The Comey Memos

The Comey Memos:  Trump should have thought twice before firing FBI Director Comey.  The ever diligent Comey memorialized each one of his conversations with Trump with a memo to the files.  Tuesday afternoon the NY Times beat out the Washington Post for Trump bombshell of the day when it reported that one of those memos detailed an Oval Office meeting that took place the day after former security adviser Michael Flynn was fired.  According to Comey’s memo, at the end of the meeting, Trump ushered everyone, including Attorney General Sessions and Vice President Pence, out of the Oval Office before cornering Comey and asking him to “let go” of the Flynn investigation.  Trump, who’s been known to lie now and then, denies that he ever asked Comey to leave Flynn alone.  In response to the news, Representative Chaffetz, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter demanding that the FBI turn over all of Comey’s Trump-related memos and it’s only a matter of time before Comey testifies.  John McCain said “we’ve seen the movie before, it’s reaching Watergate size” and talked about another shoe dropping from his oft mentioned centipede.  House Majority Leader Ryan ran away from reporters and Senate Majority Leader McConnell repeated his confidence in Trump but asked for less drama.  Democrats are throwing around the words obstruction of justice and impeachment.    

Another Day, Another Contradiction:  Tuesday morning, Trump contradicted his advisers and tweeted proudly taking full credit for sharing highly sensitive intelligence with Lavrov and Kislyak, his Russian buddies, because he is president and the president “has the absolute right” to reveal secrets.  Despite Trump’s gleeful admission, National Security Adviser McMaster again tried to play down the significance of Trump’s gaffe suggesting that Trump didn’t know enough about the value of the intelligence to realize that sharing it was damaging.  McMaster further obfuscated by adding that the intelligence wasn’t that valuable anyway but couldn’t come up with an explanation as to why Homeland Security Assistant Tom Bossert raced out of the Lavrov, Kislyak meeting at warp speed to warn the CIA and NSA about Trump’s leak.    

The Source:  Israel, the source of the sensitive information leaked to the Russians, is furious.  According to Debkafile, an Israeli website focused on military matters, the leaked intelligence concerned Israel’s capabilities for intercepting communications and signals and involved highly secret cutting edge technology.  Prior to Trump’s leak, no country outside of the US knew about Israel’s capability. The exposure of the technology to Russia, Syria and Iran’s ally, is seriously damaging to Israel and the war on terrorism. Trump’s team added insult to injury on Tuesday when McMaster refused to acknowledge that the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, was part of Israel and Spicer said that it was something that would be discussed when Trump meets with Netanyahu. Earlier in the week, Trump’s advance team had rebuffed Israel’s offer to help with logistics for Trump’s planned visit to the Wall by saying that it was outside of Israel’s purview.  Netanyahu may soon be wishing for the good old days when Obama was president.  Sheldon Adelson is positively apoplectic.

And Then There’s Manafort:   Yesterday, NBC reported that Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records related to a $3.5 million loan that Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort took out through a shell company last August right after leaving the campaign.  The mortgage loan was made by Spruce Capital, a company owned by Joshua Crane who has partnered with Trump on real estate deals.  Spruce is partially funded by one of those pro-Russian Ukrainian magnates who also contributed to Trump’s campaign.  Manafort repaid the loan in March but there is no record that he ever paid $36,000 of taxes due on the loan.            

Another Autocrat:  Trump welcomed Turkish President Erdogan, another one of his favorite autocrats, to the White House on Tuesday.  Erdogan managed to ignore Trump’s mangled pronunciation of his name, but had a harder time with Trump’s recent decision to arm Syrian Kurds.  Trump embraced Erdogan as a great friend and ignored his domestic crackdown on protesters and the press. 

Upcoming Trip:  If he makes it to the end of the week, Trump will be leaving for his Three Religion Tour, his first international foray since becoming President.  After he meets with the Pope he will be staying in Italy to attend the G7 Summit.  Trump’s advisers have told allies to keep conversations with Trump short and simple because they can’t get him to focus on preparation material, have no idea if he understands any of the issues, and are fearful of another major gaffe.      

Monday night after Trump’s intelligence gaffe was revealed it was reported that a shouting match had broken out at the White House, no doubt they were still screaming last night.