Trump is touring the Middle East, looking for graft as president and grift for his family business. Most presidents choose to visit a U.S. ally like Canada or Great Britain as their first foreign trip, but Trump goes directly to the richest, most corrupt, least democratic countries where he can score lucrative deals for himself. On the trip, the big story is that he wants to accept the gift of an airplane from the Emir of Qatar. This would of course be wildly unconstitutional and unethical.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia yesterday. Here’s Lawrence O’Donnell’s commentary from last night.
RIYADH, May 13 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump kicked off his trip to the Gulf on Tuesday with a surprise announcement that the United States will lift long-standing sanctions on Syria, and a $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the U.S.
The U.S. agreed to sell Saudi Arabia an arms package worth nearly $142 billion, according to the White House which called it the largest “defense cooperation agreement” Washington has ever done.
The end of sanctions on Syria would be a huge boost for a country that has been shattered by more than a decade of civil war. Rebels led by current President Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled President Bashar al-Assad last December.
Speaking at an investment forum in Riyadh at the start of a deals-focused trip that also brought a flurry of diplomacy, Trump said he was acting on a request to scrap the sanctions by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“Oh what I do for the crown prince,” Trump said, drawing laughs from the audience. He said the sanctions had served an important function but that it was now time for the country to move forward.
Jamal Kashoggi
Of course one of the things he did for the crown prince was to overlook the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi.
Trump and the Saudi crown prince signed an agreement covering energy, defense, mining and other areas. Trump has sought to strengthen relations with the Saudis to improve regional ties with Israel and act as a bulwark against Iran.
The agreement covers deals with more than a dozen U.S. defense companies for areas including air and missile defense, air force and space, maritime security and communications, a White House fact sheet said.
It was not clear whether the deal included Lockheed F-35 jets, which sources say have been discussed. The Saudi prince said the total package could reach $1 trillion when further agreements are reached in the months ahead.
It’s not just the “gesture” of a $400 million luxury plane that President Donald Trump says he’s smart to accept from Qatar. Or that he effectively auctioned off the first destination on his first major foreign trip, heading to Saudi Arabia because the kingdom was ready to make big investments in U.S. companies.
It’s not even that the Trump family has fast-growing business ties in the Middle East that run deep and offer the potential of vast profits.
Instead, it’s the idea that the combination of these things and more — deals that show the close ties between a family whose patriarch oversees the U.S. government and a region whose leaders are fond of currying favor through money and lavish gifts — could cause the United States to show preferential treatment to Middle Eastern leaders when it comes to American affairs of state.
The Trump sons have been seeking out deals for the familiy business
Before Trump began his visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, his sons Eric and Donald Jr. had already traveled the Middle East extensively in recent weeks. They were drumming up business for The Trump Organization, which they are running in their father’s stead while he’s in the White House.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Eric Trump announced plans for an 80-story Trump Tower in Dubai, the UAE’s largest city. He also attended a recent cryptocurrency conference there with Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and son of Trump’s do-everything envoy to the Mideast, Steve Witkoff.
“We are proud to expand our presence in the region,” Eric Trump said last month in announcing that Trump Tower Dubai was set to start construction this fall.
The presidential visit to the region, as his children work the same part of the world for the family’s moneymaking opportunities, puts a spotlight on Trump’s willingness to embrace foreign dealmaking while in the White House, even in the face of growing concerns that doing so could tempt him to shape U.S. foreign policy in ways that benefit his family’s bottom line.
The strategic pitch also included the possibility of a detente with Israel and US access to Syrian oil and gas reserves, according to sources familiar with the effort.
Jonathan Bass, a pro-Trump activist, met with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa for four hours in Damascus on April 30, alongside Syrian activists and representatives from Gulf Arab states.
That formed part of a broader push to broker a meeting between the two leaders, which occurred on Wednesday.
It was the first time in 25 years that the leaders of the US and Syria had met, and came after a surprise announcement from Trump that the US would lift all sanctions on Syria.
In Riyadh, Trump also embarrassed himself by saluting Saudi generals.
President Donald Trump saluted Saudi Arabian generals as they lined up to greet him during his visit to Riyadh, the first stop in his four-day tour of the Middle East.
There has been a discussion in recent years about the proper etiquette for presidents saluting the military, particularly those from other nations.
A returned salute by Trump to a North Korean general during his first term sparked criticism, with some saying he should not have shown respect to a hostile nation. Others said it was courteous to return the gesture.
The salute has not sparked the controversy that followed the emergence of video that showed the president saluting the North Korean general during his first term.
But it comes as Trump leads a large delegation of top officials from his administration and leaders in the business world, as he seeks to discuss peace in the Middle East and improving trade and investment.
Trump’s inappropriate behavior doesn’t shock people anymore; it’s expected that he’ll be an embarrassment to the country wherever he goes.
Qatar signed an agreement Wednesday to purchase 160 jets from U.S. manufacturer Boeing for Qatar Airways.
The agreement was signed by both President Donald Trump and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani during Trump’s visit to the Gulf Arab country.
Trump said the deal was worth $200 billion and included 160 jets.
“So it’s over $200 billion but 160 in terms of the Jets, that’s fantastic,” Trump said.
“So that’s a record, Kelly, then congratulations to Boeing,” he added, directing to his comments to Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, who was in the room.
Boeing could certainly use the help. Orders last year effectively ground to a halt after a door plug blew off of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max at the beginning of 2024, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane. Even with a rebound in orders toward the end of 2024, Boeing’s gross orders were just 569 for all of last year — down a stunning 60% from 2023.
Also not helping Boeing was a massive strike in the fall. About 33,000 machinists hit the picket lines in September, and Boeing didn’t restart production until early December. That sank Boeing’s deliveries to just 348 planes last year, down 34 percent from 2023.
And that was before Trump’s tariffs hit.
Of course the big issue today is the plane that Trump wants to accept from Qatar.
Donald Trump has doubled down on why he wants to accept a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar, a country where he traveled to today to negotiate business deals, with the US president portraying the $400m aircraft as an opportunity too valuable to refuse.
“The plane that you’re on is almost 40 years old,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an Air Force One interview on the Middle East trip, where he is also visiting Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
“When you land and you see Saudi Arabia, you see UAE and you see Qatar, and they have these brand-new Boeing 747s, mostly. You see ours next to it – this is like a totally different plane.”
Clearly irritated by questions about the ethical criticism of accepting such a lavish gift as president, Trump insisted American prestige was at stake. “We’re the United States of America. I believe we should have the most impressive plane.”
The timing of Trump’s visit has raised eyebrows, coming just weeks after the Trump Organization secured a deal with Qatar for a luxury resort and golf course development outside the capital, Doha, called Trump International Golf Club & Villas….
But the idea of accepting a plane from Qatar has triggered alarm across the political spectrum. The Democratic representative Ritchie Torres condemned it as a “flying grift” that violates the constitution’s emoluments clause, which explicitly prohibits federal officials from accepting valuable gifts from foreign powers without congressional approval.
Even staunch Trump allies have broken ranks, including the Texas senator Ted Cruz, who warned that the aircraft deal “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems”, while the West Virginia senator Shelley Moore Capito said bluntly she’d “be checking for bugs”.
On Sunday night, as the public first learned about Donald Trump’s plan to accept a superluxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from his friends in Qatar to be used as Air Force One, the president was eager to defend the arrangement. The plane, the Republican argued online, would be “FREE OF CHARGE.”
Trump returned to the point a few days later, asking why taxpayers should be “forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars” for a plane “when they can get it for FREE” from Qatar. He added soon after that only “a stupid person [would] say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”
Even if the luxury jet were free, this arrangement would still be a legal, ethical and political mess. But there’s a related problem: The “free” plane wouldn’t be free. NBC News reported:
“Converting a Qatari-owned 747 jet into a new Air Force One for President Donald Trump would involve installing multiple top-secret systems, cost over $1 billion and take years to complete, three aviation experts told NBC News. They said that accepting the 13-year-old jet would likely cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over time, noting that refurbishing the commercial plane would exceed its current value of $400 million.”
Politico had a related report that noted it “could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars” to retrofit Qatar’s “gift” into a makeshift Air Force One.
“This isn’t really a gift,” said Rep. Joe Courtney told Politico. The Connecticut Democrat, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and helps oversee its panel on executive airlift, added, “You’d basically have to tear the plane down to the studs and rebuild it to meet all the survivability, security and communications requirements of Air Force One. It’s a massive undertaking — and an unfunded one at that.”
In other words, when Trump says the jet from Qatar would be “FREE OF CHARGE,” it’s true that it would be free for him — the president wouldn’t have to reach for his own wallet — but it wouldn’t be free to us, the American taxpayers.
I wonder if anyone is going to be able to talk Trump out of this madness.
Even if the luxury jet from Qatar were free, this "gift" would still be a legal and ethical mess. But there's a related problem:The free plane would cost American taxpayers a fortune.
What a spectacle! There they were yesterday, assembled in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, autocrats and plutocrats and kleptocrats, gathered to enjoy each other’s company under the benevolent patronage of their host, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Saudi Arabia was an appropriate destination for Donald Trump’s first foreign trip in his second term as president. He chose to visit not a democracy but a despotism; not a free nation but one of the world’s most unfree; not a land of tolerance but of repression.
And Trump made it clear yesterday that he did not consider these features unfortunate or undesirable aspects of life under the House of Saud. There was not a hint of criticism or even of hesitation in the fulsome praise Trump heaped upon his hosts. The American president admires the Saudi achievements in autocracy, plutocracy, and kleptocracy.
And so Trump paid homage to his “friend,” Mohammed bin Salman, who rules without consent and who brooks no dissent. “I like him a lot. I like him too much,” the president said. So much for the late Jamal Khashoggi. As to the kingdom over which bin Salman rules, Trump said the United States has “no stronger partner.” So much for the free nations with whom we are allied.
And Trump emphasized that the achievements of Saudi Arabia that he admires have nothing to do with democratic principles or ideas of freedom. Quite the opposite. He disparaged those who supported efforts at democratization and liberalization in the region—“the so-called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits.” [….]
Once upon a time, when American presidents still believed in the principles of the American republic, they accepted that they still had to work with despotisms like Saudi Arabia. Still, they mostly tried to move them along, even if slowly, toward the goal of a freer society….
No longer. The very word “liberalization” now seems antique. In the era of Trump and Putin and Xi and bin Salman and many others, autocracy, plutocracy, and kleptocracy are the way of the world….
More than two dozen American titans of business participated in a business lunch with bin Salman and Trump. They no doubt paid appropriate homage to the two autocrats, hoping to walk away, as Trump said, “with a lot of checks.” One doubts any of them uttered the words “freedom” or “democracy” or “consent of the governed.” One assumes none defended the importance of free speech or of dissent.
In other news, a few more items:
House Republicans are still determined to use massive cuts to Medicaid to pay for Trump’s tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. Here’s the latest:
House Republicans on Wednesday pushed forward on their sweeping domestic policy bill, slogging through marathon drafting sessions that began Tuesday and stretched into the night as they haggled over Medicaid and tax cuts.
The meetings in three key committees, a crucial part of advancing what President Trump has labeled the “one big beautiful bill” carrying his agenda, came as Republican leaders raced to push the legislation through the House before a Memorial Day recess that begins at the end of next week.
Republicans are seeking to extend Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cut and temporarily enact his campaign pledges not to tax tips or overtime pay. They want to partly offset the roughly $3.8 trillion cost of those tax measures — as well as plans to increase spending on the military and immigration enforcement — by making cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and subsidies for clean energy.
But even as they moved toward winning committee approval of the plan, House Republican leaders faced pushback in their own ranks that could delay or derail passage. Conservative lawmakers have argued the proposed cuts to Medicaid, which stopped short of an overhaul in an effort to protect vulnerable Republicans from political blowback, do not go far enough in restructuring and slashing costs of the program. They are unhappy that the largest reduction included — new work requirements for beneficiaries — would not take effect until 2029, putting off any savings until then, after the next presidential election.
And Republicans from high-tax states like New York were furious about a provision that would increase the limit on the state and local tax deduction to $30,000 from $10,000, a cap they regard as far too low and which was still being negotiated.
Democrats, who are expected to oppose the package en masse, have aimed most of their criticism at the bill’s health care provisions, which are estimated to cause more than 8 million Americans to lose insurance coverage, and which they believe will be politically damaging.
This Is going to be a disaster. I hope the Senate won’t accept these health care and food assistance cuts.
House Republicans unveil Medicaid cuts that will leave millions without care
The Medicaid portions of the GOP megabill would lead to 10.3 million people losing coverage under the health safety net program and 7.6 million people going uninsured, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans released the partial estimates Tuesday less than a half hour before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is scheduled to mark up its portion of the legislation central to enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, the border and energy.
The panel has been tasked with finding $880 billion in savings, and the CBO confirmed the committee is on track to meet that target. CBO also projects that many of the major Medicaid policies would account for $625 billion in savings, though the scorekeeping office didn’t calculate the impacts of all provisions.
Work requirements would produce the biggest savings in the bill, accounting for nearly $301 billion over a decade — deeper than what had been initially anticipated. Overturning Biden-era rules on the program would save nearly $163 billion, and a moratorium on new taxes that states levy on providers to help finance their programs would recoup roughly $87 billion.
Republicans have argued that the changes will streamline Medicaid and allow it to better focus on serving the most vulnerable beneficiaries.
Democrats have argued the changes will lead to devastating impacts on health care access and have made the case — including by pointing to previous CBO estimates — that work requirements would simply remove people from coverage rather than motivate beneficiaries to find jobs.
Americans broadly disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president and favor Democratic U.S. House candidates for the 2026 midterms by 6 points, a new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll finds. In a survey experiment, support for the president’s immigration agenda falls when respondents are informed of mistaken deportations, such as the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Adults say the economy and inflation are their top priorities, but do not think either party is prioritizing the issues enough. A majority opposes making budget cuts to social programs, such as Medicaid, in order to extend tax cuts and shrink the deficit. If the 2024 election were held today and non-voters were allowed to participate, the electorate would lean toward Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by 5 points, 47% to 42%.
Methodology note: Verasight conducted this poll among 1,000 U.S. adult residents from May 1-6, 2025. It has a margin of error of 3.2%. The survey was weighted to match the political and demographic characteristics of the U.S. adult population according to the March 2025 Current Population Survey, as well as recent benchmarks for partisanship and past vote.
Verasight uses mail, SMS text, and the internet to recruit a sample using both probability-based and non-probability techniques. Verasight handled recruitment, interviewing, and weighting. Strength In Numbers had input on questions but did not participate in other methodological decisions, and conducted all analysis, including creating the topline document.
You can download a pdf of the poll at the link.
Speaking of health, RFK Jr. will be testifying in Congress today.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is testifying Wednesday on Capitol Hill, where the nation’s top health official is expected to be quizzed on his handling of the measles outbreak, the firing of thousands of federal health workers and major cuts to the health agencies he oversees.
Kennedy is appearing before a House Appropriations subcommitteeWednesday morning and will move to the Senate health committee in the afternoon. The pair of hearings marks Kennedy’s first time testifying before Congress since being sworn in as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-February.
Since then, the Trump administration has moved to reshape the nation’s public health infrastructure through eliminating roughly 20,000 jobs, ousting top career officials, threatening billions of dollars in federally funded scientific research and proposing a major reorganization of the health department. Such actions have been deeply divisive, with Democrats and public health experts expressing strong concern that the changes will damage the nation’s public health infrastructure, and Kennedy and his allies countering that they are necessary to refocus the federal government on addressing chronic disease.
In his opening remarks before the House panel, Kennedy said he is focusing on “fighting debilitating disease, contaminated food, toxic environments, addiction, mental health, and illness [affecting] families across every race, class and political belief.”
The hearings are being billed as Kennedy’s opportunity to defend the Trump administration’s budget proposal released earlier this month, which proposed a 26 percent reduction to the department’s $127 billion budget of discretionary spending. But lawmakers typically capitalize on the moment to ask a wide range of questions, particularly demanding answers over the most controversial issues facing the nation’s sweeping health department.
Finally, DOGE really doesn’t seem to have saved the government any money to speak of, despite illegally firing thousands of government workers and illegally closing agencies.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is no longer claiming credit for killing dozens of federal contracts after The New York Times reported last week that they had already been reinstated.
The Times had identified 44 revived contracts, and 43 of them were still featured on the group’s online “Wall of Receipts” as of last week. Then, late Sunday, Mr. Musk’s group deleted those claims for 31 of the contracts from its website, eliminating $122 million of the savings it claimed to have achieved by cutting federal contracts.
Those savings had actually disappeared days or weeks before, when federal agencies reversed cancellations they had made at the behest of Mr. Musk’s group. One revived contract, which DOGE said was worth $108 million, was restored by the Department of Veterans Affairs after eight days. Mr. Musk’s group still listed it as “terminated” for two months after that.
The presence of revived contracts on DOGE’s list of “terminations” was the latest in a series of data errors that have inflated its success at saving money. In the past, the group has deleted other errors from its “Wall of Receipts” site after new reports found that they were double-counting the same cancellations or claiming credit for killing contracts that had ended decades before.\
On Sunday night, Mr. Musk’s group also added more than 800 new terminated contracts and raised its overall savings estimate — across all government activity, not only contracts — to $170 billion from $165 billion. The group did not delete all of the resurrected contracts identified by The Times. It left 12 on the site, still claiming that terminating those had saved taxpayers $121 million.
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
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I’m in a surreal frame of mind this morning. I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. I have a sore throat and I feel kind of lightheaded. I hope I’m not getting sick. Maybe it’s just because I’m reading a surreal book, The Secret History, by Donna Tartt. I know I should have read it years ago, but somehow I never got around to it. It’s very different from what I expected. I knew it was about a murder involving upper middle class classics students at a college in Vermont. I didn’t expect it to be full of slapstick humor. It’s somewhat disconcerting, but very well written. It has definitely taken my mind off the horror of U.S. politics.
Leslie Van Houten, a follower of Charles Manson who was convicted in two killings, will be paroled in weeks, her attorney said Friday after California’s governor said he would not challenge it at the State Supreme Court.
“She’s thrilled,” Van Houten’s attorney Nancy Tetreault said.\Van Houten, now 73, will be paroled in the next several weeks after spending more than five decades in prison, Tetreault said.
An appeals court ruled in May that Van Houten is eligible for parole, reversing a decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom to reject parole.
Newsom, who has repeatedly blocked efforts for Van Houten to be paroled, had until Monday to file a challenge with the state Supreme Court.
Newsom, a Democrat, said Friday he would not do so….
Van Houten is serving a life sentence after being convicted along with other cult members of the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.
A jury convicted Van Houten in 1971 of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. She was initially sentenced to death, but that was overturned and she has spent 52 years in state prison.
Van Houten has been before the state Board of Parole Hearings more than 20 times. The board has recommended Van Houten be paroled five times since 2016, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
She threw her life away back in 1969 when she chose to follow instructions from Manson and his bloodthirsty cult member Susan Atkins. I doubt if she’s a danger to society at this point.
John F. Kelly, who served as former President Donald J. Trump’s second White House chief of staff, said in a sworn statement that Mr. Trump had discussed having the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies investigate two F.B.I. officials involved in the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia.
Mr. Kelly said that his recollection of Mr. Trump’s comments to him was based on notes that he had taken at the time in 2018. Mr. Kelly provided copies of his notes to lawyers for one of the F.B.I. officials, who made the sworn statement public in a court filing.
“President Trump questioned whether investigations by the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agencies should be undertaken into Mr. Strzok and/or Ms. Page,” Mr. Kelly said in the statement. “I do not know of President Trump ordering such an investigation. It appeared, however, that he wanted to see Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page investigated.”
Mr. Kelly’s assertions were disclosed on Thursday in a statement that was filed in connection with lawsuits brought by Peter Strzok, who was the lead agent in the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation, and Lisa Page, a former lawyer in the bureau, against the Justice Department for violating their privacy rights when the Trump administration made public text messages between them.
I hope Page and Strzok finally get their revenge on Trump.
The disclosures from Mr. Kelly, made under penalty of perjury, demonstrate the extent of Mr. Trump’s interest in harnessing the law enforcement and investigative powers of the federal government to target his perceived enemies. In the aftermath of Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, Congress made it illegal for a president to “directly or indirectly” order an I.R.S. investigation or audit.
The New York Times reported last July that two of Mr. Trump’s greatest perceived enemies — James B. Comey, whom he fired as F.B.I. director, and Mr. Comey’s deputy, Andrew G. McCabe — were the subject of the same type of highly unusual and invasive I.R.S. audit.
It is not known whether the I.R.S. investigated Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page. But Mr. Strzok became a subject in the investigation conducted by the special counsel John Durham into how the F.B.I. investigated Mr. Trump’s campaign. Neither Mr. Strzok nor Ms. Page was charged in connection with that investigation, which former law enforcement officials and Democrats have criticized as an effort to carry out Mr. Trump’s vendetta against the bureau. Mr. Strzok is also suing the department for wrongful termination.
Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page exchanged text messages that were critical of Mr. Trump and were later made public by Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general under Mr. Trump, as he faced heavy criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill who were trying to find ways to undermine him.
A forthcoming book by an ex-Trump administration aide describes an episode in which officials worried that then-President Donald Trump was cavalier in his handling of classified information while talking to reporters, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Miles Taylor, who was a top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, writes about the 2018 episode in a book set to be published this month. As a sitting president at the time, Trump had broad powers to declassify information. Yet the incident Taylor describes suggests that his aides still believed he needed to show more care toward state secrets — an issue that landed him in legal peril after he left office and took sensitive records with him….
Trump was still president when the episode Taylor described unfolded Oct. 18, 2018. Taylor writes that he was in a private meeting in the West Wing with John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders came into Bolton’s office and described an interview that Trump had given in the Oval Office, according to Taylor’s book, “Blowback.” (It’s common for White House press aides to sit in when the president gives interviews.)
Trump had been talking to the reporters about Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and journalist who was killed that month by Saudi assassins in Turkey.
Sanders told Bolton that the president had picked up classified documents relating to intelligence on Khashoggi’s death and displayed them, Taylor writes, but that the reporters were unlikely to have been able to read the text.
Bolton gasped at first, but “breathed a sigh of relief” when Sanders told him there had been no cameras in the room, according to the book.
Still, “We were all disturbed by the lapse in protocol and poor protection of classified information,” Taylor writes.
A Washington, D.C., Bar Association review panel is recommending former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani be disbarred in Washington for his handling of litigation challenging the 2020 election on behalf of then-President Trump.
By Daniel Ryan
Giuliani “claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence,” wrote the three-lawyer panel in a report released Friday, regarding the errors and unsupported claims in a Pennsylvania lawsuit he argued seeking to overturn the Republican president’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Between Election Day and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, Giuliani and other Trump lawyers repeatedly pressed claims of election fraud that were almost uniformly rejected by federal and state courts. He’s the third lawyer who could lose his ability to practice law over what he did for Trump: John Eastman faces disbarment in California, and Lin Wood this week surrendered his license in Georgia.
“Mr. Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy,” wrote the three lawyers on the panel, Robert C. Bernius, Carolyn Haynesworth-Murrell and Jay A. Brozost.
The panel’s report will now go to the D.C. Court of Appeals for a final decision.
How much lower can this man sink. It’s difficult to believe that he was once a DOJ official and then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, not to mention mayor of NYC.
The Zuckerberg-Musk fight over the new Threads social media app is pretty entertaining. Here’s the latest:
Mark Zuckerberg’s “Twitter-killer” Threads has reached 70m sign-ups in less than 48 hours, as it more than doubled its growth from its first day on app stores.
The new microblogging platform was launched in 100 countries this week . It immediately accumulated significant numbers of users, hitting more than 30 million within its first 24 hours, apparently making it the fastest downloaded app ever. On Friday, however, Zuckerberg announced on his Threads account that the user total had more than doubled that figure.
Marc Chagall, Le Poète
“70 million sign ups on Threads as of this morning. Way beyond our expectations,” he wrote. Threads launched around the world at 7pm EST in the US on Wednesday.
Elon Musk’s Twitter has reacted to the new rival with a formal threat to sue the “copycat” app over alleged violation of its “intellectual property rights”….
Zuckerberg, chief executive of Threads and Instagram owner Meta, has said he wants to make “kindness” a focus of the app’s appeal, in a reference to concerns that the rival platform, which has more than 250 million users, has become too hostile for some.
“The goal is to keep it friendly as it expands. I think it’s possible and will ultimately be the key to its success,” he wrote on his Threads account. “That’s one reason why Twitter never succeeded as much as I think it should have, and we want to do it differently.”
That seems unlikely, knowing human nature, but we can hope.
If you regularly spread “false information” online, Threads already knows. The platform apparently flagged those accounts on launch, warning users that considered following them, before backtracking.
When Threads launched on Wednesday, numerous right-wing users shared(opens in a new tab) their dissatisfaction(opens in a new tab) with Twitter’s biggest competitor — on Twitter of course — over having their accounts flagged for disinformation.
As of Friday, however, it seems the warning label on accounts that reported the issue has since disappeared….
“This account has repeatedly posted false information that was reviewed by independent fact-checkers or went against our Community Guidelines,” read the label that would pop up when another user attempted follow these accounts.
The wording on the label is similar to a warning prompt that appears on Meta services like Facebook and Instagram. As Threads is so new and still so tightly connected to Instagram, it appears Meta used an account’s existing reputation to inform Threads users of their history.
Later on, Andy Stone of Meta, said the warning labels had been posted by mistake and they were removed from right wing accounts.
Alex Pearlman, a stand-up comedian in Philadelphia, woke up one morning in June and turned on the local news. A portion of Interstate 95 had collapsed. Pearlman thought it was the type of thing people should know about.
Five years ago, he would have turned to Twitter to spread the news. But on that Sunday morning, he picked up his phone and made a TikTok — which quickly amassed more than 2 million views.
By Michael Bridges
A decade ago, Twitter rose to prominence by casting itself as a “global town square,” a space where anyone could reach millions of people overnight. The platform was pivotal in facilitating large social movements, such as the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East and the Black Lives Matter protests over police violence. In a recent email to staff, Twitter’s new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, repeated this characterization, calling the site “a global town square for communication.”
But Twitter no longer serves this function. Thanks to a string of disastrous missteps over the past year by new owner Elon Musk — punctuated by the decision last week to cap the number of posts users can view — Twitter is hemorrhaging users and relevance. While Meta’s new Threads app is making an impressive debut, most social media experts say TikTok reigns as the new global town square and has held that role for quite a while.
“Twitter is definitely not anyone’s public square. Not anymore,” said Chris Messina, who on Thursday posted the hashtag #DeadTwitter on Threads. Twitter is “Elon Musk’s private playground where he’s about to charge everyone … for entry and access #DeadTwitter.”
On Musk’s failed “leadership”:
Since taking the helm last fall promising to champion “free speech,” Musk has alienated users with a relentless stream of updates that are hostile to the app’s heaviest users. He removed all legacy check marks — Twitter’s years-old way to assure users that posters are really who they say they are — sowing distrust and leading to significant financial consequences for major brands that were easily impersonated under the new system. He then sold blue check marks, which ensured amplification to anyone willing to pay $8 a month, allowing scammers and grifters to crowd out the replies to popular tweets. Interesting content has been down-ranked in favor of pay-to-play blue check mark replies, some of which push crypto scams and pornography.
“Before, if I saw someone was verified, they’d have to have done something of note to get it,” said Ryan Fay, a theater director in Atlanta. “Now, I can’t trust anyone who claims to be a journalist and has a check mark because they paid for it, and I don’t know if they have any credentials or knowledge. Seeing a blue check now means this person is using Twitter to try to sell me something or some sort of scamming.”
Musk also fired Twitter’s trust and safety team, allowing harassment and abuse to explode across the platform unchecked. He’s banned prominent journalists and liberal activists. He’s railed against LGTBQ people and declared the word “cisgender” a slur. If that wasn’t enough to drive the most dedicated Twitter users to greener pastures, last week he began limiting the number of tweets users could read, blocking nonpaying users from being served more than 600 tweets per day.
There’s much more on Musk’s failures at the WaPo link. For now, it feels so satisfying to have an alternative to the mess Musk made at Twitter. We’ll have to wait and see how Zuckerberg does with Threads.
Have a great Caturday everyone!!
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Andrew McCabe’s book The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump will be released on Tuesday, and he will be interviewed on 60 Minutes on Sunday night. This might be one 60 Minutes I decide to watch.
McCabe was deputy director of the FBI under James Comey and he became acting director after Trump fired Comey. Trump attacked McCabe repeatedly, and eventually succeeded in driving him out of office. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe one day before he could have retired with his full pension.
On Wednesday, May 10, 2017, my first full day on the job as acting director of the FBI, I sat down with senior staff involved in the Russia case—the investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. As the meeting began, my secretary relayed a message that the White House was calling. The president himself was on the line. I had spoken with him the night before, in the Oval Office, when he told me he had fired James Comey.
Bouquet on a Bamboo Table (1903) Henri Matisse
A call like this was highly unusual. Presidents do not, typically, call FBI directors. There should be no direct contact between the president and the director, except for national-security purposes. The reason is simple. Investigations and prosecutions need to be pursued without a hint of suspicion that someone who wields power has put a thumb on the scale.
The Russia team was in my office. I took the call on an unclassified line. That was another strange thing—the president was calling on a phone that was not secure. The voice on the other end said, It’s Don Trump calling. I said, Hello, Mr. President, how are you? Apart from my surprise that he was calling at all, I was surprised that he referred to himself as “Don.”
The president said, I’m good. You know—boy, it’s incredible, it’s such a great thing, people are really happy about the fact that the director’s gone, and it’s just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that? Are you seeing that, too?
He went on: I received hundreds of messages from FBI people—how happy they are that I fired him. There are people saying things on the media, have you seen that? What’s it like there in the building?
McCabe describes the reaction of FBI employees as one of shock and dismay. Trump then said he wanted to come to the FBI and “show all my FBI people how much I love them.” McCabe thought that was a terrible idea, but agreed to meet with Trump about it. Next, Trump:
Flowers and Fruit by Henri Matisse
…began to talk about how upset he was that Comey had flown home on his government plane from Los Angeles—Comey had been giving a speech there when he learned he was fired. The president wanted to know how that had happened.
I told him that bureau lawyers had assured me there was no legal issue with Comey coming home on the plane. I decided that he should do so. The existing threat assessment indicated he was still at risk, so he needed a protection detail. Since the members of the protection detail would all be coming home, it made sense to bring everybody back on the same plane they had used to fly out there. It was coming back anyway. The president flew off the handle: That’s not right! I don’t approve of that! That’s wrong! He reiterated his point five or seven times.
I said, I’m sorry that you disagree, sir. But it was my decision, and that’s how I decided. The president said, I want you to look into that! I thought to myself: What am I going to look into? I just told you I made that decision.
The ranting against Comey spiraled. I waited until he had talked himself out.
After that Trump taunted McCabe about his wife’s losing campaign for the Virginia Senate, asking McCabe, “How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?” and later saying “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”
I once had a boss who was a monstrous whack job like Trump. It was crazy-making. The entire department under this man functioned like an alcoholic family with an unpredictable, out-of-control father. You never knew what horrible thing would happen next. It was total chaos, as the White House seems to be. I’m glad McCabe is telling the truth about what he experienced.
Mary Daly, Barr’s oldest daughter and the director of Opioid Enforcement and Prevention Efforts in the deputy attorney general’s office, is leaving for a position at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit, a Justice official said.
Tyler McGaughey, the husband of Barr’s youngest daughter, has been detailed from the powerful US attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, to the White House counsel’s office, two officials said.
It’s not clear if McGaughey’s switch is a result of Barr’s pending new role, and the kind of work he’ll be handling at the White House is not public knowledge.
Daly’s husband will remain in his position in the Justice Department’s National Security Division for now.
Henri Matisse: Les Anemones
The moves were by choice and are not required under federal nepotism laws, but Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, called them “a good idea” to “avoid the bad optics that could come from the appearance of them working for him.”
However, Shaub added that McGaughey’s detail to the White House counsel’s office was “concerning.”
“That’s troubling because it raises further questions about Barr’s independence,” Shaub said.
Read more at the CNN link.
If you listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast about Spiro Agnew (or even if you didn’t) you should read this op-ed at The Washington Post by three attorneys who were involved in that corruption case: We should demand high standards from William Barr. Spiro Agnew’s case shows why, by Barnet D. Skolnik, Russell T. Baker Jr., and Ronald S. Liebman.
In the winter of 1973, 46 years ago, the three of us were assistant U.S. attorneys in Baltimore starting a federal grand jury investigation of a corrupt Democratic county chief executive in Maryland. That investigation ultimately led to the prosecution of his corrupt Republican predecessor — the man who went on to become the state’s governor and then President Richard M. Nixon’s vice president, Spiro T. Agnew.
On Oct. 10, 1973, Agnew entered a plea to a criminal tax felony for failure to report the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d received in bribes and kickbacks as county executive, governor and even vice president. All paid in cash, $100 bills delivered in white envelopes.
And he resigned.
Henri Matisse. Vase of Irises. 1912
From the beginning of our investigation, months before we had seen any indication that he had taken kickbacks, Agnew, along with top White House and administration officials and even Nixon himself, repeatedly tried to impede, obstruct and terminate the investigation in nefarious ways. Some of those efforts were unknown to us then and have come to light only now thanks to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and her “Bagman” podcast.
When newspapers began to report that he was under criminal investigation in the summer of 1973, Agnew aroused his base by screaming “witch hunt” and launching a vicious assault on the “lying” press, the “partisan” Justice Department, and the “biased” and “liberal Democrat” prosecutors in Baltimore.
If Agnew and Nixon had succeeded in derailing our investigation, the most corrupt man ever to sit a heartbeat away might have become the president of our country when Nixon was forced to resign less than a year later. But our investigation was protected — first, by our staunch and courageous boss, the late George Beall, the U.S. attorney for Maryland and a prominent Maryland Republican, and second, by the man who had become the new U.S. attorney general that spring, Elliot L. Richardson.
The authors then go on to explain why Barr should not be confirmed unless he commits to releasing Robert Mueller’s findings to the public. Read the whole thing at the WaPo.
There is so much more news! Here are some links to check out:
There are four Democratic women running for president and the media is working overtime to take them all down. Meanwhile, elderly white males Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders get kid glove treatment.
Each one of these women has now been assigned a “her emails” story that will dominate her campaign if reporters are successful. But two elderly white men with problematic political records and a younger man with few qualifications (Beto O’Rourke) are treated as viable candidates.
Trump has more scandals before breakfast than Elizabeth Warren could imagine in her worst nightmares. So why does coverage of the two make her seem embattled and him riding high? Any ideas? I’m misogy-stumped.
President Trump is “in very good health” and is expected to remain healthy for “the duration of his Presidency, and beyond,” the president’s doctor reported Friday after a physical exam that lasted nearly four hours and included 11 specialists.
Carole Lombard with black cat
The White House did not release details of the exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and did not say whether more details would be released.
Trump was seen by a “panel of 11 different board certified specialists,” Sean P. Conley wrote in a brief memorandum released by the White House.
The memo did not include the disciplines of any of the specialists. Typically, a physical exam includes checks of height, weight, blood pressure and other standard measures. Trump said last year that he takes a statin drug to manage his cholesterol.
Trump did not undergo any procedures requiring sedation or anesthesia, Conley reported.
I wonder if he is still 6’3 and 239 pounds? The doctor doesn’t say. Maybe his height increased again–so rare for a 72 year old man, but possible for a wannabe dictator.
President Trump refused to provide Congress a report on Friday determining who killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the grisly assassination.
Steve McQueen and friend
Mr. Trump effectively bypassed a deadline set by law as his administration argued that Congress could not impose its will on the president. Critics charged that he was seeking to cover up Saudi complicity in the death of Mr. Khashoggi, an American resident and a columnist for The Washington Post.
“Consistent with the previous administration’s position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” the Trump administration said in a statement. The statement said the administration had taken action against the killers and would consult with Congress.
But Democrats said Mr. Trump was violating a law known as the Magnitsky Act. It required him to respond 120 days after a request submitted in the fall by committee leaders — including Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — a period that expired Friday.
The illegitimate “president” of the U.S. is protecting a foreign despot who ordered the brutal murder of a Washington Post journalist. And there are suggestions that the “president” used Saudi Arabia and his pals at The National Enquirer to get revenge on Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post.
Jeff Bezos’ stunning accusation that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him mentioned the close ties between the paper’s publisher, David Pecker, and President Donald Trump — and a second, less well-known connection.
Lucille Ball with cat
Bezos flagged the link between the New York tabloid’s parent company, American Media, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, returning to it several times.
While Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir denied any connection between his country and AMI to CNN, Bezos said in his Thursday statement that the link between the Kingdom and the media company is not yet fully understood. He carefully laid out a web of connections.
The trigger for Bezos’ post was his decision to hire a respected investigator to find out how texts to his girlfriend were obtained and published by the National Enquirer — and to determine why the paper and Pecker, the AMI chairman, had made him a target.
“Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is ‘apoplectic’ about our investigation,” Bezos wrote. “For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve,” he continued.
A couple of articles on the National Enquier story to check out:
The illegitimate “president’s” fake attorney general made an ass of himself in front of the Congressional committee and the world yesterday and the “president” is very pleased. Natasha Bertrand at The Atlantic: Matthew Whitaker Plays to an Audience of One.
It took about five minutes of questioning for the acting attorney general to provoke gasps and jeers in the congressional hearing room. “Your five minutes are up,” Matthew Whitaker, an ex-U.S. Attorney-turned toilet salesman, told the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic chairman Jerry Nadler. Nadler cracked a smile, but from that point on the rules of engagement seemed clear: Whitaker, just days remaining in his legally dubious role as the interim head of the Justice Department, appeared to be playing to an audience of one…..
Despite the lingering questions about his resume and suspicions about why he was appointed over Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who would have been Sessions’s natural replacement, Whitaker presented himself to Nadler, a 13-term congressman, with the same aloofness and disdain for tradition that often seems typical of the Trump White House. And that may have been on purpose. Whitaker, whose tenure ends when Bill Barr is confirmed as attorney general next week, will need a new job. He has reportedly been considered for the role of Trump’s chief of staff. And though he testified under oath that he had “not interfered in any way with the special counsel’s investigation,” he repeatedly declined to contradict Trump’s claims that Mueller is on a “witch hunt.”
Marilyn Monroe
Chuck Rosenberg, a former senior Justice Department official who resigned in 2017, said it would have been “easy” for Whitaker to say that Mueller’s investigation is legitimate, as Barr did during his recent confirmation hearings. “I don’t know how somebody could be that cowardly,” he added. But doing so would have undermined what is arguably his boss’s most important talking point—and that would not have been a good move for Whitaker if he was, in fact, auditioning for his next position.
Instead, Whitaker had a boilerplate response prepared for the myriad of questions posed by Democrats about the Mueller probe: “It would be inappropriate for me to talk about an ongoing investigation,” he said. Democrats, though, found that disingenuous—Whitaker had discussed the probe publicly earlier this month, going as far as to speculate that it would be wrapping up soon.
Read the rest at The Atlantic.
Here’s a Trump/Whitaker/Russia scandal that is new to me. Raw Story:
Taking to Twitter on Friday night, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D) hinted that there will be an investigation into a donor who gifted the Judicial Network with $18 million to steal the Supreme Court seat belonging to Merrick Garland.
As part of his observations on the Matt Whitaker hearing where he was confronted about a mysterious $1.2 million donation that funded his salary, Whitehouse said Democrats shouldn’t stop there.
Meryl Streep
‘Whitaker did political hit work for a front group called FACT that does not reveal its donors. Today he admitted that its donor was Donors Trust, an entity that hides the identity of right-wing donors. That means the unknown real donor hid behind two entities,” Whitehouse tweeted….
Whitehouse then put conservatives on notice that he expects an investigation into the dark money that was used to fund a campaign to keep Judge Merrick Garland from even getting a hearing — only to see his seat go to conservative Neil Gorsuch after Donald Trump was elected.
I found this on Twitter.
One of my 2017 posts on Gorsuch. It was fairly obvious it was Russian op. https://t.co/Sn3etWkdFy
John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1955 to 2015, was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history. He dictated these reflections to his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), at their home in Dearborn, on Feb. 7, the day he died.
Mary Tyler Moore
One of the advantages to knowing that your demise is imminent, and that reports of it will not be greatly exaggerated, is that you have a few moments to compose some parting thoughts.
In our modern political age, the presidential bully pulpit seems dedicated to sowing division and denigrating, often in the most irrelevant and infantile personal terms, the political opposition.
And much as I have found Twitter to be a useful means of expression, some occasions merit more than 280 characters.
My personal and political character was formed in a different era that was kinder, if not necessarily gentler. We observed modicums of respect even as we fought, often bitterly and savagely, over issues that were literally life and death to a degree that — fortunately – we see much less of today.
Click on the link to read Dingell’s final thoughts. How amazing that he chose to speak out publicly from his deathbed. He was a true public servant.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you all enjoy the weekend in spite of the insanity that surrounds us.
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Henri Lebasque, Girl Reading and Vase of Flowers, 1915
Good Morning!!
George Bush the elder died last night at age 94. I’m not going to lie and say I’m grieving.
During Watergate Bush was Nixon’s RNC chairman and supported him to the bitter end; but once the White House tapes came out, he urged Nixon to resign. Bush served about a year as CIA director under Gerald Ford. As Vice President, Bush famously claimed to have been “out of the loop” while Oliver North and the gang were running guns and drugs during the Iran-Contra affair. As president, Bush pardoned
…former National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, former CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan D. Fiers, Jr., former CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair E. George, and former CIA Counter-Terrorism Chief Duane R. Clarridge. The Weinberger pardon marked the first time a President ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the President was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.
He also refused to be interviewed by the special counsel. That quote is from the Walsh report on Iran-Contra.
Buried among 1,700 pages of notes written by then-Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger during the Iran-contra affair is one referring to a January 1986 meeting at which Weinberger voiced opposition to covert arms sales to Iran in the presence of George Bush, then the vice president.
Blue Girl Reading, Frederick C. Frieseke, 1935
The note, which appears to contradict Bush’s repeated assertion that he was never present when either Weinberger or then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz objected to the arms sales, is among classified documents being reviewed for possible use in Weinberger’s upcoming trial, according to informed sources. The note is important because it confirms earlier testimony by Shultz placing Bush at the January meeting.
Questioned again lately by reporters about Iran-contra, Bush sought to dismiss further discussion of his role in the worst political scandal of the Reagan administration. But new information emerging from court cases and congressional records since Bush last ran for president has cast fresh doubt on his assertions that he was “out of the loop,” generally uninvolved in and largely unaware of the most controversial Iran-contra operations.
There are numerous indications in the documentary record that Bush was at meetings where decisions were taken in the mid-1980s about both the secret sale of arms to Iran and some of the covert efforts to aid the contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Polls have shown that the public is skeptical of the president’s denials of involvement.
That was written before Bush issued the pardons.
As president, Bush started the Persian Gulf War in order to protect Saudi Arabia after Iraq took over Kuwait. He decided to leave Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq, and of course that led George Bush the younger to attack Iraq again in 2003, leaving us mired in the Middle East ever since.
As we watch Trump suck up to Saudi Arabia, we can forget that the Bushes also loved the Saudis and protected them after the 9/11 attacks. I could go on, but I won’t. Here are some obituaries of George H.W. Bush if you want to read the good stuff:
One good thing I will say about Bush: he didn’t like Trump.
“I don’t like him. I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being a leader.” – George H.W. Bush on Donald Trump After he voted for Hillary Clinton.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death in October, according to a highly classified CIA assessment.
The Saudi leader also in August 2017 had told associates that if his efforts to persuade Mr. Khashoggi to return to Saudi Arabia weren’t successful, “we could possibly lure him outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements,” according to the assessment, a communication that it states “seems to foreshadow the Saudi operation launched against Khashoggi.” [….]
Excerpts of the Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment, which cites electronic intercepts and other clandestine information, were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The previously unreported excerpts reviewed by the Journal state that the CIA has “medium-to-high confidence” that Prince Mohammed “personally targeted” Khashoggi and “probably ordered his death.” It added: “To be clear, we lack direct reporting of the Crown Prince issuing a kill order.”
Girl Reading, Charles Edward Perugini (1834-1918)
The electronic messages sent by Prince Mohammed were to Saud al-Qahtani, according to the CIA. Mr. Qahtani supervised the 15-man team that killed Mr. Khashoggi and, during the same period, was also in direct communication with the team’s leader in Istanbul, the assessment says. The content of the messages between Prince Mohammed and Mr. Qahtani isn’t known, the document says. It doesn’t say in what form the messages were sent.
No wonder Trump refused let CIA director Gina Haspel report to Congress.
There are lots of stories about former Trump fixer Michael Cohen today. Cohen’s attorneys released his full sentencing memo (pdf) last night. For a summary, check out this Twitter thread from Adam Klasfeld.
After a March 2018 visit to Mar-a-Lago, the President’s private club in Florida, Cohen returned to New York believing that his former boss would protect him if he faced any charges for sticking to his story about the 2016 payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to one source with knowledge. Trump was also at Mar-a-Lago at the time of Cohen’s visit.
Another source said that after the April 2018 FBI raid on Cohen’s office and home, people close to the President assured Cohen that Trump would take care of him. And Cohen believed that meant that the President would offer him a pardon if he stayed on message. It is unclear who specifically reached out to Cohen….
Oda with Lamp, Christian Krohg Norwegian, 1852-1925
Following the raid on Cohen’s home and office, Cohen’s attorneys had a legal defense agreement with Trump and his attorneys. During this time, there was a steady flow of communication between the two sides, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
At first, publicly, Trump seemed very supportive of his former attorney. On the day of the raid, Trump said Cohen was “a good man” and that the investigation reached “a whole new level of unfairness.” He unloaded on law enforcement, calling the raids “a disgraceful situation.”
But in the days that followed the raid, one source says, things started heading south with the President.
Trump started to distance himself from Cohen. And when Trump appeared on “Fox and Friends” two weeks after the raids and said that Cohen only did a “tiny, tiny little fraction” of his legal work, Cohen knew the game had changed. According to one source, Cohen knew that things had changed and he acted to protect his family — and himself.
…Michael Cohen said Friday he was in “close and regular contact” with Trump’s White House staff and legal team when he prepared a statement for Congress that he now says falsely downplayed Trump’s effort to land a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a filing seeking a lenient sentence, Cohen’s attorneys say his false statement to Congress — which Cohen pleaded guilty to on Thursday — was based on Trump and his team’s efforts to “portray contact with Russian representatives” by Trump, his campaign or his company “as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016.”
Jarne Gissel 1962
“Seeking to stay in line with this message, Michael told Congress that his communications and efforts to finalize a building project in Moscow on behalf of the Trump Organization, which he began pursuing in 2015, had come to an end in January 2016, when a general inquiry he made to the Kremlin went unanswered,” Cohen’s lawyers Guy Petrillo and Amy Lester write.
But “Michael had a lengthy substantive conversation with the personal assistant to a Kremlin official following his outreach in January 2016, engaged in additional communications concerning the project as late as June 2016, and kept [Trump] apprised of these communications,” they wrote. “He and [Trump] also discussed possible travel to Russia in the summer of 2016, and Michael took steps to clear dates for such travel.”
Another bombshell lobbed by Michael Cohen exploded late Friday night: He says he told Donald Trump about a phone call to the Kremlin asking for the Russian government’s help to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016.
And Cohen also claims he was talking to Trump’s lawyers and White House staff in 2017 while he crafted a misleading statement to Congress seeking to cover up the truth about the Moscow project and the level of Trump’s involvement.
If this is true, former White House Counsel Don McGahn could be in trouble for witness tampering. I wonder what his talked with Mueller’s team have been like?
There are quite a few stories on fake AG Matthew Whitaker too. Some links to check out:
The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
David A. Fahrenthold and Jeremy Singer-Vine at The New York Times: DOGE Removes Dozens of Resurrected Contracts From Its List of Savings.
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