, but I don’t believe that that’s actually what these are,” he began. “I think these are notes taken by the recipients of a conversation with Mueller’s office where he outlined broad topics and these guys wrote down questions that they thought these topics may raise.”

He explained that the way the questions are written make it pretty obvious.

“Because of the way these questions are written,” Zeldin explained his methodology. “Lawyers wouldn’t write questions this way, in my estimation. Some of the grammar is not even proper. So, I don’t see this as a list of written questions that Mueller’s office gave to the president. I think these are more notes that the White House has taken and then they have expanded upon the conversation to write out these as questions.”

He agreed with fellow legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin that the questions seemed introductory in nature and that they indicate the investigation won’t end any time soon.

Here’s another expert opinion from former US Attorney Barbara McQuade: If Team Trump Leaked Mueller’s Questions, It’s Bound to Backfire.

First, who might have leaked these questions? Mueller himself or someone on his team could have done so, but Mueller is known for his tight-lipped approach to investigations. Not only is it against his nature to leak these questions, it is also against his interest. Sharing these questions with the media telegraphs areas of inquiry to all other witnesses. The president may get the extraordinary courtesy of advance notice of the questions to induce him to come to the table, but no other witness will likely receive this unusual benefit. Publishing these questions only stands to compromise Mueller’s investigation, and so it seems unlikely that the leak came from his camp.

That leaves Trump’s team with Rudy Giuliani new to the team. These questions were not leaked when they were first communicated to Trump’s team in March, but only now, after Giuliani has come on board.

Why might Trump’s legal team want to leak these questions? The answer may lie in Trump’s morning tweets. Trump criticized the leak, and then stated: “No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!” A second tweet said, “It would seem very hard to obstruct justice for a crime that never happened! Witch Hunt!” [….]

He seems to be making the public case that the investigation is now all about obstruction of justice, and not about coordination with Russia to interfere with the election. Even this premise is false, in light of the fact that several questions relate to contacts with Russians. Nonetheless, more than half of the questions appear to relate to obstruction of justice. Trump seems to be arguing that this focus on obstruction of justice exposes the investigation as an unfounded, politically motivated scandal.

Read the rest at The Daily Beast.

In other news, we’re learning more about Ronny Jackson, the former White House doctor whose reputation has also been shredded by his association with Trump. CNN Exclusive: Pence’s doctor alerted WH aides about Ronny Jackson concerns last fall.

Vice President Mike Pence’s physician privately raised alarms within the White House last fall that President Donald Trump’s doctor may have violated federal privacy protections for a key patient — Pence’s wife, Karen — and intimidated the vice president’s doctor during angry confrontations over the episode….

According to copies of internal documents obtained by CNN, Pence’s doctor accused Jackson of overstepping his authority and inappropriately intervening in a medical situation involving the second lady as well as potentially violating federal privacy rights by briefing White House staff and disclosing details to other medical providers — but not appropriately consulting with the vice president’s physician.

The vice president’s physician later wrote in a memo of feeling intimidated by an irate Jackson during a confrontation over the physician’s concerns. The physician informed White House officials of being treated unprofessionally, describing a pattern of behavior from Jackson that made the physician “uncomfortable” and even consider resigning from the position.

After Mrs. Pence’s physician briefed her about the episode, she “also expressed concerns over the potential breach of privacy of her medical condition,” the memo said. Karen Pence asked her physician to direct the vice president’s top aide, Nick Ayers, to inform White House chief of staff John Kelly about the matter. Subsequent memos from Pence’s doctor suggested Kelly was aware of the episode.

In addition, The Daily Beast reports: Jon Tester Has More on Ronny Jackson Than Has Been Made Public: Aides.

For days now, President Donald Trump has been angrily tweeting at Sen. Jon Tester, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, for spreading wild allegations that fueled the implosion of the Veterans Affairs nomination of Ronny Jackson. But privately, relations are nearly as strained between the White House and the committee’s top Republican over what West Wing officials have described as the “smearing” of the White House physician.

According to four sources familiar with the situation, both inside and outside of the West Wing, the Trump White House has grown increasingly angry with Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, for his apparent disinclination to warn administration officials in advance of Tester’s media blitz.

Numerous congressional and Veterans Affairs sources told The Daily Beast that Tester was closely in touch with his Republican colleague throughout the last two weeks, when committee members first heard allegations against Jackson and began to investigate them. There was even an implicit understanding that Tester would be the one to address those allegations with the press as Isakson and other Republicans, while wary of getting into an intra-party feud, were nonetheless eager to send a critical message to the White House about its porous vetting operation.

“They were trying to train Trump, but they didn’t have the balls to stand up to him,” said one top-ranking Democrat familiar with the plan.

There’s much more to the story. Click on the link to read the rest.

Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, who used to be so close to the boss, is now pretty much out in the cold. I’m running out of time and space, so I’ll just give you some headlines to check out.

Business Insider: A National Enquirer story about Michael Cohen is the latest sign Trump is turning against his personal lawyer.

CNN: Cohen responds to message sent by National Enquirer cover.

Vanity Fair: “The Fight Goes On”: Michael Cohen, Surprised by Trump’s Comments, Is Ready to Fight the Good Fight.

The Daily Beast: Michael Cohen Claimed He Talked With Trump the Day of the Stormy Daniels Deal.

Jonathan Chait: Has Michael Cohen Already Flipped on Donald Trump?

So . . . what stories are you following today?

 

 

Lazy Saturday Reads

Posted: April 28, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

Daniel Ralph Celantano, Subway

Good Morning!!

I’m tired . . . so tired. Life in Trump world is exhausting. We’ve reached the point where it’s obvious that Trump’s family and campaign conspired witIh Russia to win the White House, and yet we still have to listen to Trump rant “no collusion” in his ugly, blaring voice. Have you noticed his Queens accent really comes out when he’s apoplectic like he was on Fox and Friends on Thursday? It seems his rosacea gets worse when he’s angry too. If only I never had to hear that honking voice or see his ugly orange face ever again!

I think maybe Angela Merkel agrees with me. Bess Levin at Vanity Fair: All the Times Angela Merkel’s Face Said “STFU You Dumkopf Orange Oaf.”

On Friday, German chancellor Angela Merkel arrived at the White House for a three-hour “working session” with Donald Trump, the goal of which was to convince the American to resist his impulses and not do anything stupid on a host of issues ranging from trade to Iran to the environment. Picking up where French president Emmanuel Macron left off—which is to say, at square one—Merkel’s visit was expected to be much less of a lovefest, meaning no hugging, kissing, hand-holding, fancy dinners, 21-gun salutes, or animal-kingdom mating rituals. The best anyone could hope for, experts warned, was that through small words and simple sentence construction, the chancellor could make Trump understand that so many of his threats—particularly the ones on trade—would hurt not only the targets for which they were intended, but the U.S. as well.

Charlotte Johnson Wahl, Subway NYC, 1994

Even then, expectations were extremely low, given the 45th president’s inability to understand complex, nuanced issues, or the freaking difference between a trade deficit and a surplus. Still, when the two took to a pair of podiums to hold a joint press conference on Friday afternoon, the vibe seemed slightly better than expected. For one thing, Trump was neither foaming at the mouth nor actively refusing to shake Merkel’s hand. For another, Merkel dug deep and paid Trump some compliments using words and phrases you know he just ate up, mentioning the “strength” of his sanctions on North Korea, and claiming that last year’s tax legislation has made the U.S. a “very interesting place for our companies” to invest. Still, one need only take a gander at Merkel’s notoriously weak poker face to understand that inside, she was screaming I can’t believe I have to occupy the same airspace as this knuckle-dragger.

Watch videos and read more snark at Vanity Fair. I can’t even begin to imagine how Macron could bear to have Trump’s hands all over him during their visit. Just the thought of it makes me gag.

On the “no collusion” front . . .

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: The new House GOP report on Russia is revealing. But not in a good way for Trump.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee on Friday released a report on Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. Although it is meant to exonerate President Trump and everyone around him, what it actually does is bring the utter degradation and disgrace of that committee to its fullest expression.

Mark Rothko, Untitled Subway, 1937

By contrast, there may be real news in the Democrats’ response to the report. In particular, the Democrats detailed new information that appears to shed light on what Republicans would not do in their investigation.

The response by Democrats makes this important charge: That Republicans refused to follow up on a lead that could have demonstrated whether, despite his denials, Trump had advance knowledge of the now-infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between a group of Russians and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.

Specifically, it appears very likely that Trump talked to Don Jr. on the phone while Jr. was setting up the meeting.

According to the Democratic response, right after Trump Jr. set up the specifics of the meeting, he had two calls with a number in Russia belonging to Emin Agalarov. Between those two calls, the Democratic response recounts, Trump Jr. received a third call from a blocked number. Who might it have been? [….]

“We sought to determine whether that number belonged to the president, because we also ascertained that then-candidate Trump used a blocked number,” Schiff said during our interview. “That would tell us whether Don Jr. sought his father’s permission to take the meeting, and [whether] that was the purpose of that call.”

Lily Furedi, Subway, 1934

Schiff added that Democrats asked Republicans to subpoena phone records to determine whose number it was, but Republicans “refused,” Schiff said. “They didn’t want to know whether he had informed his father and sought his permission to take that meeting with the Russians.”

Raise your hand if you think the call from the blocked number was from someone other than Daddy Trump. I’m sure Robert Mueller and his team already know whose number that was.

Buzzfeed: Trump Jr. And Emin Agalarov Stayed In Touch Throughout The Transition.

A direct line of communication between the Kremlin-connected Agalarov family and the Trump family was open during the transition after President Donald Trump’s presidential election, BuzzFeed News has learned.

The “first of a series” of text messages was sent between Emin Agalarov and Donald Trump Jr. two days after the 2016 election, a source familiar with the communications told BuzzFeed News.

The communications continued through at least mid-December 2016, according to information made public Friday.

It is not clear how many messages were sent, whether Trump Jr. sent any of them, or how many were sent by either party — although BuzzFeed News confirmed that multiple messages were sent.

Nicole Eisenman, Weeks on the Train

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee revealed one of the text messages, from Dec. 13, 2016, in their “minority views” report on Friday — one of several new pieces of information that suggest that the Trumps’ relationship with the Agalarovs was much closer than the president and his family have said.

Many more details at the Buzzfeed link.

CNN: Russians followed up on Trump Tower meeting after election, Democrats say.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Friday that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya reached out to the Trump family after the election with a request to follow up on efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 Russian sanctions the US enacted over human rights abuses.

Veselnitskaya was the Russian lawyer at the center of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton but instead Veselnitskaya focused on the repeal of the sanctions.

“Clearly, there’s an expectation there on the Russian side that they may now have success with the Magnitsky Act, given that the prior meeting and communications dealt with the offer of help,” Schiff said. “It certainly seems like the Russians were ready for payback.”

In addition, another effort to reach out to Trump’s team after the election came from Aras Agalarov, the Azerbaijani-Russian oligarch who also has ties to the Trump Tower meeting. Agalarov, along with his pop-star son, Emin Agalarov, also worked with Trump to bring the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant to Moscow….

G. Boersma, Surrounding, Man reading newspaper on NY subway

Democrats cite a November 28, 2016, email from publicist Rob Goldstone to Trump’s assistant, Rhona Graff, which said that “Aras Agalarov has asked me to pass on this document in the hope it can be passed on to the appropriate team.”

“Later that day, Graff forwarded to Steve Bannon the email with Agalarov’s document regarding the Magnitsky Act as an attachment, explaining, ‘The PE [President Elect] knows Aras well. Rob is his rep in the US and sent this on. Not sure how to proceed, if at all.'”

Trump’s team has denied there was any follow up after the Trump Tower meeting.

While Trump claims credit for the meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jon Un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in, Max Boot points out at The Washington Post that this has happened before: Don’t let the Korea summit hype fool you. We’ve been here before.

The meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea was acclaimed as “historic.” The two leaders hugged, “smiled broadly, shook each other’s hand vigorously and toasted each other with glasses of champagne.” Reporters noted that the “opening formalities seemed surprisingly relaxed, exceeding the expectations of many people, including perhaps those of the principals themselves. The South Korean leader said we must “proceed together on a path of reconciliation and cooperation.” The North Korean leader replied that “you will not be disappointed.”

Sound familiar? It should, because the news coverage of the 2000 meeting between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang parallels the euphoria over Friday’s meeting in Panmunjom between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s son. If anything, the 2000 meeting produced more tangible results: Not only declarations about ending the Korean War and uniting the two countries, but also concrete steps toward creating a joint South Korean-North Korean industrial park in Kaesong , allow South Korean tourists to visit the North, and to reunify families long divided by the demilitarized zone. Between 1998 and 2008, South Korea provided some $8 billion in economic assistance to North Korea in the hope that all of this aid would create a kinder, gentler regime. Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his efforts.

Subway Train Watercolor painting, Shyama Golden

And yet the Sunshine Policy, so widely heralded at the time, is now widely judged a failure. Despite North Korea’s promises, it did nothing to ease the repression of its populace or to end its nuclear and missile programs. It turned out Kim Dae-jung only achieved that “historic” 2000 summit by offering Kim Jong Il a $500 million bribe. Another summit was held in 2007, arranged by Moon Jae-in, then an aide to President Roh Moo-hyun, and it too was rapturously acclaimed. But the next year, a conservative government took power in Seoul and ended the Sunshine Policy.

Read the rest at the link.

Finally, a little schadenfreude. The Independent reports that there was a fire in the Trump Tower in Azerbaijan. Fortunately, there were no injuries.

A skyscraper that was slated to become a Trump International Hotel in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku has caught fire.

The Azadliq newspaper reported that the blaze broke out on the middle floors of the 33-storey building, which is locally known as Trump Tower, and spread.

Etibar Mirzoev, deputy head of the Emergency Situations Ministry, said there were no injuries and authorities were working to establish the cause of the of the fire.

What stories are you following today?

Thursday Reads: Trump Has Major Meltdown on Fox and Friends

Posted: April 26, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: corruption, Crime, Criminal Justice System, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Good Morning!!

The pressure is building on Trump. This morning he had a major meltdown on Fox and Friends. It was so bad that the hosts couldn’t hide their embarrassment and they finally had to cut off the call. Trump publicly accused James Comey and Andrew McCabe of committing crimes and for the first time he said the words “Stormy Daniels” and admitted that Michael Cohen was representing him (Trump) in Cohen’s dealings with Daniels. He also admitted that he spent the night in Moscow in 2013, despite what he told Comey. Finally, he said that he wasn’t going to keep his hands off the DOJ much longer.

Yahoo News: Trump sounds off on Comey, Cohen, Kanye and more in freewheeling ‘Fox and Friends’ interview.

President Trump called into his favorite morning show for a wide-ranging interview during which an animated — and, at times, angry — Trump weighed in on several scandals swirling around his administration. Chief among them: special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

The president chastised the Justice Department for greenlighting the Russia probe into his campaign’s alleged ties with Russia rather than pursuing a separate investigation into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

“Our Justice Department, which I try and stay away from, but at some point, I won’t, our Justice Department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with Russia,” Trump said. “There is no collusion with me with Russia and everyone knows it.”

On Michael Cohen:

Asked about the extent to which Cohen handles his legal affairs, Trump characterized his involvement as “a tiny, tiny little fraction.” But there was a notable exception.

“He represents me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal,” Trump said, marking the first time he had ever spoken the porn actress’ name publicly. The disclosure also raised further questions about his earlier assertion that he had no knowledge that Cohen paid the porn actress $130,000 in hush money during the 2016 presidential campaign.

On Comey:

“He leaked classified information to get a special counsel and leaked the memos which are classified — the memos were about me and he didn’t write those memos accurately. He wrote a lot of phony stuff,” Trump said as the Fox & Friends hosts looked on in silence. “For instance, I went to Russia for a day or so, a day or two, because I own the Miss Universe pageant, so I went there to watch it because it was near Moscow. So I go to Russia, now, I didn’t go there, everybody knows the logs are there the planes are there. He said I didn’t stay there a night. Of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time but of course I stayed there. Well his memo said I left immediately, I never said that. I never said I left immediately.”

Trump also said of Comey: “I did a great thing for the American people by firing him.”

Here’s his rant on McCabe.

I hope McCabe’s lawyer was listening, because I think he has a case for defamation.

Think Progress: Trump made 2 costly legal errors during unhinged Fox & Friends interview.

First, Trump claimed that Cohen — his longtime personal lawyer and fixer — only represented him in “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his overall legal work….

Trump’s comments come a day after a lawyer representing him told a federal judge that Trump himself “is ready to help recommend what materials seized from his personal attorney that relate to him should be withheld from federal investigators because of attorney-client privilege,” according to the Associated Press.

The day after the raid on his longtime personal attorney, Trump suggested that it shouldn’t even have happened because of attorney-client privilege.

But Trump’s claim that Cohen only deals with “a tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work will likely complicate his lawyers’ efforts to shield seized documents from federal investigators in prosecutors.

The second legal goof:

Trump acknowledged during the Fox & Friends interview that Cohen did represent him during his dealings with Daniels. Trump recently claimed he had no knowledge of the payment at the time.

“Michael would represent me and represent me on some things,” Trump said. “He represented me like with this crazy Stormy Daniels deal, he represented me. He represented me and you know, from what I see he did absolutely nothing wrong.”

But Cohen’s story about the secret Daniels hush payment — which may have been illegal if it was meant to help Trump’s campaign — is that he made it from his personal funds, without Trump being looped in at all. Trump’s acknowledgement that Cohen “represented me” in the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal” undermines the repeated public claims of his own lawyer.

Read more details at the link above. Also see this piece at The Guardian: Trump admits Michael Cohen was his lawyer in Stormy Daniels matter.

You can watch a long clip from the interview at this Business Insider link. If you can’t stand to listen to Trump’s voice, at least watch it with the sound muted to see the embarrassed looks on the faces of the Fox hosts.

Here’s what Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman had to say about Trump’s meltdown.

And here we go. The government’s attorneys quoted Trump’s Fox and Friends rant in their filing for the court hearing in the Michael Cohen case today at noon.

Click on that link to read the entire document.

One more related story from The New York Times: Michael Cohen to Take Fifth Amendment in Stormy Daniels Lawsuit.

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, will invoke his Fifth Amendment right in a lawsuit filed against the president by Stephanie Clifford, the pornographic film star better known as Stormy Daniels.

Mr. Cohen’s decision, disclosed Wednesday in a court filing in California, where the suit was filed, came a day before a federal judge in Manhattan was set to hold a hearing regarding materials seized from Mr. Cohen during an F.B.I. raid earlier this month.

Mr. Cohen cited the Manhattan investigation in his filing on Wednesday, saying that, if called as a witness in Ms. Clifford’s lawsuit, “I will assert my 5th Amendment rights in connection with all proceedings in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the F.B.I. and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.” [….]

Citing the Fifth Amendment in the Clifford case allows Mr. Cohen to avoid being deposed and revealing sensitive information in the more important criminal investigation.

In Trump “I know the best people” news, The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Ronny Jackson to run the VA. The Washington Post:

The White House withdrew the nomination of Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician, to lead the Veterans Affairs Department on Thursday after lawmakers went public with a torrent of accusations leveled against him by nearly two dozen current and former colleagues from the White House medical staff.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Dr. Jackson announced that he was withdrawing his name for consideration to be the secretary of Veteran Affairs.

“Unfortunately, because of how Washington works, these false allegations have become a distraction for this president and the important issue we must be addressing — how we give the best care to our nation’s heroes,” Dr. Jackson said in a statement provided by the White House press office.

He said that the charges against him were “completely false and fabricated.”

Within minutes of the withdrawal, President Trump lamented the loss of his nomination, and said that Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, would “have a big price to pay” for undercutting Dr. Jackson.

Happening right now: Scott Pruitt is testifying before Congress. He faces two hearings today.

Vox: Congress is grilling Scott Pruitt about his ethical breaches.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt will face a double whammy of hearings on Capitol Hill Thursday that could make or break his career at the EPA. You can watch the C-SPAN livestream here.

The hearings were originally intended to give Pruitt the chance to pitch his agency’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year. But members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Appropriations Committee, including some Republicans, are expected to grill Pruitt over his growing list of alleged ethical lapses.

A tsunami of accusations of improper dealings has emerged since Pruitt’s last trip to the Hill in January, from using sirens to get to dinner reservations to a sweetheart condo deal with a lobbyist to ousting staffers who questioned his luxury travel. These allegations have led to investigations from Congress, the White House, and government watchdogs. The Government Accountability Office already found that the $43,000 phone booth in Pruitt’s office broke the law.

And though his prepared statement for the Energy and Commerce Committee completely ignores the controversies around him, the New York Times reported that Pruitt is preparing for a confrontation with a set of talking points on his long list of scandals. He will argue, among other things, that he flew first class based on recommendations from his security staff and that he wasn’t involved in the decision to bypass the White House to get massive raises for two close aides.NB

Meanwhile, EPA employees protested outside the agency’s headquarters on Wednesday, decrying budget cuts alongside activists and lawmakers who want to “Boot Pruitt” out of office.

NBC News’ First Read suggests that Trump’s biggest problem might be the competency question.

This morning, President Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veterans Affairs withdrew his nomination after new allegations against him surfaced. Today, Congress is expected to grillthe president’s EPA administrator over alleged ethical lapses. And the president’s personal lawyer and fixer is pleading the Fifth Amendment.

 Yes, it’s chaos and controversy, which we’ve constantly chronicled here. But it’s also a matter of competency. According to this month’s NBC/WSJ poll, a majority of Americans — 56 percent — said that Trump’s administration isn’t competent, including 39 percent who said it isn’t competent at all. By contrast, 43 percent said it was competent, including 16 percent who said “very competent.”

To put those numbers into perspective, 50 percent of American said Barack Obama’s administration was competent in June 2014 (so after the Obamacare website crash during his second term), and 53 percent said George W. Bush’s administration was competent in March 2006 (after Hurricane Katrina).

So for all the potential dangers to Trump’s presidency — the Russia investigation, historically low approval ratings, Democrats possibly winning the House (and Senate) in November — the biggest could very well be the competency question.

Indeed, majorities of women (61 percent), seniors (58 percent), millennials (57 percent), independents (57 percent) and men (51 percent) said the Trump administration wasn’t too competent or not competent at all. Even whites were split down the middle — 50-50.

That’s a big problem.

That’s all I have for you this morning. I know I’ve only touched on a small part of what’s happening. So . . . what stories are you following today?

Tuesday Reads: White Privilege and Trump’s “Best People”

Posted: April 24, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!!

White privilege is a powerful thing, and here’s some proof.

WGN9 Chicago: Waffle House shooting suspect held on $2M bail.

A man accused of killing four people with an AR-15 rifle at a Tennessee Waffle House has been formally charged with four counts of criminal homicide and is being held on $2 million bail.

Court records say 29-year-old Travis Reinking was charged Monday. He is due in court Wednesday.

Police say Reinking was wearing a green jacket and nothing else Sunday when he stormed the restaurant in southeast Nashville and opened fire with the military assault-style rifle, first in the parking lot and then inside. Police credited a quick-thinking customer who wrestled the gun away from preventing more bloodshed.

Authorities say Reinking fled the scene after the scuffle with the restaurant patron. The suspect was captured Monday after an intense manhunt with local and federal police officers that lasted more than a day.

And yet, the judge gave him bail. Let’s hope his father (who reportedly returned the assault weapon to his son after the Secret Service took it away during an arrest at the White House) doesn’t raise the money to get him released.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, a golf club called the police on four black women members for allegedly playing too slowly. AP:

“I felt we were discriminated against,” one of the women, Myneca Ojo, told the York Daily Record. “It was a horrific experience.”

Sandra Thompson and four friends met up Saturday to play a round of golf at the Grandview Golf Club, where they are all members, she told the newspaper.

At the second hole, a white man whose son co-owns the club came up to them twice to complain that they weren’t keeping up with the pace of play. Thompson, an attorney and the head of the York chapter of the NAACP, told the newspaper it was untrue.

On the same hole, another member of the group, Sandra Harrison, said she spoke with a Grandview golf pro, who said they were fine since they were keeping pace with the group ahead of them.

Despite that, the women skipped the third hole to avoid any other issues, she said….

The five are part of a larger group of local women known as Sisters in the Fairway. The group has been around for at least a decade, and all of its members are experienced players who have golfed all over the county and world, Thompson said. They’re very familiar with golf etiquette, she said.

After the ninth hole, where it is customary to take a break before continuing on the next nine holes, three of the group decided to leave because they were so shaken up by the earlier treatment, the women told the paper.

Thompson said the man from the second hole, identified as former York County Commissioner Steve Chronister, his son, club co-owner Jordan Chronister and several other white, male employees approached the remaining two women and said they took too long of a break and they needed to leave the course.

Then the police arrived, but they took no action. Read more at the link.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly told his followers that he knew “the best people” and would hire the very best to work for his administration. That’s not working out so well.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt is still hanging in there, but for how much longer?

CNBC: Embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt faces public grilling this week as GOP support erodes.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reports to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a pair of hearings on his agency’s 2018 budget proposal, but the embattled Trump deputy is likely to face as many questions about his personal conduct as EPA’s spending priorities.

Since the hearings were announced, revelations about Pruitt’s rental of a Washington apartment linked to an energy lobbyist have sparked a near-daily trickle of reports detailing alleged ethics abuses and lavish spending that have put the EPA chief’s political future in peril.

In just the last few weeks, Pruitt has been accused of retaliating against EPA staff, arranging official trips to fulfill his personal travel whims and orchestrating pay raises for aides in defiance of the White House. The number of investigations into his conduct has expanded to five, and the government’s top watchdog determined last week that the agency violated the law by installing a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in Pruitt’s office.

The hearings could be a make-or-break moment for Pruitt, who has already sat through a combative Fox News interview that reportedly bruised his standing in the administration. Pruitt goes before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Environment in the morning and the Committee on Appropriation’s subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies in the afternoon.

And, according to Bloomberg, the White House is telling Republicans not to defend Pruitt.

White House officials are cautioning Republican lawmakers and other conservative allies to temper their defense of Scott Pruitt, according to two people familiar with the discussions, in a sign that administration support for the embattled EPA chief may be waning.

The warnings come as several top GOP lawmakers have stepped forward to publicly criticize Pruitt in recent days, marking a dramatic turn of fortune for one of the most conservative members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet who has been heralded for dismantling Obama-era regulations.

Republicans are now sharpening their criticisms about Pruitt amid a revelation that he met at least once with the lobbyist whose wife rented him a bedroom on Capitol Hill.

Last night the news broke that White House physician Ronny Jackson, Trump’s pick to lead the VA, is in trouble.

The New York Times: Ronny Jackson, Trump’s V.A. Nominee, Faces Claims of Overprescription and Hostile Work Environment.

The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee is examining allegations that President Trump’s nominee to lead the Veterans Affairs Department oversaw a hostile work environment as the White House physician and allowed the overprescribing of drugs, according to congressional officials briefed on the committee’s work.

They have also received claims that Dr. Ronny L. Jackson drank too much on the job.

The allegations, which have been under investigation since last week, forced the postponement of Dr. Jackson’s confirmation hearing, planned for this Wednesday as senators scrutinize the nominee’s time leading the White House medical staff. Officials familiar with the allegations against Dr. Jackson declined to offer precise details but said that they suggest a pattern of behavior, not just one or two isolated incidents.

How do you “drink too much on the job” at the White House? Shouldn’t any drinking on the job be forbidden?

Dr. Jackson, a rear admiral in the Navy who serves as the White House physician, was already expected to face difficult questioning during his testimony before the committee. Last month, Mr. Trump fired his first Veterans Affairs secretary, David J. Shulkin, an experienced hospital administrator and veteran of the V.A. medical system, and then chose Dr. Jackson largely out of personal affinity.

The White House did little or no vetting of his background before announcing his nomination on Twitter. Before serving as a White House physician, Dr. Jackson had deployed as an emergency medicine physician to Taqaddum, Iraq, during the Iraq war.

The Senate only received paperwork from the Trump administration formalizing Dr. Jackson’s nomination last week.

Read more at the NYT. Do you suppose this job could have been a bribe to get Jackson to lie about Trump’s height and weight and the state of his health? Or did Trump knew about the drinking and use it as blackmail?

And then there’s Mike Pompeo, current Director of the CIA and nominee for Secretary of State. Frankly, I think this guy is terrifying; and, unfortunately, it looks like he’ll be confirmed. Here’s some background on Pompeo and his scary religious beliefs:

Michelle Golberg at Slate, January 2017: “This Evil Is All Around Us.” Trump’s pick for the CIA, Mike Pompeo, sees foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war.

In June 2015, Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman, headlined a “God and Country Rally” at Wichita’s Summit Church. “To worship our lord and celebrate our nation at the same place is not only our right, it is our duty,” he began. Pompeo’s speech was a mishmash of domestic culture war callouts and dark warnings about the danger of radical Islam. He cited an inflammatory prayer that a pastor named the Rev. Joe Wright once delivered before the Kansas State Legislature: “America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.” He lamented government efforts to “rip faith from our schools” and then segued immediately into a discussion of the jihadi threat: “This evil is all around us.” Pompeo concluded by describing politics as “a never-ending struggle … until the rapture.” [….]

Like Trump, Pompeo has been a fierce critic of efforts to rein in the CIA’s torture program and a champion of keeping Guantanamo Bay open. While in Congress, he was a frequent guest on the radio show of famously paranoid Frank Gaffney, a man disinvited from the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference after claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated its parent organization, the American Conservative Union. (In the Trump era, Gaffney has been brought in from the cold: After the election, the New York Times reported that he was informally advising Trump’s inner circle on national security hires.) Gaffney once called Pompeo “one of the most intelligent men I know in public life,” and the two see the world similarly. In February 2015, they spoke about President Obama’s use of the term “violent extremism” instead of “radical Islam,” a linguistic choice that some on the right see as a secret message of solidarity with jihad. Gaffney suggested that Obama might be conveying “an affinity” for ISIS’s cause, if not all its tactics: “the raising up of the Muslim Ummah, a grand rebalancing of America’s role in the world.” Pompeo relied, “Frank, every place you stare at the president’s policies and statements, you see what you just described … every policy of this administration has treated America as if we are the problem and not the solution.”

Like Gaffney, Pompeo believes that radical networks have wormed their way into every corner of the country. “There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways,” he said on Gaffney’s show. “They’re not just in places like Libya and Syria and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas, and small towns all throughout America.”

From Vox, March 15, 2018: Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, talks about politics as a battle of good and evil.

That Pompeo is an evangelical Christian is, on its face, not particularly notable; 25 percentof Americans are. But Pompeo’s specific brand of evangelical Christianity, with its insistence on seeing Muslim-Christian relations as an apocalyptic holy war, makes him an unnerving choice for such a senior foreign policy position.

During his tenure as CIA director, and before that as a member of the House of Representatives, Pompeo has consistently used language that casts the war on terrorism as a cosmic divine battle of good and evil. He’s referred to Islamic terrorists as destined to“continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray and stand and fight and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior is truly the only solution for our world.”

Pompeo clarified that only a small percentage of Muslims were, in fact, terrorists (although in a 2013 speech, he called them potentially complicit in terrorism). Still, his language echoes a wider point: that the war against terrorism can be fought, in part, with Christian faith.

In other speeches, he’s characterized American domestic politics as a similarly apocalyptic struggle between good and evil, in which other (non-Christian) faiths and political views were signs of cultural decay. He cited a sermon previously delivered by Pastor Joe Wright in front of the Kansas state legislature: “‘America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.’” Sources inside the CIA told Foreign Policy that Pompeo’s speeches within the CIA are no less loaded with explicitly religious language.

Please go read the rest.

Now, what else is happening? What stories are you following today?

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