Lazy Saturday Reads: Trump’s Worst Week So Far?
Posted: July 29, 2017 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Anthony Scaramucci, Boy Scouts, Brian Williams, Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, MSNBC, North Korea ICBM, police brutality, Reince Priebus, Trumpcare failure 14 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
I know I’ve said this before, but it’s more true than ever: I don’t know how much more Trump bullshit I can take. This past week may have been the worst yet; how much worse can it get? I’m afraid that it can and will get a whole lot worse.
Last night Brian Williams ran this video that briefly summarizes the events of the past week. It feels to me as though Trump’s horrific speech to the boy scouts was a long time ago, but no. It was just a few action-packed days ago.
Oh, and this morning we learned that North Korea’s ICBM could reach Los Angeles or even Chicago. From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Based on current information, today’s missile test by North Korea could easily reach the US West Coast, and a number of major US cities.
Reports say that North Korea again launched its missile on a very highly lofted trajectory, which allowed the missile to fall in the Sea of Japan rather than overflying Japan. It appears the ground range of the test was around 1,000 km (600 miles), which put it in or close to Japanese territorial waters. Reports also say the maximum altitude of the launch was 3,700 km (2,300 miles) with a flight time of about 47 minutes.
If those numbers are correct, the missile flown on a standard trajectory the missile would have a range 10,400 km (6,500 miles), not taking into account the Earth’s rotation.
However, the rotation of the Earth increases the range of missiles fired eastward, depending on their direction. Calculating the range of the missile in the direction of some major US cities gives the approximate results in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that Los Angeles, Denver, and Chicago appear to be well within range of this missile, and that Boston and New York may be just within range. Washington, D.C. may be just out of range.
It is important to keep in mind that we do not know the mass of the payload the missile carried on this test. If it was lighter than the actual warhead the missile would carry, the ranges would be shorter than those estimated above.
Many news outlets published stories about how bad the week was, often including even more horrible events that The 11th Hour video left out. Raw Story included the Anthony Scaramucci clusterfuck:
Thursday. New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci started off his day by delivering a rambling interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo in which he compared himself and Reince Priebus to Cain and Abel.
Later in the day, the New Yorkerpublished an interview with Scaramucci in which the new White House official ranted about Priebus — calling him a “f*cking paranoid schizophrenic” — and top White House political strategist Steve Bannon, whom he said regularly tries to “suck his own c*ck.” In the same interview, Scaramucci threatened to fire the entire White House communications staff, while vowing to “kill all the f*cking leakers” within the Trump administration.
Anthony and Deirdre Scaramucci
Oh, and have you heard? Scaramucci’s wife has filed for divorce because of the relationship with Trump, according to gossip site Page Six:
Deidre Ball, who worked as a vice president in investor relations for SkyBridge Capital, the firm he founded in 2005 and sold to ascend to the White House, has filed for divorce from “The Mooch” after three years of marriage after getting fed up with his ruthless quest to get close to President Trump, whom she despises.
One source told Page Six, “Deidre has left him and has filed for divorce. She liked the nice Wall Street life and their home on Long Island, not the insane world of D.C. She is tired of his naked ambition, which is so enormous that it left her at her wits’ end. She has left him even though they have two children together.”
Scaramucci and Ball, 38, began dating in 2011 and are believed to have married in 2014.
NPR: Don’t Look Away: Stuff Happens Fast In Trump’s First Summer In Washington.
The week had almost ended when the Twitter item crossed. Minutes before quitting time, less than an hour after the markets closed: Gen. John Kelly named White House chief of staff.
The secretary of Homeland Security was replacing Reince Priebus at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
After about six months and a week, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee had been removed as the No. 1 aide to President Trump….
Priebus had been embattled almost from the beginning. He was said to be at odds with senior adviser Steve Bannon, to be less than close to first daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
He was too old school, too Midwestern, too conventional. When Anthony Scaramucci arrived as the new White House director of communications in mid-July, he was reporting directly to the president — not to Priebus. Bad sign.
So in Washington, among those who watch the White House, there could be little surprise. And yet the spectacle of the chief of staff sitting alone in a van in the rain at Joint Base Andrews on Friday evening — detailed in a pool report — was still, somehow, shocking.
We don’t know yet how Priebus found out. Did he read it on Twitter?
HuffPost included more about Trump’s trolling of Jeff Sessions. Yes, that was on Monday of this week.
Trump kicked off the week by tweeting his frustrations with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and asking why Sessions isn’t investigating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton….
Trump attacked Sessions again — this time in a newspaper interview [Tuesday]. The president told The Wall Street Journal that he’s “very disappointed” in Sessions, but stopped short of saying he’ll fire the early Trump loyalist.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said.
Then on Wednesday:
For the third day in a row, Trump publicly humiliated his attorney general and the Justice Department. This time, the president questioned Sessions’ decision to not fire Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and falsely claimed McCabe’s wife had accepted a campaign donation from Hillary Clinton.
The Financial Times weighs in: Trump’s week staggers from bad to worse.
It was the week that Donald Trump’s new communications director was meant to reset the White House after six turbulent months. Instead, the fight-to-the-death between Anthony Scaramucci and chief of staff Reince Priebus framed a week that shed the harshest light yet on the chaos at the heart of the administration.
From Mr Trump’s tweeted attacks on his own attorney-general to the resignation of Mr Priebus, days of rolling controversy have shown up the divisions wracking the senior levels of his team and reinforced concerns about the trajectory of his presidency.
Having once welcomed Mr Trump’s November victory for putting the levers of American power in Republican hands, conservatives now are aghast at the disarray threatening the president’s agenda.
While the week of rancour was bookended by the departure of Mr Priebus on Friday afternoon, its lowest point may have come in the early hours of the day when Republican senator John McCain, suffering from cancer, cast the vote that killed the president’s dream of repealing Obamacare after weeks of Republican wrangling over the plans.
“I don’t think there’s a clear understanding of what the party is any more and what it stands for,” said Adam Brandon, head of FreedomWorks, a conservative group with close ties to the lawmakers.
John McCain votes no on Trumpcare bill
The LA Times focused on the health care debacle: The week the wheels fell off in Trump’s Washington.
For six months and change, the Trump administration has careened down a bumpy road, seldom far from a crash. This week, the wheels fell off.
The precise moment could be seen on nationwide television by anyone still awake — 1:29 a.m. in Washington, as Sen. John McCain of Arizona walked to the well of the Senate, stood in front of the clerk’s desk, stretched out his right arm and turned down his thumb, squashing the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare.
For Trump, who had campaigned loudly, but ineffectually, for the repeal, the defeat jeopardized an entire legislative agenda. It came toward the end of a week in which his administration had never felt weaker or more riven with self-defeating factions.
More at the link.
We’ll probably learn more over the weekend about what happened with Priebus, but here’s one cringe-inducing anecdote about Trump’s methods of torture from The Washington Post:
Trump’s demeaning of Priebus came through in other ways, too. At one point, during a meeting in the Oval Office, a fly began buzzing overhead, distracting the president. As the fly continued to circle, Trump summoned his chief of staff and tasked him with killing the insect, according to someone familiar with the incident. (The West Wing has a regular fly problem.)
Click on the link to read much more about the Trump gang’s sadistic behavior.
That’s all I have for you today. I know this isn’t much of a post, but I was too exhausted after this hellish week to do any more. What stories are you following?
Thursday Reads: White House Chaos Grows Even Worse
Posted: July 27, 2017 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alaska, Anthony Scaramucci, blackmail, Donald Trump, impeachable offense, Joshua Green, Lisa Murkowski, Reince Priebus, Roger Stone, Sam Nunberg, Steve Bannon 45 Comments
Lady reading in the garden Niels Frederik Schiottz-Jenson
Good Morning!!
I’m still reading The Devil’s Bargain, the new book on Trump and Steve Bannon by Joshua Green. I should have finished it by now, but there has been so much news the last few days that I’ve been riveted to the internet and TV instead. Actually, yesterday I was struggling to concentrate on anything. This Trump nightmare is really getting to me. I need to find better ways to cope without completely zoning out.
Anyway, the book is both fascinating and horrifying. It turns out that Trump’s great wall was an idea that came from Roger Stone and his protege Sam Nunberg. They came up with the concept because they were trying to find a way to keep their cognitively impaired candidate talking about immigration.
Trump was vehemently pro-immigration back in 2012 when he attacked Mitt Romney for pushing “self-deportation.” Trump’s entire anti-immigration message was nothing but a carnival stunt to attract the rubes. And Bannon is the one who got Trump to keep talking about it. Trump wasn’t even interested in “the wall” until he brought it up in a speech at the January 2015 Iowa Freedom Summit and the audience went wild. So Bannon was a huge influence even back then.
I don’t know why I’m still shocked by this kind of cynicism, but I am. I wonder if Trump actually believed any of the garbage that comes out of his oddly misshapen mouth.
Now Trump has hired a new “communication director” who could be even more flamboyantly cynical–and stupid–than his boss. He’s not even supposed to be on the job yet, but he’s already making a very public fool of himself. Last night he sent out a tweet (now deleted) in which he seemed to accused Reince Priebus of leaking his publicly available financial disclosure form. Then this morning he called into CNN and ranted for about 30 minutes about White House leaks.
Woman reading a newspaper, Norman Garstin
Politico: Scaramucci claims ‘felony’ over report of public disclosures.
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Wednesday he will contact federal agencies over the “leak” of his financial disclosures, which he called a “felony,” despite the forms being publicly accessible.
“In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @TheJusticeDept #swamp @Reince45” Scaramucci tweeted late Wednesday.
The tweet followed POLITICO’s publication of Scaramucci’s financial disclosures filed in the course of his employment with the Export-Import Bank. The documents are publicly available on request.
Scaramucci subsequently deleted the tweet and replaced it with another disavowing widespread speculation that his message implied that White House chief of staff Reince Priebus should be investigated. “Wrong! Tweet was public notice to leakers that all Sr Adm officials are helping to end illegal leaks. @Reince 45.”
Speaking to CNN’s New Day co-host Chris Cuomo Thursday morning, Scaramucci acknowledged that the documents are available publicly but still denounced leaks.
Read CNN’s report on Scaramucci’s embarrassing call-in: Scaramucci: ‘If Reince wants to explain he’s not a leaker, let him do that.’
An even better and more succinct report in a thread from Yashar Ali on Twitter. Head over to Twitter to read the whole thing.
Also see this piece by Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: Anthony Scaramucci Is Unclear on the Concept of the Legal System.
Despite possessing a degree from Harvard Law School, Anthony Scaramucci does not seem to possess an understanding of basic principles of the Anglo-American legal tradition. First, Scaramucci accused putative chief of staff and Scaramucci blood-rival Reince Priebus of having illegally leaked his disclosure form. (The leak was not illegal and turns out to have been a public disclosure notice.) Scaramucci’s embarrassment at this gaffe has not discouraged him from pursuing a quasi-judicial purge.
The new White House communications director has gone on television to boast that he is interfering with the justice system in violation of written rules:
More at the NY Mag. link.
Scaramucci’s outrage is over the revelation that he has a serious conflict of interest, because he is currently trying to sell his hedge fund business to a Chinese conglomerate and would need administration approval to do so. Here’s the original story at Politico: Scaramucci still stands to profit from SkyBridge from the White House.
Anthony Scaramucci finally has his White House job, but he still stands to profit from an ownership stake in his investment firm SkyBridge Capital.
The incoming White House communications director earned $4.9 million from his ownership stake in SkyBridge in addition to more than $5 million in salary between Jan. 1, 2016, and the end of June, when he joined the Export-Import Bank, according to a financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics….
The disclosure highlights the extensive wealth Scaramucci has accumulated in his career — much like many of Trump’s other top advisers and Cabinet secretaries — and also the challenge he faces in extracting himself from the potential conflicts his investments could pose.
The SkyBridge website continues to advertise Scaramucci as the firm’s managing director, despite the fact that he has been a government employee for more than a month. Speaking of a website, to make your website on the top of search results, consider the SEO services of Big Vision Marketing. A SkyBridge spokeswoman said Scaramucci stepped down from the executive post Jan. 17, when the company’s sale was announced. He remained an employee of the firm, collecting a salary, until starting at Ex-Im last month.
The investment firm, which Scaramucci founded in 2005, is in the process of being sold to RON Transatlantic and Chinese conglomerate HNA Group. The sale, set in motion in January when Scaramucci was shedding his holdings in anticipation of landing an administration job, has drawn the scrutiny of regulators and is taking longer than expected to close.
The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is examining the deal to ensure that it carries no risk to national security. The panel’s review, which comes amid ramped-up scrutiny of business dealings with China, ultimately can be overruled by President Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Trump himself just committed another impeachable offense by attempting to blackmail Sen. Lisa Murkowski and the citizens of Alaska through his Interior Secretary. From Alaska Dispatch News: Trump administration threatens retribution against Alaska over Murkowski health votes.
President Donald Trump isn’t going to just let go of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s no vote on Tuesday’s health care.
Early Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter to express displeasure with Murkowski’s vote. By that afternoon, each of Alaska’s two Republican senators had received a phone call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke letting them know the vote had put Alaska’s future with the administration in jeopardy.
Francis Coates Jones, artist
The response follows Trump’s no-holds-barred style of governing, even when it comes to his own party. It is his first strike of retaliation against Murkowski, however, despite her tendency to stray from the party line and the president’s priorities.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said the call from Zinke heralded a “troubling message.”
“I’m not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop,” Sullivan said.
“I tried to push back on behalf of all Alaskans. … We’re facing some difficult times and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for the policies that Secretary Zinke and the president have been talking about with regard to our economy. But the message was pretty clear,” Sullivan said. The Interior secretary also contacted Murkowski, he said.
Can this administration get any more chaotic? My guess is that, with Trump and Scaramucci working together, the answer is yes. Keep in mind that lesser chaos agent Steve Bannon was strongly opposed to the hiring of Scaramucci. He’s also opposed to firing Jeff Sessions, but apparently Trump family members are all for it, and Trump has forgotten all about the risks Sessions too by endorsing him early on. Check out this Business Insider article: Bannon convinced Jeff Sessions to endorse Trump, and Sessions worried his career in the Republican Party might end because of it.
As Joshua Green wrote in “Devil’s Bargain,” Sessions, then a senator from Alabama, was unsure if Trump could secure the Republican nomination, and knew that being the first senator to endorse Trump could further curtail his political future if Trump, the Republican frontrunner at the time, lost.
The day before Sessions endorsed Trump at a Madison, Alabama rally in February 2016, then-Breitbart News chairman Bannon told Sessions that it was “do or die” time and that “this is the moment” to endorse.
Jacek Malczewski, artist
“Trump is a great advocate for our ideas,” Sessions told Bannon. “But can he win?”
“100%,” Bannon said. “If he can stick to your message and personify this stuff, there’s not a doubt in my mind.”
Sessions then noted that the GOP already denied him the chairmanship of the Budget Committee, and that “if I do this endorsement and it doesn’t work, it’s the end of my career in the Republican Party.”
“It’s do or die,” Bannon replied. “This is it. This is the moment.”
That moment was just days before what are known as the “SEC” primaries — a series of primary contests concentrated throughout the South. Bannon told Sessions that his endorsement could push Trump over the hump in many of those contests and essentially seal up the Republican nomination.
“Okay, I’m all-in,” Sessions said. “But if he doesn’t win, it’s over for me.”
No wonder Sessions is refusing to step down as Attorney General.
It looks like today is going to be another day of fast-breaking news. I hope I can keep myself from getting as stressed-out as I was yesterday. What stories are you following?
Tuesday Reads: Trump Trashes 80 Year Tradition and Other News
Posted: July 25, 2017 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Boy Scouts, Donald Trump, Eagle Scouts, First National Boy Scout Jamboree 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt, GOP health care bill, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Paul Manafort 110 Comments
The First U.S, National Scout Jamboree was held in 1937 on the ground of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Here the boys are around the Washington Mounument on the morning of July 4th for religious services. Later there was a fire works display, a tradition on the Mall for Independence Day.
Good Morning!!
My father was an Eagle Scout, and in 1937 he attended the first National Scout Jamboree in Washington DC. Whatever you may think of today’s boy scout movement, becoming an Eagle Scout is extremely challenging and an achievement to be proud of, in my humble opinion.
The national Scout jamboree is a gathering, or jamboree, of thousands of members of the Boy Scouts of America, usually held every four years and organized by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America. Referred to as “the Jamboree”, “Jambo”, or NSJ, Scouts from all over the nation and world have the opportunity to attend. They are considered to be one of several unique experiences that the Boy Scouts of America offers. The first jamboree was scheduled to be held in 1935 in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Scouting, but was delayed two years after being cancelled due to a polio outbreak. The 1937 jamboree in Washington attracted 25,000 Scouts, who camped around the Washington Monument and Tidal Basin. The event was covered extensively by national media and attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt….
The first national jamboree was held in Washington, D.C. for ten days in July 1937, attended by 25,000 Scouts, most of whom arrived by train. Region campsites were set up around the Washington Monument and Tidal Basin. The event was covered extensively by radio and newspapers. A press tent accommodated 626 news media reporters, photographers, and broadcasters. Sixty-four news releases were issued and the BSA assisted in the making of 11 newsreels and 53 magazine articles.
The three major U.S. radio networks of the time, NBC, CBS, and Mutual, had broadcasting studios near the jamboree headquarters to produce almost 19 hours of live, on-site jamboree coverage broadcast coast-to-coast. Celebrities also visited the jamboree, including well-known broadcaster Lowell Thomas and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While at the jamboree, Scouts also attended a three-game baseball series between the Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox at Griffith Stadium, as well as toured nearby Mount Vernon.
President Franklin Roosevelt was a long-time, strong supporter of the scouting movement.
In 1915, FDR was the young assistant secretary of the Navy when Chief Scout Executive James E. West solicited his support of the five-year-old Boy Scouts of America. West asked FDR to serve as a member of the Special Committee on Nautical Scouting.
In 1921, shortly after agreeing to become more active in New York City Scouting, FDR was disabled by polio, losing the use of his legs. During his effort to regain his health and mobility in the years that followed, his involvement in Scouting grew. His political activities also increased, and during the 1920’s he became a prominent national figure.
FDR played a major role in the effort to obtain a permanent camp for New York City Scouts, and in 1927, he was one of a group credited with opening Ten Mile River Scout Camps.
He enjoyed visiting the camp even as governor of New York. In August 1930, during a ceremony at camp, FDR was presented the Silver Buffalo Award, the BSA’s highest national honor for service to youth. During another visit three years later, he was inducted into the Order of the Arrow and posed for photographs proudly wearing his OA sash.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the fi.rst National Boy Scout Jamboree in 1937
Boy Scouts of America is not a partisan organization, despite some recent fumbles over gay rights. But yesterday “president” Trump trashed one more American institution with his foul, corrupt behavior.
The Washington Post: Trump’s Boy Scouts speech broke with 80 years of presidential tradition.
For 80 years, American presidents have been speaking to the National Scout Jamboree, a gathering of tens of thousands of youngsters from around the world eager to absorb the ideas of service, citizenship and global diplomacy.
In keeping with the Scouts’ traditions, all eight presidents and surrogates who have represented them have stayed far, far away from partisan politics.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the occasion to talk about good citizenship. Harry S. Truman extolled fellowship: “When you work and live together, and exchange ideas around the campfire, you get to know what the other fellow is like,” he said.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the “bonds of common purpose and common ideals.” And President George H.W. Bush spoke of “serving others.”
Donald Trump wasn’t a boy scout and he couldn’t possibly care less about American traditions.
For a brief moment at this year’s jamboree in West Virgina, President Donald Trump indicated that he would follow that tradition — sort of.
“Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts?” he said.
Then, standing before all 40,000 of them, he bragged about the “record” crowd size, bashed President Barack Obama, criticized the “fake media” and trashed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. In the lengthy 35-minute speech, the president threatened to fire his health and human services secretary if he couldn’t persuade members of Congress to vote for the Republican health-care bill.
At one point, he told a rambling story about a conversation he had at a New York cocktail party with a once-successful home builder who “lost his momentum.” The lesson, apparently: “You have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum. And if you don’t have it, that’s okay.”
Click on the WaPo link to read more history about presidents and the Boy Scout Jamboree.
Hitler Youth
Trump is a monster without a single shred of human decency. We need Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Congress to force him into retirement before he destroys every proud American institution and tradition. Honestly, when I heard about this disgusting speech yesterday, I felt sick at heart. I wondered if Trump is hoping to enlist young people in a modern day Hitler Youth.
The Kansas City Star: Outraged Boy Scouts call on organization to disavow Trump speech.
Sitting presidents have come to give a nonpartisan speech at the Boy Scouts National Jamboree since 1937. President Donald Trump came to give a speech – but many say he still broke the tradition in a “nauseating” way.
During the 35-minute speech Monday night to about 40,000 scouts in West Virginia, Trump threatened to fire Secretary of Health Tom Price if the Senate did not approve repealing and replacing Obamacare, railed against journalists and “fake news,” talked about getting invited to parties with Hollywood celebrities, sought praise for his election victory and bashed Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.
“We won and won. So when they said, there is no way to victory, there is no way to 270. I went to Maine four times because it’s one vote, and we won,” Trump said. “But we won – one vote. I went there because I kept hearing we’re at 269. But then Wisconsin came in. Many, many years – Michigan came in.” [….]
And while Boy Scouts in the crowd cheered and applauded during Trump’s speech, long-standing Boy Scouts were not pleased. One Eagle Scout who attended the National Jamboree in 1989 took to Twitter to talk about his family’s history within the organization – he said his grandfather was a scoutmaster for 40 years and awarded a silver beaver, while his father was also an Eagle Scout and attended the National Jamboree in 1957 – and criticize Trump’s speech. He said his son, a star scout on his way to becoming an Eagle Scout, had wanted to attend this year’s Jamboree.
Read the rest at the link.
Hitler Youth uniform
Sorry to take up so much space with this, but I truly believe Trump’s behavior yesterday is an important example of how he is tearing down everything that has made America “great” so that he can turn our beloved country into a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Russia coalition.
In other news, Jared Kushner went back to Capital Hill this morning; and Paul Manafort has been subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Politico: Kushner, Manafort providing information to congressional investigators Tuesday.
Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were both set on Tuesday to provide congressional investigators with information about the heavily scrutinized meeting with a Russian lawyer they attended last year as advisers to President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, was scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed session on Tuesday. He took questions from Senate Intelligence Committee members on Monday and, according to prepared remarks he made public, told them he did “not collude” in Russia’s suspected attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Manafort spoke to investigators after reaching an agreement with the Senate Intelligence Committee to avoid a subpoena, though a separate committee has issued a subpoena compelling his testimony. He finished a meeting with the Senate panel on Tuesday morning and “answered their questions fully,” spokesman Jason Maloni said.
The Guardian: Senate issues subpoena to Paul Manafort for testimony on Russia.
The Senate judiciary committee has issued a subpoena to Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager, seeking his testimony at a public hearing on Wednesday.
The Republican senator Chuck Grassley and the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein said they were unable to reach an agreement with Manafort for a voluntary transcribed interview with the committee.
The two said that late Monday night they issued a subpoena to compel Manafort’s participation in Wednesday’s hearing.
The committee wanted Manafort to testify on enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Russia’s attempts to influence US elections.
Trump is continuing to torture Attorney General Jeff Sessions with public comments and tweets.
The Washington Post: Trump leaves Sessions twisting in the wind while berating him publicly
President Trump and his advisers are privately discussing the possibility of replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and some confidants are floating prospects who could take his place were he to resign or be fired, according to people familiar with the talks.
Members of Trump’s circle, including White House officials, have increasingly raised the question among themselves in recent days as the president has continued to vent his frustration with the attorney general, the people said.
Replacing Sessions is viewed by some Trump associates as potentially being part of a strategy to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and end his investigation of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to influence the 2016 election, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Three more related stories to check out:
CNN: Trump slams Sessions, rips DOJ in Twitter outburst.
McClatchy: Trump messes with Sessions, and Senate Republicans are not pleased.
Axios: Trump in phone call: “What would happen if I fired Sessions?”
Finally, there is supposedly going to be a vote on consideration of the Senate heath care clusterf*ck sometime today.
Business Insider: The Senate will vote to start its repeal of Obamacare in a few hours — and the process is still in chaos.
On Monday night, Sen. John McCain said he would return to Washington to vote on key issues — most notably, on the Senate’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
The dramatic return of McCain, a week after announcing his diagnosis of brain cancer, seems to indicate that Tuesday’s vote on the Senate healthcare push is extremely close for Republican leaders.
At the same time, though, no one is quite sure of what they’re pushing for.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor on Monday that there would be a vote on a motion to proceed with the House healthcare bill, the first step in a likely multiday process of debate and dealmaking in an attempt to come through on the long-held Republican promise of repealing the law, also known as Obamacare.
The question is whether McConnell’s plan is to bring up the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the bill to repeal and replace the law; the Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act, the bill to repeal now and replace later; or some modified version of either.
More at the link.
So . . . what stories are you following today?
Lazy Saturday Reads
Posted: July 22, 2017 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Paul Manafort, Rep. Devin Nunes, Robert Mueller, Sen. Richard Burr, Senate Judiciary Committee, Sergei Kisylak, Trump Russia investigation 46 Comments
Key West Chairs, Dorine MacLauchlan
Good Afternoon!!
Another huge story broke last night at the Washington Post, and this one appears to have been leaked by people in the intelligence community or the White House who are trying to damage Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials both in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.
One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he has no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.
Russia’s ambassador to Washington told his superiors in Moscow that he discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Jeff Sessions during the 2016 presidential race, contrary to public assertions by the embattled attorney general, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The Goldfish Window, Childe Hassam
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s accounts of two conversations with Sessions — then a top foreign policy adviser to Republican candidate Donald Trump — were intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, which monitor the communications of senior Russian officials both in the United States and in Russia. Sessions initially failed to disclose his contacts with Kislyak and then said that the meetings were not about the Trump campaign.
One U.S. official said that Sessions — who testified that he has no recollection of an April encounter — has provided “misleading” statements that are “contradicted by other evidence.” A former official said that the intelligence indicates that Sessions and Kislyak had “substantive” discussions on matters including Trump’s positions on Russia-related issues and prospects for U.S.-Russia relations in a Trump administration.
Current and former U.S. officials said that assertion is at odds with Kislyak’s accounts of conversations during two encounters over the course of the campaign, one in April ahead of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech and another in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
It would be interesting to know who leaked this–could it possibly have come from Michael Flynn? In any case, this is highly sensitive information that the Post reportedly had in June but held it until last night.
The Post also published a damaging story about Jared and Ivanka’s lies of omission: In revised filing, Kushner reveals dozens of previously undisclosed assets.
Jared Kushner failed to disclose dozens of financial holdings that he was required to declare when he joined the White House as an adviser to President Trump, his father-in-law, according to a revised form released Friday.
A separate document released Friday also showed that Kushner’s wife, presidential daughter Ivanka Trump, had been paid as much as $5 million from her outside businesses over an 84-day span this spring around the time she entered the White House as a senior adviser and pledged to distance herself from her private holdings.
Saturday Afternoon, William Gunning King
Kushner’s new disclosure, released by the White House, detailed more than 70 assets that his attorneys said he had inadvertently left out of earlier filings. The new document comes as the presidential aide faces increasing scrutiny as part of investigations into alleged Russian influence in the 2016 campaign….
The new filing reveals Kushner’s past and current investments with an OFOM miner in an array of entities, including a real estate trading platform now valued at $800 million in which he continues to hold a large stake. He and his wife also disclosed that their contemporary art collection is valued at between $5 million and $25 million.
Kushner’s financial disclosure has been updated 39 times since his first filing in March.
From today’s New York Times: Ivanka Trump Received at Least $12.6 Million Since 2016, Disclosure Shows.
Ivanka Trump or her trust received at least $12.6 million since early 2016 from her various business ventures and has an arrangement to guarantee her at least $1.5 million a year even as she serves in a top White House position, according to her first ethics disclosure made public late Friday.
The report was released alongside an updated filing by her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also serving as a top adviser to President Trump. It shows that the couple benefit from an active business empire worth as much as $761 million to them, an arrangement that ethics experts warn poses potentials for conflicts of interest as the couple have been given a wide-ranging portfolio of government responsibilities.
Ms. Trump, who resigned from nearly 300 leadership positions at various entities within the family real estate businesses and at her fashion brand, has continued to receive millions of dollars from both streams, including more than $2.4 million from her stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington and more than $2.5 million in salary and severance from the Trump Organization.
Ms. Trump received about $1.7 million in payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as two other real estate companies for various management, consulting and licensing work, the documents show, these companies all are one of the best because they use hoa software to keep themselves organized. Those payments, for work done in 2016, were based on the companies’ performance.
But going forward, she will receive fixed payments — a change that her advisers say was developed in consultation with the Office of Government Ethics to minimize her potential conflicts by removing her interest in how well her family’s business performs.
More at the link.
Brookside Park Pasadena on a Saturday Afternoon
I was really looking forward to seeing Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort testify publicly, but unfortunately it will be behind closed doors now. CNN: Trump Jr. and Manafort reach deal with Senate panel to avoid public hearing.
The leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee have cut a deal with President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort to avoid being subpoenaed for a high-profile public hearing next week, with the two men agreeing to provide records to the panel and to be privately interviewed ahead of any public session.
In a joint statement, panel Chairman Chuck Grassley and ranking member Dianne Feinstein said, “(W)e will not issue subpoenas for them tonight requiring their presence at Wednesday’s hearing but reserve the right to do so in the future.”
Feinstein tweeted later Friday evening, “The Judiciary Committee will talk to Trump Jr. & Manafort before they testify in public, but we will get answers.”
Last week, Trump Jr. told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he would testify under oath about his recently revealed 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians, where he attempted to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.
But after the Senate Judiciary Committee invited him to attend a public hearing, the President’s eldest struck the agreement to avoid it, instead going behind closed doors.
Sources familiar with the matter say no date has been set for his and Manafort’s private interviews with the committee.
It seems as if Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr is getting more serious about his Russia investigation. Yesterday he publicly criticized House Intel chair Devin Nunes.
Talking Points Memo: Senate Intel Chair: ‘The Unmasking Thing Was All Created By Devin Nunes.’
Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) on Friday accused his counterpart in the House, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), of creating a false narrative about Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice.
Madeline in a Wheat Field, Daniel Ridgway Knight
Speaking to CNN after Rice was interviewed by the panel in closed session, Burr said he asked no questions about whether she improperly requested and revealed the identities of U.S. individuals swept up in intelligence reports—an accusation Nunes has made repeatedly.
“The unmasking thing was all created by Devin Nunes, and I’ll wait to go through our full evaluation to see if there was anything improper that happened,” Burr told CNN. “But clearly there were individuals unmasked. Some of that became public which it’s not supposed to, and our business is to understand that, and explain it.”
With an assist from the White House, the House Intelligence chairman in March embarked on a one-man crusade to accuse Rice of improperly unmasking the identities of members of Trump’s campaign in intelligence reports. Though President Donald Trump said he believed Rice’s actions broke the law, bipartisan lawmakers who viewed the same classified reports from which Nunes drew his conclusions said they saw no evidence of wrongdoing. National security experts also told TPM that it was within Rice’s purview as national security adviser to request that names be unmasked as she tried to determine the extent of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Nunes ended up temporarily stepping aside from the House investigation after ethics watchdogs accused him of improperly disclosing classified information in his public statements about Rice. He recently told CNN that he remains fully “read-in” to the House probe and never formally recused himself, however.
Trump has reportedly been asking his lawyers if he can pardon himself and members of his family and staff. Here’s a response in a Washington Post op-ed by Lawrence Tribe, Richard Painter, and Norman Eisen: No, Trump can’t pardon himself. The Constitution tells us so.
Saturday Afternoon, Mark Arian
Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree.
The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law.
The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.
The pardon provision of the Constitution is there to enable the president to act essentially in the role of a judge of another person’s criminal case, and to intervene on behalf of the defendant when the president determines that would be equitable. For example, the president might believe the courts made the wrong decision about someone’s guilt or about sentencing; President Barack Obama felt this way about excessive sentences for low-level drug offenses. Or the president might be impressed by the defendant’s subsequent conduct and, using powers far exceeding those of a parole board, might issue a pardon or commutation of sentence.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
This has been an mind-boggling week for Trump Russia news. I’m kind of relieved to have the weekend to process everything, since I assume Trump will be golfing. Next week could be even worse. Will Trump try to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller? Will Jeff Sessions have to resign? We’ll have to wait and see.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
Friday Reads: Ready the Pitchforks
Posted: July 21, 2017 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Donald Trump, Sean Spicer 27 Comments
Morning Sky Dancers!
It’s a sad state of affairs when the President of the United States of America is so wrapped up with money laundering and conspiring with Russians that he has to check into his constitutional powers to pardon six months into his first term. The particular features of a presidential pardon of interest are the ability to pardon family, staff, and self. If Trump removes Mueller or seriously starts pardoning any of the Trump Family Crime syndicate, there should be a mad rush to local hardware stores for tar, feathers, and pitchforks. I’m sure France will come to our aid with Les Guillotines.
We could’ve had Taco Trucks on every corner. But no, we have one Constitutional Crisis after another and a President who is a Fanboy of the autocratic, murderous, thieving KGB-trained Vladimir Putin. What does he have on our President? The deed to Trump Towers and a claim on Ivanka’s sexy time? We continue to discover Trump’s inability to leave Vlad alone during the recent G-20 summit. How creepy is that?
President Donald Trump may have held more meetings with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit earlier this month, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday — but he shrugged off the importance of the encounters.
“They might have met even much more than just three times,” he told NBC News’ Keir Simmons in an exclusive interview, dismissing speculation about the leaders’ meetings.
“Maybe they went to the toilet together,” he joked.
Asked whether the two presidents had other conversations or met in the corridors of the G-20 meeting, Lavrov used the analogy of children mingling at a kindergarten.
“When you are bought by your parents to a kindergarten do you mix with the people who are waiting in the same room to start going to a classroom?” he asked.
He added: “I remember when I was in that position I did spend five or ten minutes in the kindergarten before they brought us to the classroom.”
Lavrov echoed the White House account of a third meeting between Trump and Putin during a social-dinner at the summit in Hamburg.
The other two meetings — one a scheduled bilateral meeting and another when the pair shared a handshake — had already been widely reported.
“After the dinner was over…I was not there…President Trump apparently went to pick up his wife and spent some minutes with President Putin…so what?” he said.
Lavrov also said the U.S. presence in Syria was illegitimate and accused C.I.A director Mike Pompeo of having “double standards” regarding the establishment of military bases in the country.
He said Pompeo’s comments criticizing Russia’s presence in Syria and the establishment of military bases on the Mediterranean coast, at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday, showed that “something was wrong with double standards.”
Lavrov cited reports of ten U.S. bases built in Syria, “not to mention hundreds of of military bases of the United States all over the world and all around Russia.”
I have no doubt that part of Trump’s cozying up to the autocrat has a lot to do with the breaking news on US Support of Syrian Rebels.
President Trump’s decision to cut off aid to anti-government rebels in Syria marks a victory for President Bashar Assad in his six-year civil war — as well as allies Russia and Iran — and a defeat for U.S. efforts to remove the Syrian dictator.
Trump has decided to end a covert CIA program under President Barack Obama to train moderate rebels to fight Assad, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The report comes two weeks after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany and after the United States and Russia announced a limited cease-fire in southeastern Syria that promised to end Syrian airstrikes on rebel-held areas there.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at the time that while the U.S. hopes to extend the truce to other parts of the country, U.S. policy remains that Assad and his family have “no long-term role” as rulers in Syria.
The CIA training program was approved by Obama, who called for Assad to step down because of brutal oppression by his regime.
Talking heads appear baffled that Trump is no policy wonk and his only goal is to win at whatever. I argue that his goals are obvious and don’t include US. His goals are to:
1) Enrich his family
2) Appease Putin and the Russian oligarchs
3) Get as much attention as possible
4) Avoid jail for the numerous criminal activities he commits through blustery threats
5) Get rid of everything associated with Barrack Obama
Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.
Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.
One adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation.
“This is not in the context of, ‘I can’t wait to pardon myself,’ ” a close adviser said.
With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.
What President talks about pardons six months into his first term? What President specifically asks about pardoning his family? His associates? Himself? What Fresh HELL IS THIS?
It’s only six months into Donald Trump’s presidency — and he’s already looking into his powers to pardon his top aides and family members for unspecified crimes, according to a report from the Washington Post published Thursday night.
One source told the paper that presidential pardon powers were under discussion among Trump’s lawyers. But another source went further, telling the Post that “Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe.” And a Trump adviser seemingly confirmed the report to the paper, saying that the president was simply curious.
Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump, told CBS News Friday morning that “[p]ardons are not being discussed and are not on the table.” But if this report is true, Trump is apparently worried enough about his, his family members’ and his top aides’ legal exposure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation that he’s already looking into pardons before anyone’s been convicted or even charged with any crimes.
To be clear: It would be utterly shocking, and seemingly without any real precedent in US history, for a sitting president to pardon close aides or family members facing investigation.
And it would also seemingly be within the president’s powers. The pardon power is incredibly wide-ranging. A president can pardon essentially all federal crimes at any point after they’ve been committed — even if they haven’t yet been charged or convicted.
What’s prevented past presidents, including Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate, from doing something like this has been the fear of political backlash. And that may yet restrain Trump too — this, for the moment, seems to fall into the category of brainstorming rather than concrete planning.
But of course, Trump has frequently proven himself willing to flout the norms and traditions of American politics with glee, regardless of the backlash that may ensue. And he may yet do so again, calculating that his voters will stick with him regardless.
Brian Beutler argues that ‘We’re on the Brink of an Authoritarian Crisis’. Trump may have hoping to chide Sessions to quitting in the hopes he can find an AG willing to fire the Special Counsel or he could be just have another trumper tantrum. Either way, Mueller is our Jedi and only hope given Republican reluctance to do anything right.
The scope of that crisis is much clearer now that the Washington Post is reporting that Trump is discussing the possibility of pardoning himself, his family, and his closest aides to short-circuit the sprawling investigation of his campaign’s complicity in Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election. Trump’s team is also, according to the Post and another Times story, digging up dirt on the special counsel investigators in an attempt to discredit them.
In light of this dizzying news, it’s worth returning to the Times interview. Trump’s juiciest comments pertained to his attorney general, uber-loyalist Jeff Sessions, whom he resents for recusing from that investigation. But these grievances were already known, as was the fact that Trump has consideredterminating Robert Mueller, the man leading the inquiry. What made the Times interview explosive was Trump’s suggestion that he would fire Mueller for delving too deeply into his finances.
SCHMIDT: Last thing, if Mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances, unrelated to Russia—is that a red line?
HABERMAN: Would that be a breach of what his actual charge is?
TRUMP: I would say yeah. I would say yes.
And what lit the fuse was contemporaneous reporting, first from the Times and then from Bloomberg, that Mueller is indeed investigating Trump’s business entanglements, as it was widely expected he would. “FBI investigators and others,” Bloomberg reported, “are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008.”
The confluence of these two developments confronts Trump with a choice between backing down from his threat and making good on it, perhaps while issuing pardons promiscuously and to catastrophic effect.
The loud hum of chaos and spectacle engulfing the Trump administration is drowning out a creeping reality: We are on the brink of an authoritarian crisis that will make the firing of FBI Director James Comey seem quaint in hindsight.
Trump has long made fun of what he considers Obama’s wimpiness on red lines. Now that he’s drawing a bunch of them on Mueller, what can we expect?
The president’s miscalculation is not about his pardon authority. Rather, it is about the extent to which the legal machinations that worked for him in private, civil litigation against ordinary individuals (or even various state attorneys general) can be applied to a wide-ranging criminal and counterintelligence investigation run by Mueller and what appears to be an All-Star cast of lawyers and investigators. The president can’t try and drag out things and hope Mueller’s investigation runs out of money; the funding is derived from a permanent congressional appropriation account. Nor can the president realistically hope that he will be able to undercut the investigation with “conflicts of interest” or “ethics” complaints. Mueller has already been vetted by the Justice Department’s ethics officers, and the petty complaints raised about the personal political donations made by some on his team reek of desperation.
The president is used to overpowering and overwhelming his legal opponents, but Mueller – who ran the FBI for 12 years and oversaw the transformation of that agency in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11 – is unlikely to be intimidated. Mueller’s team appears to be methodically examining the Russian government’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, and it borders on axiomatic that his team will uncover whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin in any way (a question that, of course, remains unresolved).
Mueller’s investigation will go where the facts lead it, but the president is doing himself no favors by providing a fresh set of bread crumbs on a regular basis. His Twitter rants and stream-of-consciousness remarks in media interviews are easy fodder for the special counsel’s team, and provide it with an unusual degree of access to the president’s state of mind and motivations. It may be cathartic for Trump to express these thoughts publicly, and it might rouse his political base, but it is doing nothing to put out the three-alarm political fires that are routinely emerging in the wake of new reports about previously undisclosed contacts with Russian operatives or inquiries into his financial dealings.
If the president truly wishes to survive the mess in which he finds himself, he needs to come to grips with the simple truth that everything he learned before Jan. 20, 2017, is irrelevant. There is no one who can just make this situation “go away.” There is no deal to be made, no financial settlement that can resolve the matter. The investigation will find what it finds, and it very well might ensnare several close associates of the president (and potentially even a family member) along the way.
Mueller is indeed hunting down the facts.
Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the White House to preserve all documents relating to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer and others, according to a source who has seen the letter.
Mueller sent a notice, called a document preservation request, asking White House staff to save “any subjects discussed in the course of the June 2016 meeting” and also “any decisions made regarding the recent disclosures about the June 2016 meeting,” according to the source, who read portions of the letter to CNN.
The letter from Mueller began: “As you are aware the Special Counsel’s office is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump. Information concerning the June 2016 meeting between Donald J Trump Jr and Natalia Veselnitskaya is relevant to the investigation.”
Meanwhile, there’s these other interesting developments. Said Russian Lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has spy agency clients. The Russian lawyer who met Donald Trump Jr. after his father won the Republican nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election counted Russia’s FSB security service among her clients for years, Russian court documents seen by Reuters show.
The documents show that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, successfully represented the FSB’s interests in a legal wrangle over ownership of an upscale property in northwest Moscow between 2005 and 2013.
The FSB, successor to the Soviet-era KGB service, was headed by Vladimir Putin before he became Russian president.
Then, there’s some musical chairs going on with Trump’s legal team.
There’s been a shakeup in President Trump’s legal team.
Marc Kasowitz is out as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, CBS News chief White House correspondent Major Garrett reports. And Kasowitz’s spokesman, Mark Corallo, has resigned, Garrett says
The reasons for the moves were not immediately known.
Kasowitz has represented Mr. Trump since the early 2000s, and led his defense in the Trump University fraud case.
Kasowitz recently made headlines when he sent threatening emails to a retired public relations professional who had said Kasowitz should resign. In his first response, Kasowitz wrote “F*** you,” according to ProPublica. Kasowitz wrote a number of emails after that, including one that said, “And you don’t know me, but I will know you How dare you send me an email like that I’m on you now You are f****** with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back, b****.”
Kasowitz later apologized.
Corallo is a longtime GOP operative who worked for the House committee that investigated President Clinton in the 1990s before going to the Justice Department under former Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to Politico. Politico reports Corallo had been handling the White House’s defense in the Russia investigation.
Keeping up with the chaos and the assaults on the US Constitution is tiring work. It’s also stressful. Can you believe we’re living through this?
Oh, and this was just announced:
‘W.H. press secretary Sean Spicer resigns’
White House press secretary Sean Spicer, President Donald Trump’s embattled spokesman during the first six months of his presidency, is resigning his position, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
Spicer’s decision appears to be linked to the appointment of a new White House communications director, New York financier Anthony Scaramucci. The people with knowledge of the decision spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the personnel matter publicly.
‘Sean Spicer’s resignation as White House press secretary will rob Melissa McCarthy of her greatest role’
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