Lazy Saturday Reads: Will Michael Avenatti Take Down Trump?

Sunrise in Boston, Saturday, May 12, 2018

Good Afternoon!!

Will Michael Avenatti bring down the Trump crime family? He’s everywhere nowadays. Yesterday he post this tweet and sent amateur and then media investigators on a new path.

Business Insider: Stormy Daniels’ lawyer dropped a cryptic hint about ‘large sums of money’ he claims flowed out of a Michael Cohen-linked shell company that received millions of dollars after Trump’s election.

A search of state public records shows that Demeter Direct, Inc. is a California-based entity operated by a person named Mark S. Ko. Documents for the company describe it as a Korean food retailer. but an archive of the company’s website shows it as a business strategy, consulting, and investment firm. The website was no longer live as of this writing.

The official address listed for Demeter Direct, Inc., 3810 Wilshire Boulevard., Suite 412, Los Angeles, CA 90010, is actually an apartment, located inside a high-rise condo building near downtown Los Angeles. Another company name, PK2 Entertainment, is also linked to the Los Angeles address, and to Ko….

Demeter Direct’s website archive shows Verizon, Sony, FedEx, and Union Bank of California as some of its clients.

The precise nature of the services for which Avenatti said Cohen paid “large sums of money” to Demeter Direct was not immediately clear, but Avenatti has hinted repeatedly that there are other revelations yet to come about Cohen’s business dealings, which are already the subject of a criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York.

CNN communicated with Mark Ko: Head of Demeter Direct tells CNN he worked for Cohen in Korea Aerospace deal.

Maybe Avennati isn’t dirty. Maybe he’s just a really good lawyer. This morning he’s questioning why a top law firm, Squire Patton Boggs, was paying Michael Cohen right up until the FBI raid.

I wonder what the Twitter detectives and the press will dig up on that question?

In other news, The New York Times has a deep dive into the antics of Trump’s biggest fan, Rep. Devin Nunes: Suspicions, Demands and Threats: Devin Nunes vs. the Justice Dept.

Representative Devin Nunes of California, has issued increasingly bold demands for access to some of the Justice Department’s most sensitive case files. He has courted a series of escalating confrontations over access to materials that are usually off limits to Congress under department policy. And when those efforts failed, he threatened top law enforcement officials — mostly Republicans appointed by Mr. Trump.

In the latest episode, splashed across cable news this past week, Mr. Nunes demanded more documents and related materials for his investigation into allegations of surveillance abuse by federal law enforcement officials. His claim pitted him against not just the Justice Department, but also officials in the F.B.I., the intelligence community and the White House, who warned that disclosure could endanger a longtime source who is aiding the special counsel’s investigation….

But increasingly, top officials at the Justice Department have privately expressed concern that the lawmakers are simply mining government secrets for information they can weaponize against those investigating the president, including the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Mr. Nunes was unconvinced by the warnings about the intelligence and law enforcement source, first issuing a subpoena ordering that the Justice Department comply with his latest records request and then a pointed threat to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who is not involved in the case — in contempt of Congress.

Click on the link to read the rest.

Everyone is still talking about the White House’s treatment of Senator John McCain, who is dying of brain cancer.

Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: The Trump White House crossed a new threshold for political debasement this week.

The White House probably thinks it cannot punish Kelly Sadler for her awful comment about John McCain because President Trump has also said nasty things about McCain. It may worry that showing her the door would set a troubling precedent for a president who may one day cross a very similar line.

Kelly Sadler

Welcome to the ongoing degradation of our political discourse. Destination: No end in sight.

One mainstay of the Trump era is reporters are constantly wary of overselling the salience of the political moment. We have seen Trump cross so many established lines of acceptable political behavior and rhetoric, and the outrage cycle can feel futile and even perfunctory. Whether it is Trump’s goal to bulldoze our political norms or not, it is happening with an almost unflinching steadiness.

It is worth recording just where we are when key thresholds are crossed. What happened this week is worse than most anything we have seen — worse even, I would argue, than Trump questioning McCain’s war hero status. What’s more, the White House is trying to simply brush it under the rug, which means the bulldozer is pressing forward.

In case you missed it:

Sadler reportedly said of McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel’s nomination to be CIA director, “It doesn’t matter; he’s dying anyway.” The White House’s response Friday was not to distance itself from the comment about the brain cancer-stricken Arizona senator, but to no-comment. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sadler is still employed but declined to go any further. “I’m not going to validate a leak one way or another out of an internal staff meeting,” she said.

Read the rest at the WaPo. Here’s some background on Kelly Sadler at Heavy.com: Kelly Sadler: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.

That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?

Tuesday Reads: Bookstores and Bad News

Left Bank Books, St. Louis

Good Afternoon!!

When I first moved to Boston in 1967, I lived in an apartment a block outside Harvard Yard. In those days, Harvard Square was a wonderful bohemian place, with bookstores on every block; and I mean that literally. The Paperback Booksmith (“Dedicated to the fine art of browsing”) on Brattle Street was open until midnight. Lots of stores and restaurants were open that late, and there were always people out doing things at all hours. It was a wonderful place, and I remember those days fondly. Over the years, I spent many happy hours browsing for books in the Square.

But times change. Those days are gone now. There are still bookstores in Harvard Square, but not very many. The Harvard Bookstore is still in the same place on Massachusetts Avenue that it’s been since 1932. It’s an independent bookstore, not connected with Harvard University and it’s still a wonderful place.

What happened to all those great bookstores? Barnes & Noble, along with Borders and Waldenbooks, came along and offered discounts, driving many independent bookstores out of business. Then along came the internet and Amazon, and it’s Barnes & Noble’s turn to struggle. David Leonhardt of the NYT wants to save it.

Sorry, but I’m not going to weep for Barnes & Noble. I can get an endless variety of books on line, and I like being able to do that. I love reading on my Kindle. I hope there will always be bookstores for people to enjoy, and there will be if young people patronize them. At my age, I don’t have the energy to go out to bookstores like I used to, but I’m glad they’re still out there. Maybe if Barnes & Noble goes out of business, other people will take up the slack. And of course Amazon is starting brick and mortar stores now.

Times change. I’m not sorry we have the internet now, and cell phones, and so much more technology that I couldn’t even imagine in 1967. Human creativity will live on, and I’ll bet some creative people will still run independent bookstores.

Writers Block, Las Vegas

The photos in the post are of independent bookstores around the country from the Literary Hub: 11 authors recommend US bookstores worth traveling for.

I guess I’m thinking about bookstores, because they have always been place I went to escape and find some peace and quiet when I felt stressed or depressed. And right now the world is looking increasingly stressful and depressing to me.

I can’t begin to cover every stunning thing that happened yesterday. It’s like that most days now. But here are some suggested reads.

Last night’s shocking scoop came from The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow: Four Women Accuse New York’s Attorney General of Physical Abuse. I’m not easy to shock when it comes to descriptions of abuse. I’ve read too many. But this one shocked me. I’m not going to post excerpts. Read it if you think you can handle it. There was no way Schneiderman could have survived this.

The New York Times: Eric Schneiderman, Accused by 4 Women, Quits as New York Attorney General.

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general who rose to prominence as an antagonist of the Trump administration, abruptly resigned on Monday night hours after The New Yorker reported that four women had accused him of physically assaulting them.

“It’s been my great honor and privilege to serve as attorney general for the people of the State of New York,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me.

“While these allegations are unrelated to my professional conduct or the operations of the office, they will effectively prevent me from leading the office’s work at this critical time. I therefore resign my office, effective at the close of business on May 8, 2018.”

His resignation represented a stunning fall for a politician who had also assumed a prominent role in the #MeToo movement.

Of course Schneiderman at least had the decency to step down immediately, unlike the pussy grabber in the White House and the Republican Governor of Missouri.

Liberty Bay Books in Pouslbo, Washington

Trump is expected to pull the U.S. out of the Iran deal today. The Washington Post: Trump expected to end waiver of sanctions on Iran, endangering nuclear deal.

The decision follows the failure of last-ditch efforts by the three European signatories to the agreement to convince Trump that his concerns about “flaws” in the 2015 accord could be addressed without violating its terms or ending it altogether.

While the deal itself contains no provisions for withdrawal, Iran has threatened to reactivate its nuclear program if the United States reneges on any of its obligations under the pact’s terms.

France and Germany, whose leaders visited Washington in recent weeks to appeal to Trump, have warned that nullification of the agreement could lead to all-out war in the Middle East. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in Washington on Monday, said that as far as he knows, the administration has no clear “Plan B” for what to do next.

Trump tweeted Monday that he would announce his decision at 2 p.m. Tuesday. He is free to reimpose all U.S. sanctions, and even announce new ones. But he is expected to stop short of reneging on the deal altogether. ­Instead, he will address a portion of the wide range of sanctions that were waived when the deal was first implemented, while leaving in limbo other waivers that are due in July.

The affected sanctions, imposed by Congress in 2012, require other countries to reduce Iranian oil imports or risk U.S. sanctions on their banks and their ability to conduct Iran-
related financial transactions. Waivers on those sanctions must be signed every 120 days, and the next deadline is Saturday.

Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, Massachusetts

The New York Times has a piece up about the efforts by and Israeli company (the story was first broken by The Guardian Observer) to dig up dirt on Obama administration officials who worked on the Iran deal:

For years, opponents of the nuclear deal with Iran have accused Benjamin J. Rhodes, a top national security aide to President Barack Obama, of scheming to sell the diplomatic agreement on false pretenses to the American people.

Now, just as President Trump appears likely to announce his decision to withdraw from the deal, evidence has surfaced that the agreement’s opponents engaged in a sophisticated effort to dig up dirt on Mr. Rhodes and his family that continued well after the Obama administration left office.

A detailed report about Mr. Rhodes, compiled by Black Cube, a private investigations firm established by former intelligence analysts from the Israel Defense Forces, contains pictures of his apartment in Washington, telephone numbers and email addresses of members of his family, as well as unsubstantiated allegations of personal and ethical transgressions….

It is unclear who hired Black Cube to prepare the report on Mr. Rhodes and a similar report on Colin Kahl, the national security adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., which were obtained by The New York Times from a source with knowledge of their provenance.

The Guardian, which first published the existence of the reports on Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kahl, said aides to Mr. Trump hired the firm, but there is no evidence in the documents that indicate any connection to anyone in Mr. Trump’s administration. A spokesman for the company vehemently denied any connection to the president.

Word Books, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

The latest from The Guardian on another person targeted by the Black Cube operation: Iran deal: prominent backer says he was warned of Trump bid to discredit him.

A prominent Iranian-American supporter of the Iran nuclear deal says he was warned by US intelligence during the presidential transition that his communications would be targeted by the Trump camp in a bid to discredit him….

Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), was also the target more recently of an Israeli private security company, Black Cube, aimed at gathering personal information about the deal’s advocates among senior figures from the Obama administration.

The Guardian has obtained the transcript of an interview with Parsi conducted last summer by an operative working for Black Cube posing as a journalist, probing him for any ways Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl – top foreign advisers to Barack Obama and his vice-president, Joe Biden – might have benefited from the 2015 agreement, in which Iran received sanctions relief in return for accepting strict curbs on its nuclear programme.

“I thought it was strange that he was pushing this financial angle, which I hadn’t heard before,” Parsi recalled.

According to the transcript of the interview, conducted in the early summer last year, he told the interviewer that, far from reaping rewards, US companies on the whole were frustrated that they were getting nothing from the 2015 deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Despite the unusual line of questioning, Parsi thought no more about the interview until the transcript was read to him over the weekend.

Read the rest at the link. I have a feeling we are going to keep learning more about this story and I predict it will be connected to Trump.

Coral Gables Books and Books, Miami

I have the feeling we’re going to hear more about Trump’s payoffs of women too. Take a look at this interesting piece at New York Magazine: Here’s a Theory About That $1.6 Million Payout From a GOP Official to a Playboy Model.

On May 2, Rudy Giuliani revealed that the Trump administration has been lying for months about the fact that Donald Trump reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for the $130,000 he fronted to buy porn star Stormy Daniels’s silence about her affair with Trump. Until then, Trump had been claiming that he didn’t know about any settlement, and that he hadn’t had a sexual liaison with Daniels. (The official White House line continues to be that Daniels is lying about having sex with Trump, but almost no one believes this.) Giuliani has claimed that Trump gave him the okay last week to contradict several months’ worth of denials, by revealing Trump’s payments to Cohen.

In journalism this is known as getting out in front of a story. After federal law-enforcement officials raided Cohen’s office on April 9, they surely had documentary evidence of these financial transactions, which meant it was inevitable the truth would eventually come out.

We should consider the strong possibility that the same tactic — i.e., shameless, baldfaced lying — may have played a role in the exposure of yet another Trump-related sex scandal. The Wall Street Journal published a story on April 13 revealing the existence of another nondisclosure agreement involving an affair between an adult entertainer and a client of Cohen’s. The NDA employed the pseudonyms David Dennison and Peggy Peterson — the same names used in the Stormy Daniels NDA — and was otherwise very similar to the Trump-Daniels agreement.

According to this newly revealed NDA, Dennison agreed to pay Peterson $1.6 million, in exchange for Peterson’s promise not to reveal the affair or her claim that Dennison had impregnated her. This NDA, like the Trump-Daniels document, was negotiated by attorneys Keith Davidson, on behalf of Peterson, and Michael Cohen, on behalf of Dennison. Payments were also delivered through Essential Consultants LLC, the same LLC created by Cohen to facilitate payments in the Stormy Daniels deal.

But supposedly Cohen took care of this problem for GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy. Could it be that Broidy took the fall for Trump for some reason? I’ve certainly suspected as much. Read on at the New York link.

Now, what stories are you following today?

Lazy Saturday Reads

Tom Brown. Woman Reading

Good Afternoon!!

We’ve survived another week without Trump blowing up the planet or further sabotaging the Russia investigation. But for people in Hawaii, it it must feel like the world is on fire.

NBC News: Lava and strong earthquakes force mandatory evacuations on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano continued to erupt Friday afternoon and the island suffered a series of earthquakes with the strongest registering as a 6.9 on the Richter scale, the United States Geological Survey said. Authorities confirmed that some homes were “touched by the lava flow” after more than a thousand residents were forced to flee.

A barrage of earthquakes struck the Leilani Estates region this week, and while they did not trigger a tsunami, strong shaking was felt across the region Friday, according to the National Weather Service. The largest recorded earthquake in the area struck the same region more than 40 years ago, registering as a 7.1-magnitude.

In total, Hawaii County civil defense officials ordered thousands of residents on the eastern coast of the Big Island to evacuate late Thursday and Friday as steam and red lava began emerging from a crack in the earth in the Leilani neighborhood.

Several new vents opened as the volcanic eruptions continued on Friday, the County of Hawaii Civil Defense said. Authorities warned that “first responders may not be able to come to the aid of residents who refuse to evacuate,” according to NBC News affiliate KHNL.

Read more and see dramatic photos at the link.

Hermann Jean Joseph Richir, Young Woman Reading

As we’ve seen repeatedly in the past two years, racism is alive and well in the good ol’ USA. Racism against Native Americans doesn’t get enough attention though. Here’s a shocking example from The New York Times: Native American Brothers Pulled From Campus Tour After ‘Nervous’ Mother Calls Police.

A pair of Native American brothers who had traveled seven hours to tour Colorado State University this week had their visit cut short after a parent on their tour reported them to the campus police.

The parent, a mother, became suspicious after they joined the tour in progress, telling a 911 dispatcher that their behavior and clothing stood out, according to audio from the call.

Body camera footage shows two police officers pulling the brothers aside as they descended a set of stairs. There, the officers briefly questioned the brothers, Thomas Kanewakeron Gray, 19, and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, 17. The officers soon let the pair rejoin the tour, but by then their guide — apparently unaware that the police had been summoned — had moved on, the university said in a statement.

The teenagers returned to the admissions office and were told that nothing could be done to complete their tour, they said. Frustrated, they embarked on the long trip home to Santa Cruz, N.M.

“We drove seven hours to pretty much get the cops called on us,” Thomas said in an interview on Friday.

Louise Williams Jackson, Portrait of Woman Reading a Book on a Sofa

What was so scary for the woman who called police?

During the 911 call on Monday, the woman who called said the brothers were “definitely not” a part of the tour, describing their behavior as “odd” and their clothing as bearing “dark stuff.” She accused them of lying by not giving their names or honestly answering when she asked what they wanted to study.

What gave her the idea she was entitled to question them? And the “dark stuff?”

The shirt Thomas was wearing on the tour had an image for Cattle Decapitation, a death metal band that opposes animal cruelty, he said. Lloyd’s shirt featured the symbol of another death metal band, Archspire….

“My main choice was Denver because of the music culture there,” he said, adding that he hopes to get a doctorate in music to start his own school and become a music therapist. Lloyd, he said, plans to be a visual arts major.

The university has apologized and offered to bring the boys back for a VIP tour, but they haven’t yet decided whether to accept.

Here’s a incredible story from New Orleans. The Lens: Actors were paid to support Entergy’s power plant at New Orleans City Council meetings.

Last October, about 50 people in bright orange shirts filed into City Hall for a public hearing on Entergy’s request to build a $210 million power plant in eastern New Orleans. Their shirts read, “Clean Energy. Good Jobs. Reliable Power.”

The purpose of the hearing was to gauge community support for the power plant. But for some of those in the crowd, it was just another acting gig.

Young Woman Reading, 1873, Pierre Auguste Renoir

At least four of the people in orange shirts were professional actors. One actor said he recognized 10 to 15 others who work in the local film industry.

They were paid $60 each time they wore the orange shirts to meetings in October and February. Some got $200 for a “speaking role,” which required them to deliver a prewritten speech, according to interviews with the actors and screenshots of Facebook messages provided to The Lens.

“They paid us to sit through the meeting and clap every time someone said something against wind and solar power,” said Keith Keough, who heard about the opportunity through a friend.

He said he thought he was going to shoot a commercial. “I’m not political,” he said. “I needed the money for a hotel room at that point.”

They were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and were instructed not to speak to the media or tell anyone they were being paid.

Unbelievable. Is this normal? Or is this kind of blatant dishonesty a product of Trump’s “leadership?” Read more details at The Lens. It’s a long article.

This article is from Thursday, but I’m posting it because it seems really important. CNBC: Special counsel Robert Mueller focusing sharply on links between Trump confidant Roger Stone and former campaign official Rick Gates, sources say.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is focusing intensely on alleged interactions between former top Trump campaign official Rick Gates and political operative Roger Stone, one of President Donald Trump‘s closest confidants, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

A Girl Reading, by Johann Georg Meyer

Stone, a longtime advisor to Trump, is apparently one of the top subjects of the Mueller investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, sources told CNBC on condition of anonymity.

The questions have been largely about what was discussed at meetings, including dinners, between Stone and Gates, before and during the campaign, said the sources, who have knowledge of the substance of the recent interviews….

The new developments indicate that Mueller’s team is interested in Stone beyond his interactions with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during the campaign….

The link between Gates and Stone goes back to their work at what had been one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington, which was founded by Stone along with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The special counsel’s probe has yielded two indictments against Manafort, who is accused of several crimes, including bank fraud and conspiracy against the United States.

This suggests that Gates might know what Stone was up to with coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia and that he’s shared his deep knowledge of Stone as well as Manafort with Mueller. That seems very significant.

After his crazy behavior this week, you have to wonder how long Rudy Giuliani will remain on Trump’s legal team, especially after Trump threw his old pal under the bus yesterday. A couple of stories to check out:

The Washington Post: Giuliani tries to clarify comments on Trump’s reimbursement of payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Reuters: Security clearance for Russia probe may be hard for Giuliani: legal experts. The problem is Giuliani’s work for foreign governments.

Alfred Emile Stevens, The Reader

We learned from Rudy that Trump paid Michael Cohen back for the Stormy Daniels’ payout in monthly installments. Is it possible that despite all his real estate holdings, Trump is flat broke? David Cay Johnston, who has studied Trump for decades, think it’s possible.

DC Report: Whopper Of The Week—The Broke ‘Billionaire.’

Was Donald Trump starved for cash in fall 2016, when 62 million voters cast ballots for a candidate who told them repeatedly that he was “rich—really, really rich.”

The way that Trump “funneled” hush money to a porn actress just 11 days before the election sure makes it look that way. This would be consistent with four decades of Trump claiming vast wealth, but not being able to pay his bills as they come due.

As you read what follows keep two thoughts in mind:

First, would any billionaire need months to pay a $130,000 bill?

Second, there is not now and never has been a shred of verifiable evidence that Trump is or ever was a billionaire, a myth I first demolished using his own net worth statement prepared for a lawsuit in spring 1990.

On Giuliani’s revelations, Johnston writes:

During a rambling chat full of legal nonsense, meandering syntax and ludicrous assertions that captivated reporters and pundits, Giuliani also revealed that Trump took four months or more to pay the hush money to Stephanie Clifford, better known as the porn star Stormy Daniels. The news focused on the admission that Trump did pay the hush money, showing that the president and the White House lied earlier.

Woman Reading By A Paper Bell Shade by Henry Robert Morland

But the more significant revelation came when Giuliani said that it took Trump four months or more to pay the bill. Think of it as one of those 90-days same-as-cash deals that merchants with excess goods offer so they can generate enough immediate cash to pay their bills.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen “funneled it [the $130,000] through a law firm and the president repaid it,” Giuliani said, speaking with Trump’s advance knowledge.

“You’re going to do a couple of checks for $130,000,” Giuliani said.

Why didn’t Trump pay with a single check, as any mere multimillionaire could be expected to do? Giuliani didn’t say, and the entertainer Hannity didn’t ask even though his show appears on Fox News.

Is that why Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen took out loans for more than three-quarters of a million dollars as it began to look like Trump could win the GOP nomination? Did Trump need Cohen’s financial help?

Just Security has an interesting piece on Trump’s legal strategy by Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer: Nixon’s Long Shadow: Donald Trump’s Emerging Constitutional Defense Against Investigation–and Indictment.

It should never lightly be assumed that the president and his lawyers are working from the same strategic plan, but on the evidence of recent days, they may have decided on their defense against the Russia probe. Having concluded that the president will not gain by further cooperation with Mr. Mueller, they will systematically condemn the Mueller inquiry as an unconstitutional assault on the presidency and resist with an aggressive assertion of Mr. Trump’s rights and prerogatives as Executive, they are preparing to “constitutionalize” the conflict.  This showdown may open formally with the president’s refusal of an interview, after which Mr. Mueller may issue a subpoena and the president may decline to comply with it.

Frederick Vezin, Evening Reading

Donald Trump would be turning the clock back to the 1970’s and taking up the battle that Nixon waged for a presidency effectively immune from the criminal justice system for as long as the incumbent holds the office.  Nixon flinched. He made his case, lost, turned over the incriminating tapes, and eventually accepted the inevitable and resigned. Trump is made of different material, and unlike Nixon—a former Congressman, Senator, and Vice President, prior to his election to the presidency—he has no experience with, or understanding of, the constitutional or institutional implications of his actions. To the degree that he does,  this “norm-busting” president may just not care.

The Trump legal team may feel they have no choice except to shift the ground of battle to the Congress, away from the legal process: While they face the good possibility of a Democratic House in January, they may consider the odds very much in their favor of retaining the support they need in the Senate to defend against a two-thirds vote to convict. (They may also think an impeachment in a hostile House is likely in any case on a variety of charges.) The costs to them of engaging in this legislative forum, more “political” in character, may seem far more manageable than fighting off Mr. Mueller in the courts. And the hiring of Emmet Flood, who has impeachment experience, and the departure of Mr. Cobb who appears to have counseled cooperation with the Special Prosecutor, may be a further indication of the direction of their thinking.

Head over to Politico to read the rest.

Those are my offerings for today. What stories are you following?

Tuesday Reads: Happy May Day!

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?